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Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities
Need help ADHD inattentive type
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Anonymous
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DD is 6 years old and starting to really struggle with her schoolwork. She has no problems learning the materials. Her teachers says that she immediately understands and can do it. Her memory is good so she is not forgetting how to do it. She can not stay focused on the task that she is doing. It does not matter if it is an easy task or a difficult task. She will stare off, seems to be thinking about something, or be distracted by anything.
At first, I only saw this when she was reading. She knew all the phonic, patterns, and rules but would have so much trouble reading through the sentence. If she saw the same word in a puzzle type exercise she would know it immediately but in a sentence she was struggling which made no sense. I realized that she was struggling to remember where she was on the page so I sit next to her and keep pointing to where she is at, reminding her to focus. Oddly, her reading comprehension is very good. I can barely remember what she just read after going through this but she remembers it very well. This is now starting to show up with her math work too. The first time she does it she is fine and interested but the second or third time she can not force herself to focus. She is not completing her work at school. Her teacher told me that she spent over an hour yesterday copying only two words (she has the ability to write several sentences). DD is very upset that she can not finish her work. She ends up behind because she can't work through the tasks, catches up because she picks up the new skill quickly and then falls back behind. She is starting to develop anxiety about this, seems so sad and worried, and no longer likes school. I don't think this defiant behavior or testing boundaries because she is upset. I also don't think this laziness as she is high energy but can control herself well in classes and activities. How do I go about figuring out what this is and what to do? Pediatrician? Eduacational specialist? |
Anonymous
| I would start with your pediatrician and ask for advice. If your ped suggests a specialist, then you can start working on finding someone/getting an appointment, and in the meantime can also seek out the advice of an educational consultant. |
Anonymous
| Have you looked into vision therapy? They look into the link between focus (convergance) and ADD symptoms |
Anonymous
| also need to rule out petit mal seizures |
Anonymous
| Vision therapy is completely unproven and very expensive. Proceed with caution. |
Anonymous
| Did you do a neuropsych to get the ADHD diagnosis? Could be she has some other LD that is not only the ADHD like dyslexia or another language-based disability. Speech language evaluation might be appropriate here. |
Anonymous
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If she is being impacted at school and at home (you need impacted in 2 environments for an ADD diagnosis) I would call NIMH and try to get into the screening study for ADHD. The testing is excellent and you will receive a written report and suggestions for accomodations. They will also be helpful in teasing out other issues that might be looking like attention issues. Best of all it is free and the wait time is not too long, the testing is done in Bethesda. We found it much more useful than the $3,000 we spent on private testing actually. If you call today they typically call back within a day or so. There are several threads where people have posted their experiences, I believe all have been good.
http://intramural.nimh.nih.gov/chp/adhd/index.html My DD had similar issues reading and she was forgetting where she was. We started with an over the counter supplement called Attentive Child which is dosed by weight and saw a lot of improvement. You want to get a diagnosis and treatment plan in place before doing anything since you may need that for accomodations in school. |
Anonymous
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Hi OP. BTDT. The good news is that your child is bright ... ADD can be addressed, IQ cannot! If you have a decent pediatrician, you can really start there since it wounds like you can indeed show that your child experiences the troubles you describe in two environments. A low dose of ADD meds can actually help you confirm whether or not that is the problem ... or at least part of the problem. I can tell you that the full neuropsych evals are very expensive (over $3k) and usually not covered by insurance. So while you will eventually need to figure out more precisely exactly what is going on, I think it is reasonable to start out trying to treat the apparent symptoms.
My child was so frustrated with his inability to attend ... even when he was desperately trying to do so. It was like urging a near-sighted child to just try a little harder to read the blackboard from the back of the room. There are certain nonmedical things that can be tried (similar to moving child to the front of the classroom in my analogy), but for many children -- providing them the medicine is the equivalent of getting them glasses. Night and day. And if the medicine does not help ... that is an important piece of information in figuring out just what is going on. Best wishes. |
Anonymous
Do you mind if I ask what is involved in participating in the study? I clicked on the link but couldn't find details. I would love to get an initial screening but I'm not sure that I am ready to commit DD for MRIs, blood work or other testing that may be part of the study. If we need to go down that road at some point as part of a treatment plan its one thing but I'm cautious about jumping into a study. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
13:54 here -- yes, peds can prescribe and monitor low dose ADHD meds. That's why I suggested starting with the ped. Our ped handles meds for our oldest DC but will not for our youngest DC as there is anxiety in the mix for our youngest. We see a psychiatrist for meds with our youngest since the situation is more complex. |
Anonymous
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10:56 again. Yes, as pp says, peds can definitely prescribe low dose meds and it does not require any lengthy, expensive neuropsych testing. I honestly think that WAY more families pay those thousands of dollars than is necessary ... You should be able to start very quickly, but even if you had to wait until summer, I think you would still be able to tell if meds were helping by just reading with her and so forth. School is a better test because it is just a more intense situation. I don't mean to sound like each and every kid should quickly go on medication.
For our child, we tried a lot of other things first ... we lost a year and a half of school learning, basically, but I still think it is worth it to explore options. But I gather that your child's school has probably done some of the usual things, like giving child a quieter, less distracting place to work, gently prompting her to maintain focus, doing harder school work in the morning when she is fresh, placing yellow paper under her work paper to draw her attention to the page and so forth. In our case ... none of these things made even a tiny bit of difference. Best wishes. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
Not that PP but I think that you can opt out of the MRI but I'd give a call and ask, we did a different study that didn't involve the MRI. I spoke to the study coordinator of the study at the link, she's a really nice mom, and they call back quickly. My younger child is holding it together at school still (very young) so we were not good candidates and I didn't pursue it. I know a lot of folks on here have participated in this particular study so they probably have better recollection of the details. |
Anonymous
| 12:59 ... I assume that my response at 12:58 responds to your comment. Lots of us try many, many things before medication. For those who find solutions ... that's great. But please try not to be so judgmental about kids who really benefit from medication. Parents who are faced with this decision have a hard enough decision already. |