By Linda Richards
I’m excited to announce Northwest Arkansas now has a support group for mothers with children diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. Our first meeting is on Tuesday, March 2,nd, from 5:30-6:30 p.m. at Panera Bread Co. in Bentonville.
We have the back room reserved for privacy and will continue to have meetings the first Tuesday of each month. Once we see how large the group is, the location may change. Although ADHD is our main theme, mothers with children diagnosed with any behavioral issue are welcome to attend. I’ve wanted to start this support group for a long time, and since I don’t know of any others that exist, I finally decided to just do it.
Managing a child struggling with ADHD and other behavior issues is taxing to a mother’s spirit. My son’s ADHD has challenged my abilities to parent and causes a strain on our family. Did you know that parents with children diagnosed with ADHD are more likely to divorce than those who aren’t? According to a study in 2008, the separation rate for parents with ADHD children by the time the child turns 8 years old is about 22% versus 12.5% for parents with healthy children. The rates are even higher when you factor in ODD (oppositional defiant disorder) or conduct disorder.
The study found that if parents stay together through the child’s first 8 years, then they will most likely stay together for good. I found this study interesting but not surprising. This gives me all the more reason to believe a support group would be beneficial to many women going through similar issues.
I have the best girlfriends a woman could ask for and they are very important to me. My husband is a great support for me, too, but there’s nothing like a girlfriend who just “gets you.” I want to create a girlfriend support group for other mothers as well. Finding other mothers going through similar issues is heart-breaking to me but also a relief. There were days when I felt so alone in this battle.
What I hope comes from this support group is a way for mothers to find each other, share and learn from one another and, most of all, to be a support system. I hope to learn how other parents handle discipline, treatment, medication, school issues, etc. I hope my experiences can help guide others as well. This will be a place where we can share successes and failures, trade information on doctors and clinics, laugh and cry together — judgment free. I think letting go of how we as parents of ADHD or behavior-challenged children are perceived in public is the first hurdle to overcome in this journey. That and accepting our children for who they are is the best start to surviving this journey with your sanity intact.
