My daughter might have ADHD,I only realized that recently when I met my ADHD husband and did researches.I landed here and started reading books.I know I should not diagnose her but these are the signs from her from baby to 9 years.
Firstly this is what I noticed from her at a young age at pre-school:
She would not sit still in class,she was always restless,she would not listen to her teacher's principal NOBODY,not even me.She would cause the whole class to be dysfunctional with her distractions of getting up all the time and not sitting still,the teacher's would call me in for meetings every month to discuss her inattentiveness.
She did all that from 5 years to 8 years.Now she has been getting bad grades in school,I would stay at home and prepare her for a weekly test she has on reading or math, and she would ALWAYS come last in test.She forgets EVERYTHING I teach her the very next day.
She eats eats eats nonstop,she is always eating and watching TV,always looking in the fridge for something to eat or nibbling on snacks,She would never listen to me when I tell her to slow down on the eating,apparently it comforts her and keeps her still,it's the only thing that keeps her still when she is eating food.And now she is overweight for her age.
She is very messy,she would not put away her toys and the room is always a mess,I would clean the room now and next 2 minutes the room is back the same way again.I am getting worried about this now.Her father has classic signs of ADHD and that is why we are not together today,he went undetected for all his life and still is.Now my daughter is showing up signs of ADHD today and I always thought it was a growing stage and nothing else.I could never take her on vacations with me b/c of her hyperness and and she just could never sit still.She would tire me out soo much and she still do now.
I am not sure if this is classic ADHD and if anyone could please give me some insight on this I would be grateful.And I would seek the proper diagnose for her this week,I am already setting up an appointment.
thank you.
lovehurts
hi lovehurts,my sympathies.
Submitted by Mysteria on
hi lovehurts,
my sympathies. I have a girl who has just been diagnosed with adhd. She shares the symptoms you describe. She easily goes overboard in so many things, whether its speed, games, eating, being happy, being sad. It's like her internal compass in malfunctioning, the needle circling around wildly and sometimes getting stuck. She is 13 and in many areas she behaves like an out-of control 6-year-old.
I have put so much time and effort and love and encouragement to making my girl more average. Not to force her into anything, but to help her survive school and get along with people a little bit better. Even if she is different, she needs to learn the rules that all the other people go by. Otherwise, she will be very lonely and not even pass school.
How are your girl's social skills? My 13-year-old loves people and is very sociable, yet has difficulties in normal interaction. She interrupts, doesn't listen to others, babbles on about her own things non-stop and wonders why her friends sometimes get tired of her or think she is really self-centered. Not only has she issues, but she is also pretty clueless as to why and how she makes people avoid her company. Luckily she has many friends, this is a miracle and a result of our consistent teaching her and supporting her and drawing boundaries.
She is not on the map when it comes to her evident learning problems, either. She can feel really bad about herself, complains in class loudly that she doesn't "get it", often blames the teacher for not helping her enough etc although she gets so much extra support.
She has a really low self-esteem in many ways, yet is totally preoccupied with self. She is extremely athletic and creative and in principle interested in so many things, but even these arts are not fascinating enough for her to concentrate on them. Instead, she repeats things, wanders around the house, jumps around, talks nonstop...
I hope medication would slow her down a bit and give her room to discover herself. My husband is against medication so we'll see.
Have they started testing your daughter yet?
Good luck with the tests and all the best otherwise, too :).
one more thing - if the symptoms have been present since young age, that always makes it more likely that your girl's behaviour could be adhd related. To diagnose adhd properly, I think a thorough parental interview and thorough cognitive tests and interviews with the child are needed. This way, they can discover a lot that even the wisest parent doesn't see. We found out how her learning difficulties manifest themselves in certain fields, areas and cases and how she is above average in certain things. The results were much more than self-evident stuff, we really got a lot out of them and now know better how to encourage her to develop her weaknesses and use her strengths, and also accept her uniqueness. One thing about testing is that you can put the problems into perspective - you'll find out whether her problems qualify as mild adhd, adhd or neither but she has some areas where she has adhd characteristics. The proportion of the challenges needs to be assessed before you can consider different options for treatment. This is btw all just my personal experience, no offense meant if someone disagrees or has negative experiences from adhd tests.