ADHD Child Issue w/having BM in the Pool

[JadeLeo]

My son is 4 and was recently diagnosed with ADHD. He is not completely potty-trained yet. Lately, every time his father and I take him swimming, he would poop in the pool. It is very frustrating and humiliating having to deal with that. His paternal grandparents just moved to a house with a pool. My son pooped in their pool once or twice. He is not allowed to swim over there anymore. My parents are not happy with him, either because he would do the same in their pool! He does not tell us or anyone that he has to go potty. I would have to constantly check his swim diaper and remind him to go potty if he needs to. We are up to over our heads now. We feel like punishing him by not letting him swim at all. Since it's almost summer time, I would feel bad if I took that away from him. He LOVES swimming. At first it would be periodically. Then, it would be more frequent. Now it is almost every single time. Yesterday, at a public pool, I checked his swim diaper and he had not gone. I was glad and thought he would be okay because he had a BM yesterday morning. We left the pool and went to meet friends at a restaurant for dinner. He had already gone in the pool and I forgot to check after we got out. It was not until we arrived at the restaurant that I checked in the parking lot. You can imagine how upset I was. I almost wanted to cancel our plans and go straight home. I had to clean him up in the bathroom at the restaurant. Luckily, I had an extra swim shorts. As you can understand, I was feeling very irritable and wanted to cry! Today, I have to scrub and scrub his carseat until it's odorless. I feel so alone in this. I have never had to deal with anyone who has ADHD. As a parent of a child with ADHD, I have to become familiar with the diagnosis and how to deal with it so my child will have a normal childhood.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!! Thank you in advance.

[MommyMindSpa]

You are so not alone! My son is now 8 and we are having him tested for ADHD, Aspergers, and giftedness. (We actually just got the results from the last test, and he did pass the gifted test! Yay! A smarty!!) BUT ... at 8 years old he still comes home from school a lot with a BM in his pants. I feel terrible!! He has no friends at school because they say he's gross ... and many other things! I'm getting all the results and recommendations from his tests on Wednesday and I look forward to learning how to deal with him best. But I'm very patient with him ... as you should be as well with yours. It's really not there fault. My son has no control over this. He's also still in diapers at night! But he's a wonderful kid, as I'm sure yours is as well. Just be patient and don't make him feel bad when it happens.

Not sure if that helped ... but I hope it made you feel not so alone in this. All the best!

[JadeLeo]

Thank you for responding to my post. I'm sorry I took so long to get back to you. I hope you were able to find out what is going on with your son. Yes your message helped. Over time, I am learning to be more patient with him and be more understanding as of putting myself in his shoes. I can completely understand how it feels when you so badly want your child to have a normal childhood. My son just started on Intuniv Tuesday night. We, the parents, hope to see improvements after a few weeks. He sure is a sweetheart and a wonderful boy. When he is in a great mood, we enjoy spending time together and doing fun things. He seems to be okay with his peers so far. I'm so relieved!

[ChandlerBing]

you are not alone my dear, there are a lot of parent who are struggling with how to raise their child with add/adhd.. The important thing is that we need to guide and support them all the way. There are times that we get frustrated because they do not understand. Here is a tip, when you get mad give your child a tight hug and say "everything is OK, mommy is here to fix it.." They need all the love they can get..

[rfathal]

Nice returns this thread is getting. Just a reminder! A kids normal life is not what you see other kids go through. Each kids have different normal life. In most cases, it's the parents that has to adjust their life but not try to adjust the kids life to someone else's "normal life". In my case, my kids are actually different institutes of learning in my life. Each one poses their own challenge and I've had to go outside of my comfort zone most times to adjust to their life. Be open, the only mistake you'll ever make by being open is learning something new.