tosca,
Our 9 yo DD is also ADHD and Gifted. I have read that they are the hardest to teach. We have had great success with meds (I mean 4 years of meds and we're just now running into any real issues). Having the right teacher is key as well as the right med. I would take the summer to start medicine since you can keep an eye on her and she will have more time to adjust.
Unfortunately Dad in Akron is right. There are plenty of programs to help the disabilities in our children but not a lot to help them encourage the giftedness. For us (we are stationed in Japan) they have a pull-out gifted program but the catch is they have to make up the work they miss in regular class as well as do the gifted work (which makes it seem like a punishment). Her old school did a cluster (gifted mixed with regular students) and they always wound up going the speed of the lowest student.
I would suggest working with her at home. My mother-in-law was a teacher and helped us find lots of workbooks and such that are specifically for gifted children. There are also lots of websites that have games that make the extra learning fun. Let her go at her speed at home. Our daughter is now on the second Harry Potter book. Everyone told us it was too much for her age but she wanted to read them. She read the first one in a week.
I guess what I'm saying is don't discourage her. If she wants to pick up a middle-school or high-school level book let her. but also if she wants to sit and look at a picture book let her (sometimes their brains need a break for silliness). Or if she wants to do harder math let her. Don't let the school decide her level, let her. Heck, if you can encourage her to start learning another language. Since we are in Japan our DD is now learning Japanese and still likes to try Spanish now and then. We just encourage all kinds of learning no matter how silly it may seem at the moment.
Good luck and good job!!
tosca,
It took us a year to settle into the right med combo but I still say that it was worth it. Right away we were getting some help with the meds but it wasn't until a year that we had minimized or learned to deal with side effects.
I have always thought that the giftedness helped in some ways. My dd has learned organizational tools to the point that no one at school realizes that she struggles with organization. Our gifted programs have been good for dd because she is proud that she is intelligent when she feels so disfunctional sometimes. I think that every school has a slightly different program so you have to try it and then drop out if there are problems such as excessive homework.
My dd ended up on meds because she ended up with anxiety dealing with constantly trying to compensate for her ADD in 5th grade. She was losing friends because she wasn't able to catch social cues and didn't even hear someone talking to her. Girls can be real tough as they get older. She was driving us crazy at home and her sister was really starting to dislike her for her verbal outbursts, interupting and sometimes accidently hurting her. Even though we don't have the hyperactivity diagnosis, dd is impulsive with her mouth and body at home.
My DS has been on meds for 7 years with no problems (other than some rebounding which wasn't fun but wasn't horrific), not even at the start. We changed his meds once in about first grade and he was on that dose until this year (6th grade). So yes, it isn't a terrible process for everyone.
Having said all of that, this year (6th grade) has been difficult. I am still trying to figure out what happened. I won't elaborate on everything that happened (you can find stuff in other posts) but I am having to go back and do a lot of reading and learning. You are right to be concerned that your DD's giftedness can make things easy now but result in difficulties later. My DS is gifted and I now think that is why things have gone so well for us to this point. Our old school district had a great gifted program - he was in a math and science class everyday with all gifted kids. It worked great for my DS. We moved this year and this school district has a pull out program and like Navywife said, it is like a punishment because you have to make up all the work you miss which my DS doesn't deal with very well. Also, now that he is getting ready to enter middle school I am greatly concerned that his lack of organization, etc. is going to start causing serious problems. His "smarts" have helped him deal with this in elementary school but I think his "system" isn't going to work for him in middle school. Middle school can be difficult for all kids but I think it poses a special challenge for our ADHD kids. I wish I had done more to prepare my DS while still in elementary school. I also wish I had learned more about what it means to be gifted.
I encourage you to read both books about ADHD and giftedness. I never read anything on giftedness until just recently and I am astounded at how giftedness can "look like" ADHD sometimes. The book I am currently reading is called Mellow Out They Say. If Only I Could. Intensities and Sensitivities of the Young and Bright by Michael Piechowski, PhD. I am only on the 2cd chapter but it has been interesting.
Good luck!
Thank you all for your great input- it's wonderful to find a place where so many people really get this. I was at a little get-together last night and someone was spewing on about how awful it is that kids get sent for these assessments, that we are unnecessarily labeling them...and on and on...you can fill in the rest of the blanks. She doesn't know anything really about my dd. I piped up and told her that 1) the assessment process is actually a very enlightening and positive experience when done by the right person (as it was in our case), and that 2) ADHD isn't something that is an issues defined by the schools designed to get our square pegs to fit in a round hole. When my dd struggles every freaking Wednesday to gather up her things for Brownies and can't find them, and yells and cries amidst her room that is a tornado when her sash is two feet in front of her yet she can't see it, that is real. When she can't yet negotiate traffic and crossing streets because there's just too much sensory input for her to deal with at once, that is real. Ugh. People's ignorance really gets to me at times.tosca,
You are right about crossing streets. We thought it very likely that our dd would get hit by a car if she were to try to cross the street with out us there. I was terrified every Girl Scout field trip. She also was prone to getting lost in crowds.
We can talk more in depth about organization sometime but the biggest organizational tools that we have are the agenda and color-coding the binder. Dd is programed to write down her assignments and she picked out her color scheme for her different subjects. In our schools the kids start using an agenda in 3rd grade. Some kids would try to keep it all in their heads but my dd was always faithul using the agenda. When she hit middle school she already knew how to use tha agenda. She also adds her own notes to the agenda such as "socks for gym class" or "book for study hall". She also uses sticky notes to remind her of things. We taped a clear pocket on the front of her adgenda notebook for papers that need to go to school and sticky notes. Lists in the morning to help her with her routine. Meds help with her overall memory.
Our biggest challenge now is the rare teacher that doesn't write on the board. We also have to figure a way to get her to charge her cell phone. I forget to charge mine so I am no help.
I'm all for diagnosing. First, you can get meds without a diagnosis. Second, you can't get compensating tools effeectively without a diagnosis. Third, the world won't accommodate our kid's challenges so we have to find a way to help them fit in better. All the complaining and whining we do won't make everyone give our children special treatment or consider them just part of the normal spectrum. It's nice when it happens but it isn't the real world. Best to accept it and deal with it.