"You’re Not ADD (Part 4): You’re A Fine Girl"

They say attention deficit is invisible in girls, and now I understand why: we work our butts off to appear normal.

Life in the Fast Brain | posted by Kristen Caven

My personal opinion, as my readers have surmised by now, is that ADHD is a brain type but not necessarily a disorder. I believe that, by choosing the right attitude, we can overcome our challenges and figure out how to live with our limitations. Or better yet, get our mysterious minds to work in our favor. I know that because I managed mine so well that even I couldn't tell I had it!

It’s not a disorder when your life has some order...

— Kristen Caven

As a child, I had grownups demanding and directing my focus. On my own, I had to learn ways to work with my quirks. I never in a million years imagined I had ADHD. I wasn’t hyperactive; I was happy. Having to come back inside three times before I was truly ready leave the house was normal in my family. I thought all young adults had chaotic lives — jobs that didn’t work out, moving 10 times in 3 years, romances in the double-digits.

They say ADHD is invisible in girls, and now I understand why. We care what people think about us and work our butts off to appear normal. We gather support from our friends and try to solve our problems. We focus constantly on self-improvement, and apply our anxiety to managing our symptoms.

I created a lifestyle that leveraged my chimerical focus. My freelance art and design business provided plenty of stimulation in short-term, one-on-one situations, where I could use my problem solving skills brilliantly and hyperfocus beautifully, working under pressure on a kaleidoscope of projects. As a new mom, I could move mountains during nap times.

But when I had problems, they were certainly ADHD problems. I’d put a positive spin on the lost days, the stupid mistakes, or the despair now known as RSD — but they are a fact. Therapists and coaches always helped, but the troubles always returned.

When I’d be tested for ADHD, which happened several times over the years, I tried to be honest. If I’d had a good week, I’d answer no to questions like “I take on so many commitments that I can’t keep up,” “I can’t get things done unless there’s an absolute deadline,” “I have trouble keeping my attention focused when working,” and “I am forgetful in my daily activities” — even though the answer on another week might be TOTALLY!

My husband was no help, either. On the quizzes, he’d compare me to my other family members, next to whom I seemed incredibly sane and stable. And they never asked the million-dollar question, “Do you and your spouse fight constantly over the things she sort of forgot to tell you and the way she can never quite finish folding the laundry?"

So over and over I heard the answer: You’re too functional to have ADHD.

And for years, I agreed. Because I had the good sense to idiot-proof my life with spare keys. Because I had friends who, when I was in a mood and jerked them around, would forgive me. Because I remembered that bright days were always around the corner from bad days. Without a clock to punch, I could always take the extra time I needed to do the job right.

But I could never get the help I really needed.

"You’re Not ADD (Part 3): You’re Artistic"

The ADHD brain is disorganized by nature. Any structure I've imposed on mine has come through my creativity.

Do you fidget? No, but I doodle in the margins of everything. Are you driven by a motor? No, I’m driven by my insatiable quest for Beauty. Do you daydream a lot? Um, yeah, duh. I'm using my imagination...

I was never bored, since my mother kept me supplied with pencils, crayons and notebooks — all the medicine I ever needed.

— Kristen Caven

When the therapist interviewed my mother to see whether I’d had ADD as a child, mom resisted. She was loath to define me — or any child — pathologically. She had always played up my strengths — and thus my messiness, my inconsistencies, and my “elsewhere-ness,” were simply seen as by-products of my creative nature.

In Driven to Distraction, Dr. Hallowell talks about how, lacking an inner structure, a mind with ADHD needs to structure itself around something. How grateful I was thatmy mother welcomed me and encouraged me to structure my mind around creativity! I was never bored, since she kept me supplied with pencils, crayons and notebooks — all the medicine I ever needed. The impenetrable bedroom was a work-around. I developed my talents and work always came easily. Someone always needed a sketch for something or other. "What is creativity," asks Hallowell, "but impulsivity gone right?"

Approaching/wading through midlife, however, I was feeling inwardly burdened by my creative nature. My schedule was packed with social events involving costumes, my files were bursting with unfinished sketches and drawings, my house was cluttered with interesting things that needed dusting, and my computer was filling up with unpublished novels. I could barely juggle my twenty clients, all of which wanted a different slice of my graphic design and writing and drawing and designing and creative consulting talents, with all of the volunteer work I wanted to do. On the ADHD screening, however, I showed up as stable, having owned the same business for 20 years and being a pillar of the community.

Searching for connections one day, I found a wonderful article by organization coach Ariane Benefit about my Meyers-Briggs personality profile, the rare borderline ENTP/ENFP.

In Is it ADHD or Creative Personality Type?, she writes, "Creative personality type refers to people who thrive on growth, change and novelty, and tend to get bored with anything that is too repetitive or that stays the same for too long. They also:

• prefer exploring new ways of doing things,
• take more risks than the average person,
• challenge the status quo,
• want to try new things,
• delight in solving problems,
• prefer to research and continuously learn new things over implementing routines."

Doesn’t that sound familiar? Doesn’t it sound a little like the Interest Driven Mind? Or ADHD? The huge number of successful celebrities who are comfortable with a little creative chaos tells you there might just be a connection between the two. I guess it’s whether or not you can stand by your strengths, grow your intelligence, and have a purpose. Without clear goals and a guiding structure, creativity can be cancerous, growing in every direction and taking over every room in the house. It becomes, to quote F. Scott Fitzgerald on the second page of The Great Gatsby, “that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of ‘creative temperament.’" Distractible, Impulsive, and Hyperactive.

Distractibility is a fact of life — there is always a new and interesting idea. Impulsivity is energy — to act on my ideas. And hyperactivity, well, that will help me go the distance. I call these extra voices in my head my muses. By doodling in the margins, I give them something to do so that I can make some forward progress on my best intentions. It’s the power of creativity.

"You’re Not ADD (Part 2): You’re Befuddled"

My daily routines were knocked off kilter by a head injury that lingered — revealing how much I relied on structure to cope with attention deficit.
Life in the Fast Brain | posted by Kristen Caven

When the Mini Cooper left an imprint of its license plate in the bumper of my Prius, the insurance company said it was still a low-speed accident, and I couldn’t really be that hurt. Even my doctor dismissed the possibility of a concussion, despite that bang my headrest gave me on the back of my head, messing up my upper neck pretty good.

Suddenly, my life was capital-D Disordered, and I could see how inherently un-regulated I was without my usual structures.

Three weeks later, Enzo was diagnosed with ADD, and my immersion into this new world began. I began recognizing the tell-tale patterns of ADHD in my own psyche that had been there all along. At the time, however, they were confuddled with the symptoms of Post-Concussion Syndrome (PCS) that I was experiencing.

PCS is a lingering condition that arises when a concussion doesn’t heal. At the time of the accident, I had been in the final throes of polishing the manuscript of The Bullying Antidote and going a mile-a-minute preparing for the next project, trying to figure out the bad report cards, and grieving from the sudden death of a dear auntie. Rest, schmest. The stress of life didn’t stop — bills to pay, food to make — but I could no longer stay in control of my time. I would have a few good days a week and then the wheels would fall off. I struggled to keep teaching my Zumba classes; exercise keeps me focused and productive like nothing else.

Symptoms of PCS include attention deficit, impulsivity, irritability, a low frustration threshold, mood swings, memory problems, impaired planning, communication difficulties, socially inappropriate behaviors, self-centeredness, and a lack of insight, concrete thinking, and poor self-awareness. (Sound familiar?) Another thing that happens with a concussion is your blood pressure can go haywire, since an injured brain can’t regulate things as well. When I realized exercise was bringing on symptoms, I had to give up my daily sweat.

With the dull ache in my head, all of my other stabilizing structures became more difficult, too:Meditation would just put me to sleep; I couldn’t remember to take my herbs and vitamins; and I didn’t have the energy for my organizing routines. With caffeine off-limits, I couldn’t reach for a cup of focus.

Episodes of inattention began to mess up my life in big ways — like the time I didn’t go through all the steps properly when moving into my new computer, and lost my data when the robbers (yes, there was a break-in, too) dropped it on the way out.

Suddenly, my life was capital-D Disordered, and I could see how inherently un-regulated I was without my usual structures. I realized I had been living (somewhat successfully) with undiagnosed ADD all my life...but I couldn’t get the help I needed until my head had fully healed. Every medical professional I approached diagnosed me with capital-A Anxiety, which I most certainly was suffering, due to the not-raining-but-pouring challenges in my life.

Now that it’s all behind me (PCS sufferers, have hope!) I see what a valuable experience I had. I have so much more understanding and compassion for head injury now. The hardest part about a brain injury is that you can’t put your head in a cast, so people can’t see that you’re injured. Like mental illness, it’s “all in your head.” You can’t function like a normal human being, and you feel invisible and misunderstood.

I ended up doing eight months of counseling about feeling invisible and misunderstood. It was good to have somewhere to go and cry once a week, but my therapist could not really see or understand the ADHD connection beyond the trauma in my addled brain.

Cartwheels in Your Mind

What young love is like for my teen and his girlfriend — ADHDers both.

Life in the Fast Brain | posted by Kristen Caven

Enzo has a girlfriend! It's the most wonderful thing. With teenagers pressuring each otherthese days into going farther faster — and furthermore, first base now being what third base used to be — I was ecstatic when he told me he found a girl to hold hands with!

They both love hamburgers and unpretentious people. They even take the same medication!

— Kristen Caven

The lovely young lady is smart, cute, poetic, and funny. The two of them click as only two outside-the-box thinkers can, traveling on bursts of imagination and creating sweetness together. They both love hamburgers and unpretentious people. They even take the same medication!

As is our family’s way, we gave her a nickname. “Busy” has always got something to say and something to do. A short ride in the car with her takes you on a long journey with her interesting ancestors who were involved in historical events. It’s sometimes hard to get a word in edgewise, but she’s so charming you don’t really mind.

Together, the two of them have decided the difference between having hyperactive or combined-type ADHD (what she has) and inattentive-type ADHD (what he has) is that with the first kind, you can’t stop doing cartwheels. With the inattentive type, you can’t stop doing cartwheels in your mind.

Sadly, since school has gotten out, the unstructured nature of summertime has challenged young love. First, there is the busy-ness; for weeks at a time, one or the other is off and away on the adventures that breaks bring: Camps, sleepovers, and family trips. And when they’re both in town, one or the other of them sleeps until noon, or their phone has run out of batteries, or someone just spaces out. For days, Busy had so many sleepovers she lost track of time and forgot they had plans. Enzo’s heart broke, thinking she wasn’t interested anymore.

It was one of those challenging parenting moments. “Dave” and I had to fight the urge (sometimes winning, sometimes losing) to get involved and try to solve things. Busy’s folks were worried, too, aware that her cartwheels were making her beau’s head spin. The four of us bit our nails for days, hating to see Enzo in pain, doing inner cartwheels around this unintended rejection. We only sent midnight texts to each other once.

Eventually the moment came when Enzo asked for the car keys to go camp out on her doorstep. He came back with a smile on his face after hearing how insomnia had been playing havoc with her attention. He had tucked her into bed early, kissed her goodnight, and told her he understood.

"You're Not ADD (Part 1): You're a Blonde"

My friends had no trouble identifying what was different about me, but getting an official diagnosis was harder than I thought.

When my son was diagnosed with ADD, the inattentive kind, it put me on my own path to understanding my own attention pitfalls. As hard as it was to get him sorted out at fifteen, my own out-sorting has been even more challenging. This post begins a new, intermittent (naturally) series about trying to get to my own diagnosis.

There are those of us out there who wear our difference so naturally that it becomes part of our personality.

I hear stories all the time about how quickly doctors prescribe Adderall and Ritalin to anyone who seems a little distracted. But there are those of us out there who wear our difference so naturally that it becomes part of our personality.

Here is a list of character traits that have been assigned to me (mostly fondly, to my good fortune), and to so many others who may be secret ADHD sufferers.

1. Quirky
2. Weird
3. Chatty
4. A Social Butterfly
5. Naturally Stoned
6. Lazy
7. Unmotivated
8. Half-a*ed
9. Spontaneous
10. Flexible
11. Energetic
12. Distracted
13. Spacey
14. Space Cadet
15. A Dreamer
16. A Visionary
17. In My Own World
18. On My Own Planet
19. In La La Land
20. Moody
21. A Temperamental Female
22. A Bit Nuts
23. Bubbly
24. Ditzy
25. Dizzy
26. Scattered, and my personal favorite....
27. Blonde 

OKAY! I can own that! My blonde hair twists and curls chaotically, in every direction — not unlike the mind underneath it.

Blondes have more fun, right? And, because they help me laugh at my own moments of idiocy, I am often amused by jokes about people being dumb. Songs, too. ("Cuz I’m a blonde — B-L-A-N-D! / cuz I’m a blonde — don’t you wish you were me?" — Downtown Julie Brown)

My favorite blonde joke, for those of you who still remember Wite-Out™ and Liquid Paper®, goes like this:

Q: How can you tell a Blonde has been using your computer?
A: The little white marks on the screen.

A funny image to be sure, but the message behind this joke is actually deeply relevant to the ADD journey: until you get the right diagnosis, all the corrections you TRY to make can’t really solve the problem.

In the Mood for a Funk?

Living with rejection-sensitive dysphoria — the soul-sucking downside of attention deficit.

I wrote recently about the first thing William Dodson, M.D., says everyone with ADHD has: anInterest-Driven Nervous System. The second thing he says everyone with ADHD shares is an emotional response called Rejection-Sensitive Dysphoria. I kind of don't want to write about it, because there's that impulse to skip past the hard stuff and focus on the fun stuff. But it's hard when your mood falls off a cliff for what seems like such a little thing.

You get so tired of this feeling you want to give up before you even start.

— Kristen Caven

If you have this thing, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't, imagine (or remember) yourself as a teenage girl whose stomach is churning because there are so many choices in her closet and it's impossible to choose an outfit and the wrong combination could give her away as being different and bring the harsh and ultimately life-ruining judgment of her peers.

Or, a boy who lashes out at his brother's friends because it seems like he's never getting a long enough turn in the video game and it's not fair. Or a child who squeezes into a corner behind the door and cries at their own birthday party because things are not going the way they imagined. Or a grown-up who throws a party and can't seem to be in the moment to enjoy it.

It's what, eventually, makes you lose interest in that job you thought you wanted. Or hit "close window" instead of "submit" because you are not confident you'll win that award. Or fall into a funk and turn into a jerk when that guy/girl you like likes someone else. Or talk yourself out of liking that guy/girl as you eat/drink your troubles into oblivion. It's yeah, didn't really want that; those grapes were sour anyway. It's what keeps you stuck. Or going around in circles. You get so tired of this feeling you want to give up before you even start. It's one reason why people with ADHD don't achieve their potential. It's why an older man will decline an invitation to socialize because he's realized, or decided, he's "not good with people."

It helps to know RSD is a thing, if for no other reason than to be able to go, "Oh, now my brain is doing that thing it does." It helps to know that social skills might not come as naturally to you as they do to other people. And it's okay to get some help breaking down the details so you can understand the rules.

Acceptance of the downside of ADHD also helps you accept the upside. And, fortunately, in keeping with my theory that the nature of ADHD carries the seeds of its own cure, there are at least two wonderful upsides:

1) Forgetfulness can be a blessing when it comes to bad moods.

2) Some sparkly distraction will surely come along soon!

Blue Highways

So your child has ADHD. Welcome to a different country...now throw your road map away!

At a school where I was teaching about my book, The Bullying Antidote, the principal told me their special ed parents' club called themselves the “Holland Group.” I asked her what the name meant. She handed me a many-times-copied story that she had found on the Internet.

In 9th grade, the highway to success seemed clear. But when my son's organizational difficulties kept steering him off onto side roads, we had to find a new map.

“Welcome to Holland” is a 1987 essay by Emily Perl Kingsley that describes what it feels like when you learn that your kid has a disability of any sort. “When you're going to have a baby,” the essay says, “it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip — to Italy.” She describes in detail the iconic things one looks forward to in Italy — “The Colosseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice,” and how one learns the language. But when you get off the plane, you find you are in Holland instead.

It’s not that Holland isn’t a wonderful place — it is. There are windmills and tulips and wonderful people. But it just isn’t what you planned. And when everyone else is talking about Italy, well, you are sorry you missed it, but you wish they were interested in hearing about your trip to Holland as well!

Watching my son Enzo evolve in high school has been like getting off the plane in Holland. We chose a school with an engineering academy (which he loved), and a Paideia program (which I loved)...and started making plans (akin to driving a Lamborghini around in the Colosseum).

In 9th grade, the highway to success seemed clear. But when his organizational difficulties kept steering him off onto side roads, we had to find a new map. As it turned out, the new paths took him to some wonderful places, as Blue Highways (a term coined by author William Least Heat Moon to describe the back roads through America) tend to do.

For me, the strangest parts about being in Holland, or on the Blue Highways, are:

1. Seeing so many of his friends on the road to Rome they originally chose.
2. Managing the (ridiculous and unnecessary) resentment at their achievements.
3. Identifying with a “disorder” or “disability” in the name of self-acceptance when it’s just life, really.

Becoming an advocate and spokesperson for the "Blue Highway lifestyle" was an unexpected turn for me. But that’s the thing about getting tickets to Holland. Our new reality calls us as parents to step up to a new level, welcome the dazed new arrivals, and share our road maps.

Like Son, Like Mother?

No need to wonder where my son's attention issues came from. This apple fell from my tree.

"He definitely has attention issues, but he doesn't have ADD."

This is what the social worker told me after evaluating Enzo's questionnaires, filled out by myself, himself, his dad, and two teachers (one of whom gave him the label of "high priest in the church of no homework," whose class he barely passed).

Discussing all the problems and pitfalls, it was like watching my own childhood being replayed, and even my life now.

After all, said the clinical expert, he's well-socialized, he can sit still (sometimes for hours on end), and has a good opinion of himself. Of the five matrices that determine ADHD, he scored normal in four of them — but was way off the charts with attention issues. That was after the first report card of ninth grade, where in two years his 4.0 had dropped under a 3.0.

When his first report card of tenth grade appeared, Enzo's GPA had slipped considerably below a 2.0. Now we were desperate for some sort of help, or even just some insight, or a referral to another idea.

I went back to Kaiser and stormed the castle. "So, what do we do about attention issues, for goodness sake? How can I help my child?" The guy gave Enzo one more test, this one on a computer — why they didn't just do that in the first place, I don't know — and voilà: a full-blown case of ADD-PI. All of a sudden, the gates of support opened wide.

Within a few weeks, we were in the embrace of what I call Kaiser's ADHD School. I took a series of classes on learning disabilities, parenting practices, and coping skills. We learned about medications and chose one to try. Every week, Enzo and I attended a Teen Group with break-out sessions for parents to ask questions like, "What's with the lying thing?" "How can we stop fighting over homework?" and "Where did he get it from?"

Lightbulbs were going off like crazy in my own head about that one. Discussing all the problems and pitfalls, it was like watching my own childhood being replayed, and even my life now. (I don't have a GPA, but for all my cleverness, I do have a pretty unimpressive AGI.) I had to bite my tongue to keep the conversation on the kids.

I called Adult Psych to explore the possibility that I might also have ADHD. It felt like I could have taught the introductory workshop. I read Driven to Distraction and recognized myself on every page. I took the Kaiser tests...and guess what they told me?

"You definitely have attention issues, but you don't have ADD."

Keep Calm and C-C-Carry On

How our whole family learned to stop worrying and “C” our way through anxiety.

When Enzo was little, he loved doing sleepovers. But that all changed one year, the year he realized lying awake in strange place wasn't any fun. When he was about six, he stayed overnight with his Uncle Zoom, who had a new baby in the house. Between the distracting sounds and his underlying sleep challenges from ADD, he was up at 4 AM, dressed, ready for the strange night to be over.

He really wanted to go away to Science Camp with his class, but could not imagine how he would cope.

After that, he would become hyperaware of the fact he was lying there awake when his friends were dropping off. And then he would start worrying. He’d call to get picked up. Then he’d start planning not to stay over. His dad was sympathetic because that’s the kind of kid he had been. He could never sleep away from home, even if the whole family was with him.

This became a problem for Enzo in 5th grade, when he really wanted to go away to Science Camp with his class, but could not imagine how he would cope.

We signed up for a great class at Kaiser called the “Family Worry Class.” The therapist explained that the people who took the class all had a superpower called sensitivity, which runs in families. She gave us her “Five C’s” for handling anxiety while you’re in the middle of it. They work for your kids, and they work for yourself. In my words, they are:

1. Calm: Take deep breaths. Slow down and don’t rush through it.

2. Cheerlead: Be positive. Tell your kid they can do it — they’ve done so much before.

3. Change the Channel: A distraction can help, like food, a game, or TV; another option is to find ways to cope. (Look, another "C"!)

4. Check In: Let kids talk about their experience and how they're feeling.

5. Continue: Keep going, keep trying, don’t give up.

It was good to learn the therapist's Five C’s. We had been relying too much on our own favorite C’s: Criticize, Catastrophize, Cry, get the Creeps, and Chatter about endlessly about how bad it feels.

Thanks to the Five C’s, Enzo made it to Science Camp, and although he didn't sleep much, he felt very proud of himself. The C’s helped him in so many other ways, too — taking tests, going to a new school, and even trying sleepovers once again. Now he’s away practically every weekend, and can think about leaving home for weeks at a time. Maybe even for good! (We'll see how that goes.)

The other great thing about the class was that we went to go help our kid, and ended up helping ourselves as well. 

The Forklift of Love

Getting a sleepy ADHD teenager out of bed calls for heavy machinery — and a lot of patience from the crew at home.

Until we learned about ADD, it was always a mystery why our little guy couldn’t sleep. Even though Enzo, as a small child, was more than once called “The Thing That Would Not Sleep” by his exhausted-to-the-point-of-a-horror-movie parents, he was a blessedly solid sleeper once he was down. Yet, he surprised us all (as teenagers do) by growing up to be “The Thing that Would Not Move.”

Sleeping past nine! Oh, how we reveled in those luxurious summer mornings! It was like being newlyweds again!

Baby Enzo was better than an alarm clock. Even before he was born, I could never stay in bed past 6 AM. During his first decade, those bright little eyes would fly open at six…fricking.…AM. Even on weekends.

Later, when school days became a grind, he’d sleep in until seven. But on weekends, when there was so much more to look forward to, the son would still rise with the sun. "I've got a lot to do today," he'd say when we stumbled into the Lego jungle.

We were so proud the summer before eighth grade, when he took up a new hobby: sleeping past nine! Oh, how we reveled in those luxurious summer mornings! It was like being newlyweds again!

Now that he’s pushing seventeen, the novelty of that has also worn off. On weekends we don’t see him until noon. And on school mornings, trying to get both that brain and body working takes nothing short of heroics.

Trying to wake up a teenager on a school day is not easy for anyone. Trying to wake one with ADD is like trying to get a pig to fly, according to his father, "Dave." ("It's a waste of time, and it annoys the pig.")

His first alarm goes off at 6:15. It’s a song, or rather some electronic song clip, that he has chosen the night before, and it is set on repeat on the iPod that rests in the speaker on his headboard. At 6:30, his clock alarm starts beeping, and now there is a funky rhythmic jam going on in his room. At this point, his dad starts grumbling: “I could always get myself out of bed. This is nonsense.” (Dad has learned to go to work early to save his sanity.) A few minutes later, the radio goes off.

By 6:45, if Enzo has not crawled out to turn off the beeping yet, I go into his room and start shaking his loft bed. Sometimes it takes an earthquake. When he was little and we needed him to move, we’d just bring on “the forklift of love” and lift him out. That became an impossibility after he reached the hundred-pound mark.

Half the time — and I swore I would never do this — I get angry. I start shrieking things like, “Oh, my God! It’s 7:30 already!” Or I get snotty. "Okay, I'm driving you to school without you." But I hate to go this route. While others might respond to the stress in my normally calm voice with a shot of adrenaline, Enzo doesn’t seem to have been built with this response. For him, motivation must come from within. Nagging backfires. In the mornings, the higher-pitched my voice goes, the more he shuts down.

But what goes on in that brain? When I was younger, I remember having just as much trouble getting out of bed, especially after a night of brain-racing. There are stages you have to work through in that transition between the sleep state and the awake state, which, according to the experts from the sleep study Enzo participated in, are constantly at war for our time. “I am working things out,” he mumbles. He’s still achieving the mystical tasks his dream set out for him.

On a good day, he’s up to kiss his dad goodbye. He gets dressed quickly...and then lies down for a pre-breakfast nap.

The Thing That Would Not Sleep

Enzo's busy brain kept him up and active even as a baby. We had to develop guerilla tactics to ease him into sleep.

We used to dread bedtimes. Once the novelty of being born wore off, once he rested up from that exhausting ordeal, Enzo just could never see the point in sleeping. He just didn’t want to miss a thing. If I wasn’t able to nurse him down, his dad, "Dave," would carry him around the house and the yard showing him how the birds were asleep, the animals were asleep, all his friends were asleep, his toys were asleep, and daddy was, well, dead on his feet.

Once the novelty of being born wore off, Enzo just could never see the point in sleeping.

— Kristen Caven, ADDitude blogger

We always thought we were bad parents. His little friends would just put their heads down and close their eyes when they were sleepy. It was probably because of the pacifier that he never learned to self-soothe. It was probably the co-sleeping. And then, after two or three years of that, when he took up combat sleeping, it was probably because we didn’t have the guts to let him cry it out past 2 or 3 AM.

The ADD diagnosis turned out to be a sweet victory. See? He’s neurologically different. He’s got thoughts in his brain. All night long.Thoughts, do you hear me, interesting thoughts! Hah! to you doubters!

Beyond the typically prescribed bedtime baths, off-buttons on TVs, rigid routines (hard to keep when you have ADD, too), and ban on Coke at dinner, we had to work hard to find remedies that worked. When I was a baby, the only thing that would put me to sleep was a drive around the block in the Volkswagon Bug. That never worked for little Enzo — cars, as you know by now, are way too interesting to him.

These things did:

>> A Positive Attitude. Knowing that I was the adult helped me “dominate” my toddler into taking a nap when he needed it. Sometime around age 7, I looked at my husband and said, “You know, even though it hasn’t seemed like it, he has actually gone to sleep every night of his life.”

>> Homeopathics. We discovered these tiny little sugar pills that dissolve on a child’s tongue when the teeth started coming in. They were lifesavers so many times, when dealing with everything from sniffles to stomach aches. Guess what, the right ones can help with racing brains, too! Bach Flower Remedies are also wonderful non-drugs, and always help bring on the Zzzzs.

>> Company. Although a child “should” be left alone to sleep in peace, having a big person there to model being quiet and calm helped Enzo relax. When self-regulation is difficult, having a body with a restful heartbeat and slow breathing nearby provides a neurological pattern to follow. Controlling conversation is the challenge...

>> The “Broken Record” trick helped keep me from being drawn into conversation. I would only permit myself to say, “Today is over, it’s time to sleep.”

>> Touch. Backrubs helped Enzo get in touch with his body. A story about the backrub helped him focus and relax. Favorites were the Weather Report (taught by Dr. Louise Hart), and the one about the cat that walked out and made tracks in the snow.

>> Story Tapes. He listened to a recording of Winnie the Pooh (read by Peter Dennis) over and over and over again. It was long and calming and interesting but a little boring. We found one that worked, and he listened to it every night for four years!

Eventually I developed Mom’s Guaranteed Sleep System with Magic Stories™ that could both hold his interest and bore him to sleep. (Send $99 and two box tops in.)

And then one day he found late night radio and a talk show podcast that allegedly did the same thing. I love you but now get out of my room, Mom and Dad!

As a teenager, Enzo participated in a sleep study and got some sleep coaching, plus he's gotten to know himself a little better. For example, he has also become a writer, and can relax better after doing a brain dump. But whatever he ends up doing with his busy brain, he may always be a night owl, wired to rev up when the rest of us are revving down.