Three months in....

and I can't believe the changes we are seeing since George has been on The Dore Programme.

Our house is generally a calmer place and I've stopped grinding my teeth in my sleep.....

When we first started "doing Dore" I must be honest and say that I could not see how these silly little exercises would help. We have religiously kept to the routine, so I think this helps.

What changes have we seen? Well, they're very subtle ones, but already the improvement in our child has made the cost worthwhile.

He's quieter, generally, and those awful non-stop noises have all but gone. I can't remember the last time he made the popping noise (that was the one that drove me almost insane).

He still argues but before Dore he did not know when to stop and it caused so much tension in the house. The arguments now only last less than a minute (as opposed to up to an hour on bad days).

He's started to remember to do things! Oh my goodness, what a shock it was when he thought for himself and remembered to pack his PE kit, the night before! I nearly fell over....

I ask him to get the bins from the top of the drive and bring them down behind the house... he doesn't complain, he just does it... and the next shock..... he actually does it without messing about!

He still has lots of issues that need to be addressed, but to see these changes in these last couple of months gives me hope for his future.

I have a friend who is a Doctor and he was absolutely insistent that there is nothing that will "cure" ADHD. He sees it as a hormone imbalance in the brain, rather than a developmental problem which can be overcome. Interestingly, when he and I were having this debate, I received a message from a Mum who uses the Dore Talk Forum and she suggested that George may have Sensory Processing Disorder. As I understand it, this is another relatively new diagnosis to behavioural difficulties experienced by some children, and can be attributed to early years hearing loss. There's a reasonable amount of information out there regarding this, but the scary thing is that the main symptoms are more or less the same as ADHD. I started to wonder if George doesn't actually have ADHD, that perhaps he suffers from SPD because he has had hearing problems since he was 2 or 3 years old (and still does). I started to try and find out more information, but with a shortage of time, it got put on my "list of things to do".

I doubt that I will spend much time looking for more information, because I don't care. I really don't care what label people want to attach to my child. It doesn't matter. What matters, right now, is that The Dore Programme is helping where all manner of drugs and behaviour strategies failed.

How does George feel about the programme? Well, there have been a few times when he's moaned a bit about doing the exercises. I have a simple sentence which stops him in his tracks.

"That's OK George. You don't have to do them if you don't want to. As long as you know that you won't get better if you don't do them"

The look on his face.... it's like "Oh God, I don't want to be like this for the rest of my life" followed by "No Mum! I have to do them!"

Our next assessment is 6th May. I'm looking forward to it.