inattention after 6

I found this an article on LD in depth.

One can get an idea of an auditory problem even in a preschool child simply by watching for certain types of behavior:

1. greater tendency to ignore a speaker when engrossed in something;

2. unusual sensitivity to or complaints about noise;

3. difficulty telling the direction from which the parent is calling;

4. tendency to confuse similar-sounding words;

5. confuses or forgets directions if several given in one sentence.

My son, who has APD, did all these as a preschooler. I also figured out that he watched everyone to figure out what to do. He couldn’t do Simon Says, for example, unless he had a model.

Did your son learn his alphabet and numbers at home with you? My son had a lot of trouble learning both numbers and letters.

We hit major attention difficulties in first grade which were cleared up by doing Fast Forward. His receptive language was then normal. Then we hit the same attention difficulties in third grade (increased demands). We then did Interactive Metronome. He is doing fine with attention now. He still has LD. He has been diagnosed with both APD and ADD-inattentive (as well as other things).

I don’t think my son was aware enough of his difficulties to get depressed, quite frankly.

Beth

Here’s the really fun part, sometimes add and apd occur together.

Honestly, I really didn’t notice anything different about my older son(add/inattentive) either, I had no idea whatsoever that school would be so hard for him. He was a very quiet baby, would sit in a stroller for hours shopping with me, as long as he had blankie and puppy, was fed on time he was fine. He had a temper on occasion but nothing too wild, he did bang his forehead on the tile floor at around 13 to 15mos old when he was mad and could sustain a temper fit for quite some time, they were not frequent though.

He went through all his milestones on time, he was curious about things, he could build the most amazing things with building toys (legos, knex, tinkertoys, erector set), he was curious about letters and would copy titles from my books. All before kindergarten. I read stories to him and sang to him everyday from the time he was 2 weeks old on.

He had lots of ear infections as a baby and toddler, when my mother and I realized he wasn’t hearing us well at around age 3 and a half, I had him evaluated by an ENT, he didn’t end up with tubes but did get his tonsils and adenoids out just shy of his 4th birthday.

I do remember his preschool teacher telling me that he did seem to have some problem remembering the letters, I didn’t really think about it too much because he was 4 and I didn’t believe in pushing him. You know how some parents back in the 80’s and 90’s were stressing over the right preschool so their kid would go to Harvard, that kind of pushing I mean. I rather assumed he would learn all he needed in kindergarten.

He went through kindergarten without a problem or so I thought, the teacher never brought up anything negative at the p/t conferences so I thought all was well. At the end of kindergarten, I got a list of about 20 words that my son was supposed to know at the end of the year and he hadn’t gotten any of them. The words were from the ‘write to read’ computer program in El Paso, TX.

Anyhow, 1st grade came and he was getting letter grades and they were all F’s, it took about 2 weeks for him to figure out that F wasn’t just the first letter in his last name. Pretty sad when a first grader brings home a paper with an F drawn into an A.

He was expected to learn 10 phonics words, 10 spelling words and 10 reading words, all different. He still didn’t know the letter sounds at this point (he thought W made the duh sound) so 30 new words a week were totally beyond him. Actually he was getting C’s in math at this time.

He was also getting his green card pulled for not paying attention and staying on task. My first thought was a hearing problem.

I took him to the doc, his hearing had been checked a year before as part of his follow up from surgery and no fluid in his ears at this checkup, was referred and evaled by a dev. ped. at the mil. hospital, dxed add/inattentive, started on ritalin and a few days later evaled by slp (same hospital) for capd, which she tested him positive for, still not sure this is a true dx. for him. I was skeptical about all this having never heard of either, I was like most folks and only associated adhd with hyper kids, mine was anything but. This was the end of October of 1st grade.

After starting medicine, his grades improved in two days from F’s in lang.arts and C’s in math to… C’s in lang. arts and A’s in math. He was just beginning a reading class at this school when we had to move in December. He started the second semester of 1st grade in Florida. No reading teacher, on grade level according to this school so no real help from school. He didn’t really learn to read until we got to VA, lots of help from the reg. teacher and the reading teacher, tutoring from the reading teacher over the summers and finally sp.ed in 4th grade. Now he is in 8th, sp.ed, inclusion and accommodations.

Really long story short, there were no signs that I could pick out that would have told me my son had add inattentive, most likely if someone had been able to point at them I would probably have attributed it to the ear infections and the accompanying temp. hearing loss. Getting an apd evaluation for your son couldn’t hurt although I did read that if there is both, it is best to treat the add before the apd is evaluated so that attention problems don’t get in the way.

The medicine has been a good tool but there have still been times when my son has hit walls, 3rd grade being the worst when he actually said these words to me ‘I am so stupid and so dumb, I should just go kill myself’. Yes, we ran to the counselors office and he has never been this down on himself since. He still gets negative about himself especially when the sp.ed subject comes up but he has seen some school success and that has helped.

About the apd vs add thing, there is a whole thread going on over on teaching an ld child bb. You might find it interesting. I am still trying to learn about all this stuff and I have been on this road for 7 yrs.

Hope this helps, I apologize for the length. It’s hard to put so much time in a paragraph.

Best wishes.
Amy

Another thought I had when reading your post is that your son could be experiencing anxiety - which can mimic ADD. While my son is definitely in la-la- land alot of the time (we like to think of him as the absent minded professor) it became a much bigger problem in 2nd grade for 2 reasons: 1) the work became more demanding so his zoning out caused more real problems for him 2) he had tremendous anxiety about his undiagnosed reading disability.

Its still tough to differentiate with him what is anxiety, what is his natural behavior, what is now a learned response to being in a classroom that may not be right for him. But addressing the anxiety has made a big difference.

My son did have some signs of ADHD early on. He was always a little hyper and had a wicked temper, with me at least. His preschool teachers never once noticed a problem His was the star of preschool. The only problem ever brought to my attention in preschool was fine motor issues. He never liked to color, I just thought, “Thats a boy for you.”
He could say his letters and count to 20 before he was 2. He would wow people with his verbal abilities doing a little stand up routine with his microphone when he was 3.

Then in kindergarten he hit a wall. He could not recognize his letters or numbers on the page and forget about writing them. I also thought they were being ridiculous expecting too much to soon. I was in complete denial that there was anything wrong.
He was diagnosed with a visual motor problem at the end of first. He was not learning how to read and writing was extremely poor. Math was also a problem. He was at the bottom of his class in everything.

I never thought even at this point ADHD. He was fidgeting in his second grade sped class. I attributed it to the teacher because his first grade teacher allowed them more time to get up and move around and he didn’t fidget.

I honestly realized just how much his attention was affecting his ablility to learn after I saw an improvement in attention after IM. I started to see certain times when his attention was right on. During these times he was a third grade superman capable of leaping complex math problems and decoding difficult nonsense words in a single bound. The times when his attention was off because of lack of sleep, high demands etc he couldn’t do 2+2.

It was a real eye opener.

don’t feel bad about this I did the same thing with my son. Matt was always so perfectly behaved that I never picked up on the fact that he was to well behaved. Matt is also a zoner he also spoke late.
My family told me that I was overnuturing him and should make him do things for himself . However when I moved I moved back to our Hometown and Matt began to be around his cousins (at about age4) thats when I began to see that there was a problem so I took him to a different dr. that his problem was diagosed. He was prescribed adderall and suddenly I had different child.

Now at age 11 he’s a good student and a very interesting person. We still have montly Dr. appointments and bad days but overall things are much better. So tell your little guy and yourself that there is hope .

Some general comments. Children who involuntarily zone out can be ADHD or in some cases have a type of epilepsy or some other challenge.

Reducing background noises can be helpful for concentration. Taking written notes in a notebook can help with the organization.

No easy answers - sorry.

There can be a question as to how young a child is to try the ADHD meds but it is known that for some of those with ADHD, the right ADHD med (a central nervous system stimulant/alerting agent) actually works a little to reduce ADHD symptoms.

Some very conservative doctors will wait a number of years to try the ADHD meds - and ~ monitor the condition in the meantime.

The ADHD meds do not work for everyone so even if one tries ADHD meds there is no guarantee they will work at all or work well at all. Good luck.