Felder took Ritalin for several years growing up to combat the concentration issues she faced in school. But she made the decision in high school to stop taking the medication and find other ways of dealing with her condition.

“It made me feel as if I were a zombie by just toning everything down,” she said. “I didn’t like who I was on the medicine and really hated it.

“I stopped taking it and forced myself to learn and get good grades without it.”

Felder said she made the decision to put Sanders on medication shortly after he was diagnosed.

She hopes Sanders won’t need the medication for the rest of his life, but Felder said she knows it’s helping him during a critical part of his development.

“I hope one day De’Norris will take the time to learn more about what exactly it is he has and see if there are other ways (to cope), like I did, but right now is not that time,” Felder said. “By no means do I want to sit by and let my child be left behind and not learn something while the other 25 to 26 kids in the classroom move on to something different.

“It’s like pushing you out in 30-feet-deep water when you can’t swim.”

Sanders’ third-grade teacher, Yolanda Winding, said she can see his struggles from time to time in the classroom.

“He always tries really hard, but I know sometimes it’s a struggle for him because of the ADHD,” Winding said. “He’s always very respectful in class and tries his best, but sometimes it’s just a matter of helping him get back on task if he’s lost his focus.”

Winding said she’s gotten plenty of support and advice from Felder on how to help Sanders during certain moments of attention interruption in the classroom.

“She’s been very supportive, and I know I can always call her if I have any problems,” Winding said. “She’s offered me a lot of good advice on how to deal with something I wasn’t too familiar with.”

Those calls, however, aren’t placed often if Sanders is on his medication, Winding said.

“It is obvious when he’s not on the medication, but that doesn’t happen often,” Sanders said. “You can just tell the difference with him having more trouble getting focused or starting any assignment.

“That’s when you really have to redirect him as much as possible to get his focus back on the task.”

That redirection of Sanders attention by his teachers is something Felder said she hopes her son will eventually be able to accomplish on his own later in life.

“What I don’t want it to become for him, or any other child going through the same thing, is for it to become a crutch,” Felder said. “I don’t allow him to use it as a crutch for anything, so he knows he just has to put in a little more time than others.

“Where someone else might study for 15 minutes and have it down, De’Norris knows he might have to put in 30 minutes to get there.”

But until Felder feels like Sanders has reached a point where he can keep up with his classmates without the medication, the mother says she will continue relying on modern medicine to help her child get through the most critical years for his development.

“I hear parents all the time say they are skeptical or afraid to put their children on medications, but my response is always, don’t you want your child to get the best education they can?” Felder said. “This disorder will hinder them from doing just that.”