ADHD or bored? Or anxious? Argh!

[Gertrudetheadelie]

My DS (just turned 8 and v late August baby) has been assessed by an Ed Psych as being exceptionally intelligent. The Ed Psych thought that that was all that there was and that his fizziness was the consequence of a very active mind. We were warned that schooling would prove very difficult as he was going to not fit into mainstream ways of teaching.

However, he does seem to struggle at school with focus - his teachers complain about him getting out of his seat, chatting, making noise, and so on. He complains about not learning anything and being bored. His teacher wants him to complete tasks before he gets extensions (which I do understand).

He is not distracted or unfocused when we take him to the theatre, or even when we were in France and he had to stand still and listen to a French guide! These were not special interests. He doesn't show hyper focus on special interests. He's never been a risk taker (in fact, the opposite), and the Ed Psych commented that he had excellent task focus and could switch attention well for the couple of hours that they were together.

I just feel so unsure!

Has anyone else been through anything similar?

How was he over the summer holidays?

Fine really. He does complex maths for extra homework happily and with focus or silence.He's a bit chatty, certainly..sort of bubbly. But not getting out of his seat or wandering.

Are the school asking for a diagnosis? In your shoes I’d be presuming bored unless others were pushing a different narrative.

I’d probably try stretching him outside of school for now - Musical instrument/language learning/chess that kind of thing?

Oh well we sooo much stretch outside school. He's reading adult science books, we got him a maths and science tutor just to do learning with him around topics he enjoys, we goes to days in London with the Royal Society, he goes to the theatre, he does drama...But in class, I have no control and I can't help.

I've just been upsetting myself looking at another thread with a teenage child and everyone said that the child was awful for disrupting the learning of the good kids (which, of course, I understand). We really do punish anytime we find out that he has behaved unacceptably. He knows that we are cross and disappointed so we are just trying to excuse him by saying 'oh he's bright'. But the fact that our disapproval and that of his new teacher isn't really touching the sides, makes me wonder if there is something else going on.

The school haven't mentioned it but he's just not fitting the mould of the good eager, compliant, bright kid.

It sounds like he is getting great stretch and stimulation at home and out of school but in school he is in a group of 8 year olds and as such the tasks being set are for that age group. He is bored as he can do those easily and is more advanced and I suspect in his mind he is thinking why do I need to do any of these as I already can. Can you perhaps speak with the school and agree a strategy for the extra stretch work for tehm and what the stretch material will be - but he needs to do the standard class work first. Then have a conversation with your DC to explain the strategy that he needs to do the boring stuff first but his reward is that he gets to do stretch stuff / what interests him as soon as he has completed the initial task.

in this way it isn’t just about punishment for bad behaviour but a reward system for good behaviour. You could also agree with your DC what the stretch material will focus on I’m sure it’s difficult for the teacher trying to balance the wider class needs with your DC but this approach might help keep your DC focussed in class , interested and not being disruptive for the others.

@Aligirlbear unfortunately, we have tried this. We've had meetings with the school, I've told DS that it is incredibly unfair on others and we are disappointed etc. He was apparently fine last week for three days and did the extensions but has just thrown it all in the air this week past. I'm not sure how extending the extensions are but I'm also fed up of this and I just want him to suck it up even if he is bored! It's just not an excuse but I can't seem to get a handle on it.

What does your gut say about adhd?

The thing is, the symptoms can be hard to spot in people who have adhd plus very high IQs. They don't always present typically.

The other thing is that he might have adhd and be bored. People with adhd often have low boredom thresholds and find boredom absolutely intolerable.

The fact that he can concentrate well in some scenarios doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't adhd. But of course, it might not be.

Either way, neither adhd nor boredom are an excuse for poor behaviour or disrupting the learning of other children. This needs to be made very clear - and it sounds like you're trying.

How are his social skills and empathy?

@MrsBennetsPoorNervesAreBack very empathetic and thoughtful about how things might appear to others. For example, he missed a science fair at school for a funeral but said that it didn't matter because it was a worse day for our bereaved relative. Doesn't always get his peers (doesn't like football or want to pretend to care!) but has always had a circle of friends.

I don't know re ADHD. Sometimes I think there must be something. Sometimes I think actually he just needs to be worked hard and feel valued. His science tutor loved teaching him as she said he was always bubbling with ideas. I taught him for a bit and I did GCSE content but he lapped it up and getting him to work wasn't a struggle. He's never had meltdowns or big emotions. He's sort of...fizzy. I always say he's like a working spaniel in that he needs working or he gets sorted of destructive in making his own amusement.

I think we are actually a bit stricter than the school tbh! Certainly, we give fewer chances and in a former tone more rapidly. But I'm not sure I want him to start seeing himself as 'bad' either.

As someone with Adhd and without wanting to sound a nob quite intellectually able. The thing that seems to be missing (°as it was with me) os exercise and sport. I realised later in life that as well as intellectual stimulation I also need physical stimulation. Footbsll; cricket, running, athletics, whatever as long as cardio and thinking is involved.

Ignore all the spelling mistakes. I have been put since 5pm!

ADHD often involves being able to hyper focus on things you are interested in and are challenging enough, while having zero ability to focus on things that are not. Sometimes people think it can’t be ADHD because kids are able to focus really well on some things, but that is classic ADHD.

Ha no I'm grateful for all ideas @TallSturdyGirls ! He's not really a natural athlete. He does swim and we walk at least 1 mile a day (he's a lean bean) and often have park time, but he's never really enjoyed sports per se. He has quite a strong risk aversion so he didn't enjoy rock climbing when he went with the Beavers etc. I did wonder about pilates or yoga but it's not easy to find classes! He did a bit of martial arts when he was younger but it wasn't really his thing.

@BibbityBoppityTwo it's not just some things though. That's what I find confusing! If it was just during science, that he enjoys, it would fit with the picture the internet has given me. But he will concentrate during the ballet (very much not his thing), opera (ditto), history stuff, almost anything really! He even sat through an archaeology thing really aimed at 5 year olds with no problem. I've always seen hyper focus and special interests referred to quite specifically but can you be hyper focused about literally everything apart from stuff that think is easy?

@BibbityBoppityTwo apologies if that sounds cranky. The amount of sleep I have lost over going round and round this problem and guessing and second guessing myself, reading everything I can find on ADHD and autism and giftedness... 😱

Oh no it doesn’t sound cranky at all!
But yes, what you’re describing does sound very clearly connected to giftedness and understimulation rather than ADHD. A kid with ADHD would definitely struggle to sit through the ballet, etc. if they’re not into it.

If he is very empathetic, then this is your way into the behavioural issues. Get him to really think about how his classmates feel when he disrupts their learning or how his teachers might feel when he is so disrespectful towards others. If he is genuinely empathetic, he should be able to put himself in the place of the other people that his behaviour is affecting, and this may help him to moderate it somewhat.

@BibbityBoppityTwo I had to convince him to go to the ballet by telling him that he could have ice cream at the interval! The thing is that he is bright so he does just find everything interesting and stimulating! He was really still and quiet when we were having to follow a guide doing her guiding in French on holiday and we could only pick out bits of it (A level french 20 years ago didn't help me translate mining vocab!). That's why I'm so confused. I can see it and I can't. He just really struggles in class with class marking of tests, circle time when they were explaining things he feels he knows that sort of thing.

I'm really not saying that he's not being a dick in class. I just feel like if I could get to grips with why, he'd be less of one!

@MrsBennetsPoorNervesAreBack I think I will try this in a more organised, calmer way. We've obviously done it on the hoof in that sort of waggy finger way, but perhaps he needs to see it in a more academic sense. I'm trying to show him that he also needs to see that if he wants people to understand what he needs (and that people need to care about his needs too) that this is a really crap way to achieve that.

I can hyperfocus about all sorts of things and wouldn't necessarily say that I have ever really had "special interests" as such. I just need to get sufficiently into them to get into that focused state. I don't cope with boredom at all, but I can sometimes get into a flow state with stuff that isn't inherently interesting.

That said, I think most kids with adhd who aren't interested in something like a ballet would struggle to sit still through it. Tbh, a lot of kids who don't have adhd might struggle in that scenario.

The thing is, if he found the ballet really uninteresting but managed to sit through it nicely anyway, that would suggest that he can actually cope with boredom perfectly well, and he just doesn't want to cope with it in school. That's a bit different from a child who really struggles to cope with it, and makes me lean more towards the idea that this might be a behavioural issue and not an underlying issue with neurodivergence. Unless the novelty of the ballet/opera etc actually made it more interesting to him than you realised.

I think it's worth a try - regardless of whether or not he has adhd tbh.

@MrsBennetsPoorNervesAreBack it was a really good production so I can see that if might have! And we have quite lively conversation at home so I don't think we provide an atmosphere that allows him to experience intellectual boredom much. Which makes it really hard to work out what is going on.

The trouble is that everything I have read tends to the black and white - hyperfocus being a good example. When the picture is more nuanced, it is really really helpful to have real life experience so I hugely appreciate the advice I have got on this thread.

What I’m hearing is that he is enormously absorbed by intellectual stimulation (ballet, science, even a talk on archeology aimed more at 5 year olds).

It sounds as though the school curriculum or the school teaching methods (or some other thing about the schooling system) are not intellectually stimulating.

He is young so he is stimulating himself in other ways so as not to be bored (and disrupting the class), I get that completely.

Schools understandably and unfortunately often can’t accommodate the outliers. Can he be home educated, or otherwise educated in a more stimulating setting other than mainstream school? It’s such a shame that the school’s narrative is that he needs to change rather than them.

@MagicalMystical he was home ed for a bit and the Ed Psych said that really it was the ideal situation for him intellectually but I really wanted him to experience 'normal'. I think though if behaviour is communication and it isn't ADHD, I think his classroom behaviour is self-destructive unhappiness. That's why, perhaps, I'm still awake at 2am (and keeping you lot up!) fretting about it.

@Gertrudetheadelie is the adhd-like behaviour only in school? The symptoms need to be evident in more than one setting to meet the threshold for a diagnosis.

You said that he doesn't have any issues with emotional regulation, no meltdowns etc. What are his organisational skills like? How about his ability to transition between activities? His relationship with time? His sleeping habits?

High intelligence can very easily mask adhd and make it much harder to identify, so I think it's important to keep an open mind. But it doesn't sound as if he isn't really displaying many symptoms other than a bit of bad behaviour in school, which could just as easily be due to boredom?

I’m up because my 18 year old has gone away to uni and has freshers flu a million miles away from me. We worry, don’t we.

If you can afford to do so, my gut would say take this amazing boy out of this small existence and into the bigger pool of creative intellectual thought he craves and needs.

What price ‘normal’? He isn’t ‘normal’. I would be thinking of his mental health in a situation where he is being told he is wrong or difficult or too much.

But perhaps you can’t afford to home educate (I’d love to do so for my youngest as she is bright - top sets - but hates school to the point of worn-out, ground-down tears, however I can’t afford to take her out school unfortunately).

I'm up because, well...adhd. And because trying to go to sleep is boring!

Do you have any adhd in the family, OP?

Hope your dd feels better soon @MagicalMystical. It's a big adjustment all round when they go off to uni.