Lack of awareness!

Hi,I am not sure if normal or not?? I have a son, 7 year old with CAPD-ADD-Dyslexia and he too does that. I a not sure what to do??? We are still in the learning process ………….

My son is 6 and does this. Last night the entire family was going to go stay in a hotel for a night just to get away and play tourist. My son had an absolute melt down when I mentioned it. He had been told all week but couldn’t seem to remember. I just kept cueing him and trying to remind if of the previous conversations and eventually he remember.

In my son’s case the speech and language person just told me to keep giving him reminders and cueing him, it is frustrating that he doesn’t remember but the reminders seem to work. I actually make him keep talking and ke kind of reminds himself.

K.

It took him awhile to remember that we had taken her to a friend’s house.

So he was paying attention to the incident it just fell out of his memory. Is that what you think happened or is it really just that he wasn’t paying attention to begin with?

Mel Levine has a very interesting chapter in his book, “A Mind At A Time” about memory.

Some kids remember certain things depending on the way it enters their brain, some can remember visual information, some remember auditory. Some just don’t remember anything. There is alot more.

Both of my boys do this too! My 10-year-old (dyslexia, CAPD, memory and attention issues) is getting better, though, with age. We had a neuropsych eval done this past year that revealed what you mention too, weak visualization skills/ short-term memory issues, slow processing, etc.

Right now my 7-year-old is making me crazy with the exact same thing you describe and I keep trying to remind myself that the older one went through this and it DEFINITELY improved. The older one even gets impatient with the younger one when we have to go over things several times.

I’m not an expert, but I’m not really sure that its LACK of awareness of environment. At 7 and 8 years old they are teetering on the brink of becoming aware that the world does not just revolve around them. So when there’s a weakness in the areas that require being able to put all the pieces together and making sense of the abstract the confusion is magnified. Both of my boys are very verbal too, so everything they are thinking comes out.

I take comfort in the fact that they have good common sense. I do not have to worry about an impulsive issues either, they are pretty solid where all of this is concerned. And the neuropsych pointed that out on the recent WISC-III test that one of his highest subtest scores was Comprehension which tests common sense skills. His Freedom from Distractibility and Processing are very low. So it takes him a while to really process information and get it burned into memory.

Of course if it worries you, I would not hesitate to talk to a professional about this. But my older boy worried me silly over this around that age, and now I see all of the pieces coming together.

I also found it helpful to try to explain it a different way each time he asked. When I would say it like “Don’t you remember, I told you …” he would become anxious and then would be embarassed to ask again even though he still didn’t get the big picture. Now, with the littler one I just pretend like he’s asking it for the first time and try to explain things a little more clearer than the first or try to make logical order about what he seems confused about.

But patience is the key, I think, and try not to react like you are worried. I really think they are trying to put it all together and with the different wiring of the dyslexic, CAPD, ADD brain, this is a harder than we imagine. But I think it is a sign that he IS aware of what’s going on, just needs help putting it in sequencial order and have it make sense.

I also like Mel Levine’s book Educational Care -which breaks down all of these complex tasks and explains how a deficit in any one area might manifest itself. He doesn’t use labels like ADD, dyslexia etc - just explains what’s going on.

I suspect your son, like mine as we have discussed, has trouble processing all the information coming at him and things that aren’t important to him (like where his sister is!) might not be something that’s worth the effort for him to remember. Usually my son is unaware of his surroundings in particular when he’s busy actively thinking of something that interests him. He can’t split his attention well. Maybe its a guy thing come to think of it…

>>Maybe its a guy thing come to think of it…<<

chortle!

Story to tell on my eldest son - he and his twin sister
were in the same fourth grade classroom. Around 10am
one morning his sister felt ill and I brought her home.
My son went through the whole day and never noticed
until it was time to go home and then asked their teacher,
“Where is my sister?”

Youngest son, the most dyslexic of them all, at 13 still
checks in with me to keep things straight. He used to ask
me to run a checklist in the morning - shoes and socks
on? had breakfast? taken your inhaler? backpack ready?
brush teeth? So it does get better.

Anne

One more thing….playing hide-and-seek. My son has the most difficult time finding people. Today he was playing hide-and-seek with his sister and a friend (who is his age but VERY “aware”).

He looked in the most obvious places, and even looked in the closet where his sister was hiding, but he couldn’t find her! She was behind some clothing, but he didn’t even look.

I understand with the posts that this should improve with age and maybe I just need to remind him to pay attention, but what other things might be helpful in getting a child to be “more aware” of their surroundings? Oftentimes I feel like my 8-year-old is more like a 6-year-old.

with 3 boys(2 teens) I am convinced there are some things we women will never get about the male species, even our own flesh and blood

‘People things’ just dont hold the same priority for them as they do for us IMO-even if they seem sensitive and caring at preschool age, I swear they still turn into GUYS later on

Today my 8 year old son was playing hide and seek with his cousins and sister, all girls and ranging in ages from 5 to 9. He can play, but today his uncle was hiding in a pretty good spot. My son looked right at him, but didn’ t see him. Of course it took the girls to find Uncle. But then later my husband was looking for something in the utility closet. It was right in front of him but he couldn’t see it!! This scenario is reenacted in my house every day.

I wouldn’t get too too worried at age 8.
I would worry a lot more at age 12.
I would really worry at age 12 if he couldn’t go back and pull it out of memory himself.

There is a development over time with this, and some of us are worse than others.

When I was 4 (and my mother was 28) she forgot she had me — we went for tea at her friend’s place and I went down to the basement to play in the workshop while they chatted, and then they finished and she went home – got there and wondered where her kid was … she did figure it out and came back and got me.

We always joked we’d never know if my mom became senile because she never had any memory anyway. One of the constant things was that when asked for her phone number in a store, she always had to turn to me and ask. But then again, as she pointed out, when would she ever call that number, because if she wasn’t home nobody was. No hope asking her who political figures are. If she’s in an ambulance she’s going to have a heck of an argument with the consciousness evaluators.

Now my daughter is saying the same about me. I just tell her it’s honestly inherited by *all* of us and she’s next.

I used to be very very worried about forgetting to go to work; I have never had any natural sense of time and never knew what date it was (oddly enough getting better after turning forty, maybe because watching TV now) so never knew if it was weekend or holiday or whatever. I double-check with radio or TV and friends, and only missed work once when ill and disoriented.

And I never once forgot my daughter, although close once or twice; I take pride in that — it was a dedicated eighteen-year effort.

I think you are on the right track, sometimes I think it is a male thing. I also think we are so used to watching for signs on our LD kids that we notice more. Our other children might do the same thing and we just don’t notice it as much. Or it just might be overload. But heck, what do I know. Just lately, I went through a fast food drive through to pick up supper. Got all the way home, 15 miles, the kids said what’s for supper. It dawned on me, I had paid and then just drove off without the food. And, I’m supposedly “normal”. LOL

Hey I’m almost 40 and I do this all the time!! My whole family knows if it isn’t written down on the calendar I won’t remember it.

I have made appts for my husband knowing that he will be gone say May 14 through 21 but make the appt for the 18th, see I only remembered the ‘important’ dates of 14 and 21. The 18th didn’t register as being in the middle.

Or even better, I had to drop off and pick up my husband’s uniforms (one each), as I am holding the clean one, I see the clerk throw the dirty one in the bin, I panic and say ‘Hey that’s the clean one!’ then realize I am holding the clean one. This after I had already paid and was going out the door. Go figure. My mom saw me do this, she just shook her head.

Part of the problem I think is what someone else mentioned, not being able to divide attention, if I am thinking of something, my attention isn’t available to listen and remember what someone is telling me or I don’t remember what I was just doing. Kind of like being on automatic.

I was thinking about the first post, probably your son was thinking ahead about class and wasn’t mentally there when his sister got dropped off.

Let me mention also, my older son one day went w/out lunch because he forgot that I had come during class and dropped it off, it was under his desk.
His brother used to do something similar, I would give him lunch money and he wouldn’t even remember it was in his pocket, I only found out when I saw him going to the office (I thought he was in trouble for something), he was going to get a lunch pass, I told the teacher he had money and pulled his dollar out myself. After that his teacher was given his lunch money to hold on to.

I don’t know what to do to ‘fix’ it, I just find it a quirk of mine, the boys aren’t really as bad as me. We just work around it.

Boy, don’t these posts make us all fee a little bit more normal. I baked a pie the other day well, sarah lee did, and decided to turn off the oven and let it cool. Remembered it two days later when I was about to pop in some biscuits!

I’m with Victoria, I would say it’s b/c of my age, but I’vee been this way ALL MY LIFE!

Oh yes. Maybe all men have a little attention deficit or selective attention. Amazing that my husband can pay attention to Tiger Woods chasing around a little ball for hours but when I tell him to take out the garbage is attention just seems to fail.

All right. I had to add to this discussion. I bought tickets to the Sound of Music for my family. I wrote it on the calendar. But then I remembered it being a different weekend than it was. I didn’t realize until the kids were all in bed the night of the musical!!

Now I write it down and make a point of looking at the calendar each morning.

Beth

Okay…okay…I guess I’m being a little overly frantic. I think if my son were an awesome reader I probably wouldn’t think twice about these little quirks.

And yes, my son is very similar to his father who is an engineer (that in itself should explain everything!), but his father learned to read when he was 4 so in reading they differ quite a bit. However, I’ve been thinking about this and wondering if my husband hadn’t been a first born child with a mother who spent tremendous time and effort in teaching him to read at an early age, would he have learned easily later? In other words, if we catch these things early and basically “pound” the information into their heads early, can we avoid these reading problems?

Awhile back there was someone posting who was trying to find out how many children with reading difficulties had a difficult time learning their alphabet (recognizing and naming the letters). Well…my son sure did and in response to the question a majority of the children seemed to have this (although there were some that didn’t).

To give you an example of these differences. My daughter (first born) could recognize and correctly name off all the letters of the alphabet at age 2. I’d write them on a scratch of paper and she’d read the letters. My son made mistakes with this at age 6 and even now (at 8) will on rare occassions forget a letter.

Unfortunately, I ignored this “sign” of a possible problem and didn’t work with him on this. If only I had known then what I know now! :-(

Oh well….thanks again for all your reassurances! I have learned so much from all of you and really appreciate this board soooo much!!!

And now I have to share my latest “spacey” incident (of course I attribute mine to old age! ;-). The other day when I was tremendously busy and had many things on my mind, I had dropped my son off at his tutoring class and taken my daughter and her friend to look for uniform clothing at Tilly’s. Because my son has a tendency to wander in stores and I’m constantly trying to keep an eye on him or asking his sister where he is and to watch him. All the sudden I had that “he’s lost” feeling and frantically asked his sister and her friend “Where’s your brother?”

They both looked at me as if I were crazy and my daughter said, “Mom! He’s at tutoring.” I was soooo embarassed!

I can top that one. We lost our five year old on the beach a couple years ago and my husband has never been the same. He wandered off and his uncle followed him (and didn’t tell us—obvious that he doesn’t have children!!!) Anyway, we were at Disney and all of a sudden my husband frantically said “Where’s Alex? Where’s Alex?” Well, he had him on his shoulders!!!!

Beth

Laura,

My son had a terrible time recognizing the letters. I of course didn’t worry because he could recite his alphabet before he was 2. I can still remember thinking people were nuts to teach their children to read so early. Now here I am teaching my 3.5 year old how to read. Talk about coming full circle.

I do believe that the earlier you teach a child the RIGHT way to read the better. It is harder as they get older to break bad habits.

On the spacy thing. I am convinced that it happened after I had my children. I used to be on top of things. I worked in a cardiothoracic ICU. A spacey move could kill someone. Now, I find myself constantly forgetting even the most basic things. When I tested for IM with my son, the tester said I was borderline
ADDish. It did not surprise me at all. My son didn’t have a problem with the attention part, just the timing. So there you have it. It isn’t the kid, it is the Mom.

Linda F

I am the same way. Can’t focus on anything without thinking of something else. Didn’t used to be this way so can’t be organic!!

Beth

That is so true. Its important to take a step back and not over scrutinize our kids. My son is an intense person, a little rigid, a complicated person. What helps me remember that not everything he does is about his LD, is that my brother has the same personality and he is Not LD, and happens to be very intelligent. While his temperment and LD certainly influence each other, they are not the same thing.

Meanwhile, I am a control freak about not losing things and it drives me crazy when my son loses stuff at camp. But I’m trying to accept that he can’t help it …. So I buy myself a pair of underpants, and they are kind of small. So when I put the bag in the kitchen I forget they are in there and proceed to fill the shopping bag with garbage and throw them out. My kids got a big kick out of this!