Now, some of you may not agree with having a pediatrician prescribe ADHD drugs, but we've been with his office since our daughter was born and my husband and I read everything we can when it comes to our kids and possible illness or problems; we were comfortable with our pediatrician prescribing the meds.

Life went on ok for a while; we tweaked the meds, we took a medication holiday during the summer (never again, but that's another post) and we started second grade with confidence.

It wasn't too long before the second grade teacher said, "Can I talk to you?" I hadn't told her Nikoli had ADHD; I didn't know how to handle that, so I let her find out on her own. Once I told her, things clicked and from then on we got on great, but Nikoli needed another tweak on his meds.

At some point during the summer medication holiday, I noticed some unusual behavior. Nikoli was spinning and flapping. I was afraid to even admit it to myself, but those were autism spectrum disorder symptoms. There were other things I was noticing, too - no eye contact, regression of affection, he didn't like to be touched, etc.


I mentioned this to our pediatrician at our next ADHD checkup and he sent us to a pediatric neurologist.

The neurologist didn't do much; he wanted psychological testing before he did anything, so off we went to a pediatric psychologist.

We were happy learn that Nikoli didn't have an autism spectrum disorder, but now we're getting counseling help to go along with the medication and it's made a huge difference. We've seen the psychologist about five times in the last year. We're to the point that I'll just give him a phone update in September.