Child Physcologist

[stressedmcd]

Please help!!! We have been having problems with our daughter (Age 11) since she was about 5 or 6 with behaviour issues, anger, frustration, not listening, aggressive etc. This behaviour is only happening at home. However recently she has gone high school and they have raised some issues about her work, not retaining information etc, they are thinking along the lines of dyslexia. However having read up on this, we feel that she ticks more of the boxes in ADHD. We have since made an appointment with our GP and she is referring her to a Child Physcologist. Can anyone provide any info on what lies ahead for us all.

If they are looking at adhd - they will want to see if her symptoms appear in more than one setting eg home and school. To that end they will take a history from you talk to oyur dd and observe your dd in school and talk to her teachers. They may ask you and teachers to fill out a connors questionnaire - describing possible symptoms like "fidgets a lot" and you have to tick always, sometimes or never. I don't know about dyslexia but I'm sure there will be someone else here who does.

Pinks right ... for a dx of ADHD the symptoms need to be at school and home to such an extent that they impair her daily routine iyswim. Does she have friends and have friendships been easy for her to retain? I've been through an ADHD assessment for my ds. School made observations and based on them, we went via our GP to a paediatrician for diagnosis (a child physc can also dx). ADHD can present itself differently in girls ie: less hyperactive/boisterous and more inattentive, slow processing and poor short term memory. Do her teachers feel she is seriously underachieving at school? This is another area an assessment would take into consideration. If it is ADHD, I'm surprised her primary school didn't pick up on it - could be more of a learning difficulty then behavioral ... however, I'm no expert.

We actually felt that she was underachieving at Primary School, we felt that she was really struggling with her Maths work, we made several appointments and questioned whether we should enlist the help of a tutor and each time we were told there was no need, that this was normal and she would pick up. Aside from her spelling and maths work the only other thing the school have said is that she talks too much sometimes! They have all said that she is a lovely well mannered child, which she does appear to be until you get to know her further. After speaking with her school last week they informed us that the Primary School actually had her down as working towards a certain level that would have been normal for her age, although they later screened her at this level and she only scored 29%! Regarding friendships, this is a very sore point for me and my husband, she really struggles with this. She is constantly changing friends from month to month and never seems to keep any long term, she always seems to loose interest in them. She is also not good in a crowd of friends, on a one to one basis everything is fine, as soon as another or more come into the frame she can't seem to handle this. I am now kicking myself for not following my gut instinct away back and doing something about this sooner, but we just went with what the Primary were telling us. It has just got to a point now that because she is slightly older she is very wearing and literally draws the life out of us, constantly picking fights especially with me for no reason, then 5 mins later has forgotten all about it and thinks everything should be fine. Family members are also finding her hard going now and are not as keen to look after her....... She is unaware that this is going on and I dread when we have to broach the subject with her!