Inattentive ADHD diagnosis

[ADHDadviceplease]

10 year old DD has just been diagnosed with inattentive type ADHD at the end of year 5. Teachers weren’t supportive and just put things down to her being lazy but SENCO said she was a classic case of it and recommended getting formal diagnosis. So we had her assessed and we’ve just got her diagnosis, which confirmed ADHD.

DD is really really down. Her confidence was already wavering but now she’s really miserable and I don’t know how to help make her feel better.

Her class teacher is still putting lack of focus down to laziness and I don’t know what I should be doing to get things in place properly for next year.

Any advice?

Hello

No advice, I'm sorry to hear that your DD is really down. I was given antidepressants at 13/14 and now at 29 I'm being assessed for inattentive ADHD. X

Hello! My son was diagnosed with inattentive ADHD at the end of primary. Started meds for secondary and they really helped. He didn't always like taking them or how they made him feel, but they helped his confidence and his ability to concentrate. He has just done his GCSE's and he did need a lot of support from me as his prganisation and planning skills are non existent, but he took his medication daily.

Learn all you can about ADHD and also the funny bits of it. Instagram has lots of information and is very good for normalising the traits of it.

What does your daughter enjoy doing? Have you noticed she is good at hyper focussing? My son can hyperfocus on things he enjoys and will go to sixth form to study something he loves in a way that will hopefully suit him.

Hang in there, the diagnosis will change things for her.

Read up on loads of strategies to manage it together so she knows there is hope.

Read about neurodiverse success stories.

Trial medication over the summer?

We will try the meds but we need to get some baseline measurements and bloods from her GP before the specialist will start the drugs and we can’t get an appointment until August!

I am researching everything I can about strategies, I just know that however much I support her the diagnosis has made it real for her and she doesn’t know quite how to process it so she’s finding it tough.

Thanks for the advice - and it’s good to hear some positivity! :)

I was diagnosed in my 40s and although it's hard for your DD now thanks to rubbish teacher attitude, hopefully she'll get the right support in future.

Some teachers are very fixed in their way of thinking, one of my DS has similar issues and some teachers are so inflexible in terms of DC who aren't all evenly achieving what they think they "should".

(See also all my school reports where I needed to try harder and make more effort to finish my work. No one was diagnosing ADHD much in those days though, let alone in daydreaming wee girls.)

But these days there's a lot more knowledge. We had a really good support teacher for a few years, who did the referrals for my DS.

What's the support like at her school? We're in Scotland where it's a slightly different system, but a local autism service have signposted me to lots of resources to help advocate for kids with additional support needs at school.

Does your dd know what helps her?

So movement breaks? Cold drink?

She may feel better if she's involved in her daily plan if what helps at school and hopefully she'll have a new teacher in September?

Sadly she won’t have a different teacher next year as whilst they have four separate teachers for year 3, year 4, year 5 and year 6 the teacher they have for year 3 moves up to year 4 with them and similarly the teacher they have for year 5 moves up to year 6 with them, so they rotate every two years.

They said they’ll pull together a plan for her that they will then send me for my comments, but I’m still waiting to see the proposals.