To tell my son he has ADHD?

[HairyBeaver]

Hi my 6 year old son has just started year 2 at school and just been diagnoised with ADHD.

His main issues are with hyperactivity, impulsiveness and his major issue is lack of concentration. He has to have one to one teaching or he won't do any work as he goes off with the fairies.

His not a naughty boy and only gets into trouble at school for shouting out, not sitting still etc, classic actions which come from his above actions.

I'm due to go to a day course next month with the local ADHD/mental health team to learn new parenting skills to help him at home. I've also asked his new teacher for a meeting with her and the SENCO to see how badly he is behind in his school work (was told he was last term) and how to get him back up to his level.

Now do I tell him he has this condition? Would he be able to process and understand this?

So really its more of a WWYD?

Thanks

Fargate you are missing my point. Teachers rarely have an insightful view into the behaviours of the parents, they are not there when the children get up, go to bed, do their homework, eat their dinners, get dressed, showered etc.

The only contact a teacher has with a parent may be to view them when they collect them or drop them off and few meetings a year inbetween.

Teachers judging parents or believing they can judge parents when in reality they have very little observations between the child and their parents, just makes them put themselves in an uninformed and illjudged self appointed positions of faux superiority.

SOme teachers are fantastic and I worship the ground they walk on others haven't got a clue when it comes to the mental health of children they are responsible for. The training is very limited so they can't be blamed but those who are useless can be blamed for having an over inflated sense of ego over the parents when they're useless.

I've seen both and thank goodness for teachers who actually understand SEN.

Judgements on parents should or could only be made after a thorough assessment by CAMHS, input from teachers who should accept their limited interaction with the parents, observations in schoools, observations in social situations, blood tests to rule out anything phsyical as with hearing tests and all of the other wonderful work CAMHS do.

Teachers should accept they are a very small part of that process. Idiots like buster are a part of the problem, not the solution.

Sorry. I don't agree with you.

We'll have to agree to differ.

you are confusing the diagnosis with other factors that may have affected his behaviour way more than any parent of a child with SEN buster!

my son is, i think, a success story, he does not have adhd, but does have several other disabilities (asd, dyslexia and dyspraxia) He was never angry or disruptive in class, more likely to be the victim than the perpetrator, this did not however, stop certain teachers misunderstanding him or making his life very difficult, or as you are in the case you mention above, blaming his parents.

but despite teachers like you, (im pleased to say the majority were supportive and helpful) he gained excellent GCSE results, wobbled his way through A levels and has done a foundation degree, embarking next year on his third and final year at uni and living away from home for the first time. he is a success. he holds down a job, and is on track to get a first.

i do not believe that withholding his diagnosis would in any way of been beneficial to him. He needed to know WHY he was different, and his dx explained this for him, and was such a relief to him and us. It did NOT give him carte blanche to misbehave, but buster you seem to have stereotyped all pupils with disabilities and their parents, and thats a shame. attitudes like yours really do more harm than good.

im used to it now, and its water off a ducks back.

My sons IQ is way above average. He knew he was different from an early age. he needed to know why, and accept it.

Your attitude really saddens me, but does not surprise me in the least. the absolute worst years of my sons life were his school years, and he openly says the same. perhaps one day hidden disability will be accepted for what it is - a disability, without scorn or scepticism within schools. but it seems that nothing much has changed in 19 years.

justabout - your tale mirrors mine somewhat.

i once sat in a meeting with no less than 8 other health care professionals and still the teachers at sons primary refuted the dx!

in the end we went out of county and got a 35 page dx on the nhs - not private - didnt want to be accused of buying a dx....knew that would be the next accusation levelled at us.

the treatment of kids and families with hidden disability is appalling. my son is almost 20 and it seems nothing much has changed.

i am so relieved that DD is now going to the same school - just so they can see it wasnt us! DD is popular, academic, and totally NT!

they treat us so differently at her parents evenings....

The Kindle was dropped in when I was very pissed last night I can't even bring myself to read what I wrote - double blush.

As I said before, I think children should be helped to be aware of their being 'different' and given all types of strategies to cope.

I think the whole area is a minefield, and, as in all areas of mental diagnoses there are some mistakes made. I just wonder, because of those possible mistakes, whether a child should be told his or her 'label'. After all, diagnostic procedures for mental health issues may have improved in a few years time and 'labels' may change. Also, as in my example above, some children have so many things going on that can affect behaviour, a single diagnosis (and a few pills) means that all avenues of care and therapy are not always followed.

It is only this point I disagree with, and, having sat in frustrating meetings (when they actually occur, months after our original applications), I do understand (in my own way) what a demeaning and miserable experience having a child with SN can be.

Vicar, I think you must have misunderstood me. I'm not saying a diagnosis should be withheld - just that I don't think the child should know his label. I have said that I do everything in my power to help these children in school - I don't see their disabilities are 'hidden'.

I just gave an example where other factors could have caused the behavioural problems rather than 'ADHD' as the child had so many disruptions in his life (the disrupted Y1 and the views of the supply teacher were very unhelpful and had nothing to do with home). We were supporting both him and his mother, and, hopefully they both made positive steps.

I'm not quite sure what your example is supposed to show Buster? That external events can create challenging behaviour in a child with ADHD, surely that's fairly obvious?

Medication for ADHD is vary strictly linked to weight, there's a maximum dose that doctors will not prescribe over - it's usual to start on a low dose and then prescribe one closer to the maximum if it doesn't work so the us a bit redundant really.

The thing is, a well informed teacher could quite easily explain why you can't just blame undesirable behaviours on ADHD to a pupil.

fwiw, if I had been told I had ADHD while at school, it would have changed my life. For the better. If I had been given ADHD medication at school, it would have changed my life. For the better.

Kids with ADHD often grow up to have major self-esteem issues. Inattentive ADHD looks like laziness. Hyperactive ADHD looks like intentional disruption. Impulsive ADHD looks like aggression. An undiagnosed child is told they are not just useless, but selfish/mean, ie a bad person on a regular basis. And eventually they come to believe it.

When I was finally diagnosed (and medicated) age 44, I was angry about a number of things, but top of the list was the truly horrible things that family and in particular school said to me all through my childhood. To say it's better to treat a child like that than risk them trying to use their ADHD as an "excuse" - wtf? And how is that different to eg a child with glasses trying it on and claiming they can't see the board? You wouldn't say "oh better not let them wear glasses in case they use it as an excuse". You just say: "OK, sit here, now get on with it." ADHD is no different. Yes you need prompting. No that doesn't mean you get off doing homework, you need more practice concentrating more anyone else. So start now.

What age do you think they should be told justabout?Do you think they is a minimum age?

Havent read the whole thread but my DD was dx in July aged 7yrs 3 days lol

We have been totally open and honest with her, as has the pead we see monthly.

From what you describe your sons behaviours are, he is my DDs double! Hope you can find a happy medium x

Tabula - my example was just to show that a diagnosis was made on the basis of flimsy subjective evidence (no ed psych involved), and there were lots of other things going on that could have affected his behaviour. I'm just a little bit worried about some ADHD diagnoses, that's all. And I don't really understand how they describe manifestation of ADHD in females to manifestation in males. I just feel that ADHD diagnosis is going to improve in the next few years - it seems very wishy-washy at the moment. I'm quite willing to be educated in this BTW!

BTW he WAS given the higher dosage to start, hence the .

I agree you tell them different things according to their understanding/maturity.

DD2, 5, is not diagnosed and I hope and pray she never will need to be. But she's showing signs of impulsive/inattentive and I'm priming her a little bit. I absolutely am NOT telling her: "oh it's OK, you probably have ADHD so you can't help it". What I am telling her is that everyone is different (she is acutely aware of this as DD1 is profoundly disabled and it affects DD2's life in so many ways) and we are all good at some things and bad at others. Some people in her class are bad at reading and need extra practice, but they will get better at it by trying harder than everyone else. Some people are bad at maths, some people are bad at games. That's normal. We all have to work harder at the things we find difficult. If she finds concentrating difficult, she needs to try harder and to find ways to minimise distractions. And it's OK if it doesn't come naturally like it does to some other kids: nobody is good at everything, and the important thing is not what our weaknesses are, but how we handle them.

Well I'm going to disagree with everyone on the thread. My DS had his dx of ADHD at 7. We deliberately didn't tell him. Obviously he was aware he was different and that we had to see different specialists etc that other kids didn't. The nurse at the clinic told him when he was about 11 ish, and he did use it as an excuse for bad behaviour for a while, until we put a stop to it. We knew he would, that's why we hadn't told him.

(I've agreed with you tallulah. We have had instances of this at school too. I'm glad a parent came on the thread saying this, as everyone thinks I am just an evil teacher!)

I can also see it from both sides my sisters middle one got away with blue murder because 'he had ADHD' he'll be 19 next month and is always in bother with the police, funny thing is that neither my other sister or I thought there was anything wrong other than A. he was a boy who needed to burn energy off and B. he needed firm boundaries which he never got.

We have never allowed the ADHD to be used as an excuse for bad behaviour firm boundaries and sanctions are imposed.

My ds has (9) dyspraxia and CAMHs are about to assess for Aspergers. He knows he has these conditions and knows roughly what the issues they cause are - he struggles with friends because of his aspergers, and his struggles with things like balance and co-ordination because of his dyspraxia (in a nutshell that is how he understands it). He knows that this means he has to do things slightly differently to others/he may find things harder to do than others/he may need other things to complete tasks (e.g he has a wobble cushion at school). However he does not get to relate his conditions to any misbehaviour, he accepts that this isn't allowed and will not be accepted as an excuse, either at school or home.

Regarding 'using it as an excuse' I think its a bit sad that even some parents see it in such a negative way.

It isnt bad behavior its different behavior. it generally becomes bad behavior when no or little allowances are made for those differences.

IME the children whos parents dont seem to have accepted their childs dx or simply equate it with 'naughty' or 'bad' struggle more.

i really dont understand the argument regarding telling them equating to allowing them to behave badly as an excuse.

in my experience, the earlier the child knows the more they accept and understand, and are less likely to use it because its something they have always known and grown up with, where as just springing on a child at the age of 11 gives it a novelty factor - these children are not stupid, if i had a dx sprung on me at an age i could manipulate my parents then no doubt i would have used it to! but with my boy, he had always known something was up, then he had it explained at 7, understood it, was relieved to learn that his "thing" had a name. He has never "used" it, not ever, not once, and both his father and i have always had the same rules and boundaries with both of our children. Children are children - with or without a dx -and pushing of boundaries is normal - its how the parent responds that crucial in my estimation.
What you are saying buster is that givng a child an explanation amounts to giving them carte blanche to misbehave, which hopefully you may have realised from other parents on this thread that that is a misnomer.

But its important to stress that some behaviours linked to their disability may be seen as bad behaviour when in fact its part and parcel of the disability - i will give you an example;- My son when he was about 6 was sent out of class by a teacher for being cheeky. When i asked what he had done she told me she had told the whole class to put down whatever they had in their hands, and he piped up " how do i put down the air?"
now to her this was cheeky and required punishment by sending him out.
when i asked him about it, for him it had been a genuine question. He had (and still has) very literal interpretation, so asking him to put down everything in his hands included the air, not just his pencil or whatever it was. He did not understand the punishment because he didnt understand that she thought he was being cheeky. This is simply part and parcel of his ASD, and should not have been punished without explanation. the punishment was lost on him, and so did no good, because he still didnt understand. This pedantic and literal interpretation is very common with ASD, its part of the condition, how do you punish that? What he needed was to have it explained to him that that was not what she meant - and in future, if she said put everything down she only meant the stuff that he was holding, like pen, or pencil or book of whatever he could actually see.

There is a difference between "naughty" behaviour and behaviour which is part of their disability. I am not saying that behaviour linked to the condition should go unchecked, but may need to be tackled differently, such as other than simply ordering a child out of the room when they dont have a clue why a teacher is cross, because its lost on them.

like i say - DS is almost 20, but his school years were dreadful for this very reason.