'My urgent need to help people with ADHD'

Author Jessie Hewitson on the journey towards diagnosing her son, and herself, and how she wants to help others understand the condition better

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When my son was around age three, I wondered if he was an ADHDer. He was chatty, impulsive and found it hard to sit down at mealtimes. I'd looked up signs of ADHD and he ticked pretty much every box, but then don't all kids, particularly boys, at age three? And he could sit still and draw for 20 minutes or longer. How many ADHDers can do that, I thought. Many, it turned out. Over time I realised I had misunderstood what hyperactivity - and ADHD - is.

It doesn't mean you never pay attention or sit still, it's inconsistent. Then it dawned on me a lack of knowledge had led to me wrongly discounting it countless times. Then as the frequency of phone calls from the deputy headteacher increased, I reconsidered.

Anxiety

"Do you think," I said, "we should rule out ADHD first, so we know whether he's able to control this?" The deputy head agreed, and a request for a referral was made.

Two years later, at age eight, my son got his diagnosis. This should have meant things would get easier, only they didn't. Despite the teachers doing their best, his difficulties grew. So much so that, a few months after his diagnosis, he stopped being able to go to school.

His rising anxiety and decreasing self-esteem swamped him and, for the past 15 months, he hasn't spent a full day in school. I took unpaid leave so I could spend more time with him and piece him back together. I funded this by writing a book, ADHD, How to Raise a Happy ADHD Child. I felt an urgent need to help people understand ADHD better and more precisely because I hadn't. I felt it was my son, who is now nine, soon to be 10, who had paid the price.

I also wanted to look at why ADHD was so poorly understood. And then it hit me: it's the name. It does such a terrible job of describing what ADHD is that a lot of people don't spot it early.