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Today is the day I will put my 11-year-old son on drugs. It has been a long time coming.
Let?s start at the beginning.
On the day Drew was born, I was so exhausted I slept non-stop for almost 12 hours. Reveling in his new dad status, my husband spent that time proudly carrying our firstborn in his arms all over the hospital. When I woke up, he told me our baby had been exceptionally alert throughout the day. His big dark eyes seemed keenly watchful; he didn?t cry or fuss; and he didn?t sleep?a harbinger of things to come, but we didn?t know it then.
As a baby, Drew always did things early, which we were secretly proud of. He was crawling at four months, pulling himself up at six months, and walking and talking at 10 months. By the time he was a toddler, we started to realize those early accomplishments had a lot to do with the fact he just couldn?t stop. Not for one moment. If we coaxed him to sit still, another part of his body would start twitching. If I held on to his twisting hands to make them stop, his legs would start jiggling. Other parents told us that when their kids had been over to our place for a playdate, they?d fall asleep instantly on the car ride home. We laughingly called that being ?Drewed.? When Drew was around three years old, seeing him in preschool next to other kids classed as high energy made me realize he wasn?t just energetic, he was unrelentingly restless. It seemed like he was driven by a motor that he couldn?t shut off. I too...