Do you know your child has adhd from a young age?

[OnceuponaRainbow18]

Thanks for reading.

I was wondering if your child has adhd if you knew this from a young age? My son has just turned 3 and I’ve suspected for a while he may have adhd, I did call our GP to talk about it, and they dismissed it as him being too young, which I do understand. But, I also feel like if he does have it surely early intervention may help? Or maybe I’m overthinking it all.

I think he may have adhd because:
He cannot sit still, from the min he’s awake he’s buzzing
He can’t manage/regulate his emotions
He can’t wait his turn, even if it’s to speak
He has no impulse control
If he’s excited he always goes over the top
He has never slept well, takes an hour to fall asleep, just chats and chats and chats

Any thoughts from people with experience of children with adhd would be much appreciated!

I have severe ADHD and used to be a teacher so have experience of recognising symptoms in children.

OP, I know exactly what you mean. I would list those same behaviour for my just 3 year old, whom I strongly suspect has ADHD.

Yes, many of her friends of the same age might be described like that. But it's to nowhere near the same extent.

My daughter's Speech and Language Therapist also thinks it's ADHD.

I'm sorry you've had rough rides with your children. It must be so hard seeing them make bad choices and feeling so helpless.
I think my son might have ADD but it's a very mixed picture and not yet become clear.
It's really interesting what you say about it only appearing at 7 years old @Blueberryflavour was it just that he was managing before. Do you think it was that once he was in the school system it became harder for him to regulate himself?

@Blueberryflavour your son sounds just like mine.

I can talk to him when he's calm, and he knows he shouldn't do what he's done to some extent. But you've got a cat in hells chance of stopping him 'in the moment' it's like his brain completely switches off. He puts us at insane risk sometimes.

We were getting a McDonald's (I hate taking him inside and use the drive thru as much as poss) but of course the time I had to go in, ds couldn't help himself, wrangled free from my death grip in the queue and ran (you'll know how fast they run ) straight through McDonald's kitchen near the deep fat fryers and ovens. Just running rings amongst all the staff cooking having the time of his life. He had to be rugby tackled to remove him.

We've been on holiday (super stressful!) and when checking in he's jumped on the conveyor where your luggage goes and run down the belt disappearing into the back of beyond with everyone's suitcases, airport staff had to press the emergency stop button.

He's drove my car up onto the path narrowly missing crashing into somebody's front window.

It's a full time job to keep them safe isn't it when they get the 'urge'

My son was like this. Didn't attend nursery, but was thrown out of playgroup! I thought school would sort him out but was called in to see the HT because of his behaviour. He stuck his foot out and tried to trip his teacher up. Only 5 years old. His childhood was an absolute nightmare. Now an adult and still distractable, impulsive and problematic, but owns his own house (bought age 21) has 2 cars and a steady job he loves. Also very intelligent, but never achieved academically because of the adhd issues

DH also has it.

I’m aware that I am sounding very negative here so some of the things that did help when my son was at his worst. We did specialist parenting classes, the content was a bit obvious but learned a lot from the other parents. We also did family counselling which gave us space to talk but didn’t really achieve a lot.
Lots of activities, although he wasn’t hyperactive keeping him busy did help ( and also gave us a much needed hours peace) but activities with structure like martial arts, cadets, scouts etc especially if they had leaders who were used to kids with ADHD he dealt best in situations with clear expectations and behaviour boundaries. Free flow activities were not a success. Also he was extremely sporty so we signed him up for everything, due to his lack of fear he was great at skiing and track cycling and sailing. He would take instruction well from the leaders because he really wanted to do these activities. Tbh if he had been able to channel his focus a little better he could have had a future in sport.
Also we never sprang anything on him so no surprises as they would trigger him. It was a delicate line between not telling him something was happening too soon and not telling him too late. Also we picked our battles, other parents thought we were a bit slack but they weren’t living our lives. One example was homework it was a huge area of conflict and we were always up at the school anyway meeting with guidance and class teachers so in the end I had to say that we couldn’t make him do his homework. It was destroying what little nice family time we managed, the school agreed that he would do his homework in school time.

@Blueberryflavour

Free flow activities were not a success

I struggle with groups so have given up, the only thing I do take him to is a forest school where there’s hardly any other kids and he seems to enjoy it. Every time I try and take him
Somewhere we end up
Leaving early, then my eldest is crying that the fun is cut short. He just can’t cope with anything remotely exciting.

He will sit and watch tv for about an hour though….!

@ilkleymoorbartat
I can’t think of anything that made it apparent at age 7 apart from the fact that they had an exchange teacher that year who really didn’t have a great handle on things. I worked part time when he was little and my mum minded him for me so he was the only one there. Then he went to nursery which was great with amazing leaders and lots of outdoor space. He then went to school for the first 2 years with the same primary teacher with nearly all the same kids from nursery. So it was only when he experienced a radically different approach that he started to struggle or it could have just been coincidence?
@OnceuponaRainbow18 it must be so tricky at such a young age my experience of using a lot of structured activities obviously worked as my son was older. Have you tried sharing the load, one of you do an activity with one child and one of you do an activity with the other? It wasn’t an issue for us but I know that a lot of other parents in my parenting group had to approach outings like this as it’s not fair on the non ADHD sibling to always miss out and can lead to resentment. Also have you tried tiring him out physically before you even go to a group, we found that worked reasonably well before visiting family or eating out.
to everyone going through this it’s a nightmare and it affects every aspect of your life. I had to give up a good job and when I went back to work had to take the kind of job where I could leave without warning if the school phoned. My DH had to keep his job to keep the roof over our heads but put in the hardest work at home especially when my son got way bigger than me.

Yes I knew when my DS was 2, however he wasn’t assessed until about 10. I parented him as if he had Adhd always and talked openly to him about how “his brain works a little differently to mine” etc without ever labelling it until he got a formal diagnosis.

My DS was formally diagnosed at 7 - we waited for the DX as some won't assess kids until this point. We were lucky in some respects as it was VERY clear from an early age that my DS had ADHD and his school agreed that they would assume that this was the case, and give him additional support even before the formal diagnosis.

Looking back, I can now see that he had ADHD from when he was a tiny baby. He literally couldn't be still at all. He was a poor feeder, mostly because he couldn't lie quietly and breastfeed for long enough to get the calories that he needed. He was like a whirlwind, always on the go and his lack of impulse control meant he had no regard at all for safety or consequence. From toddlerhood he spent a lot of time upside down, walking on his hands, standing on his head, or swinging. We started to see aversions to some sensory situations and we also started to see the jump-flap when he's excited... I'm sure others will know what I mean by this! Once he was in a formal school setting the differences between him and his NT peers was even more apparent. It also then becomes more obvious if you are dealing with other spectrum issues too. We now have DX's for GAD and Tourettes also, although these came a little later.

OP - parenting our ND kids is tough! In my experience this is mostly because our kids don't always fit into society's expectation of what 'good' is. From my perspective things improved once I realised that I just needed to do what's right for my DS, rather than what everyone else is doing. Medication is a game changer but also comes with downsides too. For us, having a good routine, without too many last minute changes is good. Making sure that DS is eating and drinking enough is crucial and most important of all is being positive. My DS is so much better with positive feedback / instructions etc rather than negative.