how do you keep your kid focused? even if she seems focused ....

[joburg]

My daughter has not yet been diagnosed with SPD but she has all the signs of it (i already asked questions about it in a previous thread and got answers, thank you all). Anyway, my new question regards our çonversations' which are most of the times surrealistic. She has difficulties sitting still when we talk and i try hard to have her in a still position plus looking into my eyes (no toys in her hands, no chewing, even if she is almost 6 years old, she still does this frequently) and even so, she seems to register very little of what we are talking together. It takes me a great deal of effort to stop her from fidgeting, swinging, looking around until she settles down and listens to me. I try to use short sentences, easy words, easy concepts but many times she seems lost. We talk about the difference about 2 things, she says she doesn't know it and i'm asking her to ask me a question related to our 'subject. The next moment she doesn't even remeber the subject of our discussion. I spell out smth like 'tomorrow is sunday, so what day is tomorrow? she answers friday. I explain to her that grandmother X is my mother, spelling out grand .... mother, emphasize the mother word, and when i ask her what grandmother is she says father. I ask her to take a thing to the bathroom, she takes it to the kitchen. I'm completely lost. She is not a bad child and she tries to please me but it really seems she doesn't 'hear' things. Is this a concentration issue, is it something else? am i expecting too much from a 6 year old? I'm loosing my mind, please help!

are you getting any speech therapy input for her? a lot of what you describe sounds par for the course with a receptive language problem. i wouldn't force eye contact - as for some people (especially but not exclusively those on the asd spectrum) the effort required to maintain eye contact can make it harder to concentrate on speech - just encourage her to look at the person's head/shoulder area rather than the eyes.

I know with my boy if he's sitting there playing with toys or in front of a video game he can come out with some cracking sentences - but if I ask him a question he can struggle to both understand the question and formulate a suitable response, so surreal is a word I would also use to describe some of my conversations with DS. with some of the things you describe, having a visual back up could help - so if you have a calendar in front of you when you talk about the time issues.

in terms of the restlessness - she might be a little undersensitive to movement (useful book on sensory issues - the out of sync child). so giving her plenty of opportunities for movement in general - eg. having a trampoline she can go on - can help run off that energy.

Does your DD mix up the ?questions at all? e.g answer a where to a what question etc? My DS still does this, so I am about to order this for me to use at home with DS to work on his conversational skills (asking/answering questions etc)

www.sayitright.org/wh_questions.html

he has used the game once at a speech therapy session and it looked good (my DS loves board games atm so it will be a fun way to practice).

Another thing that was recommended to me by speech therapy for the question words was to use a visual - either a picture or do the sign when asking questions.

Thank you TotalChaos. No our daughter never mixes when and what and why, she just gets sometimes completely blank. As for speech therapy, again the same issue as in the previous posts, still waiting for the school to accept the fact that we have an issue (otherwise, after spring holiday we have to take it on our own. It costs hugely over here, but the school teacher keeps telling us there is nothing to worry about. I guess we have to do it on our own. She has pronounciation difficulties on every single new word we are learning) Do you think all these might be related to SPD or shall i start looking into something else?
Many times i do gymnastics myself together with her (good for myself too ) because otherwise i cannot have her stop moving around and climbing whatever there is to climb around her!

We got an assesment for her already regarding sensory integration issues. It turned out dissastrous... all her parameters were under the minimum normal standards! But the teacher totally disagreed with the report, so i thought, hey, i might be paranoid, the teacher maybe knows better. TClanger, thank you for your post. Could you please explain more about the kooch balls and the fabric?

TC, ADHD was my first guess, but then all the others said calm down, we'll wait and see, she's too young. In the meantime, DD gets fish oil and i get positive feedback from the school since we started with it. Hoping for the best! Hopefully DD will start OT sessions after the spring holididay. Do you think this is gonna help? I'm just afraid there is more but i guess starting with this would help.

We have just got one of those balls you use for pilates (£10) and friends son is enjoying sitting on it while watching tv etc.

have also had success with bits of bubble wrap to pop for distraction if stuck in car etc.

Another possibility could be auditory processing issues, ie she can hear you ok but it's how she's processing what she hears. This follows on from Tclangers sensory comments.