ADHD kid turning into a "radio station"

[Anonymous]

It's her meds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FWIW, our ADHD/Inattentive kid, age 10, does this constantly -- humming, singing, sometimes scatting instead of singing known songs, playing drums on the desk, tapping, chatting up other students, etc. DC recently said it's worse when he doesn't get enough exercise during the day. (DC needs exercise before school and lots of running at recess.) Oddly, DC is not "hyperactive" when he doesn't get exercise, i.e. he does feel the need to run around, just run his mouth.

I think, for him, it is an attention issue -- most people focus their brain on just one channel at a time, but DC can have more than one channel going at once. He is doing his math and singing a song at the same time. He is listening to you read the story while he is tapping a consistent, complicated beat with his foot. His brain is bouncing around from one idea to another and rarely in a linear fashion.

Our DC doesn't take meds. He is in a SN school though for his language learning disability, which happens also to be able to deal with the ADD issues. At home, we have learned to redirect -- fidget balls, time to play/breaks, chewing gum, and, when it's really important, gentle reminders to be quiet (when someone is trying to concentrate or on the phone or not feeling well).

DC also had trouble with instructions, but we found in a large classroom a big part of the problem was receptive language and auditory processing difficulties. He has problems hearing against background noise and so, just tunes out.

In our case, Aspergers or Tourette's are definitely not possible alternate diagnoses - it's definitely an aspect of the ADD. It will serve him great one day as his brain careens around to solve a scientific problem in the lab and he connects B and Z to do so in a way no one else would think of, but until then, it's a "weakness" to be managed.

I'd be really concerned with the scatting. That's an indication that he's not even being socially inappropriate, but just stringing words and sounds together that sound good to him. Has he been diagnosed with autism?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FWIW, our ADHD/Inattentive kid, age 10, does this constantly -- humming, singing, sometimes scatting instead of singing known songs, playing drums on the desk, tapping, chatting up other students, etc. DC recently said it's worse when he doesn't get enough exercise during the day. (DC needs exercise before school and lots of running at recess.) Oddly, DC is not "hyperactive" when he doesn't get exercise, i.e. he does feel the need to run around, just run his mouth.

I think, for him, it is an attention issue -- most people focus their brain on just one channel at a time, but DC can have more than one channel going at once. He is doing his math and singing a song at the same time. He is listening to you read the story while he is tapping a consistent, complicated beat with his foot. His brain is bouncing around from one idea to another and rarely in a linear fashion.

Our DC doesn't take meds. He is in a SN school though for his language learning disability, which happens also to be able to deal with the ADD issues. At home, we have learned to redirect -- fidget balls, time to play/breaks, chewing gum, and, when it's really important, gentle reminders to be quiet (when someone is trying to concentrate or on the phone or not feeling well).

DC also had trouble with instructions, but we found in a large classroom a big part of the problem was receptive language and auditory processing difficulties. He has problems hearing against background noise and so, just tunes out.

In our case, Aspergers or Tourette's are definitely not possible alternate diagnoses - it's definitely an aspect of the ADD. It will serve him great one day as his brain careens around to solve a scientific problem in the lab and he connects B and Z to do so in a way no one else would think of, but until then, it's a "weakness" to be managed.

I'd be really concerned with the scatting. That's an indication that he's not even being socially inappropriate, but just stringing words and sounds together that sound good to him. Has he been diagnosed with autism?

I'm not at all concerned about the scatting. Ella Fitzgerald does it, and she's not autistic. "-) It's just a part of his musicality. Sometimes he remembers the words to songs and sings them. Sometimes he makes up his own (lovely) words. Sometimes he doesn't remember the words, can't find the right words in his brain (part of his MERLD and slow processing) or is also focusing on something else at the same time so he doesn't have attention left to put words to his music. For example, he might scat while he is doing homework instead of singing a song with words.

Autism is definitely NOT even close to the proper diagnosis, not at any level of the autism spectrum. Although DC has social pragmatic speech difficulties, as do kids with autism, DC's social pragmatic speech difficulties are quite different from those of kids with autism. DC has never had any other symptoms of autism. His social pragmatic difficulties are an aspect of his auditory processing difficulties and his MERLD. It wasn't until he was old enough to explain that we understood that he has to focus on people's mouths as they speak in order to understand them because he can't differentiate speech enough by just listening. Therefore, he misses a lot of facial and body language because he is focused on the mouth and deciphering speech. The weakness in social pragmatic speech may also be an executive dysfunction aspect of the ADHD --- that he can't take in, organize and integrate a variety of different messages wrapped up in speech (tone, facial expression, body language, chosen word, his response, etc.)