"Normal" 4 year old behaviour / adhd?

[jobsagudden]

Hi, I just wanted a bit of perspective on whether you consider this to be "normal" behaviour from a 4 year old or if there could be something more to it?

Sorry in advance for the long post.

For a bit of background I was diagnosed with adhd in my 30's.

DD1 (4) is very emotional, we had a bit of a rough ride with her age 2/3 where we often had screaming fits that lasted hours on end (longest was 7 hours) but after conversations with HV and GP we put it down to her adjusting to the big change of DD2 coming along mixed in with the terrible twos and threes.

Now aged 4.5 she is a lovely little girl we adore her, she's not had any problems with any milestones and feedback from her teacher at pre-school is that she is doing really well and is more than ready to start school.

My concern is her emotions still seem to be extremely volatile. Every morning without fail we have crying / screaming for hours, it normally stems from putting her clothes on. When we ask her she can't give us a reason as to why she is crying / screaming / kicking /upset. We have tried everything to try and understand what's causing this. It's a battle with her every day, when she finally gets dressed and we leave the house she is absolutely fine for most of the day.

We normally have an ok day unless she is tired for a particular reason until bedtime when we get crying / mood swings again.

We've asked for feedback from preschool who haven't reported any problems other than to say she is a bit emotional.

Would you consider this typical behaviour from a 4 year old? Is this just her personality or do you think there js more to it? I don't know if I'm being overly sensitive due to my late adhd diagnosis, I struggled with sadness / controlling my emotions all of my life and just don't want her to go through the same thing as I did if we can do something to help her.

Thanks for anyone who can share experiences / offer any advice?

Anyone?

Hi so I have adhd myself and I'm an send teacher specialising in ASD and ADHD.

I think you are right to be keeping an eye on things but, this could very easily be just the way she is at the moment and this may be a phase that will stop, or it may be ADHD.

Girls and boys display ADHD differently, but I wonder what her concentration is like. This doesn't always need to feature for a diagnosis especially in girls but how well can she focus on a task. You could either be seeing thing such as finding it difficult to concentrate, flitting from one thing to another , or on the contrary hyper focus on things she enjoys.

As with asd and girls, with adhd girls also tend to "mask" which is why she could be ok at school and then become very volatile at home after a hard day.

My honest answer is though I've never met you or your DD, obviously, and I have absolutely no idea whatsoever if she has ADHD. And no one on MN is going to be able to tell you either!

I think at 4.5 it's likely that she does and could be diagnosed ....or equally likely that she doesn't I'm afraid. I think your best bet is to keep an eye on things, I I would also encourage you to keep a diary of her behaviours because if your GP does want to refer you on, they're quite likely to ask you to do that PRIOR to a referral ...so if you've already done it that's cut out that stage.

I would try your best to keep on the GP and HVs radar with this because this sort of age is where it could go either way really and you don't want her to be potentially missing out on support.

I honestly don't know if she does or she doesn't but I also do understand how you're feeling - I feel the same about my kids - because I have adhd I often end up over analysing things that they do because like you , I wouldn't want them to miss out on support that they needed. So I totally understand where you're coming from and the worries you have ! I'm sorry I can't give you any actual help but I don't know your child!

@YarnOver thank you so much for your reply, I really appreciate it.

That's really great advice about keeping the diary, even for me so I can maybe pinpoint when this is happening.

Her concentration varies and I can't be sure if it's just normal for her age, e.g she is very interested in playing with dolls / drawing and can play on her own doing this quite happily, but if something isn't grabbing her attention e.g if I'm sitting down to look at letters / phonics with her she has a very short attention span and will lose focus after about 5 minutes.

I really appreciate your advice and it's nice to hear I'm not alone. Thank you.

No worries I'm sorry I couldn't be much help like I said.

Attention wise that sounds normal for a 4 year old, however that doesn't necessarily exclude things especially in girls. But I wouldn't be immediately worried from what you've described.

Keep a diary, identify any triggers that you can, or if there aren't any (I know you said you can't often work out what has caused her to be upset).

Just keep an eye on things and try not to panic. If she does have adhd then there are so many things that can be done to help. I assume you will have has a similar experience to me when you were little whereby we / our parents were just branded as being very naughty / poor parenting as not much was known about ADHD in those days (I always feel so old saying that but it's true!). So if she does have it is doesn't mean that she's going to be emotional and upset with nothing that anyone can do.

You say that it stems from putting her clothes on in the morning. I wonder what it is she doesn't like about that - is it all clothes or just her school uniform? She sounds happy at school so I wouldn't imagine that she isn't wanting to go. Do you give her her clothes that she has to put on or does she get a choice. One thing that I've always found very important with children with adhd is allowing choice, so she feels she has some control over a situation that is clearly making her upset for whatever reason.

Even if it's just allowing her to choose what underwear she is going to wear on a weekday (as she clearly can't choose her school uniform!), And at the weekend she can maybe choose from two outfits she could have. This may not work, so I'm sorry if it doesn't, but often with adhd it is very small steps of breaking tasks down into manageable and controllable chunks, so as to take the anxiety out of them.

You could also give her a tick list of things she has to do, so she maybe doesn't feel overwhelmed by her morning so :

Get up and go for a wee
Choose my socks and pants
Put my clothes on
Go downstairs for breakfast
Brush my teeth

Or however your morning would go, and she can tick off as she does each thing. That is a good way to just add some control over her anxious time, and it makes it very clear exactly what she has to do and in what order.

Anyway these things may not work and so I'm sorry If they don't, but they may be worth a try!

All the best!

Could it be a sensory issue regarding her clothes?

@YarnOver thanks so much this is really insightful and funnily enough we started a checklist a few weeks ago for bed time as that was causing some issues and since we have started it things are running a lot smoother.

The issue is she wants to wear a summer dress every day, it's been 11 degrees here and raining so it's not suitable. When I've compromised and said she can wear it with a cardigan or a jumper we're just back to square one. I often give her 2/3 suitable options to chose from, she will chose one but then gets annoyed having to put the clothes on.

Thanks again for all your help.

@CP2701 I don't know an awful lot about sensory issues but it has crossed my mind before. She won't wear any rough fabrics and gets upset about how tight her shoes are, wear the lining is on her socks, but not enough to the point where that's the main issue?

I think I've read before that children with sensory issues have problems sleeping? Is that correct? We have a long history of poor sleeping and not wanting the duvet on.

I should probably do some research into this.

Thank you

Check out asda George clothing as they do sensory friendly school uniforms and stuff! First supermarket in the UK to do so :)

Not all children with sensory issues have problems sleeping but the two often go hand in hand.