My 14-year-old son appears to be a typical teenager: His nose is constantly buried in his phone. He has an obsession with Quentin Tarantino movies. He has an amazing attention span when it comes to playing “Call of Duty” on his Xbox.

But he is learning disabled. He has struggled ever since his preschool teacher noticed some trouble. In those days, he faced the other way during circle time and had an inability to draw a face with two eyes, a nose and mouth. Today, those struggles manifest themselves in other ways: He has poor reading comprehension skills and is not able to answer the question, “How would your friends describe you?”

At age three, we took him for testing. The first developmental pediatrician put him on the autism spectrum. We thought she came to that conclusion rather hastily, and dismissed the diagnosis. We got a second opinion at a well-regarded autism and communications disorders clinic.

There, a team of doctors — a neurologist, psychologist, speech therapist and occupational therapist — all concluded our son had a neurological condition called dyspraxia and ADHD.

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He began his journey taking every ADHD medication imaginable. And every medicine failed him. The diagnosis was accurate, but because of our inexperience as parents we began a series of very serious mistakes, which have put him at a disadvantage.

Our first big mistake was to passively allow doctors to medicate him without really getting to know him or following his progress regularly. We didn’t know any better and put our trust in medical professionals. These doctors included reputable neurologists, psychiatrists and pediatricians. We renewed his prescription for years, all the while continuing to see our son fail to learn and stay “on task.”

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Our second mistake was thinking that special-education services at the public school were enough given his early diagnosis. We didn’t know that his language-processing inabilities were that serious and were going to affect his academic performance throughout elementary school. He learned to read on time. He could even read the Gettysburg Address; he just didn’t know what it said. What he needed was a special-education environment that could do early intervention and teach him the academic survival skills he desperately needed to learn early on.

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By the end of seventh grade it was apparent that public school wasn’t going to cut it for him, so our search for the right school began. It was amazing to discover that the choices are few in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area. We tried a private school closer to home that catered to the ADHD student. We thought its structure would address the executive functioning deficiencies that had plagued our child his whole life.

The school ended up being a terrible fit: Its curriculum was too accelerated for his language-processing deficiencies. He ended up being moved back to the seventh grade in the middle of eighth grade. That school year was filled with visits to a therapist because his self-esteem had been destroyed.

The journey continued with an educational consultant, an attorney and a new private school that also didn’t fit our son’s needs. The attorney and the consultant did help us put together a robust individual education plan known as an IEP, so now he’s in public school again attending the ninth grade. The good news out of all of this is the consultant helped us to find a new neurologist who ordered some genetic testing. This showed our son has an enzyme deficiency that affects the processing of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. This deficiency explains why school work truly was a pain for him.

The neurologist prescribed him some supplements and a new ADHD medication. After a month, we were shocked to learn from his team of teachers that he had regressed dramatically, and couldn’t stay on task anymore. Of course, we stopped the medicine completely.

The story is still not over. He’s only in ninth grade. We will keep working with the neurologist to find what will work for him but for now, he’s not taking any ADHD medicine.

While this has been a difficult and painful journey, we’ve made an amazing discovery. Now that our son is no longer taking the ADHD medicine, his true personality has come through.

He’s articulate for the first time in his life, giving his political opinions on the presidential race and holding his own talking to adults about classic rock. As parents, we are excited that the plant we have been watering all these years is starting to bear the kind of fruit that gives us hope. Our hope is that, in the end, our son will be that successful adult who stands at a podium exhorting others to not give up on their child with learning disabilities.

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