Five year old can never sit still

[ditzzy]

My five year old DD has always been a wriggler, even before she was born I commented that she wriggled continuously rather than kicking and snoozing (as her older sister did) and now it’s starting to become really noticeable.

School (year 1) noted that she finds it hard to sit and pay attention, but that seemed to be fixed when she got glasses six months ago (I’m still horrified by the fact she came home saying she’d never realised they were staring at the white board because there were letters written on it, she thought it was just to make them all look the same way). Now they don’t comment on her attention span.

But outside school we can still see it, at swimming lessons, gymnastics and karate she’s just running (or swimming) around with way more energy than everyone else and listens to the teacher for the first sentence before drifting off to her own world (and usually energetically doing something extra).

Today, she’s come home from school saying she wants headphones for school because everyone keeps distracting her when she’s trying to write her lessons.

So questions: at what point do I need to take action, and what action (talk to teachers?)? Should I just ride this out as attention seeking and assume she’ll have to get used to it being a noisy world she lives in? I don’t want to over dramatise this, but at the same time if there’s something we should be doing that would revolutionise things for her the way that glasses have done, then I’d feel terrible for not doing it.

She seems to almost be regressing at the moment, she can read and write fairly well (as well as her sister could at the same age) but has got a lot worse with communication lately, preferring not to give direct answers, and making noises/pulling faces in preference to words which I’m sure she’s copying someone at school for.

Anyway, that came out a bit long! Just after reassurance that this is a phase, nothing to worry about and only to worry if it starts making her get behind at school

School (year 1) noted that she finds it hard to sit and pay attention, but that seemed to be fixed when she got glasses six months ago (I’m still horrified by the fact she came home saying she’d never realised they were staring at the white board because there were letters written on it, she thought it was just to make them all look the same way). Now they don’t comment on her attention span.

Is she long sighted by any chance?

Yes! She is long sighted, not by a huge amount either based on the prescription, but the optician referred her to the hospital to check the prescription and they agreed.

Yes! She is long sighted, not by a huge amount either based on the prescription, but the optician referred her to the hospital to check the prescription and they agreed

OK so that was a not so lucky guess I suppose. There's been some research lately suggesting that longsightedness is more prevalent amongst people with NDs.

I think it's time to read up on all the types of ADHD and on ASD, masking and how those all can present in girls then talk to your SENCO.

You might get some good advice in the SN Children Section too

Thank you @TinyMouseTheatre I guess a first conversation at school is a sensible step regardless of likely outcome.

At the e last parents evening I raised with the class teacher that I’m concerned about dyslexia as there’s some slightly odd mixed up reading she had been doing; putting letters from the middle of a word at the front (left instead of felt, nest instead of sent, things like that) and the teacher said it was a TA who’d been reading with her so she would do some directly and see if she saw any issues.

I suspect she’ll say the same with this, but it will be a first step to raise a question even though I feel as though I’m being neurotic.

If you feel that you're being neurotic (unlikely) then I'd do the 5 year Ages and Stages along with the 5 year Social and Emotional Ages and Stages.

Do those along with this progress checker from Speech & Language UK and it should altogether give you a better idea of whether she needs extra support or assessing.

I can't offer any help on the suspected dyslexia though sorry although your local library probably has dyslexia friendly reading books of you ask them

Thank you for the links, I’ll look through them all in detail.

Speech and communication she’s fine with (apart from the refusing to answer questions and generally rambling on forever on a topic regardless of whether anyone is even there to listen to); and she does imaginary games with teds and toys in a brilliant way (her sister seemed to skip that phase altogether). So she always comes out ok on developments assessments. I remember her 3 year assessment where she started talking the ears off the Health Visitor within two seconds so flew through that section but wouldn’t stand still for the height and weight measurements.

What she can’t seem to understand is giving people personal space or when it’s inappropriate to talk and run around non stop. The karate teachers have an amazing level of tolerance for continuing to teach the class while she’s bobbing up and down on their toes trying to tell them something really random!