Adhd assessment - worried that it’s not apparent in school

[thelegohooverer]

I’ve been looking through the assessment forms in advance of ds’ appointment with paediatrician.

I strongly suspect that he has adhd - there’s so much of his behaviour that chimes with what I’ve been reading and listening to.

But I feel that the assessment questions can be - I don’t know - worded in a way that can be misleading.

Like the question that asks about trouble concentrating - for years I’d have said that ds has no trouble concentrating when he’s interested but was lazy and unmotivated. I was interpreting the question as asking if he couldn’t concentrate at all iyswim. Until I delved into adhd, I didn’t recognise it.

I’m concerned about the section that has to be filled out by the school. He has asd and masks a lot in school. He’s highly motivated to avoid being in trouble with teachers, and can organise himself inside the very structured school setting. But he comes home exhausted from all this.

There are subtle signs in school - eg he doodles constantly in order to concentrate, he sits like a pretzel in order to stay still, but I’m not sure that the assessment questions will capture any of that.

I’m massively overthinking at this point but I also can’t help thinking about a recent thread by a teacher who believed a child was being medicated unnecessarily because he was managing in her classroom but not at home and therefore it was a parenting issue.

I’ve been with him when he’s masking at doctors appointments and therapy appointments or in shops and it’s impressive. In primary his teachers didn’t pick up in his autism either and his school reports were always glowing.

Hi,
I don't have any answer for you but just wanted to bump your post and also say your son sounds a lot like my daughter. She's super intelligent, reads fluently aged 4, but really struggles with basics at home.

Getting ready in the morning takes over 2 hours to get ready and have breakfast etc- with constant nagging. Bedtime much the same, interrupting bedtime stories every other sentence, gets distracted all the time and she's 100 miles an hour at everything she's doing. It's a struggle every day to focus on normal stuff and she has zero attention span.

The teachers noticed at the start, lots of impulsive and compulsive behaviours, and there were a lot of meetings and conversations with her, and now she behaves pretty well whilst there. As soon as she's walked out through the school gates she explodes as like you say she's hiding it and masking at school in order to fit in and not be in trouble, and she is exhausted from it.

I understand what you're going through x

@Mummyroundtwo thanks. They sound a lot alike.

Oh my goodness, sounds so like my 11 yo DD. She has been diagnosed with ASC but I do wonder about ADD or ADHD . she can look at screens or read a book she's engrossed in for a long g time but everything else it is so incredibly difficult to keep her attention. I'd also easily be able to describe her as lazy and unmotivated.

Primary are having issues now as she's so anxious she's late all the time (and I mean very late, can't get her there) or off. But she masks incredibly well at school and I'm utterly sick of hearing "she's fine" when she is so very far from fine at home. She did actually try and run away from school last week and got over the gate and a short way down the road. She says she just HAD to get away, she couldn't cope any more.

Will he be observed as part of the adhd assessment? Even our recent family support worker observation has talked about my dd appearing to "play a part" and states they feel it is masking to appear neurotypical.

I got the school section of the assessment back. Very thoroughly filled out so I can’t fault them but he’s a different person in there. I feel a bit sad because they’ve rated his potential and actual attainment as average and I feel that he’s under performing (but I suppose most mums feel that way).

Ds filled out his own section but told me that things with dd or at home “didn’t count” and basically filled it out for his school persona iyswim.

I don’t know if it’s even worth sending it all in. My version of him is so at odds with his own and the school’s. Just makes me doubt myself.

Some of his reasoning about his answers made me laugh though - field “I behave like an Angel” he selected often, and commented “the avenging kind with a fiery sword”.