Ds SEN? ADHD? Not sure what to do!

[Beansandcheesearegood]

Ds9 is struggling in school. I've long thought he has something different about him - ADHD inattentive? But no-one else does. School say he's a dreamer and doesn't listen to or follow instructions well and answers back. He struggles with organising himself, becomes overwhelmed with too many instructions. He could live in his imagination. He draws all the time. He can find every day tasks hard

Not sure what I'm asking or where to go from here. Dh has this week started to accept there might be 'something '.

What are school doing to help? You will get nowhere with an ADHD assessment if school don't support it as you have to have evidence in two settings for a child. So I would focus instead on what support he would benefit from at school. Is he behind age expected academically? Is he regularly getting in trouble at school? Does he struggle to make and keep friends?

Hi there, here are a few options:

Go to your GP to be referred to the CAMHS ADHD pathway for diagnosis. The waiting list is long (like three years long).

Go to a private clinical psychologist who can assess your son. Somewhere like Psychiatry UK do comprehensive assessments for children https://psychiatry-uk.com/

Don’t just wait for an appointment though, if you think they have it, you can implement some strategies and see if they help eg get a whiteboard and write a tick list for morning and night time routine - this helps organisations, memory aide etc. A quick search on parenting children with adhd on Amazon will bring some books up.

You could go on your Local Authority website and search something called The Local Offer. This should bring up links to many sen services in your area if you want to connect with other parents with sen.

I don’t agree that you won’t get anywhere with an adhd diagnosis if the school don’t agree! The school couldn’t see it in the case of my DC but we could definitely see it, and so could the paediatrician when we finally got to see one. Masking is a huge part of ADHD/ ASD and my DC totally masks at school. We persevered with school and they did the referral to Developmental Paeds at our insistence. Inattentive ADHD is far more likely to go under the radar in the school environment. It’s super hard when no one else sees it.