Sylvia smith Facebook ad: “My ADHD son has two settings.”

About this ad

Meta Ad Library ID

1074392022195840

Platforms

Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, Messenger, WhatsApp and Threads

Relaunches

0

EU reach

62

How we count

Ad text

I found my son's sketchbook in the bottom drawer of his desk last month. Behind a stack of Pokemon cards he doesn't play with anymore. Pages of drawings from when he was four and five. A dinosaur with a crooked tail. A rocket that looked like a crayon exploded. A picture of our family — giant heads, stick arms, everyone smiling. He'd written "For Mom" in backwards letters on the bottom. The last page with anything on it was almost a year ago. Everything after is blank. He's 7. He doesn't draw anymore. Doesn't build with Legos. Doesn't make up games. Doesn't pretend. If the iPad is off, nothing in the world exists. "I'm bored." Fifty times a day. His teacher says he can't get through an assignment on his own — needs constant redirection. He's impulsive in class. His mood swings from fine to tears in seconds. He won't listen unless I've said it four times. Homework ends in a fight almost every night. He snaps at his sister. He's more defiant than he's ever been. On the iPad he's a different person. Calm. Creative. Focused. He builds entire worlds in Minecraft. He designs things for hours. It's everything off the screen that's dead. I tried a screen-free weekend. Cold turkey. Told him we were taking a break. He stood in the middle of his room surrounded by toys — Legos, markers, dinosaurs, the magnet tiles he used to live in — and said "There's nothing to do." He didn't pick up a single toy. Didn't draw. Didn't go outside. He just sat on his bed and waited for it to be over. I thought if I took the screen away he'd remember how to play. He didn't remember. He just sat there. I signed him up for art class. A real one — painting, clay, mixed media. He went twice. The first time he stared at his blank paper for twenty minutes and then said he didn't want to be there. The second time he refused to get out of the car. I sat in the parking lot and cancelled the enrollment from my phone. I bought new toys. Expensive ones. A marble run. A snap circuit kit. A giant floor puzzle of the solar system. He opened them, looked at them for maybe five minutes, and went back to asking for the iPad. They're still in his closet. Untouched. Three things. Art class, new toys, a screen-free weekend. All I had. None of them brought back the kid who used to sit on the kitchen floor for two hours with a crayon and a piece of paper. His school recommended he see a pediatric occupational therapist for the focus and behavior issues. At the appointment I told her everything. The boredom, the blank sketchbook, the screen-free weekend where he didn't play with a single toy. She said something I haven't stopped thinking about. "He didn't go back to playing because he can't. His brain has adapted to screen-level stimulation. Normal activities don't register anymore." Screens deliver dopamine faster and bigger than anything in the real world. The brain adapts to that speed. Once it does, Legos and crayons and a backyard — they can't reach the threshold. It's not that they're boring. It's that his brain genuinely cannot feel them. "That's why the screen-free weekend didn't make him creative again. You removed the screen but the threshold stayed high. His brain was sitting below it with nothing that could reach. That's not a reset. That's just emptiness." "That's why art class didn't work. Painting produces dopamine slowly. His brain needed it in screen-sized doses to feel anything at all. He wasn't being difficult. He was sitting in front of a blank page with a brain that couldn't feel the reward of filling it." "That's why new toys didn't matter. It was never about the toys. A thousand new toys couldn't reach a threshold that high." And the focus problems, the mood swings, the defiance — same root. His brain doesn't have enough dopamine or serotonin to run on. The screen was masking everything. She told me about a specific saffron gummy — not the spice, a clinical version — that helps the brain start producing its own dopamine again so the threshold can come back down. She said once it does, normal things start registering. Crayons. Legos. The backyard. She warned me not to buy a random one online because most of them are barely dosed. He chewed it and asked for another one. I said one's enough. First week — less fire when the iPad went away. Still bored. But less explosive about it. Second week — I found him at the kitchen table coloring. Without being asked. Without the iPad anywhere near him. I didn't say a word. I barely breathed. I just let it happen. Third week — I walked past his room and he was on the floor with his old dinosaur set. Making up a story. Talking to himself in different voices the way he used to when he was four. I leaned against the doorframe and covered my mouth with my hand. Because I hadn't heard those voices in over a year. His teacher emailed me. He finished two assignments independently. Stayed in his seat. She said he's calmer and more focused than she's seen him all year. The iPad is still in the house. He still uses it. But last Saturday morning he woke up and didn't ask for it. He asked me for markers. Sat at the table for an hour and drew a rocket ship. Red and blue with flames coming out the bottom and stars all around it. He held it up and said "This one's for you, Mom." The iPad went from the only thing that mattered to just something in the drawer. And the sketchbook isn't blank anymore. EDIT: It's called Mood Balance. Clinical-dose saffron, 95%. 👉 uselumexa.com/pages/saffron-2

Where the ad sends people

uselumexa.com

My ADHD son has two settings.

Lumexa