Does my 5 year old really have ADHD? | ADHD Information

My son is 5 1/2 and he has been diagnosed with imulsive ad/hd since he was just barely 4..  He was given an QEEG test and was observed extensively by family, daycare teachers, doctors.  He also was given a glucose tolerance test and with this we found out he has reactive hypoglycemia which can trigger some behaviors.  Play therapy was also a part of our doctor's recommendation although we already had that in place prior to him.  I'm a teacher and I knew I had to start somewhere.

I also suspected my son's dad had ad/hd.  Come to find out he does and he is now on meds too.  I am a firm believer that genes and environment go hand and hand when it comes to ad/hd. 

My belief is ... if you catch it early then you can save the children a lot of stress and hardship once they enter school.  My son in my opinion going to be starting school in the fall with a great chance for success that he might not have had if I had waited.  I know this is  controversial but I just believe everyone deserves a quality life.  My son is on 5 mg. Foacalin and we have never had to change his dosage.  He is doing quite well.  You honestly would not know that he has ad/hd unless he misses a day of his med.  I had someone recently share with me their son had ad/hd and I of course replied  mine too.  She said no way and of course I had to hold back a tear of joy.  I knew at that moment or should I say I confirmed at that moment that my son was on the road to a healthier life. 

good luck with your journey...

There's just too many variables in this situation. No, I would not accept the diagnosis at this time. To me, forcing an early diagnosis is nothing but trouble UNLESS the child is truly intolerable at home or something is just seriously and wrong. Time cures many things. I would give your child the gift of time.  Valuable neuropsyche testing cannot be done until age seven. Before that you can get limited testing. The learning disability thing is funky. BTW, that literally means one to two years behind in a particular subject, but your child has not entered school. My very expensive neuropsyche anticipated a writing learning disability after evaluating my son at age six. No go, he did fine with writing in second grade. It was a guess and it was wrong. You don't know until you are there. Also you can toss the "significant" adjective out the door. Severe, moderate, mild and so forth are totally subjective and depend on the environment. In your shoes I would take the conservative approach and consider that my child possibly has mild ADHD, bone up on the subject, and go from there.

K7Kate, please dont take offense. Obviously children CAN be diagnosed before age 7. That is what the criteria is though. The reason for this is as I stated above, kids change so much at this age. As you stated this is NOT the case for every child, that goes without saying. Also no one is saying you shouldnt HELP your child or have them checked out if you have concerns. What I am personally saying is absolutely do every thing you can for your child and what will be best for him/her. I was LITERALLY at my wits end with my NT daughter a year ago. And I have an older ADHD child, but she was awful! She isnt any more. She matured and is able to cotrol her self better. This wasnt magic, we helped her learn this stuff, but my point is she matured and and things CAN change. Every person who waits is not doing an injustice to their child, and every person who doesnt wait is not doing an injustice to their child. It's not quite that black and white. It's a very personal decision for every family to make.

bjrossington wants to know if she HAS to agree with this diagnosis and no she does not have to do anything. Her child has a lot of concerns that can be related to the delay and behaviors. There are physicians out ther who throw a quick a label on things. And most LD's are not able to be diagnosed prior to age 6 as children under 6 are not able to developmentally perform the testing required. My dd has both ADHD and an LD. We have to repaet the testing on my NT as we cannot test for LD at age 5.

Diane V39288.703587963I wasn't directing anything at you Diane V...I was just venting and I used this post as a sounding board.  I didn't mean to sound as if I was directing my words at anyone in particular.  I wasn't. 

To bjrossington

You have so many things going on with this child that I would not take any diagnosis of this type as being even close to final. That does not  mean that she is not ADHD but does mean that it could be a lot of other things also from severe to benign.

A number of issues can mimic ADHD and need to be ruled out. All of the things you listed could be a factor. I might suggest that when you get back  home, get with some really good people who are equipped to deal with this. In this case I might suggest multi-disciplinaryassessment, perhaps a good hospital based clinic with known expertise.

Be aware that at age 5 you may not be able to find out all that you need to know.  I suggest that you get the best, go with what they give you, but be firmly aware that this may well change as she ages and more data comes in.

Good luck and keep on probing. Give her the best you got and keep on working. It is very much worth the fight.

Diz

 

 

 

My daughter turned 5 today and was diagnosed this week as having 'significant ADHD combined with a likely learning disorder' (she struggles with conceptual/abstract things such as basic arithmetic).  However, her situation is fairly unique (as set out below) and I am not sure whether to accept the diagnosis at this stage:

- her hearing was severely impaired until she had 'tubes' inserted and her adenoids removed at the age of three and a half.

- immediately after that operation we moved to Africa where she was thrust into a cross-cultural, trilingual environment.  Although we speak in English at home, she has been going to a French speaking school and understandably finding it tough going, though she is starting to get to grips with French a bit more now.

- a year ago, her baby brother was born.  She is now the second of three children.

- she does have trouble concentrating, remembering/processing instructions, and she is certainly a very active and emotional child but I would not describe her behaviour as extreme.  She is a 'handful' but then so are many kids.

I would be very grateful for any thoughts on:

- the diagnosis we have been given

- the extent to which past hearing problems and a multi-lingual environment (which can produce a lot of frustration and tiredness) could lead to a premature diagnosis of ADHD

- the kind of tests we should get done/professionals we should see when we go back to the UK for four months next Spring.

Thanks so much. 

- the diagnosis we have been given 5 is young. Not unheard of, but young.

the extent to which past hearing problems and a multi-lingual environment (which can produce a lot of frustration and tiredness) could lead to a premature diagnosis of ADHD     ABSOLUTELY

the kind of tests we should get done/professionals we should see when we go back to the UK for four months next Spring.  Will she be 6 at this point? If you can wait until after age 6 and get a full neuropsych evaluation at that point it will be a lot easier to distinguish both the ADHD and the LD. Did they make a suggestion of what kind of LD? Language based or non verbal learning?

Now I'll elaborate a little on my opinion. What promtped the diagnosis in the first place? Is she struggling a lot at school? If so how?

We had my daughter evaluated at school for a few reasons this year at age almost 5. She was delayed in handwriting, socially and was behaving "differently", tantrums at home and disruptive in class. Basically they said, we should wait things out until after age 6. Over the past 8 or 9 months she has matured drastically. We did a lot for her, used a solid, very consistent discipline plan (similar to MAgic 1 2 3) and I obsessivley arranged playdates to get her playing with kids her own age one on one. Some of it was this some of it maturity.

This age is SO difficult to know what is "normal" and what is not as the spectrum of "normal" is so wide.

 

 

Diane V39288.6554513889I am also a firm believer that the sooner a child is diagnosed and receives treatment, the better.  I do not believe that a child can't be diagnosed before age 6 or 7...whatever it is.  We all know how children are in school...they're downright mean!  Why wait until a child is in school, failing, struggling, being "labeled" by their peers and then do something?  If you're planning on having your kids attend the same school district their entire school career, that can be very difficult on them.  They spend the next 10+ years with the same children year after year and they had already formed their opinions, bonds way back when they were 6 or 7!

I'm sorry, I'm ranting!  I'm just tired of hearing people say children cannot be accurately diagnosed at such an early age.  That may have been the belief years ago...but doctors, teachers, etc. are changing their ways about this.  If they didn't,  my child wouldn't be getting the help he is now. 

I say, if you're concerned about your child, no matter what their age, get them checked out...what can it hurt?  We all know our own children best...no one else and every situation is completely different from another!  There may be common denominators with all our situations but each and every one of us still has a unique set of circumstances.

I'm done....sorry!  lol

 

As a teacher and parent, I aways advise parents of struggling 5 and 6 year olds to have thorough testing by an audiologist and speech therapist.  The tests should focus not just on the level of hearing and quality of speech but also the ability to process.  Our son had very poor auditory processing and  worked with a speech therapist to learn basic language patterns.  Words like under over between had to be learn.  These are words learned as a toddler.  Because their processing is so poor they need to learn these.  We actually have a great audiologist/speech pathologist in Brisbane Australia if you want to travel

We see him every few years to check the levels.  He then made recommendations to a speech therapist who work with our son.  We would work with him every day for 15 minutes to learn a set speech pattern.  I'm sure a supportive speech therapist could do this based upon thorough testing. 

The next port of call is a pediatrician - I also like an IQ test so I can see where the deficits are and if there is any  learning difficulties that may explain your child's difficulties.  This is like a crystal ball into your child's head!!!  Our pediatrician specialises in learning and behavioural difficulties and uses a number of computer programs as well as testing brain waves and IQ.  I like having all of this "physical evidence" rather than just depending on what is said about the child.

It may also be worthwhile getting a checklist for ADHD for your child's teacher to fill in so that when you go to the specialist you have a view point of a specialist to give more of an insight.  

I agree that 5 is tricky for a diagnosis, however a experienced teacher can see patterns of behaviour that stick right out!!!  There are some teachers who have no idea!!!!

Write a thorough history and also thorough observations of your child now while she is in her normal surroundings. 

Good luck!

HI Jan, I would not jump on the ADHD diagnosis just yet...I think you are wise to wait until you get back to England...Based on your description you may want to investigate CAPD or Central Auditory Processing Disorder...there are some good books on this and one written by a mother titled " like sound through water"...my nephew was just diagnosed with this ( almost 6years old) and prior to intervention he sounded like your daughter especially in the area of academic skills.  With the help of the Linda Mood Bell Reading program he has made amazing progress this summer and is now starting to read and sound out words.

A huge thank you to all of those who have taken the trouble to reply to my post.  The responses have been encouraging and enlightening, even if you don't agree on everything!

We are currently in Kenya, and taking advantage of the medical options on offer here, before we travel back to Rwanda.  Since I posted a day or so ago, we have seen an occupational therapist, a speech therapist and an audiologist, so I thought I would give you a brief update.

Neither the OT or the ST are remotely worried about our daughter.  Her motor skills are fine and her speech, whilst slightly delayed, is what you would expect from a child who has had hearing problems, and she has made huge progress since she had the tubes fitted 18 months ago.  Both these professionals were very doubtful about the ADHD diagnosis on the basis that she cooperated fully and was attentive throughout both appointments.  When I mentioned this to the psychiatrist who made the initial diagnosis, he put this down to the ability of many ADHDers to 'hyperfocus' when an activity catches their imagination.

The audiologist confirmed that our daughter has residual hearing problems in one ear, but I don't think this is a factor in her behaviour.  This professional also thought it unlikely that our daughter has anything more than a mild case of ADHD, but she did think there was something in the learning disorder diagnosis.

Our daughter does seem to have some 'processing issues'.  For example, she had a perfectly normal five minute conversation (questions and answers) with the audiologist, but then struggled when it came to the hearing exercises.  She was supposed to give the Dr a piece of lego every time she heard a noise in her ear, but even though she seemed to understand that instruction, every time she heard a noise she would just clutch the lego and wait for the Dr to ask her if she had heard a noise.  I prompted her on a number of occasions but she rarely if ever followed this fairly simple instruction on her own initiative.  The audiologist found this strange for a child who has just turned 5.

It was precisely this issue of not processing/understanding abstract instructions and concepts that prompted us to seek help with her our daughter, rather than the classic ADHD symptoms. 

The audiologist was also concerned that our daughter does not really recognise any letters or have any grasp of numbers.

She has kindly arranged for us to see a friend of hers who is some kind of ed psychologist.

Right now therefore, we are more concerned about the LD side of things, although we are not dismissing the ADHD diagnosis.  We are considering hiring a personal classroom assistant for the next six months back in Kigali.  That would be good for her French and stop her from getting distracted when the children are doing exercises on their own.

We are reluctant to start her on Ritalin, given the uncertainty surrounding her diagnosis and the lack of available supervision in Kigali.  We would consider it in the future though.

I guess we then need to wait for our time back in the UK next Spring, in order to get a second opinion from an ADHD expert and see an ed psychologist who will no doubt do a lot of tests (the pyschiatrist has mentioned neuro-psych).

In the meantime, we will give her a lot of love, attention and prayer.

Thanks again, and any further advice would be much appreciated.

Bruce and Jan Rossington