I'm so disappointed. My daughter and her husband have been patient and have tried working with him as much as possible. Including family therapy. They are not lazy parents looking for an easy way out. I knew this was the inevitable result when they started therapy with him a few months ago. He has behavior issues. Very defiant and demanding at times. There are times he has ruined entire weekends up at the lake with his defiant and disruptive behavior. I'm not going to go into specific examples but I don't believe it is normal behavior. There were times I felt very bad for him because he was spending so much time being angry and sad for a seven year old. But there are many times he's just a great kid and so much fun to be around. He loves fishing and swimming and playing hockey. Of course the therapist has diagnosed him with symptoms of every alphabet behavior condition out there.

I don't know what med they are going to give him as I didn't ask my daughter at the time because I was upset and thought the conversation should end after she told me he was going to be medicated. She is a counselor as a profession and has some training in child behavior and she feels it is best for the family as a whole. I have always been against finding answers in a pill so I am struggling with this. Many of my daughters friends are telling her what a life changing thing it has been since they decided to medicate their child. The behavior change has been astounding. So that is an influencing factor as well.

I have no choice but to come to terms with their decision. Maybe I'm over reacting here and to set in my old age. I'm not one to air personal issues here but felt this is something a number of people may be dealing with and can offer up some advice.

I have a niece that had some behavior issues. Once her parents got her off all the shitty food dyes, she was fine. However, they have to be very careful as to what she eats.

I'm sorry your family is going through this, and especially for your grandson.

Jmho, medication is a last resort. It sounds like they have tried all other options, leaving no other choice but either medicate or allow the current situation to continue.

I am sorry for the situation and can understand your frustration. Have they tried or had some kind of brain scan done to determine if there is something there causing the issue. I also like the comment about diet. Prayers for him and the family.

Having watch a grandson go down the medication route he chose to not to stay on them as an adult. It has been terrible to watch.
He is not capable of being an adult.
We and everyone else has tried to help him and its like trying to help a drug addict.

Hope they work better for your grandson. I cannot recommend them from my limited exp.

My oldest got put on medicine for ADHD around that age.
It helped with the behavioral issues, but also severely stunted her appetite.

There were 2 mfgs for the medicine she took & 1 of them did nothing, nearly to the point of having the opposite effect. When we weren't able to get a refill from the mfg we needed [called 26 pharmacies in an increasing radius, all over N Houston] we weaned her off of it with what we had left.

Appetite came back, and over the course of time when she was on the meds, we found that food dyes had a noticeable effect on her behavior.
We cut as much out as possible & she's been doing great without the meds [13 yr old now].

Hope for the best for the OP & that your family finds the right combination to make things better.

Sounds like he's got enough to occupy his mind and he's getting enough exercise and outside time.

Has she tried changing his diet? Tried feeding him Real Food? Cutting out the snacks and sugary sodas, etc.?

Kids are hopped-up on refined carbs nearly all their waking hours these days. Never mind the alphabet soup of additives, food dyes, and whatnot they add to everything.

You wouldn't believe what school cafeteria "food" looks like these days. Mainly it's the kind of crap we used to get only once-a-week. Like "Pizza Friday" or whatever.

I had forgotten about the sweets and sodas having negative effects on them.
GS would et a soda and bounce off the walls for hours.
The not getting them caused rebellion throughout his life. Anything that was done to help him was seen as punishment by him which caused more behavioral issues and rebellion.

My son didn’t eat suger, food dyes, soda, etc. I think the two things that really helped him were swim and puberty. By swim, I mean on a year round team with two hour a day practices 6 days a week in middle school and 2 a days during high school season.

Thanks for all the feedback. I am going to bring up the diet issue with my daughter but I think this is too far down the road to stop it now. I'ts not my decision to make in the end and I have to reconcile myself with it and hope for the best going forward. I know my daughter was hesitant to approach me with it as she knows exactly how I feel about it. I won't be surprised to find out he is already on them.

GIGO.

While there conditions that involve hormones and other biological origins that result in "behavioral issues", mostly it is someone "communicating" in the only way they know how to express emotional distress form their enviornment.

Unfortunately, parents cannot often "figure out" what that source is, and the "help" (medical, counseling, etc.) offered is with drugs.

It's the worst bandaid, if it actually is not "fixing" the cause, but "masking".

We have seen in the past hundred years, that moving away from the physical (labor) and simpler (natural foods) from cradle to grave, having produced all manner of ills in society across the entire spectrum of our daily existence.

(fat lotta good, me and others, being able to perceive these facts, and unable to easily fix it all)

My daughter put her 10 YO son on the drugs. She found a doctor/therapist who used a very low dose coupled with specific therapeutic techniques. Yeah, it wasn't the food, the kid has never been fed crap and won't even eat it for the most part. The results have been good, and he's behaving normally. He's in a private school that actually has recess, and is on several sports teams. Running his ass ragged seems to have very beneficial effects. They're now discussing eliminating the drugs and see if he remains ok without them.

I know a woman whose 6 yo boy began acting out, getting in fights as school, etc. School wanted to put him on meds. Problem ended up being a Candida infestation in the gut.

Kid was put on an anti-Candida diet and in two weeks was back to normal. His mother kept her son on the clean diet for six months to make sure the problem was gone. Kid stayed healthy from then on.

Pills do not solve problems. Kids in the 50s and 60s were not on medication. Drugs like Ritalin are not without problems. The pharma industry has also convinced adults that they need stimulants as well. These drugs are almost impossible to get in the UK as they have realized their addictive potential.

There are some excellent ideas in this thread. The diet, the behavior manifesting as a way of communicating, the fact that he’s a boy (they DO need more exercise to really think in a schoolroom setting, for example). I could give you examples of kids I know where it was diet, or it was a problem at school that the child was acting out about and couldn’t verbalize to his folks, etc..
I know nice parents of a child where one was a social worker and couldn’t seem to wait to slap labels on the kids and start medding them (both not even teens yet), but….
I also know parents who have a real and genuine struggle managing their day to day when their child flips out at a social function and they have to leave to regain control of the situation (spectrum disorder) and I struggle to understand why they can’t just talk it through..these are also nice, responsible people with graduate degrees in a variety of things including behavior, and high functioning members of society.
That’s where I have to think, they must have hit a real wall to decide to medicate, and I’m no one to judge. I’m not walking in their shoes, and they are struggling to continue to incorporate that child into the fabric of everyday life, instead of withdrawing from society altogether, which might make any parent feel like a failure. So..while I refuse to label or have my kid labeled, I’m also not struggling with behavior issues or health issues. I have a graduate research degree in science, and I’m a huge proponent of using the technical and medical advances we have gained over time.
I don’t like big pharma, and I hate when doctors push pills, but if I have an infection, I’m taking antibiotics.

My thought would be that your daughter, in the profession of children and counseling, might either have so many people around her doing this that it seems status quo, or she reasoned her way through all her options and feels she has no other choice. Or both. Perhaps ask if the child has had a complete physical evaluation, allergy testing, bloodwork, etc before starting any meds. It may uncover some answers and new ideas, but it would take TIME to test the theories of diet, etc, and most people today just don’t have it if they want to keep up with society, work, bills, friends, and life as we know it. Nothing hurts a mother’s heart like watching her kid get rejected from social groups because they don’t “fit in” or behave in the typical manner. Easier pushing a pill down a throat.
The only other thing I might suggest (and it’s radical) is arm yourself with knowledge about his particular behavior and situation and then offer to take him with you for a month to see if you’re able to effect any change through, diet, exercise and structure. Basically pull him out of his world, and start fresh. This would be assuming a summer month and that you’re retired and really have the time to dig in. It’s doubtful his parents would allow that, but it might show you how desperate they are if they take you up on it.
Sorry for the long post, I really feel badly about your situation, and I’m just free form thinking here. Best of luck.

Reading “communications” in other posts: my son’s troubles started in preschool. I could understand him, but no one else could, he got frustrated easily, and instead of telling someone to knock it off, he’d punch them. He had speech therapy through the second grade and truthfully he needed it. Of course it only took kindergarten for my son’s teachers, classmates, classmates’ parents, etc. to label him. He truly was a handful, some of his teachers managed it well, some did not. He rarely started anything, his classmates knew how to push his buttons and he was fortunate that some of his teachers recognized this and caught the instigators as well.

My wife and I worked hard at it, but we got to the point where we gave in to the pressure from the school to have him evaluated at the beginning of 7th grade. That off course lead to the recommendation for meds which we did for a month. My heart wasn’t in it though because I really believed he was doing better before the meds so we didn’t stick with them. He did fine without them. He left that school after the 8th grade, went to the local collegiate high school, and graduated high school with a college AA degree. He made good friends on the swim team and at the high school.

In his case, food dyes, soda, sugar, video games, lack of normal exercise, lack of parental involvement, not being spanked, not being disciplined, etc. were not the issue. I wish I knew what the issue was, but I thank God for the changes that happened in my son.

I know another family that resisted meds and whose son just changed for the better. He had communication difficulties as well.

Thanks again for all the feedback and ideas as it does really help. My daughter and I are going to have a one on one talk later today and I'm going to recommend she does some of the things that have been pointed out here. Especially getting him a complete physical. But I also know they have exhausted all their efforts and patience and just need his behavior to change.

Also I plan to take irreverent's advice about taking my grandson out his world and start fresh. The timing is right as I am retired and he will be on summer vacation from school in a few months. I spend the majority of my summer up at the lake cabin which is a place he loves being. My wife and daughter and son in law come up there Fridays and spend the weekends so he won't be entirely isolated from them but perhaps it will be enough to show some things we had not noticed before.

In my grade school nobody ever mentioned allergies, behavior problems or cognitive issues.

During a discussion that included three school employees,
I found out that the schools have become so adept at seeing symptoms and alerting the proper people,
That
They have had to hire many extra "special" needs teachers / handlers.

They spoke about many a parent(s) that are in denial and refused to segregate and address their children's needs.

A super frustrating position.

I have heard great things about this place.

Neurophysical and Behavioral Medicine specializing in the non-drug treatment of ADHD, Autism, and Stress illnesses/disorders in West Los Angeles and Irvine, CA

https://www.drakeinstitute.com/


I am sure it isn't cheap though

Hello lastmanstanding.

Sorry to hear that your grandson and family are faced with the challenges that you have described.

Do you know if the family has pursued or consulted with a doctor practicing naturopathic / homeopathic medicine?

Fundamentally, their treatment protocols are to first try and determine if there are any underlying physiological imbalances going on in the body, and address / correct them with non-prescription treatments only if possible, and retaining the minimal prescription meds if necessary.

Lifestyle (diet) choices are also evaluated and changes recommended if appropriate.

I have a very good friend that is a traditionally trained MD, but switched over to naturopathic medicine, and is VERY successful in treating his patients.

Please reach out to me via e-mail if you would like to discuss further. We can also talk on phone. I can share with you what I have learned through my friendship with Dr. Frank.

Regards,

Rob