I know that when we’re living with an FAS or FAE child the good days are few and far between and we’re suppose to cherish them but not expect them, it’s just so hard. When my teenage daughter has her good days, she’s a joy to be with and such a help to me around the house. Then mentally I get caught up seeing her future as a normal woman. It’s what I would so desperately want for her, if only I could fix her.

Logically I know that it is completely unreasonable and way out of her ability level. By expecting her to achieve it... more

Over on Nancy’s Reactive Attachment Disorder blog, she and her readers have been pondering how mental illness is related to adoption, and to what extent people tend to accept that adopted and foster children are more prone to mental illness. For me it’s an age-old and apparent argument with lots of catches in it.

The obvious truth is that children from backgrounds of neglect and abuse (research says neglect is worse) run a much higher risk of mental illnesses. Couple this with the fact that many children relinquished to foster care or for adoption often have parents with mental... more

My niece was actually diagnosed with childhood epilepsy when she was seven years old. My sister said that in hindsight she really should have been diagnosed much younger. Because when she was about four years old she would sit and stare like she was daydreaming and during these episodes she would usually wet her pants, even though she was completely potty trained. Looking back on those episodes she now feels they were petite mal seizures. Her grand mal seizures started when she was seven years old. Since my sister... more

My children have tried several of these medications for treatment of their ADHD and some of the treatments are new. Our pediatrician tried to get one of my children approved for one of these new options but our HMO refused to pay for it. For other treatment options see About Prescription Treatments for ADHD or Natural Remedies for ADHD posted on March 26, 2007.

Adderall 3 Adderall XR Desoxyn 4 Desoxyn Gradumet 4 Dexedrine 2 Dexedrine Spansule 2 DextroStat... more

A reader asked me about treatment options for ADHD. Since there is so much information available and so many options for treating ADHD I decided to divide the information up into prescription and nonprescription alternatives.

Prescription drug therapy is an important component of treating ADHD and there are many different medicines that can be used to help control symptoms. The medicines typically used are available in immediate-release, intermediate-acting and timed-released options. You may need to try several forms over a... more

One of my readers asked for some treatment possibilities for ADHD so I decided to break them up into natural remedies that don’t require prescriptions and prescription treatments. I provided links with each so you can study each one to determine if you’d like to try any of them. If you’ve ever searched on the internet for ADHD the information available is overwhelming. The claims and information listed with each “remedy” is pasted directly from the web site cited.

Vaxa's Attend is... more

Part one

We didn’t end up sending our daughter away to boarding school after she had killed so many of our 4-H chickens, but the dream kept us from disrupting through a couple of difficult years. She became an enjoyable girl to have around in her high school years. Unfortunately, our relationship was really damaged as a result of those chaotic preteen years before we decided to try medication. During those early years when we should have... more

It is quickly becoming my personal opinion that inositol may be a well-kept secret when it comes to helping Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Inositol is described as a member of the Vitamin B family, although it’s not really a vitamin at all. It is made by the human body and has been shown to be effective in managing anxiety and depression.

One study showed that people with OCD and panic disorder had symptoms drastically disappear when given a dose of 12 grams of inositol a day.

Often in pursue of the right biomedical answers for LuLu, I feel like a dog chasing my tail. Inositol is one of those moments. Before we consulted with our awesome DAN! doctor, who knows more about... more

We certainly knew that our nine year old daughter had behavior problems. Of course her favorite reply was always, “I didn’t know I did that,” and she always spoke so adamantly that people tended to believe her. We were fairly new foster parents at the time so we believed her, for maybe a year. She was so quiet and sweet to people outside of our family that everyone assumed she must be a real joy to us and a really big help with the younger children.

The real truth was that she hurt other children by “accidentally” shutting their fingers... more

Last week we were living in the North Pole for the entire week so I figured at any minute we would be heading south. My daughter was actually “giddy” last week. I can’t think of a better word to describe her near euphoria. She was laughing and her mouth was running during all of her waking hours.

Having lived with her for nearly two years now, I knew this long lasting excitement was an ominous indicator of a fall. Yesterday the south came crashing in on us. My daughter was asked to leave work after only an hour on the clock for insubordination.... more