Hidden adhd?

[Wotamum]

Ds is 10 & in year 6. He's predicted level 6 in all his Sats however I've recently started to look at the possibility that he has ADHD. I feel quite silly that I've not looked into this sooner but as he's always done well at school I've just looked past his quirks & put some like the incessant talking down to his giftedness. He's always talked constantly, questioned everything, been quick of mind - will interrupt a question with the answer, won't 'hear' when spoken to directly, has terrible organisational skills, loses things, won't sit still, fiddles with things, etc. I think I'm questioning it more now because the impact on his poor organisational skills is much more obvious now he's older than it was before.

So my reason for posting is to find out about others experiences of ADHD and giftedness/high intelligence (for want of a better word). I think he's managed to hide his inattentiveness so well, for instance, because he's able to pick things up so quickly. If he half listens to something that's enough for him to get it.

What should I do next?

Thank you Tendorbuttons. It is mostly the inattentive boxes I could tick too! Might just be worth me picking up some fish oils!

ADD without the hyperactivity is notoriously difficult to diagnose in bright children (and especially in girls who are less likely to have the oppositional behaviours that often lead to a diagnosis).

It is, however, very difficult to judge exactly where the line between "inattentive but not enough to justify a label" and "ADD" lies. I think this is especially complicated in very bright kids who may disengage if insufficiently stimulated.

My DD displayed a lot of ADHD symptoms as a young child (she was very, very inattentive, very oppositional and mildly hyperactive). She was referred to an ed psych age 6. Psych did cognitive testing - DD came out as very highly gifted with a profile that could be suggestive of ADHD (processing speed much lower than everything else). Conners questionnaire was also very positive for attention-deficit, mildly positive for hyperactivity. However we didn't go any further with a diagnosis on the grounds that I wouldn't choose to medicate a child who was doing well at school. Also she moved into a class where the teacher coped better with her.

She's now 13 and the ADD-type behaviours have largely disappeared. I don't really know what to make of this - was it "just" immaturity? Interestingly last year she participated as a volunteer in a research project by neurology students, and she did some processing speed type tests as part of this. Whereas at 6 she was very average at this type of test, her processing is now off-the-scale fast. So maybe it was just a question of uneven brain development with that side of things lagging the rest.

OP - yes sleep problems are commonly related to ADHD. My dd has never had "sleep issues" like insomnia, but as a child she was completely unable to shut off if there was the slightest stimulation - she could only sleep in a dark quiet room with no one around. She never even as a baby slept in a push chair or car seat. Her sleep improved noticeably at puberty along with everything else.

However we didn't go any further with a diagnosis on the grounds that I wouldn't choose to medicate a child who was doing well at school.

This was exactly where we found ourselves too. But it's great to hear your story and definitely gives us hope. We've had some improvement already at age 8, but there's room for plenty more yet!

Oh, one other thing that is worth looking at is trying to identify the kind of distractibility. With DD, it is almost entirely visual, so things improved a great deal when we moved her to a different school with a much smaller class size and made sure she sat at the front of the class. She still utterly shuts down when three classes are all changing together for PE, but that's not the end of the world.

Thanks Misti & Tender.

I've been trying to get an appointment to see my gp but she's been away. I'm now hoping to go tomorrow. With regard to ds I think I would like the diagnosis (if there's one to be had) but I think he's of an age where he's old enough to decide what to do with - if wants to try medication, if he feels he's really struggling or learn more about it or whatever. He might just need to develop some strategies but we could certainly do with some guidance on that!

tender if I recall correctly things improved at school from age 8 ish, and by 9-10 her inattentiveness was no longer a big issue at school, in the sense that her teachers didn't complain about it too much. At secondary school it has never been raised as a problem but I think that secondary teachers are more tolerant of students who are a bit distracted in class as long as they are not disruptive and they do the work. At home the very oppositional/ highly impulsive behaviour largely disappeared at puberty, which sounds odd but it's true. It's actually quite hard to believe at this distance that she was ever as difficult as she was - she did some truly hair-raising things, always due to poor or non-existent impulse control.

What makes me doubt the tentative ADD diagnosis is that she doesn't appear to have any associated learning difficulties or serious problems with organisation. I have a couple of RL friends with gifted children with diagnosed and treated ADHD, but they are both "2E", with noticeable impacts on academic performance due to slow processing (very slow/disorganized in class) and dyslexia. DD often appeared disorganized, in the sense that her stuff was always a mess and she used to lose (or eat! she chewed everything!) the contents of her pencil case, but her actual school work was not at all disorganized, and she has always been a very fast worker.

Not sure whether this adds anything to the discussion, other than to emphasise how fine the line can be between actual ADHD, and a mildly understimulated and easily distracted, but highly able, child ...