I think that my niece has ADD. [Her mom, my SIL, who has custody of her, says that she’s getting extra help in school and is taking ritalin and has recently gone through something like a CST evaluation.] She’s always been a handful.
Recently, I’ve noticed that she gets “screamy” and it takes my SIL’s time for about an hour to calm her down. She also seems to be acting out against my other niece (her sister), who is slightly older and is not ADD (in fact, she’s quite precocious).
Is this behavior ADD-related? Sibling rivalry (older niece is not really competitive with her sister that I’ve seen — she seems to almost see herself as more of a grownup and tends to do a lot of reading by herself — she is 9) as seen through younger niece’s eyes?
My brother sees the girls on weekends (when I do, although I babysit some for them) and tends to think that the younger one is acting up because of the split up and because of the SIL’s parenting skills (again, older niece never had an acting-out problem). I’d like to help and maybe give him some information about what he can do to help them all, but I’m not sure what the root of the problem is exactly.