This is something I have noticed and am wondering if there is anything can be done to help. My son, who has ADHD and dysgraphia, seems to have serious delays sometimes in how he takes things in. Tonight I asked him a question about the plot of a movie he was watching. His answer was “I don’t know.” At least 20 minutes later he looked up and answered the question I had asked.
Sometimes he will have an idea about a topic that was discussed days before, and will start talking about it as if no time had elapsed. Needless to say most people find this very confusing. It got him into some trouble recently at school when someone misunderstood a comment because they did not know that he was talking about something that happened weeks ago.
I’ve learned never to answer a question without saying “Tell me more” so I can figure out what he’s really asking. As someone put it, it’s like he’s wandering the hallways of his mind and I don’t really know what room he’s in.
Re: starting in the middle
I used to do the start in the middle of something on a pretty regular basis and still sometimes do. I remember a colleague of mine saying “whoa, start at the beginning.” I also teach for a living and my college students used to sometimes give me blank stares. A few questions by the brave ones made me realize they were totally clueless and it was my fault.
My son, who is LD, is famous for the starting in the middle. I learned to give the context after I became conscious of doing this. My son is still learning. I think that people who do this are thinking about something very intently and really don’t realize other people aren’t. Also, it takes work to start at the beginning when you are at the middle and I suppose being ADHD and a bit impulsive makes this tendency worse.
I am working at making my son aware of his habit too. Actually, it has become a family joke—when people just start talking—others just tell the offender that they are starting in the middle. I think it can be learned. I consciously start at the beginning now and when I get cues that I haven’t, I start over. I tell my son that he needs to tell me who “she is, and what what is”. He gets annoyed at me but I don’t think it helps to act as though everything is just fine. When he was younger, I used to be able to guess what he was thinking but now even when I can, I won’t. I figure if I do, he will never learn to communicate with other people.
I think the processing speed is a separate issue. My son isn’t like that at all and sometimes you need to be a detective to figure out what he is talking about.
Beth
Processing Delay and NeuroNet?
My son does the same thing. And it is a very noticable and prolonged delay sometimes. For years it has baffled his teachers and made social interactions with other kids a challenge.
We haven’t found any therapies yet which seem to directly impact this delay. It is often intermingled with question about his comphrehension, word retreival, and memory retreival. I am looking to a program called NeuroNet www.neuroacoutstics.com which claims to help with word retreival.. I contribute part of the delay to my son’s inability to “find the words” needs to express himself. Although, I think memory retreival or working memory problems may be a better description. I can tell if he needs extra time on “INPUT” of the questions, or “OUTPUT” of the answer. It may be both. Sometimes he has difficulty retreiving information which he knows very well (like when you forget how to spell a very common word). Most of the time, it is with spontaneous conversations and questions in class. He does not have trouble with word retrieval when he is just trying to express his own thoughts.
Another approach which I’ve read about, but not seriously considered yet is neurofeedback. I’ve seen claims for it helping to processing and attention. But, the research is largely testimonials. It has been used widely to help with other types of neurological conditions … everything from epilepsy to obsessive compulsive disorder. I am a very cautious about alternative approaches which are not doctor recommended. Although, 4 years ago when my son went through FastForward, it was brand new and considered “out there”.
I can imagine the “delay” also makes it difficult to learn. I can only imagine the extra effort my son must put out to compensate for processing to a different beat than the rest of us.
We just finished PACE. I am waiting for our post-test results. We saw some positive changes, but processing speed was not one of them.
Good Luck. I can definately relate to how SPEED is an important factor in the equation. I’ll post more later about what I’ve been learning about this. Gotta pick up kids from school.
Rosie
It is not easy to understand. If you hear of any other programs that might help this condition, please post them.
As far as conversations go, I personally do this all the time, it drives my family crazy, especially my husband. Or sometimes I will think about something and start talking about it to someone without them knowing any background. No preambles I suppose. I don’t know if this is a real problem to worry about, sometimes it just takes a while to figure out what you want to say. Actually my husband takes a long time to answer questions occasionally, I often think he didn’t hear me, nowadays I ask if he is still processing, he usually says yes. One other thing about the comments days later, sometimes a person continues to think about a subject or something reminds them of it and they start talking about it(without the preamble).I do this a lot too. My whole family has varied add/adhd. My older son has in his iep, additional wait time for processing questions and giving answers. Maybe this could help if there is a problem in class. Hope I helped.