Child away with the fairies - does it get better?

[Ladbrokeroad]

Since DD started school a year ago she's slowly drifting into her own little world. Not aware of any SEN yet. But from a very allert baby, toddler and a young child she's become this little girl who zones out and is away with the fairies a lot. Doing well academically though, very well behaved and easy going. Not very sporty, not because she's not capable, in fact she is very capable, but is not interested.

I see the other children in her class, how competitive and switched on they are with everything and I can't help worrying.

I read a thread on here from a long time ago about a DD who sounded the same, she must be much older now, I'd love to hear how she's doing now. Anyone can relate to this?

She has combined type. At home we realised she won't sit down at meals (she will stand at the table or bob about with one knee on a chair) which is her hyperactivity. She butts in to adult conversations a lot (her impulsivity).

In terms of her away with the faeries inattentiveness she will look at you while you're talking to her and rather than responding to what you've said will just start another convo about what she's been thinking about (which provides her presumably with more dopamine) e.g. "so, DD what did you need to bring to school today?" "Mum, Sarah at school said we should do this crazy handstand thing and we did it and we all fell over...."
Homework is also variable. Given 10 maths questions and you sit and point at each one and ask what's the answer she gets them all right. Ask her to do 10 on her own and she sings for 5 mins and then gives you a sheet with only 4 complete and she has genuinely missed the other 6 and seems surprised they are there. Reading she is very able with decoding words and comprehension but will pull words from later in the text into her current sentence as her brain seems to go ten to the dozen - she has read 10 sentences down while she's reading out loud the first sentence. She also infers and creates far more from the text than is there. The text says the man hid behind a wall. She reads "the man hid silently behind the wall in fear" it's like she has edited the book and found it wanting in the time it takes for her to read.

Those are just some issues!

My oldest has glue ear. Glue ear normally comes and goes and when her hearing is poor she is exactly like this.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience, sounds so so much like DD: the reading, the standing at the dinner table, homework, butting into conversations, starting a new conversation in the middle of you asking her a question. Gosh...we definitely need to look into it. We don't have any ADHD in family (that we are aware of), possibly my mum) never diagnosed but always hyperactive.

Girls are good at hiding it.
Also consider absence seizures

This is interesting.

I was the daydreamer when young and it was frequently commented on. I loved reading, and playing by myself, and had a very good imagination. I also used to zone out and stare out of the windows in class. Forty years later I still zone out when watching TV and have to rewind.

I always thought it was because the real world is kinda boring and monotonous as I'm very focused and present when there is something that either interests me or is important.

This was me all through school and I got my adhd diagnosis a few years ago, far too late.

I was 'twice exceptional' too, ie, very bloody clever but nd. The cleverness compensated for the nd and I Essex was missed.

Keep a close eye on her op, perhaps even get her assessed. If she is not nd, it will do her no harm, if she is, it will be of immense help to her

This is such a refreshing lovely statement "just his personality" don't hear that much these days

My son was the same. He’s 17, has ADHD and is very popular. In primary school his behaviour was considered immaturity (as he had an August birthday)
In my experience, it’s difficult to get school to agree to an assessment when they cope well at school. He’s very sociable and is fine academically so not really a target for the limited resources of diagnosis. In hindsight I should have pushed earlier but I was too polite and willing to wait and see.

We just put her on a waiting list for an Educational psychologist, she might see someone in the spring. They will not diagnose her with ASD or ADHD but will be able to point us in the right direction.

My DD was like this as a small girl and as a bigger girl is being assessed for ASD and will probs get a diagnosis. She's lovely! And very clever. But she struggles socially a bit as she's getting older - I think because she misses things happening! I wondered if she had hearing problems and petit mals as she grew up.

She's being assessed because she sometimes needs to check out a bit, draw in lessons, or have school be lenient on her with her organisation skills/homework etc.

I do think if the world was different this stuff would not matter so much. Things are strict and inflexible these days.

We don't have it in our family either (although now I do suspect a few of them!) But we chose to assess privately just to know for sure as I had noticed many behaviours that were flags to me, and this was pre COVID (lots of people say it's just the impact of COVID on kids). We don't intend to go down medication route, yet at least. For us it was about knowing how to support her later on as we know several women who have had awful experiences in secondary school and later diagnosed so we wanted to ensure that didn't happen to DD.

I'm also the first to be diagnosed officially in my family but I would bet my house on both of my parents being nd. I'm convinced my mum has adhd as she is very very similar to me and struggles with the same things as I do, and I would be shocked if my df is not asd

That's absolutely the right approach! I can't just wait and see when the red flags are there. I feel like we need to know whether there is something we need to keep an eye on so if things get tough in the future we can access support much quicker.

My DS now 20 has always been away with the fairies. I often ask him what the weather is like where he is as he's usually in his own little world.
He is dyslexic and often struggles with focusing. However he is at uni studying biomedical science, loads of friends and very happy and lovely.

My DSD was a very dreamy, chaotic but sweet girl. Currently doing a PhD and has worked in assessing children for ADHD so well aware of the criteria.
For her, it's personality and she grew out of it. Now she's very capable, organised and reliable.

I was like this. I imagined stories in my head and would often forget well er... everything. I think I was avoiding some difficult realities and also just struggled to socialise. School reports read, she is clever but often distracted. I found lessons easy and boring.

Did it get better? It depends what you call better. As a teenager I did engage with the world a lot more and became engrossed in hobbies. I got good gcses. But not before getting into a lot of trouble at school out of boredom really.

It turns out I'm fairly clever, I have a well paid job and also probably have adhd. I learnt to manage it quite well and made a sensible career choice.

My own child isn't away with the faries - he's realised mummy won't remember his book is due in today and daddy doesnt know the other kids names so he'll have to. I can see the difference.

My NT DD was like that. It turned out to be absence seizures which stopped when she was about 7 or 8.

That's was me - always in a dream world. I was actually assessed by a school psychologist at one point. Always did well in school too. Anyway Ive done ok - got a masters degree and a successful career and have quite a good business head.

Thank you so much for everyone's reply, it's incredibly helpful x

This sounds like DD. She was always on her own world as a child. We thought nothing of it because she was academically very capable, very social, a bright and curious girl who had loads of friends. She sometimes got a bit over anxious and was very clumsy but nothing that worried us.

She hit Y6 and it all came crashing down and she’s now undergoing an autism assessment and we are suddenly seeing a lot of very obvious signs of autism (for girls)

It doesn’t mean your DD is autistic or has ADHD but it doesn’t hurt to gently keep an eye on it as she gets older. With hindsight we ignored a lot of warning signs as we weren’t educated enough on how autism presents in young girls.

I was very much like your DD - still am. I'm undiagnosed ND due to the school and doctors being certain that because I was "clever" getting a diagnosis would hold me back in life. 🙃

It hasn't held me back, and even when I was "away with the fairies" I was still easily keeping up with the class. When I was particularly interested in a subject I'd get so far ahead quickly and then end up doodling while everyone caught up.

With our wonderfully weird brains some things fall into place far more easily than others, and sometimes it can be easy to fall into a "I can't do this" trap, especially if the school is teaching things in a certain way, so be prepared to have to find alternative methods for teaching. My biggest issues in school was maths - I couldn't wrap my head around division and multiplication, but once we were taught algebra it all fell into place.🤦‍♀️

Good luck!

I work in the arts and myself and pretty much all of my colleagues were like this as children. We all have very vivid imagination, quite high IQ and very high EQ. Not being academic doesn't have to be something bad, in fact I think most of us have far more fun in life than those who excelled in school. But I would say that...

Yes it is called inattentive ADHD. I hate the title it implies that we are useless - but the reality is we have busy brains and are thinking of multiply things in our head at the same time. If I am honest it is actually quite fun to day dream a lot but its just a pain when we have to be organised...

This sounds like my eldest DD. I didn’t particularly clock it until I realised how “competent” my younger DD is by comparison. Unfortunately she gets it from me. I don’t think I (or my DD) necessarily have ADHD but we’re both creative daydreamers who get deeply absorbed in things we care about but are easily distracted when we don’t. For both of us this manifests as being good (mostly) academically but hilariously bad a sport (balls bouncing off heads, tripping over hockey sticks etc). I also have zero sense of direction and literally cannot follow directions - I even struggle w google maps and get lost in buildings. It’s a miracle if either of us does our buttons up properly. A bit of a zany professor type. But do keep
an eye - friendships can be tricky to navigate especially if you’re a bit “different” and my DD certainly is a very sensitive soul (I on the other hand was largely oblivious so managed to dodge much bullying).

DD is a dreamer. I am too. Its not a big deal. As a PP said in the right profession it can be very useful. Im teaching DD to pause her dreams during lesson time. She has a lovely group of friends and also hates sport. Shes very arty and musical and finished the book bands at school 2 years early.

She'll be fine.