… or some other attention problem. Sorry for the massive post.
he has basically self-diagnosed himself from information / tests that he has found online.
I don’t really know how to react. Do I rush him off to the dr and push it forward? Or do I try to reassure him that even if there is something there, he is going to have to learn to work around / with it anyway?
i don’t know enough about it to know him seriously to take it.
we are in France btw, but all English speaking at home. So he’s fully bilingual more but had a rough time adjusting in nursery when he has to learn French.
he has always had a short attention span for anything other than technology / tv - though even there he flicks around a lot. As a child he frequently lost interest and walked away from any crafty / arty / science projects before the end. School homework was always done just good enough… that’s still the case. As school has got more academically challenging, and more chalk-and -talk, his marks have really slipped. He’s clever, there have never been any issues with his ability, but I can see he doesn’t put the time in at home to study. In class, he says that he zones out frequently, more than his friends, so much so that they and teachers comment on it. Several of his teachers have mentioned lack of concentration in his most recent report card.
when he was 8, in primary, his teacher raised a concern that ‘something’ was up: in writing exercises he would frequently leave sentences unfinished. Here, it’s up to the parents to take these things forward so he went for a whole range of tests - I think some of them don’t even exist in English! He saw an orthophoniste, psychométricien, and a psychiatrist. It took two years due to waiting times in total, and the assessment didn’t raise any alarm bells. They reckoned that his writing issue was normal for a bilingual child with no French at home. They did note that he was very ‘fast’ to do everything, and would produce eg less detailed drawings than expected of his age, because he wanted to get it done and finished. This is 100% him, his whole life we’ve been telling him to slow down and do it properly! He’s never had an issue with sitting still, or doing what he’s told etc. In school afaik. He’s just done - and away!
socially he is absolutely fine and always has been. he’s got lots of friends, including old ones from nursery. He’s had 2-3 girlfriends, pretty normal teenage romances. He hangs out with different groups, goes to the gym. He’s pretty happy in himself. His teachers genuinely seem to like him, as do most people he meets.
The main concern / frustration is school and his results. All his teachers say the same: his marks don’t reflect his ability, and he needs to ‘work harder’ and ‘concentrate more’ to improve. The academic system here is very mark - driven with constant testing, and it’s not student-led: the teachers teach the content and it’s up to the student to keep up. Plus he’s in one of the best ie most ‘rigorous’ lycée in the city, so there is a lot of pressure.
DH is an experienced lycée teacher reckons he’s immature about his work (he’s the youngest in his year, birthday literally two days before the cut off 🙄) and not really taking responsibility. I agree with this, and feel it’s ‘just’ him. And yes I do think that he should try harder to concentrate. Or just accept that it’s normal to zone out during maths and it’s not indicative of anything that needs diagnosing. When I go over homework or help him revise for tests, he’s always pushing to get it done ‘efficiently’ (his words 🙄) ie as fast as possible. I know that he isn’t memorising, learning by rote as he should be.
So what do we do? Go along with him and pursue tests? Or acknowledge that he finds certain things difficult and look at ways to change that?
I’m concerned that he’s convinced himself that ADHD is why he’s struggling to get good marks, and he’s using that as a way to cop out of really knuckling down. And we almost have to get (expensive) tests done to prove him wrong? 🤷♀️