Dad resistant to getting GP referral for development delay assessment

[TICKLETUMBLE]

My step son (5) lives with us and it has been identified at school he is delayed in social and emotional development with some fine motor skills issues also. He was premature, had a bit of a rough time in his early days and birth mother was next to useless bordering on neglectful, and was speech delayed, so no surprises he has some other developmental problems.

There has been an assessment done at school (educational ) and in two places in the report suggestions to consider GP referral for assessment and CAMHS. Hyperactivity, impulsiveness and lack of attention specifically mentioned.
The problem I have is that Dad is not in any way keen to go this way, stating a lot sons issues are personality traits (he's just like his dad...that doesn't mean he does not have ADHD or whatever!!) and the school being less organised and rigourous in routines than we both think is sensible for themore excitable kids.

For the sake of our son, he needs to get the right help and we may need to be taught the right way to help him and so need to get the assessments done to achieve that.....how do I persuade Dad to agree?? I cant just take son to GP and ask for assessment without dad'a agreement. Help!!

Tickletumble, this sounds like a difficult situation for you. It is so lovely that you are concerned for your DSS - i think that sometimes it can be hard for dads to accept that their DCs are having difficulties.
Have these difficulties been identified after your DSS had an assessment in school with by an educational psychologist? Would it be worth speaking to whoever arranged the assessment to ask how it could be taken forward? My DD is younger, so I don't have any experience myself of this stage yet, but wondering in these circumstances someone else could trigger a referral for assessment - possibly a SALT or HV? I'm sure someone will come along soon who can give you some proper advice. All the best to you and your DSS.

You could tell GP the issues, and say dad isn't ready to request referral yet. It makes sure that the records have the full story in case dad goes later and says school are nuts, do you need to refer my perfectly normal boy?

The other thing is, you don't need a full assessment to do a useful NHS-thinks-probably-ADHD parenting course. So you could do something useful now and nod to your dh's views for a bit longer.

I thought the parent course would be drivel but it was actually pretty useful. Incredible years, strengthening families, triple P, Solihull, 123 magic are offered here, and applicable to all kids, sen or not.

Another route is let the school speak to your DH about your sons issues. Every time there is a phone call from them or they need to raise anything let them deal with your DH. It might help him and lead him to silently observe his son first and maybe come to a decision to assess in the future? x

A tricky situation indeed if the school has pointed out that there are some issues then their concerns must be very real. By getting a referral to a community paediatrician this can access lots if support and assistance for his DS and if they are personality traits as he says then you could explain that they will be easily sorted as he is at a young age if he leaves it until the boy is much older it will be more difficult to change his behaviour.

Thanks for the responses. I dont know how, but will work on trying to persuade DH that, for the sake of school treating him fairly - to recognise he is not a naughty child, he is an impulsive one who doesnt think about the consequences, has difficulty consentrating on anything someone else has instigated, and is often confused and emotional as he is 'getting it wrong' so much of the time - we all need to understand what he is/is not capable of doing that is notin line with the average 5 year olds in his class, so that our expectations can be modified if needs be.
Got the summer to play with, so hopefully will get him to the GP eventually.

In a child as young as 5 the brain is still elastic/plastic or whatever you choose to call it, you just don't know summat is permanently "wrong" or whether it's something that just needs some fairly short term intervention until the medics have properly checked it out. The danger in hubby putting his head in the sand is that a potentially minor short term issue, if left too long unattended can turn into a lifelong problem. (Glue ear & speech development is a classic one).

A bit of occupational and speech therapy + extra tlc at school while he is still young, and there's every chance he can catch up with his NT peers, so as noone could ever tell the difference by the time he's ready to get his first job.

• Is this an approach his Dad could stomach?

BCOHEAD - all good ideas. DH collect DS from school every day so he is the one seeing the frazzled teachers getting the lowdown on his behaviour and successes of the day..so got that covered.

DS had speech therapy and has been discharged - he speaks too fast and misses out words for the sake of speed, but otherwise has all the skills he needs to pronounce all the words he would want to speak and to verbally communicate.

DS is on SA+ with a TA providing support for behaviour, IEP is behaviour based goals only as DS is doing well academically - scored 6(as expected) and 7(above expectations) for all areas except social and behavior where he got a 4 (below expectations).
DH is aware of the IEP and the support DS gets...but is sceptical of its need and value with a child so young....the assessment is very clear about the kind of behaviour that was observed which we cannot refute, but accepting their opinion as to why certain answers were given, or certain behaviours were displayed is a tough one to swallow for DH, and me too to be fair.

DH (and our parents too) feels there cant be much wrong if he's picking up things and doing well academically. That is pretty hard to argue with. On the other hand, we all know you dont get SA+ and the extra help in the classroom for no good reason.

DS is basically a happy child, and a lot of the issues school have we dont ever experience as we are not trying to maintain attention of a class of 20 children when DS is with us - he has the attention he needs and support to move from one task to another without a meltdown...we just learnt how to manage that through trial and error without knowing we were doing anything unusal or different. So I cant say, well that's all well and good but DS is unhappy and needs help, because he doesn't appear to be very unhappy, he loves school, enjoys being with his friends and is only really a bit bemused that he got a time out or missed break after an incident, not unhappy about it as he seems to understand the reasons, but can tremember why he did what he did so is confused....which i know is not 'normal' but it doesnt seem to make him unhappy. Theonly times shows real unhappiness os when he isnt getting his own way...which is the case for most children, nothing special about that.

The point is he cant do the academic stuff without an adult 1:1 encouraging him to stick with it, reminding him what is expected and giving him lots of positive encouragement above and beyond what the other children get...he wont sit still long enough, or simply would not start in the first place. Left to his own devices he would be climbing up on things and jumping off or breakdancing, or possibly just reading in a corner as he loves to read.

I am making changes to how I deal with the forgetfulness, lack of consequnce consideration etc, bearing in mind possibility of ADHD and DH is receptive to those things. its just the hard cold acceptance that something medical, possibly permanent could be wrong that is the sticking point...and a fear of having phsychologists and suchlike involved..fear of the unkown I suppose.

We are making strides to change and help without a GP referral, and that may have to be as good as it gets for the time being.