Approach to improve ADHD articulation/speech and slow process for expressing oneself

[Return2thebasic]

Posted at SEN board, didn't get any response. Hence give this high traffic board a try.
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DS10 had speech delay when he's young. Didn't speak in full sentences until starting school at 5yo.

Always struggled with executive functions, especially organising thoughts and expressing them in a way others can follow/understand. He had some development leaps during the years. But COVID set back that for about 1.5 years.

He's diagnosed last year for ADHD (mild/moderate) and has started medication since February. A lot has been improved , but speech remains a challenge. He sometimes just can't find the right words to describe whatever in his mind. He often misses out the key information or any basic background feeds, so that people have no idea what he's talking about. It hurts to hear when his friends could talk at ease about whatever funny or deep thoughts they have while DS tends to pause in mid sentence and drag on before he can make himself understood.

He writes well, but a slow writer. And what he usually focuses on are actions and events, but not able to describe feelings and thoughts.

I really want to help him to be clearer self expressed and better understood by others, especially when he goes to secondary.

I'm not sure if speech therapy is the right answer , as his problems largely lay with processing and organising information.

Has anyone gone through similar situations? Or any advice?

We had always suspected that he had ADHD, his first confirmed diagnosis was in September 2020, the psychologist we saw at that time mentioned CBT, and I started looking at other alternative therapies as I knew it wouldn’t work
for us.

I watched the documentary attention please! And we started with inhibiting retained primitive reflexes - he had a lot of them. I noticed that even though there was a huge improvement in behaviour and ADHD symptoms (his impulsivity was very high and everything else border line), he was still struggling with spelling, handwriting and retaining information, even when he started meds 20 months later.

I came across Charlotte Davies of fit-2-learn on LinkedIn through Andrea Thornton who made the attention please! Docu. She posts very frequently and a lot of her content resonated with me. We had a call in early August and she referred me to her colleague Daleen Smith who practises out of Wimbledon.

When we went for my son’s assessment, we were surprised to learn that he struggled visually as he has 20/20 vision. But it was evident from the testing that his eyes were not working together making it difficult for him to process visual information. An example was that he had to draw a triangle, he covered his left eye to do it and the left side of the triangle was ‘wobbly’ and the right side was well formed.
His auditory processing wasn’t as ‘bad’ as his visual processing and we have been working on making him right ear dominant.

My son is obviously ND, but his symptoms are exacerbated when there is an overload of information for his very busy brain, which is what happens when there are processing issues as he has to work harder to assimilate everything.

I always share the alternative therapies we are doing with his doctor as I became worried I’d gone down a rabbit hole. He has assured me
that there is evidence that these therapies work, and that the best time for this intervention is before the age of 11 when the brain structure begins to change again due to puberty.

I hope that gives some insight but feel
free to DM is you have any questions!

@Abby212 how long the drug stays in a person's system is actually debatable if you do a bit more research. 72hrs that's what I remember, depending on the person. But my peace after Elvanse lasted two weeks! 🤣

@Gruello Thank you very much for the detailed account! It's very interesting to learn. I will look into it more.

To mention, we did go through the retained reflex therapy, including myself. I'm unsure if it helped DS much back then. I was almost certain it helped me BUT thinking back, it's probably just me being over then moon falling pregnant with DC2 and "bleezed" through those months without getting stressed with anything. Now after 4 years, I'm back to where I was 🤣 So, I'm not sure that path worked at all, at least for us.

@Return2thebasic it really is the strangest feeling! My partner kept talking to me and I wasn't really responding like I usually do. It was a weird feeling, I had no racing thoughts but I felt empty. But the next day I felt like wonder woman 😆 my friend said she opposite.. she feels the come down effect as soon as it wears off. I'm going to speak to my doctor again because I was taking citapram from slight anxiety but he said it sounds more like adhd.

Just to ask, how did you discover you son had adhd? My little one bounces off the walls daily 😆 he can always ignore me completely or be all on my face!

@Abby212 "Wonder woman"! Yes! I felt like NOTHING, NOTHING could disturb my peaceful mind. I felt I had the capability like an adult to handle any problem (like my screaming 4 years old tyrant! 😆) I was not only in a good mood but also felt I was in control of my own life. How I missed that feeling!

I have a theory - but I don't think I will ever be able to prove it one way or the other: Apparently, some of us can have too much dopamine in the brain which lead to similar symptoms as if too little. I think the research has not well established, or there's just very little interest in this difference. I just can't find much information bout it. But that's what I suspect. I tried to ask my psychiatrist whose response was "I'm sorry. But I'm not a researcher!"

About DS, his speech delay was a big sticking point for many years. He also appeared "empty" when he was young - not as present as they should at that age. We felt we were never able to connect him fully, as his mind seemed just always half present and half absent. He was also very physical, running in circle a lot (still does sometimes) and having no awareness of personal boundary (pretended to be a dino roaring in other children's faces). We were unable pinned it down to anything specific until one day at work I realised I was naturally too talkative! So I googled and then discovered the biggest secret that has been hidden in my life - at age 35! From then, everything clicked and made sense.

@Return2thebasic ahhh I love that theory it makes perfect sense! I did try and do my own research but like you said, there doesn't seem to be much about it. I did actually read a couple of reviews on the medication and some people said similar things so could be a thing!

Oh my goodness that sounds just like my boy. Not so much now hes alot more engaging since his speech has came on but he has trouble articulating what he wants to say. Sometimes he's really into chatting and othet times he will just give me yes and no answers. He always made really good eye contact and very meaningful... especially when being naughty!

My family are the same including myself. We talk so much and interrupt each other and skip from one topic to another. My partner Said he's never met a family like it and I'm starting to agree 😆😆

@Abby212 Your DC sounds very promising though. Mine had really poor eye contact at earlier age. That's even before he could make any sound. I used to suspect ASD because of that. Now I see that his mind just drifted too easily and eye contact wasn't a thing to be bothered.😬

My DH hates to visit my family. The dynamic is just too much for him! Chaos? 😂