Tanisha Martinez Facebook ad: “The School System Is Failing My ADHD Kid”

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Parenting & Kids

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My son’s teacher thinks his ADHD meds are finally working. He’s never taken a single pill. He’s seven. Three months ago, she asked me to come in for a meeting “without him present.” It was the third time that semester she’d brought up medication. There was a blue pamphlet on her desk. A little boy on a swing on the cover. Understanding ADHD Medication Options for Children. She slid it across the table before I’d even sat down. “He can’t sit still. He calls out without raising his hand. He’s disrupting the other children.” Nobody knows that boy like I do. Here’s what wasn’t in her notes. Last summer he rigged a pulley out of string and a yogurt cup so he could send snacks up to his sister’s top bunk. And he’s the first one in our house to notice when I’ve had a bad day. I’ll find a drawing on my pillow before I’ve said a word. “A lot of families find this really helps,” she said. I told her I’d think about it. I wasn’t against medication. I know it helps a lot of kids. I was against losing the parts of him I love most. Two moms were in the hallway when I walked out. They went quiet as I passed. I knew exactly what they were thinking. “That’s the problem child’s mom.” And I knew something else. It’s easier for a school to medicate a kid like mine than to teach him. In one meeting, I’d gone from the mom who knew her son best to the mom in denial about him. That night I sat down with him to do his spelling worksheet. Ten words. By word three, he was under the table. By word five, the pencil was snapped in half and the worksheet was in pieces on the floor. He screamed so loud his sister went to her room and shut the door. Forty minutes. Ten words. We got through four. It was like that most nights. And most mornings, it was me dragging him through the front door while he cried that he wasn’t going. At bedtime he climbed into my lap and asked, “Mom, am I bad?” I told him no. That he was perfect. That I loved him more than anything. After he fell asleep, I sat on the bathroom floor and cried. For two years, I’d told everyone he was just bored. Just smart. Just seven. That night, I didn’t believe it either. Maybe they were right. Maybe I didn’t know him. Maybe I was just being stubborn. Two days later, we went to a birthday party. My best friend’s son used to be the funniest kid at every party. That afternoon he sat in the corner and didn’t say a word for two hours. Her son had the same teacher two years ago. She got the same pamphlet. She said yes. She saw me watching him. “He’s doing so much better in class,” she said. “No more calls. No more meetings.” Then she looked over at him, and her eyes filled up. “The school got the version of him they wanted. I lost mine.” Across the room, my son was doing the robot on a folding chair while six kids screamed laughing. And I realized I was looking at two versions of the same boy. I knew which one was mine. I wasn’t going to trade him for a better report card. The problem was, I’d already tried everything else. Magnesium. Omega-3s he gagged on every single morning for two months. OLLY focus gummies from Target. Patches I found on Instagram. A weighted blanket. Two different reward charts. Cut out Red 40. Cut out sugar. None of it worked. And every school day, my stomach dropped every time my phone buzzed. On Monday at pickup, one of the moms from the hallway walked straight up to me. I braced myself. “I’m Dana. Jack’s mom.” She lowered her voice. “Can I tell you what I said to my friend when you walked past us on Thursday?” I didn’t say anything. “I said, ‘That was me two years ago.’” Then she asked, “Mrs. Harmon?” I nodded. “Blue pamphlet? Little boy on a swing on the cover?” I almost laughed. “Slid it across the table before I’d sat down.” “Same,” she said. “Look, she’s not a bad person. She’s got twenty-eight kids, no aide, and a principal who judges her on how quiet her room is.” “She wants him quiet. She’s not wrong that he’s struggling. That pamphlet is just the only answer anyone’s ever handed her.” I knew Jack. He reads the morning announcements now. Half the school knows his voice. “I tried everything,” she said. “Magnesium. Charts. Cut out Red 40. Nothing held.” “Then someone explained to me what was actually going on in his brain. I wish someone had told me sooner. So I’m telling you.” “The fidgeting. The calling out. The distracting other kids. That’s not bad behavior.” “It’s a brain that isn’t getting enough stimulation inside, so it goes looking for it outside.” “A kid’s brain runs on four pathways. Dopamine, serotonin, GABA and norepinephrine. Focus, mood, calm and impulse control.” “In kids like ours, all four are underperforming. Not one. All four.” “He’s not being bad. His brain is starving.” “And you don’t fix a starving brain by turning it down. You feed it.” I thought about the pulley. He’d spent a whole Saturday on it and never once looked up. Then I thought about the spelling worksheet in pieces on the floor. The pulley gave his brain what it needed. The worksheet didn’t, so his brain went hunting. And the magnesium only ever hit one pathway. The omega-3s, same thing. Everything I’d tried was one piece of a four-piece puzzle. “Look up the 2019 saffron study,” Dana said. “Read it yourself. And read the labels. Most of them hide the dose.” “I’m not going to tell you what to buy. You know your son better than anyone.” That night I read the study. Researchers put saffron extract head to head against Ritalin in children with ADHD. Six weeks. Comparable results. No side effects. No appetite loss. No personality changes. Not the cooking spice. A clinical-grade extract, with compounds called crocin and safranal that work across all four pathways at once. No personality changes. I read that line five times. I thought about my friend’s son in the corner. Then I flipped over every saffron gummy I could find. Most hid the dose inside a “blend.” Some had St. John’s Wort, which can interact with ADHD medication. I found one that prints the dose right on the label. No St. John’s Wort. He took the first one on a Monday morning. Said it tasted like candy. I didn’t tell anyone. Not his dad. Not his teacher. I couldn’t take one more person watching me try something and pointing at the pamphlet when it failed. Week one, nothing. Same mornings. I almost stopped. Week two, he came home on Tuesday and didn’t explode. Not calm. He just didn’t explode. That Saturday he made his sister laugh so hard at dinner that milk came out of her nose. Same kid. Week three, I realized I hadn’t had a single call from school. I kept checking my phone. It didn’t come. One night he sat down at the kitchen table and did all ten spelling words. Twelve minutes. Then he asked me to give him a hard one. Week four, his teacher pulled me aside at pickup. Not the usual tight smile. She was actually smiling. “I don’t know what you’ve changed at home, but he’s had the best three weeks I’ve seen from him all year. He raised his hand before answering. He helped another student with his worksheet.” Then she squeezed my arm. “I’m so glad the medication is working for him.” I smiled. Walked to my car. Closed the door. And fell apart. She thought the medication worked. It wasn’t medication. Nobody at that school ever asked what it was. As long as he was quiet, they didn’t need to know. Two weeks later, there was another birthday party. Same room. Same folding chairs. My son waited his turn for cake. He sat through “Happy Birthday” without falling off his chair. Then he stood up and did the robot, and the whole room lost it. Afterward, my friend’s son wandered over. Mine spent the rest of the party teaching him the robot. My friend came and stood beside me. “He’s still him,” she said. “You always knew who he was.” She asked me what I’d done. I told her everything. Then I told her to talk to her son’s doctor before changing anything. He still has hard days. He’s still loud, wild, a little crazy, and everything I never want to change about him. But last week he climbed into my lap again. “Mom, you always knew I wasn’t bad, didn’t you?” I did. Even on the days I doubted myself. I didn’t have to choose between his report card and his spark. Nobody had told me there was a third option. If you’re the mom holding that pamphlet right now. If everyone around you has decided you’re in denial. If you’ve tried everything and you’re starting to think they’re right. This is where I got mine: https://trysaphire.com/pages/gummies-kid-quiz Try it for 90 days. If his teacher doesn’t notice a difference, send it back. Because the robot dance isn’t the problem. It’s the best thing about him.

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trysaphire.com

The School System Is Failing My ADHD Kid 💔

Saphire Saffron