Worried about teen DD

[Doublefacedcottonwoolpads]

DD is 15 and in many ways very normal teen, has her moments of typical teen behaviour but favours staying rather than going out but no real issues at school, gets on well with her siblings, loves her dog etc.

lately though she’s been complaining about not being able to focus at school and having to try and block everything out to get things done (easier said than done in a large mixed secondary). She is dyslexic and has slow processing skills but she seems to be suffering with understanding very basic information and doesn’t really follow instructions easily. Things take a lot of explaining.

tonight she came into my room and seemed quite distressed, (although weirdly she said she wasn’t) but she said her head felt totally empty, that she literally had no thoughts and couldn’t focus on anything. Also that she has started to feel like this a lot recently. Also said she feels really restless.

It might be normal teen stuff but I have been worried about her.

has anyone else experienced anything like this with their teen?

thank you

@Doublefacedcottonwoolpads

Sorry your going thru this
A lady I work with had a similar thing with her dd and she took her to the GP who did a specialist referral and apparently she has Irlens - I'd never heard of this but it's a condition relating to processing information

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irlen_syndrome

Have a read of this my colleague said it all fell into place once they knew - I hope you get her to a better place soon 💐

Thanks so much I’ll have a look at this.

I definitely think a physical check with a GP is worth doing. Have you considered that something may have changed and she could be worrying more? Has she got exams coming up? Have school started talking about exams/careers more and she's worried about the jump? Sometimes a person can worry about something that can't be defined well and that means it's hard to focus due to the background worry which is constant. Sorry to not describe that well! But I hope you know what I mean.

It can be normal, if you have specific difficulties that others don't have, and when you're in a system that's designed to gently ramp the average person up through the difficulty levels, for the ramp to suddenly feel like a brick wall. While the typical kids are adjusting to each new demand as it emerges in the expected manner, you're instead suddenly hit by something you Just. Can't. Do. And it looks like a new difficulty, but instead it's uncovering a weakness that was there all along but just never mattered this much before. If she's dyslexic with slow processing, it could be she's recently hit one of those walls.