My son is eight and has been diagnosed with dylexia and dysgraphia. In addition to the problems those LDs bring we are now considering the possibility of ADD. It is only now that I reflect and realize that we have not had a “kid” birthday party for him since he was three due to his extreme excitement.
It seems like if we have an event that he will just get so excited and over stimulated but I still thought this was part of being a “boy.” When hes outside and playing with others he gets very excited and yells. At times at home he will be sitting and will make noises (which drive my and husband and I crazy). Does anyone have a thought on this? What has realy made me begin thinking about this is observing his four year old brother who is extremely different. He is calmer, does not make noises and doesn’t seem to get overly excited. So maybe these behaviors in our eight year old is not as normal as I thought. Once he was dianosed with “attention seekng behaviors” but no one thought this was an issue and I just thought it was my fault because being the first born he did get alot of attention and maybe that was just behavior stemming from my parenting ways.
Re: calming down, etc.
My daughter used to have difficulty calming down after being “revved up.” Occupational therapists have a great program called “How Does My Engine Run” which is all about how to teach kids to self-regulate — how to stay alert and how to calm down. Working with an OT might help your son. Often the overstimulation is a sensory integration issue
There are a variety of other scales and evaluations to determine ADD/ADHD — I’d explore the OT side as well as the ADD/ADHD evals.
Re: calming down, etc.
Just chiming in here to agree that there are many other explanations besides ADD. (although the more I learn about all of these disorders, the more I believe they are all related)
Your son may be wired to have a lower threshhold for stimulus than other kids, which may or may not be related to his LD. He may have anxiety about perceiving the world differently. We thought our son might have ADD-inattentive on top of dyslexia. Noone can agree on the nature of his learning disability, but they all agree its not ADD. I’d definitely explore the OT side of things - couldn’t hurt, and is an appropriate area to explore given his dysgraphia anyway.
My son is 8 and he has an extremely quiet, easy almost 4 year old brother. I know what you mean when you say that you start to realize that it is more than just the, “He’s a boy phenomena.”
My son can be like 2 different people. He can sit quietly for hours and listen to books on tape way above his reading level. He can tell you everything that happened in the story.
When he gets excited he can get a little overboard. This was an especially big problem when he was younger but it has gotten better now that he is older. He was always the kid who hated to go to sleep. I would drive him around for hours trying to get him down. My younger son just will lay down and go to sleep when he is tired. My son will play loudly making up imaginative stories.
I have found that with my son’s hyperactivity is VERY situational. He is extremely inconsistant. My husbands family is loud and physical. They like to tickle. This will send my son into a tail spin. He becomes difficult and disruptive. The adults expect him to shut off the excitement like a switch. He can’t, once he gets going he can’t calm himself down. I can usually help him calm himself by bringing him somewhere quiet.
My son can do many things that my friend’s children with ADD just can not do. He actually saved his ADD friend who was walking in front of a car from killing himself.
After reading the book, “The Our Of Sync Child,” it became very clear to me that my son’s problems are mostly in the realm of sensory integration.
Interactive metronome has helped a great deal.