son is constantly taking things apart! | ADHD Information
hello my 12 yr old son is adhd well here the past 4 months my son is constantly taking things aprt!! first was his bike! then his skateboard. then it went to his dad's stuff! and he gets into his dad's tools to do this and then the tools are lost! and the garage looks like a tornado went thru it!!! he is on 30 mg of adderall xr and hetakes zoloft too!! is this a adhd trait?? or as my friends call it "" he is just being a boy and boys like to take thingsapart''?? and its an all the time thing ! when he gets up in the mornin something is being as he calls it "" fixed properly'' and till the time its time to go to bed~~~ he dont even wanna come in and eat!!! and hiseating habits arent good! he barely eats!! me and his dad have told him over and over to stay out of the garage and leave things alone~ but still he does it! and me and his dad have had huge arguments over this!!! any suggestions~ ty for reading this.... kimme~I don't think it's a 'boy' thing. My son has been taking things apart for 3 years. I went to 2nd hand stores to find stereos, clocks, anything mechanical. I also found these really cool box things that would make a cassette player and anything scientific. He now is only slightly enthusiastic about taking things apart. Took all of the fun out of it when it was his stuff.Wow! I had no idea that this was a common thing for Children with ADHD. My 2 year old does the same thing. He seems obsessed with Daddy's tools, especially screw drivers. When he can manage to sneak and get one, he starts trying to unscrew everything in the house, and usually he settles for his fingers and will unscrew my kitchen chairs every single day! And has recently found that most things run on batteries, so now he finds where the batteries are on everything and takes them out! I guess I'm really in for it when he gets older.
Ging
Some kids take things apart because they love figuring out how things work. After a few years of practice, they start putting things together again. Then they start inventing new things ... If allowed to flourish, they may become engineers or something.See the Project Lab pages for inspirational writing about this sort of child:
http://borntoexplore.org/plab/plab.htm
I would suggest buying a bunch of stuff that he's allowed to take apart. It's best if it's stuff that still works -- the fun is figuring out how it works, which is hard to do if it's not working. You can buy things like windup alarm clocks at garage sales.
Hi Kimme. You know, my 8 year-old son also takes things apart. He too loves using his Dad's tools. As soon as Dad goes to work, our son is quietly going through his Dad's tool box. He also loves assisting my husband whenever it comes to working on the cars or the bikes or anything the little guy can get his hands on. There have been occasions where my husband and I used to get irritated and yell at the little guy to stop but then we figured, you know, it's better than him sitting in front of the TV watching those awful things on Cartoon Network. I've read some suggestions here also by other posters to buy used clocks, alarms, et cetera, which is such a great idea, so he can have fun pulling those things apart. For us, I think once we changed our perspectives and stopped fretting and fighting over the screwing and unscrewing of things, we figured just let him enjoy himself as long as he's not hurting himself or anyone else. Who knows, maybe our sons will become great MIT mechanical engineers some day!
Leticia
Hi Julie - when our son was small like that, we just didn't buy expensive things that he could break. I used books as well as a lot of things around the house to keep him entertained instead. We made playdoh every week, we made a puppet show box and sock puppets, any craft type thing seemed to be a good thing for him.
Now he knows that if he breaks it, I won't replace it. He takes much better care of his stuff.
One thing that he loved at that age: Save all your little droppers from baby tylenol (or whatever) and get a muffin tin and a roll of white paper towels. Cover the kitchen table with newspaper, fill the muffin tin with a litte water and different colors of food coloring in each tin, and a dropper in each one. Then put down a double layer of paper towels in front of her, show her how to suck up the colors in the droppers and squeeze it out on the paper towels. I could usually get a whole dinner made and ready for the table before he got bored with making various patterns. Yeah - we went through a ton of paper towels, but so what? 
Much luck.
You can buy her toys such as lego. You can get lego with gears and things, so it can be put together to "do" interesting stuff and she can take it apart to see how it works without breaking anything.
My 7 1/2 year old loves to take things apart and fix themn. She uses whatever she can find to do it to.....Example of this...she will try to fix her bike with a garden shovel (the little ones that u use inflower beds) or she will pull nails out of the deck with my little shovel and then pound them back in. Usually uses a rock to pound them back. It is really annoying somedays to hear that rock pounding, but she is enjoying herself.....
Leanne
My Grandson doesn't take things apart. But when my youngest son was little he took things apart.....we bought him his own tools so he wouldn't use his Dad's . He isn't ADHD...but today he is a Chemical Engineer:)Hi. This is kinda off the subject here, but I am looking for some ideas on how to teach my 3 year old daughter who has ADHD not to break all of her toys. She doesnt have one toy in her room that she hasnt broken. I believe that she is trying to take it apart and see how it works, but she is just so destructive. Am I looking at this wrong, should I not be concerned that she is breaking all of her toys. It doesnt seem to bother her?
anyone have any advice?
HI
I just wanted to add that when i was married my parents in law would tell me stories about how my husband would take anything he could find apart. He took apart his grandma's washing machine one day to see if he could make it spin faster. And he would pick stuff out of the garbage and try to make it work. That is what interested him. They let him do it cause he wasn't in trouble. His rules were, he couldnt touch anything that wasnt broken. NO more "fixing" the appliances that were already running. But he could find whatever he wanted from the junk store or the trash. They bought him inexpensive set of tools and when they were lost he could not have any more, unless he bought them himself. Well, he ended up learning how to fix all kinds of things. Guess what he does for a living? He is a mechanic (very good one I might add) and in his spare time he fixes peoples computers, radios, etc . for money
Hi again. I thought I'd share this excerpt I read this morning from chapter 5 of the book entitled, SEVEN TIMES SMARTER by Laurel Schmidt, regarding exploring and discovering:
"Dismantling is a complex thinking process, but most seven- or eight-year-olds are up to the challenge. Taking things apart lets kids exercise their logical, kinesthetic, and visual intelligence. Direct sensory contact--touching, pushing, pulling--helps them discover the rules governing objects like gears, circuits, levers, pistons, springs, and switches. This purposeful handwork is the most powerful way to activate logical thinking and the surest way to retain it.
"Kids who deconstruct make hunches, test ideas, and try again, which is exactly how scientists go about their work. They strengthen eye-hand coordination, patience, memory, and persistence, skills they need for practical real-world problem solving and for success in school. But it's their flexible thinking that allows them to transform and invent."
Leticia
Hi Kimme, my ten year old does the same exact thing, he has taken apart all of his skateboards, and even spray painted his mongoose bike, he said it needed to be updated. My sons dad doesn't live with us, so what ever tools he can get his hands on, he is using, his new things is cars, he'll be like i have to go check the tires air pressure, or maybe we should go check the oil, I'm hoping he just wants to be a mechanic like his dad, my like I'll get up one day, and my car will be stripped.