ADHD Symptom Regulation without Medication
Struggling with ADD/ADHD or have a child or teen who does? If you're in my shoes, you understand how emotions can run very high with yourself and with your child at times when you're facing the behavior that comes along with this diagnosis. The frustration I've felt and always second guessing myself is sometimes overwhelming. I can only imagine how my daughter feels during these moments when neither of us can keep our cool.
We’d been having issues with our youngest, Violet, ever since she was around 3 years old. She is now 8 years old. Over the years we faced tantrums, hyper activity, not falling asleep easily at night and lack of focus. We simply wrote it off as "just being a kid" and blamed ourselves for not being consistent in proper discipline. When it started to affect her schooling this year in reading and math, we finally got her officially tested this past September. The conclusion: ADHD with a doctor’s suggestion of Ritalin or Adderall without even the slightest blink of an eye. Well, if you know me, I’m always skeptical of diagnoses (especially this type that I think is potentially over diagnosed) and pharmaceutical drugs before doing all kinds of research. I was not about to jump on a drug with potentially severe side effects without trying other things first.
Here's our success story of greatly minimizing our daughter's ADHD symptoms without using pharmaceuticals! I'll list product links, but please message me if you have any questions or want to know more details of our story than I'll put here to save you some reading time.
A friend of mine introduced me to Juice Plus in late Sept and we started Violet on the kids' fruit and veggie gummies on Oct 5, 2022. I'm a big believer that nutrition and gut health is highly related to behaviors, so that was the first step at getting healthy nutrition into a picky eater. Juice Plus also has multiple studies and research to back up their products!
We then went to a holistic pediatrician for an alternative opinion and she gave us several suggestions of vitamins along with diet changes we could make. I’m happy to report that we’ve seen great success with this vitamin regimen since adding in these extras at the end of Oct, 2022!
*Garden of Life Organic Kids Probiotic
*Omega Focus Jr: Fish oil supplement for brain focus and clarity
*OptiMag Neuro by Xymogen: Supports stress management, sleep quality, and a healthy mood
*Amare Kids Mood: provides significant benefits for mood support, including stress resilience, cognitive performance, calmness, focus, and positivity. (We saw the most significant changes once we had added this at the end of Nov after another friend of mine introduced me to this life changing product!)
We still have to redirect her a bit to get tasks done, but her tantrums have greatly reduced (3+ a day to pretty much most days none at all or the ability to squash it right away if it even begins to look like it’s going to turn into a tantrum!), her ability to actually focus on her school work and reading books has greatly improved and her overall general demeanor has been so much happier. She also had a hard time transitioning from one thing to the next (time for dinner turn off the tv, for example) and transitions have become way less of a battle for us!
I’m so pleased at our results and it may not work the same for everyone depending on the severity of the child’s condition perhaps, but I was willing to try anything to stay off meds! I’m thrilled to be staying away from the meds because at the start of this, my hubby and I were both at our wits end and almost to the point of just doing meds bc we didn’t know what else to do and felt like terrible parents for losing our cool with her all the time!
Our last issue that hasn't been helped by any of this new regimen is the struggle to fall asleep at night. We’d been using kids’ melatonin, but I’ve been reading a lot about that and effects of it with long term use, so Amare has another product called "Sleep" that we just ordered and are giving it a try.
As of March 2023, once we run out of our current supplements, I'm going to switch things up a little bit next month and do away with the Omega Focus, Probiotic and Optimag to replace them with Juice Plus Omegas and the full Amare Kids Pack. I like Juice Plus Omegas because they are not just one Omega, but are Omega 3, 5, 6, 7 and 9. The Amare Kids Pack will cover the probiotic and while it's not a magnesium supplement, the Amare Kids Pack has several calming ingredients that I think will offer a similar result.
So if you've tried everything and are at the point of possibly trying meds, but it doesn't sit well with you, please reach out! There is hope!! And if you made it this far on this post, thanks for reading! I just hope our story can help someone else!
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