Hello all,
I posted here for the first time in April and got some excellent advice and support. That advice led us to taking my son to a neuro-psychologist for a thorough evaluation. We met with her to discuss the test results today.
As expected, she concluded he is gifted and ADHD. We pretty much knew this going in, but the testing was worth it. We did not know if there were any other problems or how severe his ADHD was until now. We wanted to quantify it as much as possible.
Fortunately, there were no other conditions. After reviewing everything she judged his ADHD to be about a 7 or 8 on a 1-10 scale (10 being most severe). That was not a clinical number, but a judgement based on experience. The most interesting thing we learned though was that his learning potential is greater if we can improve his attention problems. That would seem intuitive, but he's pretty darn smart to begin with and I didn't see how he could learn much better than he does now. Our problems weren't with him not learning , but rather impulsiveness and hyperactivity. Honestly, I thought his attention span wasn't that bad.
But her tests clearly showed how he could do better when challenged in a way that forced him to try a little harder.
She recommended trying some meds and requesting some accomodations at school. We are going to talk to our pediatrician about an Rx this week. I'd like to see how he does with it before school is out.
I would be interested to hear from anyone with a similar child about what meds might work best. He's 6, does not eat much (but isn't underweight - yet), sleeps like a log and is very fidgety.
Thanks again for the support!
My son has impulsive issues. He doesn't have much of a focus issue in school ( he did early on when we first found out about ad/hd for him), but after his meds wear off in the late afternoon we see more focus issues and hyperactivity.
Currently we are on 10 mg. Foacalin XR once daily (started at age 4 on 5 mg. and prior to his 6th b-day we increased). He too is very smart and was recently tested for g/t. He scored very high on the sub test the school gave. My son is 6 1/2 and in kinder due to b-day landing late in the year. He doesn't have eating issues other than typical kid pickiness.
Something you may want to look into ...a 6 hour glucose tolerance test. We found out when looking into ad/hd our son has reactive hypoglycemia. Our doctor asked us to look into this as well. He says and research backs up his thoughts...that the symptons related to hypoglycemia can trigger some of the impulsitivity issues. As a result we make sure our son has plenty of protein and try to go low carb with him. We met with a nutritionist per psychiatrist recommendation.
4myson39580.8188773148 Congratulations on getting the dx. Me and my son liked Focalin the best. Good luck on everything.We tried the Focalin and he was like a zombie, but my ds is around 2-3 on a scale of 10. He currently is taking vyvanse, 30 mg. and doing well