I'm still here!

It's been a long couple of weeks.  I had original intentions of updating this frequently but the last couple of weeks have tested me.  A little background....when I married my husband, he had two children already who lived with him....two beautful children that I just fell in love with.  His younger one, Joey, was about 3 at the time.  Now, Joey is 9.  Over the years school has been a stuggle for him...actually behaving in general was a struggle for awhile.  At one point several years ago he was pretty hyper all the time.  We talked to A LOT of people and tried different things.  Changing his diet definitely helped with the hyperactivity.  His schoolwork though has suffered since he began Kindergarten.  He went through first grade twice and is now in third, but he's really struggling.  His reading, math, writing, social skills, and pretty much everything else are behind that of almost all of his classmates.  A few weeks ago, I had a conference with his teacher regarding plans for next year.  She told me that she doesn't think there would be any benefit to holding him back again and that it would do more harm to him socially.  She said she is however working on getting him into special sessions during the day where he'd get to work one-on-one with a teacher for a half hour twice a day.  She said he does really well when she works with him individually and is hopeful that he will be up to speed in no time if he gets into this program.  When Joey found out that he would not be held back, he completely gave up and began doing NOTHING in school.  Not turning in ANY assignments and blowing off all the tests he was given.  He went from doing decent (C's mostly) to failing four of his classes.  He has talked to various counselors before regarding how he acts in school...the list would be long, but involves things like randomly getting up from his seat to talk to people, sometimes hitting people, standing in his chair, CONSTANTLY talking, when he takes a test he'll write random things all over it.....but when we tried to get him help from counselors, he never tells them the truth.  He tells them its all just fine, he's doing great, and they tell my husband and I that he's a normal, well-adjusted kid.  It's been hard going against that thinking that something really is not right.  So after the latest incidents in school finally made us realize we can't help Joey ourselves.  We took him to the doctor, he was evaluated, and as we expected, he was diagnosed with ADD.  Since we have tried other things, we decided to try something new and start him on medication.  Tuesday was his first day on the medication and a bad day at that.  He made a huge ordeal out of being on the medicine and ended up in the nurse's office.  He felt fine, he was just anxious over the situation.  Wednesday was a much better day.  The biggest obstacle I have right now is getting him to swallow the pill every day.  So that's been my headaches for the last week or so.  Not everything, but a little piece.