Joey Went From “D”s to the Honor Roll Once we Finally Understood His ADHD

Hi my name is Ann Fetzer,


I created this page to share my story of how my family has struggled with ADD-ADHD and what we did to deal with this serious problem. I had so many of my friends and friends of friends asking me what we did… I found it would be easier to share my story on this page.

I all started 4 years ago when Joey started middle school. We began to get negative reports from his teachers. We knew that Joey was a handful, but we thought he was just a very “active” kid. Well things seemed to get worse and worse. His grades were going way down. By midway through his 6th grade year, he was getting a “D” average.

Needless to say, this was not acceptable to us. After multiple parent-teacher conferences it began to become clear that the teaching staff had labeled Joey “ADD”. He was definitely on their radar as the “problem kid”.

We began to feel pressure to take him to the Doctor to be tested for ADD. My wife and I were getting to our wits end. I have to tell you, at this point my emotions were a mess. On one hand, I know my kid and I know that he is a good kid, maybe a handful, but he is a smart, good kid. We were devastated at the idea of having to take him to the Doctor for something that I was not even sure was a real thing.

But we wanted the best life for Joey, and we could see that the path he was on was dismal and scary. For months we knew that we had a problem, but I guess we did not want to admit that it was “real”.

So we finally take him to the Doctor and the Doctor asks us a few questions and gives us a questionnaire to fill out. After reviewing the questionnaire explains that he is very confident that Joey has ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. I guess this is like ADD on steroids or something.

The Doctor explains that we should consider putting Joey on Adderall. I thought he was going to say ritalin, but apparently adderall is now the drug of choice among Doctors. Anyway, my wife and I left the Doctor that day with very heavy hearts. We knew in our gut we had to do something for Joey, but this adderall thing just did not sit well with us.

So what did we do? Well we googled it of course. I swear it feels like using one of those black 8-ball things. At this point we were desperate for answers. The first thing we did was look up adderall to see what it was all about. It did not take us long to realize that there was no way in H%$# I was going to put Joey on that stuff. I mean people have died from it and it was banned in Canada… so the adderall thing was not an option.

So now we are faced with our problem and we are going to try every solution until we found something that works. I cannot tell you how many hours we spent researching this topic. Every website claims something different. There is a lot of conflicting information about ADHD. Somehow we knew in our gut that there had to be a safe solution.

One of the things nagging at me was that there was no such thing as ADD when I was growing up. I made me begin to wonder what was so different about kids these days… anyways I will cut to the chase here.

We stumbled on this 3 steps to conquering ADD site that looked very cheesy. I was skeptical because it was making some tall claims. First of all it was an “ebook” and I have never bought an ebook in my life. I don’t like to read too much on the Internet… but all the book at Barnes and Nobles were worthless.

So we get this ebook (since then they have a print version that we now have) and it confirms a lot of what I knew in my gut. Things like ADHD may be nothing more but allergies or a lack of a certain vitamin. So the book made a lot of sense. Nothing earth shattering there, but good information that I could have probably found on the Internet after about 100 hours of compiling and condensing.

My wife and I decided that whatever we tried, we would follow it to a “tee” to give it a chance. Our first few attempts at so-called ADD supplements failed miserably. We tried attend, native remedies, and omega bright with no noticeable improvement. So once we got this book, we followed everything they said which included 2 different supplements that we take daily in the am. I really did not expect any improvement. And I have to be honest, I bought this stuff with the full intentions of getting my money back after we tried it for 30 days.

So we start this daily regimen first thing every morning. The first few mornings Joey resisted us but we explained that these vitamins were making him strong and gave him super-powers ;) it worked. Anyway, no real noticeable change in the first 3 weeks. Then we get e phone call from one of Joey’s teachers.

This is where I became a believer. She did not know that we were doing the 3 steps thing, and she tells us, “whatever you are doing with Joey, keep it up. He is attentive in class, he seems happier and less agitated” I cannot tell you how big of a relief this was for us to hear. We began to notice small changes around the house. Joey was able to do more than one thing. Like before we would have to tell him only one thing at a time. You could not say Joey, “go clean your room and bring your shoes in here” because before there was no way that he would remember to bring his shoes back. Now we can tell him several things at he can do them all.

His grades went from a “D” average to all “bs and As” and the occasional “c”. We cannot be happier. I truly believe that we would still be struggling and at out wits end had we not found this book. It has totally given our life back to our family. That is why I have written this page. I am deeply indebted to Jon Bennett and I really appreciate his work. You can get more information about the 3 steps program at

http://3stepsadd.com/

I hope this helps you!

Ann Fetzer

PS - you can email me and I will be glad to share our experiences with you

annfetzer (at) gmail.com

PSS - OK, I appreciate all the emails, but I am getting too many to respond. I would ask that you direct questions about the 3 steps book to that company. I think that their support desk is very responsive.

http://3stepsadd.com

Thursday, January 15th, 2009 adhd 36 Comments