Just occurred to me ds might have adhd

[Cryinthepooltodisguisethetears]

Hi all

Stemmed from another thread, I feel like my eyes have been opened. My ds has always had those traits but I just thought as he matured he would calm down or whatever but actually it's becoming more pronounced and causing issues in the family.

I looked up adhd and he ticks every single one of these:

Hyperactivity/Impulsivity ADHD Symptoms In Kids
Constant talking
Feeling restless
Running around and playing, even in calm settings
Constant fidgeting or tapping
Frequently full of excess energy
Being excessively loud
Impatience and difficulty waiting
Interrupting other people

...and some of the inattentive symptoms but to a much lesser degree

I am wondering a few things. I've researched it but i always find asking on mn is much more productive than simply googling and getting confused.

If you have kids with adhd how did you approach it with your child? Ds is highly sensitive. He's been bedwetting since forever and was mortified when I took him to a specialist. He will hate talking about it...any advice?

Should I ask the school or gp?

I am really scared about medication. I really would hate to put him on any. But I am open to all therapies etc...is it even possible to effectively treat adhd without meds? And even if I decided to go with meds his father who I am separated from...he would never go with it,or any other therapies. How do we treat him when he has a uncooperative father?

So many questions but I'm very tired so I'm going to post this and hope for some replies by morning.

Tia xxx

Sorry ds is 10 years old

I went to my GP, well I burst into tears on the phone to my GP to be more precise. I also spoke to a friend who had son who had ADHD and borrowed books and read up about it and realised that a lot of behaviours that were before manageable but now becoming an issue (aged 12) were symptomatic of ADHD. He is being assessed formally later this month. I don't think he has severe symptoms which is why we have probably got this far without thinking ADHD was a possibility, but it has caused immense issues over the last year and we were in desperate need of answers as to what was driving the behaviour and strategies for how to cope.

School have been pretty useless. The head said his behaviour was a 'choice' and he could choose to behave 'well'. True to an extent, but conforming to their expectations every day is a massive effort for him and frequently breaks down. They are underfunded and overstretched, so I would trust your gut and bypass them initially for getting a referral unless you have a really strong SEND department at the school who will support you in obtaining a diagnosis. This may speed things up, but like us, you will probably have to pay to go private. Others may have a different view on this but I don't think we would be anywhere near getting the assessment if we had gone through the school first.

Our strategy was that we spoke to my son saying we wanted to understand why he was struggling to do what they needed him to do at school so we could help him and get the school to help him and make it better for him and a more positive experience. He had kids in his class asking him if he had ADHD...

Hiya

Thanks for replying

If you don't mind me asking, what behaviours became worse as he got older? I ask because atm his behaviour, whilst absolutely exhausting, isn't causing real issues. Dh thinks it may turn into something else when he gets older...which correlates with what you are saying

He gets overtsimulated in certain situations (eg supermarkets, airports etc) and we now realise his high school is big, noisy and hectic and similar to being in those environments every day. He also struggles with transitions (eg calming down after break) and high school is full of multiple transitions between classes. He spent a lot of time being sent out of the classroom while the teachers tried to settle the rest of the class because he was too distracting. He was getting disciplined for things like doodling in his books and asking to go to the toilet - things we now recognise are signs of the need for movement breaks but are deemed to be unacceptable in high school. When he did try really really hard to not do those things, he would end up with his head on the desk and get into trouble for 'lack of engagement with learning' - it was literally like he couldn't win.

But on top of this his impulsivity and poor ability to think actions through to their consequences meant he made some poor choices around new friends and started to get involved in things that were not really him and if left to their natural conclusion could have got him into real trouble - stuff on social media for example.

He was also bullied by an older child and this ended up with a fight - the school didn't care about the background just that he had been involved in a fight.

If I had had concerns back in Y6 it would definitely have been beneficial to him/us to have worked on understanding them and putting in strategies to cope with them before he went to high school. As it is, we are now having to try to rebuild his reputation from troublemaker. Some teachers are very lacking in empathy I have found (not all, but definitely some).

PS my older child also had issues with bed wetting right up until he started high school. That was pretty stressful too. We went to the clinic for advice, tracked his drinking etc etc and had to get desmopressin for a school trip. It resolved itself pretty much overnight though and i am pretty confident it was hormone related and once the hormones kicked in he has never had any problems again. Hang on in there!

Sorry for late reply. This is just so, so helpful and makes a lot of sense. I can see clearly now how things could so easily become worse as he goes into high school. Your child sounds just like mine.

Your post has made me resolved in my decision to get him diagnosed. Now to figure out how to broach the subject with him. He's a sensitive soul and it could go down very badly. I might start out by reading an article and suggesting I am neuro divergent (I am.now convinced I am) and open up the discussion that way??

Reading up on ADD I definitely have a number of traits myself. I think one thing I found really useful was reading somewhere that children with ADHD develop some of their executive processing skills at a slower rate so their level of maturity is about a third behind their peers - so in some ways a 12 year old has the processing ability you may expect of an 8 year old. We assumed my son was coping with the new changes in his life and just growing up and gave him a lot more freedom than we should have done, in hindsight. This last year gave me a massive wake up call that I had been way too hands off as a parent and i have clamped down on social media and I make a conscious effort to talk him through scenarios and things people say (as I have realised he can be very naïve), to help him trouble shoot things that I took for granted he would process in the same way as other children his age. He has started puberty and I think that is also a bad thing to throw into the mix!

My son can also be quite sensitive and it was noted by teachers he had low self esteem. But I think better to deal with a conversation about possible ADHD than having low self esteem from constantly being shouted out by your parents (which is where we were), being told you are naughty/have a bad reputation/not trying/lazy which is where things end up if you don't put some of the behaviours into a different context.

I got a book (ADHD is our superpower) which talks about some of the positive things about ADHD which could be a good way to broach it with your son. I said i wanted to help him develop and learn about all the possible positive aspects of it as well as help him deal with some of the stuff that was causing him problems.

Even if we don't get a formal diagnosis, just reading about it has helped me learn so much as a parent and look at different strategies which are definitely helping.

The Disruptors, a documentary on Amazon Prime is also a brilliant watch.

Good luck!

Thank you for sharing.

He was miserable going into school today. He said he hates it. I tried to get more info out of him in a playful way, so he thinks its boring and they are too strict. He said its like torture and you spend too much time away from home because of it.

I will check outtl those resources thank you x

@Chachahacha thank you so much. Last night we watched "The Disruptors" together (after I had watched alone to make sure it was something he would relate to) under the premise that I thought I might have ADHD (I think I do).

He didn't know what it was and was interested in the concept so we watched it.
He kept saying "thats me! Thats me" and admitted he thought he had OCD but now he thinks it might be ADHD.

He admitted that he got in trouble for things like tapping his pen on the table and not being able to sit still.

He also related to one boy in the documentary who kept being sent out of class to sit in the hall. I asked whether that sort of punishment still happned these days (we are in the UK) and he said he was always being sent out of class to sit on the floor outside the classroom. I was shocked as I didn't think that still happened these days??He isn't known for being a fibber but I dont know whether this it true or not?

I will be calling the SENCO team next week, after I speak to him again and let him know we are going to help him with getting in trouble with the teacher.
I think after the documentary he will be on board.

It was really great because it showed all the positives of having this special brain, and all the successful people now and in history who had ADHD (or suspected ADHD) - he was particularly taken with Einstein and Tesla.

The introduction to ADHD went better than I could have hoped!!
And I am now confident in asking for a diagnosis, that he will have a positive attitude about it.

Oh I am so glad this was useful! I honestly feel like my relationship with my son has improved a lot since I started looking at his behaviour through a different lens. We have his ADHD appt this week and regardless of the outcome I feel better equipped to work with him and the school.

My son was regularly sent out of class in Y7, which annoyed me no end as he had missed so much school in lockdown - he was one of those children that lockdown was a complete disaster for, and he has much ground to make back up as a result. He also got punished for not waiting his turn in the lunch queue by having to sit on a chair outside the school office at lunchtime for a week :( I was told it was 'an opportunity for him to revise for his exams', but he just sat there watching the chaos around him. So many times I have had to tell my son to just take it on the chin and move on while the school continued to dish out punishments that don't work. His resilience is impressive really. It is good that he tells you what has happening. The school can tell you if there is another side to the story but it is also important that he feels he has your support if something sounds unreasonable. My trust in the school process has become a little battered after the last year unfortunately and I write notes about a lot of things as I go . It can help you build a pattern of what is happening and try to get to the root cause of what is causing problems, which our school seemed completely disinterested in doing until we reached a breaking point and I engaged directly with the SENCO.

I hope you don't mind me joining your thread. DS (also 10) has the traits listed in your OP. He also takes things very literally. The hierarchy in his friendship circle has shifted and one of the children makes comments like he hates him and isn't his friend (and to others) this upsets him for weeks afterwards and he almost becomes fixated that this friend doesn't like him even after the others have moved on.

He has just come back from a party, very subdued but said he was fine. Accidentally hurt his brother, didn't want to admit it, work out what happened and we told him we appreciate it was an accident but he does need to say sorry. In the meantime his brother has stopped crying and was chatting and smiling. DS got very upset saying his brother is laughing at him because he has been asked to apologise for accidentally hurting him. DS became hysterical screaming, sobbing, throwing himself on the floor. He calmed down after about fifteen minutes and is now acting fine although a bit more fidgety then normal.

Need to follow up with the school as he was being referred for ADHD assessment at the end of last academic year.

I don't have time to reply properly right now but i wanted to let you know I haven't disappeared from the thread and I will be back later ! X

Also...if you have time...watch this it's an interview with Gabor Mate, who I know because he does a lot of work around trauma. I know the interviewee is controversial but try to put that to the side!! I'd love to hear your views.

Hello just an update to say we have had his ADHD diagnosis confirmed now. My son took it quite well but clearly working through lots of very mixed feelings at the moment and we are having to be very sensitive to the fact that it is a bit of a shock to him - despite having lots of conversations beforehand. We told school and asked them to keep an eye on him and they have offered him time with a TA that he likes and trusts to talk things through, which I haven't pressed him on too much as to how it went. He obviously isn't ready to talk to us about it. I feel similar mixed emotions but I really feel that we are in a better position now to work with the school towards a more positive future.

Thank you for updating, wow, shit just got real. I hope the diagnosis is something positive for your son and your family on the whole. I guess you won't know the effects of the diagnosis until some time passes? I still haven't spoken to the school about it, I don't know why I am procrastinating. I stupidly spoke to my mum about it and she watched the film but she doesn't think he has it. She just thinks he has lots of energy. He's not getting into too much trouble at school, we never have a bad report etc, so its made me rethink things a bit. I spoke to ds about maybe getting us both checked for it and during the conversation he was moving around like a fish out of water on the bed so we ended the conversation as he wasn't listening!!

Thank you for sharing and I apologise its taken so long to reply to you.

Your description of your son reminds me of mine. Sometimes he thinks people are laughing at him and gets very upset...his face will go red and he will cry...I mean he is able to control it better now but I can see the hot tears wanting to come, bless him.

Gosh, thats a long time to wait for an assessment. Is that normal??