Trying not to drip feed, so sorry if it's long. Ds is in year 1, will be 6 in a few months. His teacher has pulled me up a few times over his lack of concentration / listening in class. At parents evening he was described as 'immature'. She has questioned his hearing but after grommets less than a year ago he's been given the all clear. basically if ds is not interested in the topic he just does not listen, preferring to do anything but. For example the other day they were doing an activity he wasn't interested in whilst sitting on a cushion. Rather than pretending to take an interest he pulled all the stuffing out of the cushion 'to see what was inside' and when told off by the teacher refused to say sorry and generally acted like the clown. He does lots of after school activities mainly as he enjoys them, or at least says he does, but also because he has this never ending energy. However in almost all these activities each instructor has pulled me up on his poor listening skills aka- mucking around in the activity. I have asked ds if he enjoys the activity and he assures me he does and wants to keep going. Yet he doesn't listen to the instructions given and today at swimming spent the majority of the time throwing his googles around. In many ways he's very bright,especially with maths and science subjects. If you get his attention with something he enjoys he will sit happily and read a book, talk about it with you, watch a film,play a bored game etc however if he's not interested he won't bother at all and hes up and down like a yo-yo. He also does this flapping with his arms/ hands when excited - a lot. Socially he seems ok, although he does lack in patience and can sometimes lash out / get emotional easily. Out and about he doesn't seem to have any saftey awareness eg he will wander far away from me without looking at where I am. I am also having to continually remind him about road saftey. This probably doesn't sound like much, but even as a baby I had to make sure there was enough distance between him and the other babies on the floor as he never stopped moving his limbs. Not much as changed, he still moves around all the time - eg twisting, turning, flapping, pulling on ears etc even when being 'still' watching tv. Previously I have put all these behaviours down to his age, but he's almost 6 now and it is becoming more and more noticeable amongst his peer group. Grandparents find him 'differcult', his dad says he's just like him when he was a child and I'm overreacting. But every instinct in me is screaming this is more than just an active 5 year old, I've always though there was something 'different' about him. So Aibu to think along the lines of ADHD / add / asd or am I just a neuortic parent who is failing miserably with discipline? All opinions welcome as I have been it tears most of tonight wondering which one it is.
AIBU?
AibU to think ds has more than 'poor concentration / listening skills'?
Fairyegg · 29/11/2012 23:33
I'm more than happy to hve my parenting skills questioned to be honest. In many ways I hope it is something we are doing wrong, which could be corrected or firmer boundaries put in place. Has your ds been diagnosed with anything crappypatty? I've asked my sons teacher for a quick chat after school today so we'll see what happens there. Another example of his odd behaviour is walking to school today. We had to wait at the crossing, there were 3,4&5 year olds waiting nicely for the green man. Ds is jumping from foot to foot and each time a car drove past he would kind of flap his arms whilst making them very tense and twist his fingers in a bizarre way. He was doing this out of excitement. it's hardy the first time he's seen a car though is it 
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