ADHD: The Report Card

Every 1st marking period for my son means a storm is coming.  EVERY first marking period my son gets the worst report card of the year.  This is always so heartbreaking and disappointing from him and myself because I know he’s capable of so much more.

I know its coming, and believe you me, I’ve tried all the tricks in the books to try and prevent this.

However there are several factors that contribute to this impending storm.

The first being the fact he has parents in two different households with two different opinions of his ADHD condition.  His father feels he don’t need medication and/or therapy to be successful, whereas his the medical PROFESSIONALS  and MYSELF feel and KNOW otherwise. 

This difference of opinions leads to reason number 2 being non-compliance with his medication.  Due to the fact he has his father’s family convincing him he don’t need medication, and the fact he don’t want to take medication, he goes with gravity (down) and stops taking his medicine over the summer (when he’s with dad) and then struggles during the school year.

The lack of compliance with his medication leads to difficulty staying on task in school, completing and turning in assignments, failed test/quizzes, and ultimately a failing report card.

The constant failures in school creates a wall within my son, and lowers his self-esteem of himself to the point where he just give up.  

He hides his bad grades, don’t complete assignments, and never ask for help because he’d rather forget the fact that he has failed, than ask for help to overcome his struggles.

My son has 3 HIGHLY EDUCATED adults available to him for assistance in school.  We go ABOVE AND BEYOND to try and prepare him for school (I’ll write a post about that).  In the past we literally followed behind him like a bird following a bread crumb path to help prevent him from bottoming out.

However, with him being in high school, and on his way into the real world, I refuse to continue to do this.  I need for him to learn how to compensate for his condition, and unfortunately, I feel like him failing will either motivate him or break him.  I pray for the best, but know I can’t always be around to pick up and put together the pieces of the puzzle for him.

My son is highly intelligent, and if he only put forth minimal effort he would have a C average and I need for him to see this.  It’s heartbreaking watching him fail, and fell like he’s a failure.  However, he has to learn to take responsibility for his work, because he is totally capable of doing so, and can verbalize what he needs to do to be successful.  

As always, my first marking period starts off meeting with his teachers AGAIN to address why my son failed, why I was never notified of him failing, and what can we do to prevent him from failing in the future.  After this meeting, every marking period his report card steadily improves until he’s where he should be by the end of the year.

I pray he gets sick and tired of being sick and tired, because then I know he will do something.  This is something my mother would always say.