Science experiements and hippie rants

I know what you're thinking.  WTH is that?  I was at work a few Sunday's ago and Brian sends me this picture in a text message and tells me he found it in Brady's room.  I was so disgusted by this picture that I gagged several times and then was unable to eat lunch or really anything for the rest of the day.  I'm having a hard time now just typing this post without gagging because the picture is currently above this type.  Maybe I should have uploaded the picture after I typed everything up....So back to the big question you've been asking--WTH is that?  Well that my friends is what Brady calls an "experiment."  It's cereal and water.  He said he was trying to extract the iron from the cereal.  Then he was going to sell the iron on ebay.  *insert eye roll here*  I have no clue what the strawberry candy wrapper is for.  Speaking of the strawberry candy wrapper, those were my candies that I had hidden away in the back of the cabinet where the plates are.  He found them....and then proceeded to eat them all.

This past weekend we found an empty honey bear in Brady's room.  Knowing that there had been 2 honey bears in the pantry (one full and one half full), we made Brady tell us where the second honey bear was.  He finally fessed up that he had hidden it in the linen closet.

This morning we go downstairs to an empty container of little meringue cookies....so we watched the video footage from during the night.  Apparently the kid was up from about midnight until around 4 am....

(the above was written about 2 weeks ago or so.  Everything from here on out was written 3/31)

So this brings me to a picture I saw on Facebook today that a friend of mine "liked."  (nothing against my friend.  I love this person dearly)  This picture really peeved me off and I feel the need to rant about it. 

So I was reading the comments that went along with this picture and just really wanted to give the hippy naturalist people a piece of my mind.  Now don't get me wrong.  I'm all for being healthy and organic, etc.   However, maybe it's because I'm a nurse so my job is giving people medications that help whatever problem they have that ails them.  If you have diabetes, you take a medication for it.  High blood pressure--you take a medication.  I feel that it is the same way with children with ADHD.  They need a medication.  Trust me, I have tried everything in order to help with this kids attention and hyperactivity.  Diet modifications, schedules, militant structure.  Nothing works.  I had a kid that was FAILING the first grade.  All because he could not focus on his work.  His teacher couldn't sit beside him all day and re-focus him.  I couldn't go to school with him and sit there all day and re-focus him to get his work done.  You would think that it would be pretty hard to be failing first grade.  It's actually not.  :)  So after lots and lots of discussions with therapists and peds, we started a medication.  Within a week the kid was bringing home A's on his school work.  He ended the school year being on the A/B honor roll. 

We haven't really adjusted his medication dosage since he was in first grade either and he's now in the 4th grade.  However, this past Monday we went to a follow up appointment with his developmental pediatrician at the local children's hospital here in KC.  After an hour and a half of discussing all of the issues I post about on here and then tons more, they decided to increase his ADD medication on a trial.  We were on the verge of sending this kid to concentration camp or something because we were at the point we could no longer deal with him.  He was such an overwhelming force in our house that was making our house a miserable place to be.  The FIRST day we noticed a dramatic improvement.  He was almost like a normal kid.  We have only had ONE incidence of food sneaking in the past week.  He has been able to focus and has not been chewing on everything he can get his mouth on.  He hasn't been hyper.  He has been respectful.  He hasn't been eating us out of house and home.  He is like a totally different kid. 

So back to the hippie naturalists that think I'm an evil, lazy, uninvolved parent because I give my kid ADHD medication.  I will gladly send them my unmedicated kid for a month and see if they can "fix" him naturally.  If so, I will totally eat my words and bow down to their graces and kiss their hippie, sandal covered feet. 



Oh--here is what Brian does at the end of the day to relieve some stress: