The one where I almost got arrested for drug dealing
...it's all fun and games when you have a child with ADHD!
Hi!
Tomorrow ‘Raising Attention’ is FINALLY out. I feel like I have been talking about this book forever and I am equal parts excited and completely terrified (I have major imposter syndrome) about it being out in the world. To lighten my mood a little today I thought I’d share a little exclusive extract of it with you. I share lots of my epic parenting ‘screw ups’ in this book, some shameful, some scary, some heartbreaking and some funny. The one that I’m about to share with you combined a little bit of everything. I hope you enjoy a good laugh at my expense! (by the way, Flynn is my son with ADHD)
Anyway, Raising Attention is out tomorrow. It’s for parents and carers (including teachers) of children who either have a diagnosis of ADHD or a child who has explosive behaviour (but no neurodivergent diagnosis). There’s lots of understanding, support and a few tips and zero judgement from me (because as you’ll read in a minute, I am in no place to judge anyone!). Scroll to the bottom for a little video from me telling you more about it.
If you’re in the UK, the cheapest place to get a copy is AMAZON (though you can get it at all major book sellers). If you’re elsewhere in the world you can get it from BLACKWELLS with free international delivery (sadly, there is no planned American or Canadian release). If you’ve already bought a copy, thank you SO much. I really appreciate the support.
Sarah xx
The one where I almost got arrested for drug dealing
Many years ago, when Flynn was at infant school, as yet undiagnosed, and I was trying on different careers to see which fit me as a mother, I worked briefly as a homeopath. As the remedies I dispensed were tiny pills, we used to put them into powdered lactose (milk sugar), known as Saccharum lactis (or sac lac for short). The sac- lac powders were wrapped in greaseproof paper and folded into small wraps, about the size of your little finger. I had hundreds of them stored in a cardboard box in a cupboard in a room I used as my office at the time.
Unbeknown to me, Flynn had sussed out where I kept them and helped himself to a couple of handfuls, which he stuffed into his jacket pockets and took into school one day, to share among his friends during breaktime. The first I knew about this was when there was a knock on my front door and I answered it to find two uniformed police officers standing on my doorstep. I instantly panicked. Was everybody OK? What had happened? They replied simply with, ‘Can we come in?’
Once we were all seated and they reassured me that my family was safe, one of them pulled a sachet of sac lac from their pocket, contained in a plastic evidence bag. They asked me ‘What is this?’ I proceeded to tell them that it was lactose powder, which I dispensed my homeopathic remedies in, and reassured them that it definitely wasn’t anything illegal. To which they replied, ‘We know. We have drug tested it.’
Apparently, one of the midday staff at school had spotted my son dishing out the sachets of white powder to all his friends in the school playground, panicked and informed the headteacher who quickly called the police. While waiting for the police to arrive they had questioned my oldest son, who was at the same school, and asked him if he knew what it was. He had replied, ‘I don’t know, but Mummy works from home and people come to our house and sit in her room for a bit and then pay her money and she gives them the sachets and they leave.’ You can imagine how this raised suspicions that I was dealing in class- A drugs even higher.
After a reprimand from the police officers, who told me to keep the sachets somewhere safer and out of the reach of my children, they left, as stern faced as they had arrived. To this day, I wonder if they had a good laugh at my expense when they left. I was then called in to the school to explain myself to the headteacher and to convince her that I wasn’t a drug dealer and that I would ensure Flynn did not do anything like this again*.
That evening, I asked Flynn why he had taken the sachets. He looked at me with big, innocent brown eyes and said, ‘Because they taste nice, Mum, and I wanted to share with my friends’. I don’t know if he would have done the same had he been neurotypical, though I suspect not. Drug-dealergate is now the source of a good laugh in my family, but the embarrassment I felt for weeks, if not months, every time I set foot on school property was immense
*Reader; he did in fact do many things like this again (you can read more about them in the book)
