Parents who have children with behavioural problems now have a support group in the region. Health Editor Barry Nelson talked to the new group’s co-founder.

IT was when she caught her three-yearold, Joe, climbing over a 6ft fence for the umpteenth time that Nicole Minnes thought her son might be different. “Joe was convinced he was Spiderman and used to climb walls all the time,” says Ms Minnes, 32, who has just set up a support group for children with behavioural difficulties.

“From the age of two until he was about six, he was absolutely obsessed with Spiderman.

He’d watch Spiderman DVDs all the time.”

Utterly fearless, if he wasn’t watched Joe would climb out of the nearest window.

On one occasion, Joe astonished his mother by scrambling over a smooth 6ft-tall fence.

“Later, I found out that this kind of obsession is called hyperfocusing,” says Ms Minnes, who lives in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham.

In reception class at his local primary school, Joe caused a stir because of his inability to sit down and pay attention. “He was running about like a lunatic all the time,” says his mother.

In his first year at primary school proper, Joe frightened his mother when he suddenly appeared at home when he was supposed to be in class.

“Something happened at school and he was told off, which Joe thought was unfair so he ran away,” she recalls.

“It was really scary because he had to cross two main roads between our house and the school. He was only about six at the time.”

Ms Minnes found it particularly worrying that Joe appeared to have absolutely no sense of danger. “I thought he was different to other children, but I didn’t know why,” she says.

Eventually, she asked her GP if there was any way of getting support and help with Joe.

She was referred by her doctor to the local Child and Adult Mental Health Service team, known as Cams.

But when the time came when someone from the Cams team observed Joe – with a view to obtaining a diagnosis – Joe, for once, was as good as gold.

“He knew he was being observed and he really behaved himself. The Cams people decided they couldn’t make a positive diagnosis and we were discharged.”

Despite being told that Joe didn’t have any diagnosable condition, he continued, in his mum’s words, to “run amok” at school.

He was sent home for the day on more than one occasion because of his behaviour.

Finally, Ms Minnes persuaded the Cams team to try again and this time Joe did not disappoint.

“It was actually one of his worst days.

He wouldn’t do what he was told and his behaviour really supported all the things I had said,” she says.

Joe was then seen by a psychiatrist, but it wasn’t until he was nine that he was finally diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, as it is popularly known.

This quickly led to Joe being put on Ritalin, a drug that has attracted controversy in recent years.

Ms Minnes is adamant that Ritalin is one of the best things to have happened to Joe.

“At first I was very reluctant to put him on medication, but Joe said he wanted something to help him at school,” she says.

“He is medicated now and he is so much better.

I really want to spread the word about Ritalin.

It is meant to be the worst thing in the world when your kid has got ADHD, but it really does calm them down.”

Joe’s school work has really improved since being on medication. “It takes the aggressive edge off his behaviour as well,” she says.

Finally happy that Joe is receiving the treatment he needs, Ms Minnes now wants to see if she can help other parents who are struggling to cope with children with behavioural difficulties.

“When I was going through the diagnosis process, I would have loved to have talked to someone who was more knowledgeable and who had more experience of ADHD,” she says.

That’s why, with the help of her neice, Lauren Randall, Ms Minnes has set up a support group, which will meet on the last Thursday of each month in Greenfield Community School and Arts Centre, in Newton Aycliffe.

Ms Minnes believes a support group is particularly important because having a child with ADHD, or a related behavioural disorder, can be quite an isolating experience.

“There’s also the issue that some people think a child’s behaviour is due to bad parenting, rather than an underlying condition,” she adds.

WHEN Nicola started looking around to find a support group she found the nearest was in Peterlee or Sunderland.

She hopes the new group – which held its first meeting yesterday – will really take off.

Poignantly, Ms Randall, who has helped Ms Minnes look after Joe for several years, was diagnosed with ADD – attention deficit disorder – when she was 16.

“I was perceived as being lazy in certain subjects at school, but they were the ones I wasn’t very interested in. I also have a problem with maths because I find that the numbers are all jumbled up,” says Ms Randall.

Despite her diagnosis, she did very well in her A-levels and was reading French and Spanish at Manchester Metropolitan University until her studies were interrupted by illness.

“I think there are a lot of stigmas around disorders like ADD and ADHD. More people need to be more aware that they are recognised conditions that can be treated,” she says.

For more information about the group, go to aycliffehd.co.uk or call 07809-549988.

What is ADHD?

ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) is the most common behavioural disorder in the UK, affecting up to nine per cent of school-aged children and about two per cent of adults.

Common symptoms include a short attention span, restlessness, being easily distracted and constant fidgeting.

There is no cure for ADHD, but it can be managed using a combination of medication and psychological, educational and social therapies to improve behaviour.

Information is taken from the NHS Choices website