To live up his full potential !

Starting my new life some years ago with the new member of my small family was not what I have thought It would be!

On 2015 I was lucky to have delivered a healthy son on my 39 years of age. wow! who would have thought ! he is my first and only child and was, still is , the first and the last thought of the day every day for both of us , his parents.

M. was a cute baby with a high temper. We were always joking that it was because of his (and mine) Greek heritage, that's he was crying constantly, wanting to be held , to be attached to me. Even then he was not quiet and calm, but fussy and irritable. Soon he started to crawl around the house, and wanted to explore every inch of that big box we were leaving in. he was always in a hurry crawling as fast as he could , making his knees bled.

Playing in the garden with his hands was his favourite. Always covered in mud while being very active and very very curious. Many times the activities he was involved were leading into unfortunate incidents with him being injured till even now - even writing of those events is like reliving them and the feeling is unbearable - .

M. was growing and the first questions started hanging over our heads. Why isn't he talking already? Kids in his age are somehow communicating better. We couldn't really understand him! Growing up with three different languages didn't make it easy for him at all anyhow. Searching in a foreign country to find answers as a new mom is not the easiest thing you can do. After talking with the GGD, we have requested for him to attend in his 1,5 years, twice a week a 3 hour program in our neighbourhood kindergarten, so he can socialise and learn through the play. Around the 3 years he formed his first clear sentence -surprisingly- in English. 4 years old , going to elementary school in the Netherlands, things started to get more difficult. We were advised from school to have him checked for dyslexia or other speech problems and so we did.

1,5 year later the outcome of the investigation came out and he was not dyslexic. But what was it ? My frustration grew bigger as I was too struggling to find answers to help my son and even though they were all telling me that something is there, no one , NO ONE could tell me what to do and how to move towards the solution.

At a very young age at school he was always making funny performances for his mates. Didn't really comply with the norms of being in a classroom and he was a lot of times sent out pf the classroom to cooldown to change this disruptive behaviour. At group 3 when Mickey is in the first class that needs to start reading and writing, the teachers' first semester comment was that he's lazy! She said "he sits in the back with his hoodie on and does not participate, he is not paying attention.I think he has potential but he is lazy." How hard was for him , no one can imagine ...

Listen to the teacher was the common phrase since he was 4. It must must have been so hard for him to do what the others found so easy, since they were thousands things he was paying attention to at the same time. And he was coming home tired every day and frustrated too. It was either a kid that did something to him or said something to him or heard something that hurt him. And the teacher didn't understand him or listen to his part of the story and gave him blame for what has happened. Or when he wanted to understand what he needed to do in an exercise ,talking to the teacher was impossible, as they would dismiss his questions and leave him with never want to ask again. And the tests couldn't be finished , and the exercises would not be done. And that continued some time ...

I was witnessing my child losing day by day his self-confidence, having trouble communicating what was going on his mind, why he couldn't do what others could, why he couldn't behave like the rest and I couldn't understand that either. I thought that I have done something wrong, or I haven't done something. The house became unbearable to live in , going out was not fun as well, he was bursting into tantrums in the ages of 5, 6, 7 and even now still sometimes.

The situation took a big toll on me and my partner . We broke up.

And the breaking up , had a very big impact in my child as well . He started being scared for almost everything... scared to stay alone, scared to be in his room, scared to play in the playground in front of the house, everything was very very difficult.

Seeing him struggle and not being able to help him , it was very upsetting . He needed to get some help the soonest. Searching and searching through the web for a care provider that could address his challenges, I found a children’s coach that would help him explore his feelings and put everything into bigger picture for him to try to realise and understand them, as well as find ways to coop with the scary part of .

And that was what we did. She work with him for a year and while doing coaching trying to help him, she and I realised that were more issues coming up for M.: he was inattentive, a lot of times in his own head not responding ... he was really creative and was able to set the scenes for lots of conversations . all his feelings was there, on his drawings …he had a big emotional world to explore but couldn’t talk about it … couldn’t make it words … and some times didn't even want to go there.

He was also very energetic and even though she would find ways for him to be able to sit down and do the exercises she was asking him to, we saw that it was very very hard for him to sit still. After a couple of minutes he was very anxious and very curious at the same time for other sensors around him and that's what led the coach to conclude that he might have ADHD as several challenges was with executive functions. So I started to search about ADHD , and read anything i could find that could potentially give me some explanation as of what was happening. Found a book that in every paragraph i read I was recognising M. in it. In every chapter I understood more clearly what was happening . In every word that i was reading , my child and his struggles finally made sense . And that gave me hope to dig deeper and find different solutions and several approaches to work with his different brain instead of against it. To understand his experience and enhance his strengths i knew that life coaching was a very powerful approach, from own experience,  that could help him. Therefore I chose to take an ICF(International Coaching Federation) recognised course for ADHD life coaching.

This was not the end but just the beginning of my ADHD journey. What drives my life is my mission to help my son and people like him live up to their full potential; empower them to take charge of their uniqueness and making it work to their benefit and success.

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