To think ds has adhd

[tickclocktock]

I’ve tried to convince myself he hasn’t but I kind of think he must …

He’s 5. Been at school today. After dinner I put the TV on.

Ds just … won’t sit down. He endlessly circles the room, relocating toys from one part of the house to another, standing right in front of the tv, scraping his chair across the floor, climbing on the back of the sofa. Just will not sit down.

Obviously I tell him not to but he ignores me. Or does it then moves back.

I am stressed out with constantly nagging him; our relationship is poor as a result.

I don’t know what next steps are.

Your post asking him to move

Tell him what you want him to do specifically eg

"Come and stand where you can touch the sofa, you can wiggle and jump as long as you're touching the sofa arm"

You're telling him to move and expecting him to understand exactly where his body is etc. he's still young.

Also if he does have ADHD don't shout or argue, he'll get a dopamine hit from arguing and then might even try to trigger it.

Suggest a yoga ball or wobble board or similar for him to sit and bounce on / stand on while watching TV. Yoga ball with a stand even better as it stays still!

Also recommended a gorilla gym and sandbag kettlebells. Dangling / hanging / lifting heavy weights really good for sensory regulation

I have two boys at least one with ADHD and you have to pick your battles to an extent.

Try to build the exercise into your routine. Can he do a lap of the school playground before you leave or will he run off?

You could get him jumping, hopping or skipping (the not rope one) on the way home. He could go straight out in the garden for a swing or trampoline. You can send him up and down stairs several times. You can encourage his mini trampoline time. He could dance to music inside. He can skip outside.

Watch out, professionals will tell you you need to do xyz with them but they often forget you have other kids that xyz has to be avoided.

Why on earth would you think it isn't brilliant parenting?

You have found a solution that works for you and your child that is enjoyable for you both. You are meeting their needs in a way that is specific to them, not trying to battle on with a routine that doesn't work and upsets you both and leads to less sleep.

Keep it simple.

" Fred, use a quiet voice, please."

Or "Fred, quiet voice now. "

Take out all the unnecessary words. Helps them process. Praise when they do it. Catch him doing it at other times and praise him. Remind him he was really good at quiet voice yesterday can he do it again today.

No, I couldn’t, we drive. Besides, it makes no difference whatsoever, you can have him out dawn till dusk, still he will stand in front of the television.

He might be neurodiverse ..its normal to start to see signs at this age

However. I think parents think children get more time to move and play at school than they do

Even in reception there is a lot of time doing what you are told and being indoors. He will have pent up energy after school and some children really feel that more than others

We are in danger of pathologists a range of childhood personalities because our expectations of 5 year olds are unrealistic

So he is high energy and struggles to behave indoors...he just might have higher movement and play needs than some other kids

Im sure as his mum you notice where his behaviour is different to other kids.

But ..he might just really need to do his own thing a lot after a day of following rules at school

Remember most countries dont start formal learning til 6 or 7

It’s really hard to know. I am massively struggling with the level of destruction he’s causing and the fact I’m effectively powerless to do anything about it. It’s kind of been an ongoing thing for a while now, and probably because he is in a bit more than normal it’s becoming very hard to manage. I also just can’t meet both my children’s needs and feel overwhelmed by this.

Could you reach out to the GP?
and even ask for an OT referral maybe?
my health visitor has also referred my LO for OT as she said they can help find strategies that work for each individual child

As a parent of a sen child you have to adjust your mindset. You are meeting the needs of their disabilities not some parenting ideal from a book/tv show/parenting expert. The pressure from society to conform to the idealised pattern is quite high. (Schools can have a one size fits all mentality)

You have to actively look for the good in them, praise it, effusively.

Parent the kid you have not the mythical one society expects.

you have to decide what is important, (Standing in front of the TV maybe) (How's his hearing and vision?) and what you can let go.

Stop trying to fit to the made up parenting ideals, which will not work for your particular kids. (Keep muttering to yourself that you are meeting the needs of his disability/condition etc)

Try to find solutions that work for you that are not standard sit still on the sofa. (Eg can he stand near the TV somewhere you all can still see it? Mount a TV on a wall? Watch TV on a small screen with headphones, Don't watch tv? Have more than one TV? Use a beanbag near the TV? Hold him while you watch TV? etc etc)

Reflect on your own parenting. What worked, what didn't. Adjust. Don't beat yourself up for trying stuff that didn't work, or didn't work this time but did before. Not everything will work. It's the reflecting and trying to improve and finding what works in your family not the persistent trying to bash a square peg into a round hole.

You won't be able to do all the stuff professionals suggest because they are not practical for your family. Try to substitute it with something that has the same effect.

It's bloody hard work. (Disabled single parent of two disabled children who had opposite needs)

Go for diagnosis asap. There is a long waiting list. Even if you are refused now, raise your concerns with the GP.

Go on a parenting course. (They want to send you on those as a first step) You can say you use these strategies but they don't work.

Be aware they will try to blame your parenting. School, medics , professionals. Schools especially. (They struggle to acknowledge that the things they do can cause a reaction in the kid) More so if you are not white middle class married neurotypical. If you are in any way neurodiverse go for your own diagnosis.

Except if they aren’t doing anything to elicit praise, I just ignore it, everyone else’s life is hell but he’s OK, seems to be the message. I’m in a low place and it’s probably better I don’t really come back to the thread but no … I’m not going to trill how jolly wonderful it is he’s destroyed another toy or blocked the TV from everyone else’s view.

If two tablets works for your family sod what anybody else thinks. It's meeting your kids needs.

Over my dead body will my two under fives sit on tablets. Absolutely over my dead body. That is not what other people think, it is what I think. It is shitty, lazy, damaging parenting.

OP, you sound exhuasted. I get it.

As always. @BertieBotts has great advice. Listen to her! :)

A few things from my perspective based on what you've said and my own experience with DS.

For a start, your comment that he probably only has "minor" ADHD. I think that if the symptoms are this obvious, this early, it's unlikely that this is a problem that's going to get better as he grows. If anything, ADHD becomes more challenging as they get older because it's not actually about how "bad" the ADHD is but how much it impacts their lives - ability to learn, to operate within standardised environments like classrooms or sports activities etc, and his behaviour is already impacting him hugely. IU'd be very interested to see how he is at school because while a lot of children can mask, I would suspect he's not. Randomly wondering around hte classroom is not uncommon at this age, but I would be surprise di f it's not already more noticeable and also if it's not impacting his learning already. I would definitely speak with teachers.

You say that conversations can be difficult, he's not listening etc. I thik that sounds like processing issues, which can be part of ADHD or co-exist with Sensory Processing Disorder. I remember telling people that sometimes conversations with DS were bizarre. he'd ask me what was for dinner, I'd tell him "fish and chips" and somehow, that didn't go in and he'd ask me again, in an irritated way, because he hadn't heard me. It was just bizarre. It was like talking to a child who was hearing a different language.

I completely get theexercise issue. And part of the challenge is that movement and exercise is so important for them... and then they cross over the line and are over tired but it doesn'tstop them moving. In fact, it just makes them more stressed out, more restless, less able to sleep.

I would say pick your battles - general restless is ignorable. Standing in front of the tv less so.

This one may be controversial but long before we worked out DS had ADHD, we realised that all the advice about "no screens before bed" etc was bollocks for him. If I tried to read him a story, he was running around the room, jumping off the bed etc. If I handed him an ipad, he could calm himself and start to wind down. Usually by watching the most ridiculous videos - YEARS of kinder unwrapping videos, for example!!! He had a flare up of poor sleep recently and took imself off screens before bed, and it just got worse and worse. Eventually I told him to get his phone out and watch some cat videos for 20 minutes! (he's 14).

He could also be sensory seeking so it might be worth explorting things like fidget toys, weighted blankets etc.

He's quite young for this, but when DS was a bit older, sometimes we were able to deploy the ADHD hyper focus to good effect. So it might take us 30. minutes to get him to sit down and start some kind of quite intense, higly concentrated activity, but once he did.... he was on it. I once watched, completely gobsmacked, as he spent an hour on a train copying constellations from a book into a notebook and writing notes on star systems. without stopping, loking up, getting bored. Easiest train journet of my life!

I agree with the advice to parent the child you have. Not the perfect child super mum on instagram shows to the world (which is almost certainly fake anyway. Remember no child is perfect and your child is amazing, just perhaps not how you imagined he’d be. It is OK to grieve for that.

What I will say, is while you make your own parenting choices, be very careful before you judge the decisions of others. Please don’t judge parents for using screens unless you have walked in their shoes. Remember you only see a snapshot of their day and if screens is what children need to calm them on a train journey for example, it’s what they need.

You're main focus has been about him standing in front of the TV so I find it odd you're so opposed to tablets.
I think a 2 year old watching a lot of TV is more odd than a 5 year old being active. Maybe work on reducing TV time, it can be overstimulating and it sounds like it's causing stress for your DD as well as you and DS.

Oh yes my LO can hyper focus on Lego for hours lol so much so it is difficult to ask him anything or bring him away from it.
although my step son will try and then regret as son won’t leave him alone 😂
I have told my step kids to appreciate when he is quietly focused on something and leave him to it lol.

@tickclocktock

Projecting into the future, medication is the treatment for ADHD. It’s a medical condition, like diabetes. Psychiatrists will talk you through the benefits of meds and how titration works. Just because it affects the brain doesn’t mean it’s not treatable with meds.

Your child stands in front of the tele because he has no awareness that people are behind him. Quite often, ND presents as lack of awareness of yourself in relation to others/objects. Both my DSes block my view of the television

@CarefulN0w look, I was very passionate in that reply and of course I wouldn’t judge another parent for using a screen at a restaurant or journey. They have a place.

But they are damaging. I don’t think that we should shy away from this point. They are addictive and they are very harmful when used in excess. Just this morning DH gave dd an iPad - I have no idea why because we don’t habitually use it. I took it off her to take her to ballet and she clawed my face. She has never, ever done that before. Using two tablets, kids plugged into headphones, zombies away from interaction with me or one another is a horrible thought frankly and would very likely produce the behaviour I am so keen to avoid.

I tried to use yesterday evening as an example. Another example would be when we spent Halloween at a farm and another kid was trying to put something in a bin and ds was repeatedly taking the lid on and off the bin so the other kid couldn’t put the litter in. Just irritating behaviour or something more? No idea but I’m not going to carry a lidded bin around with me; I’m going to sharply tell him to knock it off.

I really don’t know if DS has ADHD or not. It’s hard not to wonder. Some things suggest yes, others suggest absolutely not. Either way, I’m struggling with his behaviour and with mine too as if I’m honest with myself a lot of things he’s doing are the opposite of what I want a child of mine to be.

Standing in front of the tv sounds really irritating, but the rest of it I would try to accept and not get stressed by if possible. My house is littered with toys that the kids have moved about, and my youngest can barely manage to sit on a chair to eat her dinner. These things seem pretty normal and don't generally bother me (until we have guests due or I skid across the floor on some bit of tat, obviously).

The TV thing- can you change the environment to manage the impact of this? Could the TV be mounted on the wall so that he can't block the littler one's view?

I can really feel how exhausted and frustrated you are OP.

I think you need to try to reframe your thinking a bit.

It sounds like you feel like you’re failing at parenting because he’s not “behaving well”.

Whereas I think you need to look at the child you’ve got and think about what he needs from you - “good parenting” is recognising and responding to his needs. You need different ways to measure what success looks like.

As I said earlier, a lot of parenting is trial and error. Everything is progress- even if you what you are learning is what doesnt work, you are still learning.

This holds true I think whether your child is ND or not, but if they are ND, cracking their code can be that bit harder! But in the same way that solving a tricky puzzle can be more satisfying than solving an easy one, it’s so rewarding when you actually start building that deep understanding of what they need and being able to provide that support.

You sound like you’re caught in a trap of idealised parenting. Good parenting is helping your children reach their full potential. You seem to have built a cage with bars built from some kind of notion of idealised parenting. You’re stressing out about getting your son to sit in that cage. Just accept, it’s not going to happen. Get rid of those bars. Look into what does work, read up on adhd in case DS has it, you need to learn to speak his language.

Having a child with different needs requires you to parent differently.

You seem very stressed over it all. Maybe reach out to school to see if they can sign post support groups. Why do you think your DH won’t be supportive, is there a background to this?

I will if it impacts him negatively. At the moment he's just him and he is doing really well at school. I don't medicate my other dc who has a diagnosis but again would if it impacted more at school. I'm not totally comfortable that there is enough evidence about the impact of meds on developing brains. Some shows changes in the brain but nothing conclusive as to whether that's good or bad change. If their behaviour isn't impacting their schooling then I see no reason to experiment.

100% agree. I think it’s more beneficial if possible to learn coping strategies. Although I understand this might not be the case for all people with ADHD. It presents and affects people in very different ways.whats right for one might not be for another

@tickclocktock I have three boys and I am sorry If I am repeating what has already been said but do you think it might be partly an attention thing? I know it’s nice to watch tv and relax when you at home but one of mine was not a sitter. He also wanted to spend time with me by hook or by crook so if I wasn’t on the ball he would annoy the others to get my attention negatively.
That’s how you enter into a negative relationship- and he gets the attention.
Does he have a good relationship with his dad? Hey one on one time without his sister?

I also hear your frustration and upset in your posts and it is hard to parent when you feel like that. We all have set ideas of how things are going to be! My sons are very different in personality and temperament. I wish you well and some peace :)