When did you notice the problem?

Everything else seemed like a probable cause for our daughter’s issues but ADD… :roll: I was in total denial that would be an issue until I realized that when she was diagnosed That I had ADD too. :oops:

JenM - oh totally. My son has always been quirky and now at the age of 10 even the things that were strengths are sometimes parts of the problem now. For example, his wonderful attention span from when he was a toddler is a problem now because he only wants to attend to what interests him. His knowledge of all his colors at the age of 18 months was useful in helping him describe things he wanted or needed, but know I realize he probably was having word retrieval problems and that’s why he wasn’t using the right words to begin with.

I’ve also found that when I read a check list for characteristics of almost every disorder you can think of (ADD, dyslexia, even aspergers..) he has several. Not all, and often not enough for a dx. So he hasn’t been dx as ADD, but he has an attentional problem. And its interfering more with leanring as he gets older.

And its really tough to tease out which problem is causing certain behaviors. At this point the inattention is causing anxiety is causing inattention?

The one thing I will tell you is it does get a little clearer as they get older. having trouble with reading in 1st grade could have many reasons and possible interventions. When they are still struggling 3 years later in spite of appropriate intervention there is clearly a problem and in our family we choose to call it dyslexia.

I realized that my daughter was “intense” right from infancy but I wasn’t sure exactly what the problem was. Then in Kindergarten she got a note home to get her hearing checked. 1st grade came with the poor grade in attention at about the time when I was getting real tired of having to be on her all the time to finish tasks that I thought she should be old enough to do like getting out the door in the AM and getting to bed in the evening. It just felt like she wasn’t growing up fast enough, immature. If she had been a second child I probably would have been wondering about ADHD earlier. With your first child you just don’t have much to compare to.

My son had delayed speech and was In Early Intervention from 22 months of age. He attended the district’s special needs preschool form 3-5.

I never thought there was anything going on that he couldnt just “catch up’

In fact, I pulled him out of special ed in 1st gr. He had done so well in Kindy that I saw no reason to pull him for resource in 1st grade. The teachers disagreed with me and we ended up keeping him on the list but they only kept an eye on him(no pullout)

Midway through 2nd gr, I desperately wanted him back in pullout resource and THEN ended up with a teacher who felt he didnt need it. She left it up to him to go if he felt he needed it(at 7!!!) and he showed up about 1/3 of the time

He was at age 9 when a good friend had two of her children and herself dx’d as ADHD. My friend told me about ADD inattentive and gave me some books. It clicked. My son definitely has no H and it had never occured to me that he could have ADHD

It has definitely made a difference

I dont beat myself up about it. This kid was under the nose of professionals from 22 mos on and no one guessed(they too have the hyperactive picture in their minds)

TerryB, in my case I feel like I have a memory block on my first child! There are five and a half years inbetween and for the life of me I can’t remember many things! Then again, the more I learn the more I know my first child also has ad/hd so it wouldn’t offer me an accurate comparison! I used to wonder why it was so hard to take my kids out somewhere! I came home drained and worn out. Now I know.

Some of the quirky things we had were head banging as a baby, refusing to walk barefoot (sensory issue), unusual fears, among others. Developmentally she did everything about a week before the end of the normal range. She walked one week before 15 months. Same with all of the other milestones except talking. She started talking young and hasn’t stopped yet! My mother used to work in early intervention and felt that there was what she called an insult to my child’s neurological system (birth related) but we thought she was okay.

[quote=”JenM”]My daughter was recently diagnosed ad/hd inattentive in December. She also has anxiety issues that are probably comorbid. I look back and I realize that the diagnoses is new to us but not the ad/hd and anxiety. This is something that we have always dealt with and just didn’t know it. We thought our child was just quirky and had a very strong personality. Last year in Kindergarten she did okay but not great. The teacher kept saying she knows the stuff but for some reason isn’t getting it on paper—maybe maturity, rushing, distracted. One day when there was a substitute my daughter came home from school threw down her bookbag and announced she was quitting school! Good thing it was Friday because we had all weekend to work on convincing her it was not good to be a kindergarten dropout! We still were not thinking anything was wrong.

This year when I went to back to school night the Achieve (remedial) reading teacher introduced herself to me and told me she was going to get my daughter up to speed. I looked at her like she was crazy. This was the first I heard and it didn’t make sense because I know how bright my kid is! So, I thought about it and knew there had to be a reason. I started working with the teachers right away trying to get to the cause of the difficulty. The teachers were inclined to wait things out. I kept remembering the week school started when my daughter and I were reading and she couldn’t remember the words from one page to another even if it was the same short word. At first I thought she was messing with me but realized soon she wasn’t. That was my red flag and every time I questioned my reasoning I went back to that because I know it ‘s not normal.

The other thing that happened was I started researching like crazy and found my child fit almost every dyslexic symptom there is. I thought this is not normal either. She told me paying attention was a problem for her so I started looking at ad/hd. I don’t know how to describe this and I guess I’m wondering if others experienced this. It was like when I started looking at LD and ad/hd all the pieces of a puzzle suddenly fit. Suddenly, all those little things that we thought of as quirks or her being different made sense when looked at in a different light!

I think it all came to a head just this past fall for a couple of reasons. Mostly academic pressure to read in first grade. Also, the more demands put on her the less she is able to handle everything else in her life. I look back and I think that I have always felt extra protective of this child but never knew why. I always must have known that something was different but didn’t know how. There were all those little things that all add up that by themselves may not mean a thing. We should have seen all of those red flags but we caught this in the beginning of first grade. For that I am very thankful![/quote]

Please consider the following. 5 years old is too young for an ADHD dx even by the DSM-IV guidelines. Her brain is still growing.

Kindergartners should not be learning how to read. Kindergartners should not be learning how to read. Kindergartners should not be learning how to read. Reading should not start until the end of first grade or the beginning of second. No responsible parent would let a 5 old child ride a 2 wheeler in traffic. No responsible educator will teach reading to 5 year olds. They simply are not ready. Though many will try to do it and some will do OK at it, most kids are not ready at that age. Schools have been making that mistake forever. My guess is the child is probably OK and the anxiaety is being caused by the pressure of school. Imagine that a child feeling performance anxiety in Kindergarten. She will read when she is ready. If reading is made an issue, she will always hate it.

Children are not all alike thank God. They have their own time tables and they develop at different rate.

What they are calling ADHD is her reaction to a situation that she is too young to handle. All a 5 year old really wants to do is please his or her parent. She feels she is failing you. A parent is a child’s entire world so you can see why she is having anxiety.

If the school is pushing the idea that she read on their time table and you know that she is not ready. God gave you a middle finger.

Did you ever wonder what sort of thing go one chemically and neurologically in a child’s brain when they are subjected to stress on a daily basis? Probably not, but that is really not your job. That is the job of educatior and other professionals but they are not smart enough to consider such things.

Please consider the possibility that your child’s problems are not a result of an unproven made up disorder but rather the trials and tribulations of a 5 year old in a failing educational systems that seems to have all the answers but no solutions.

Please get all the facts.

Gosh, I hate to say it but every “Guest” post is suspect to me. If you don’t at least make an attempt at an alias name I only skim over your posts. I’m sure that I am not the only one doing this so please Guests you must understand that this is a very strange board taken over from time to time by a Troll that posts as a Guest.

I have to apologize to the legitimate Guests but I just can’t trust that “Guest” postings are worth my time. I automatically, without thinking, skip over these posts because 90% of them are not of any relevance to me or are inflammatory, in a single word, “Trollish”.

I find myself doing the same thing Megan’s Mom. I’m possibly missing some good posts.

Jen, your mother’s comment, although well-meaning, has something offensive about it. An “Insult” to your child’s neurological system. It leaves you paranoid about something that might have happened during pregnancy. For us the ADHD is simply genetic, duplicated over and over throughout my husband’s family with the “creative” gift along with it.

My kids still wear me out in public. My ADHD daughter don’t know when to be quiet and let me think. Oh my, it’s like verbal diarrhea. I can’t believe I wrote that but she really drives me insane sometimes. I lock the bathroom door now so that I can take a shower in peace and try to plan the day’s activities. If she gets going, she’ll take over the entire agenda simply by talking so much that no one can think straight! I just realized that I really need to work on this issue…. Time to start planning a new angle.

[quote=”Megan’s Mom”]Gosh, I hate to say it but every “Guest” post is suspect to me. If you don’t at least make an attempt at an alias name I only skim over your posts. I’m sure that I am not the only one doing this so please Guests you must understand that this is a very strange board taken over from time to time by a Troll that posts as a Guest.

I have to apologize to the legitimate Guests but I just can’t trust that “Guest” postings are worth my time. I automatically, without thinking, skip over these posts because 90% of them are not of any relevance to me or are inflammatory, in a single word, “Trollish”.[/quote]

Gee, that’s too bad because the “Guest” posts I have read have been informative, factual and quite erudite.

I fail to see how any of the guests posts are inflamatory. I have seen the the word idiot tossed around by non guests. I would consider calling another person an idiot to be inflamatory.

I don’t think the term idiot was being applied to teachers because an idiot is an adult who is mentally inferior to a child of 3 year of age. If the word moron was used then perhaps that would be a more accurate description of teachers because a moron is an adult equal to a child between 8 and 12 and as it was pointed out in an earlier thread 10% of Chicago teachers failed a compentecy test that most 12 year olds could pass.

I think the word idiot would be a complement if it were used to describe educators who beleive that teaching Kindergartners to read because even some idiots would know enough not to put a square peg into a round hole however; an imbecile would not know that he could not put a square peg in a round hole so the term imbecile would be more accurate in describing an educator.

This may clear things up.

Moron = many teachers and principals

Idiot = superintendants and vice principals

Imbecile = State deputy commissioner of education

Total Imbecile = state commissioner of education and G.W. Bush

Terry, I understand what you are saying about the talking! Sitting at the dinner table at my house sometimes it’s hard to get a word in! My rule is that my kids are not allowed to talk to me when I am in the bathroom unless it is an emergency—no questions or conversations through the door!

Just to clear things up. My mother made those comments long before there was any kind of diagnoses. She used to see so many children in so many different situations that it was second nature to look for milestones and indicators. She also did a lot of babysitting for me. She never said anything in a way that would upset me. It’s hard to explain but I do understand what you are saying. I am positive there is a genetic component in our family and my husbands. We just didn’t know it! However, the doctor did tell me that my daughter’s difficult birth most likely was a contributing factor—lack of oxygen and low sugar. Maybe it’s what makes her situation a little more extreme than my older child?

Terry- I recently pulled out ds’s baby book because I was doing a medical history for a new doctor. Intense but happy. that’s what I said about him at 3 months!

Terry, I was thinking about my last post and it really probably doesn’t make sense because there is some history I’m leaving out. When my daughter was around 2 the pediatrician was concerned about the size of her head. Not a comforting thought when you start researching the possibilities on that one! She had to have a head CAT scan. Talk about a nightmare. To make a long story short it was not an easy process and didn’t work the first time and almost not the second. She had a neurological exam at that time and tested fine for motor skills. That’s all they really looked at because of her age. My discussion with my mom was at that time and she was reassuring me. The term “insult” to the system is one they frequently use in early intervention.

Terrie—Reading your posts, I have the feeling you’re describing my son (9 years old, diagnosed with ADHD at the end of second grade). “Intense” is exactly the word I’ve always used to characterize him—everything is wonderful or tragic, seldom anything in between. And like you, the teacher’s intervention came just as I was being driven crazy by my son’s inability to finish even the most basic of tasks (getting out of the house in the morning and going to bed at night being among the most frustrating!). ADHD runs in our family—two first cousins and probably my uncle and grandfather as well—but the thought that my son could have ADHD had never crossed my mind. I always just thought of him as quirky and intense (and, less flattering, babyish and lazy). He also talks non-stop, and sometimes I have to just tell him to be quiet for a little while.

Vika

We noticed our son was different at about two weeks old. We just didn’t understand why. It seems that more and more I am running across parents that knew very early on but didn’t know what exactly was going on. When school starts, different issues need to be addressed for these kids. When people say that ADHD, SI and other disorders are brought on by bad parenting, I know it isn’t true. I have watched this little guy since the day he was born struggle. Whether it is with attention, milestones or sensory issues, he has struggled. I know that many of you out there have watched the same things in your own children that I see in mine. I am glad we can come together here and share our stories.

You said it Vika; the emotions are extreme. She’s generally either exuberantly happy or miserable. There is one exception to this rule; when she goes into her “hyperfocused” artist mode though she zones out in the most incredible peaceful state of mind.