Appt with pre-school and psychologist over son's "attention" issues - am concerned!

[glasjam]

Well, went in for a meeting with son's pre-school keyworker - read me a lovely report she'd written about him - glowing references to his excellent communication and verbal skills, exhuberance and enthusiasm, sense of humour, wide general knowledge, friendliness and imagination etc. we'd deferred our son for a year as we are in Scotland and he is a January child so he is 4 and a half. I had written on my little outline of him at the start of term that what I wanted out of this pre-school year that I wanted him to learn to listen more and handle his emotions better.

Referring to this issue she said he did seem to have some attention difficulties. Didn't like doing anything that he'd done before, wouldn't fully participate in activities that didn't interest him, didn't seem to be making friends although generally friendly with everyone and particularly good at talking with adults in great detail. Prone to wondering off when it was "come together" time not wanting to sit down with everyone else. Also a bit over-excitable and boisterous with other children. His attention seems to wander sometimes when you are talking to him (he's started to go "blah blah" to me and rolling his eyes or going cock-eyed when I am talking to him "firmly" rather annoyingly!)

She said that if I wanted to I could have a meeting with the psychologist. I was a little bit taken aback but must admit have had a bad week with his strops and intransigence and thought I could do with having some tips on how to handle him. So I've agreed to see a psychologist at his nursery (assume it's an educational one?)

I'm just wondering now whether I am opening up a can of worms? Am I going to get him labelled as ADHS - is he going to be sucked into a system and not be taken as an individual anymore just a problem. Will it be on his records? Are they just getting a "label" to put on him being a "boy" - we deliberately didn't send him to school because we feel that as a boy he's not ready for that formal learning experience.

I guess I am just venting and wanting to hear other people's experiences - whether they have ended up with a diagnosis of ADS or ADHS or not... any advice, thoughts, opinions gratefully received!

[RaggedRobin]

we're at a similar stage to you, where professionals have picked up a problem (speech disorder/autism) which came as a bit of a shock. we're also in scotland and i've found that the professionals are not in a big rush to throw labels about.

our SALT has encouraged a "wait and see" approach, especially since speech disorder and autism present quite similar issues at my son's age (2.10).

i am undecided whether i want to "wait and see" or get the ball rolling by going to see a developmental paediatrician. much of the advice on here tends to be "get the ball rolling - you can always take yourself of the waiting list to see a particular professional."

i think i've come to the decision that i'd rather talk to people about it now than wait til we hit a BIG problem at nursery or school and find we have a long wait to get any formal diagnosis.

perhaps if you make it clear that you are not looking for a label, your discussion with the ed psych could focus only on what your ds's needs are and how nursery/school could meet those needs. perhaps you could ask what difference it would make, say to setting up a Co-ordinated Support Plan or an Individual Education Plan, whether you had a formal diagnosis or not. it might be that you won't need to go down any formal route to get the support that your ds might need.

good luck

[glasjam]

Thanks for that RaggedRobin. Yes, I am surprised that they have brought this up now. My take on it is similar to yours, if there are resources out there being offered that could be of constructive help to me then why wait? I guess if I feel it isn't helping me deal with my son's issues and therefore isn't really helping him then I can always opt out. But thanks so much for replying - I will report back once I've had the meeting.