my kids are being evaluated for ADD

They will be looking to see if the distractibility is pervasive (not just in school, but also at home and in other settings) and had been present early in your child’s development.

I wasn’t as well prepared for the historical questions as I should have been like: What were your child’s teacher thoughts about your child in 1st grade. 2nd grade? 3rd grade? If I’d thought about it I would have brought in the teacher’s comments about how they had had trouble keeping him on task

Good luck!

My oldest was dxed add/inattentive in 1st grade by a developmental ped. after constantly having his behavior card pulled for not paying attention in class. I had his health evaled first and was then referred to the dev.ped. At my older son’s eval. I was asked about his med history, how he was doing in school(the reason we were there in the first place, school was terrible and it was only 1st grade). Also, questions about family, immediate as well as uncles and grandparents. Some of them were unusual I thought such as has anyone been in jail?(yes) for stealing?(yes) has anyone been seen for depression?(yes) had anyone had trouble in school(yes, my husband and all 3 brothers). There appears to be a lot of possible ld in my husband’s family( the sons) especially with reading, which is my own son’s difficulty. I recently was dxed add/inattentive as well as a formal dx for my husband, he is adhd, something I was pretty sure of , he only went to the doc after I did,but only after reading an article in men’s health that finally gave him the ‘aha’ moment.(to quote Oprah)

If your kids have been in school a while there should be some evidence to back up the dx of add, from schoolwork samples to teacher comments(progress reports and such, documenting any academic problems) as well as your own observations at home(can’t follow multistep instructions, doesn’t seem to hear you when involved in an engrossing activity, doesn’t finish chores, jumps from one activity to another or overfocuses on one particular activity, can’t sit still in the dinner chair long enough to eat more than 3 bites…some things I have observed with my kids, the second one has no education problems but is adhd, he runs 90 to nothing all day long.

Anyway, I hope this helped, please excuse the rambling, I tend to do that all the time. Best wishes.

Thanks for the help. What I am concerned about is that the place that will do the diagnosis has not asked to bring in school records or contact teachers to get their comments. That isn’t that big of a deal since I have mostly homeschooled my oldest, who is a girl. For the five year old, we have only last years pre-school records to go by, and they aren’t very detailed. For my older son, he was in first grade part of a year, last year he went to fourth and is now in fifth. No real big behavior problems at school. No big learning problems either. But he cannot write very well. He also doesn’t read all that well either. So for many of the questions, without school records, I am afraid I won’t be able to answer. We shall see. Wish me luck.

The evaluation also went into behavior after birth. Our Child Psych wanted my ex-husbands and my report cards. Ours even evaluated my son in school without him knowing who she was yet.

The behavior after birth knocked me for a loop but when she explained, it made sense. My son could NEVER be out of my sight. He fell asleep on me, he was carried in a Snugli for what had to be the first 5 months of his life. There were many questions involving behavior during the toddler years as well.

The teacher (he was in 1st grade) and his kindergarten teacher all had filled out evaluation forms ahed of time as well.