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What is this? Social issue


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*Update in Post #15*

 

We are waiting on reports from recent evals, but this is killing me.  Can you name it?

 

My 10 yr old son wants to be in groups with kids, do activities, seeks the attention and time with others.  However, he is reserved, quiet, doesn't speak up much, and often misses cues or what's happening.  Example, in small group at scouts, the boys were to vote on a yell for their group.  I asked if he got to vote or voted, and he wasn't sure if he had or not.  If I or another caring adult isn't there to walk him through, he misses what's going on, lags behind.

 

My husband said he was the same way and always struggled in school because of it.  He know has a few close friends, but I find he still misses cues like when a conversation should end or we should leave a place.  His mother has it, too.  She is unable to even hold a job because she can't understand what is happening or keep up or gets too upset by others or something.

 

I know they all have ADHD or something very like it; although, I don't have a dx for that.  Does anyone else have this?

Edited by mymommy1
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Oh dear, how long do you have to wait?  I would send you chocolates, but I've been eating all of mine!  Maybe get some chocolates and a pedicure? (I've never had one, but it would be relaxing and something to do, lol)  

 

I know it's awful sigh.  I mean, which could try to tell you what you already know, but we could be wrong.  There are some other things that could explain it too.  Sometimes you have just very, very low processing speed, for instance, running in a family.  Or really nasty inattention.  Did they have you fill out some questionaires for ASD?  Like did you do the ADI-R or the Gilliam or...?  Because if you did, then you know if that's even a direction the psych is going.  

 

I'm sorry it's hard.  This is for your 10 yo?  In school?  (not in your sig)  When do you get your report?  Sometimes the psychs do a sit down talk with the parents say 2 weeks later and then take longer for the report.  Hopefully it will be soon for you!   :)

Edited by OhElizabeth
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I usually ask a ton of questions, but I did not think to ask all the tests she did.  I do know that i did the long questionaire and then also an interview with similar types of questions.  I didn't think waiting would be too hard since we've waited so long to test, but starting back to homeschool this week is a pain.  I don't want to go in a different direction until I have more info, but I'm so tired of the fits and lack of progress.  School is both boring and too hard.

 

We do have to wait a bit because we tested at the local university, but she did oodles of tests and then called us back for another for motor testing.  I just wonder if the testing will help with the social side at all. 

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When we had testing for my oldest the social side of things didn't come up, nor the processing, and it really should have at least been explored by the np, knowing what I know now. Socially, she's actually good but the effect of the sensory stuff almost seems worse with age as the demands of life increase. So it all makes me wonder. Her only dx is CAPD through an audiologist. She could have had the same type of problems you describe.

 

This round with another dd was different. The np didn't want to know too much going in, and it was only after the first session that the questions related to social stuff came up. But even before going in, just getting the briefest overview, without the social stuff even being discussed, I could tell her radar was up. 

 

I think in subtle cases the social stuff can be missed until kids get older and things become more obvious.

 

 

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I'll echo that CAPD is certainly a possibility, but it sounds like there may be other things going on too.

 

As far as whether the testing will help the social side, the social stuff can be assessed numerous ways, including surveys you fill out and the tester interacting with the child. If you do not feel as though they assessed social stuff adequately when you hear what they have to say, you can ask what your options are then. You might be able to leave a message for them stating that this is something you are concerned about but didn't have a specific example for them when you provided your intake information (assuming that's applicable), or that you didn't think of this at the time, etc.

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Getting back the report won't change anything *immediately* because you won't know what to do with the information.  I suggest you make a workable plan for the next 1-2 months.  It can be something really alternative even, like buying an amazing K'nex kit and working on that every day.  Kwim?  Or Andrew Pudewa tells stories about doing audiobooks for a year.  I suggest you think WAY out of the box about what would make life go better for the next month or two, something really realistic, do that, and that will give you time to figure out what you do with the plans.

 

Edited by OhElizabeth
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Thanks for the replies about social issues and evals, kbutton and tiramisu.

 

OhElizabeth, you always have a good idea.  He loves audiobooks and reading (if he picks the books), so I'll use that.  I'd thought to add more exercise since that can only help and drawing/modeling as he likes those and they will help his hands.  Back-off on some of the other things.  Add in hands-on kits or computer programming or scout projects or whatever he picks.

 

City Mouse - That is a good explanation of what is probably happening.  I do feel his processing speed is low as well or that his brain is too busy for me. 

 

Thanks all!

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That sounds just like both of my ADHD kids. There are too many distractions in large groups. They can't tune out background stuff, so can't figure out where to focus their attention. As a result, they don't focus on anything and miss out the important parts of what is going on.

 

Yes, this is my ADHD daughter as well. She either stares off blankly in large groups without responding or, more often, tries to dominate the conversation so that what others are saying becomes beside the point. She's fine one-on-one or two-on-one, though. But from the way you worded things, mymommy1, it sounds a bit different. When you say he doesn't remember whether he voted, do you think it was just that he didn't know he was supposed to vote, or what raising his hand meant, because he wasn't following the conversation, or could it be that he actually doesn't remember raising his hand? How is he with following conversations with only one or two people and no distractions?

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He can follow conversations with one or two people, especially with adults,if he is interested.

 

He clarified for me just know that there were two options, he didn't care which, and he didn't vote.  The little boy that is the "leader" of their group is a real pill, and I think that sets him off to where he can't or won't participate.  With a good leader that can draw him out, he can function.

 

So maybe, I should have asked if there are situations worth putting kids in when they do struggle?  One reason we homeschool is because of the terrible time my husband had, and we didn't want ds to be picked on, bullied, left out, etc.  I hate spending money to put them in activities and see them treated poorly.  Thoughts?

 

 

 

 

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He sounds a bit like my sister, who has severe ADD (I guess ADHD, she was just never hyperactive).

 

I wouldn't force him into situations where he'll struggle, at least not at this age, without some good tools in his toolbox yet.  He may need coaching.  My sister has benefited from some coaching on social and executive functioning skills, but unfortunately she didn't get it as a child (only as an adult) and is too ADD to actually commit to it for more than a few weeks at a time.  

 

SO GOOD that you're proactive, noticing these things, and trying to help him NOW.  This makes all the difference, IMO.

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Yes, I should have said his mind may be hyper, but he isn't.  What kind of coaching did she get, if you don't mind me asking?

 

Sorry--just seeing this!

 

I don't know if it has a name.  She saw a psychologist who specializes in ADD, and the psychologist helped her with her executive functioning--lists, prioritizing, setting small goals, etc in a gentle and appropriate manner.  The problem was that my sister went to maybe 2-3 coaching sessions and then did not go back. This is pretty typical of the ADD/ADHD person, I think.  She was an adult at the time.  I think you've have much better luck with some sort of coaching for a child, b/c the parent can be in charge of making the appointments and getting the child there...things that can be overwhelming or bewildering to someone w/ severe attention deficit issues. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

*Update*  We received our eval report last week.  Overwhelmingly, it was ADD-inattentive.  She did not see any learning disabilities beyond inattention.  His IQ and achievement scores were average to very low, except in reading, global concepts (I can't remember the actual name), and logic, where he was average to above average.  She observed that he was inconsistent and unable to pay attention during the tests, probably causing his scores to be low.  Also, there were some issues with behavior, attitude toward school, executive skills, etc.  (He has always been hs.) 

 

Her recommendations were:

1. medication for inattention - We started melatonin a few weeks before and see benefit from a small amount, so we will continue that as needed.  We are also going back to less processed-foods.  (When I went back to work, I quit cooking as much.)  And, after talking to his doctor, we are trying the liquid Quillivant.  We are starting with a very low dose on only "school" days.  Today was day one, and he did his work faster, maybe.

 

2. Change in schooling, like to computer - She felt it would help take the stress off the parent-child relationship since he struggles so with his work.  We are changing his plan some.  We are sticking with Apples and Pears because he is finally learning to spell and it covers enough handwriting and grammar for now.  We do 5 problems or 15 minutes of math from MM or LOF.  I added back daily art - drawing, architecture, clay, appreciation, etc.  For history and science, he will pick books and read from them daily, exploring any project ideas he thinks of. We do lots of audio books, and I read-aloud as I can.

 

3. Using reward chart type things to improve motivation - We are trying, but hmmm, I don't know.  Getting him motivated or started on something like A&P is hard.  He will fight it all day for 15 minutes of work!

I'd love ideas on how to improve motivation, starting, attitude.

 

 

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Well it sounds like you got lots of help!  Starting meds can be good.  If you want, you could see if there's an Ed Therapist in your area and ask them to help you problem solve.  There are some terrific books on ADHD like Holloway's Superparenting ADHD book.  We've had threads before with book lists if you google search.  

 

The motivation thing is just intrinsic, chemical.  He's going to be most motivated where he's working to get done something so that he can do something else he IS motivated by.  You want to have structure, clear expectations, breaks.  Your sig is pretty trim with no junk/fluff.  

 

What you might do is add some cognitive therapy component to your day.  You can get books on EF (executive function) and start working on that.  You can do heathermomster's metronome homework.  You can bring in digit spans and other things to work on working memory.  Really GAMES can be incredibly, incredibly therapeutic.  Does he like Ticket to Ride?  He might be old enough for it, and it's terrific for working memory.  Make it game day once or twice a week, so he knows ok if we finish everything by 1:30, mom will play games with us!  Also apps can pull some of that weight.  There's a Ticket to Ride app.  Anything where he's having to plan out steps and hold them in his head.  Play *with* him so he doesn't get overwhelmed.  

 

I think you're right that school should not be too hard.  You want it at the *just right* point, where it's just enough challenging to be interesting but a small enough step from what he could previously do that it's within reach.  Around that age I had to get my dd some things that made her feel like a ROCK STAR.  Is math going well?  If it's not, I would ditch MM and go to something you do with him.  I'm just biased, lol.  But really, a combo of you doing some math with him and some math that makes him feel like a rock star can be good.  

 

You can use timers on a device (kindle, ipod/ipad, whatever) to build momentum.  Does he transition ok, or is that hard for him?  Some kids really struggle with transitions and some don't.  If you can get him to accept it, a timer approach, where the timer dings every 10 minutes and you CHANGE what you're doing to the next thing in the stack, can be very good.  And then like every 20 or 30 get up and do a few laps or some metronome work or BalavisX or something to get him back into his zone.  Do you have a pull up bar?  That can be very centering, and it's something he can do independently.  Pull up bar.  Or one of those small punching bags, the kind that bounces back.  Anyways, that timer dinging every 10 minutes as you work through a pile, that was a technique someone told me.  I SO wished I could have gotten dd to do it.  I must have gotten the suggestion too late, because the thought of so many transitions wigged her out.  But, truly, that pace would help.  And you could reinforce it with earning m&ms or something.  It's ok to reward things that are new/hard/formative skills, kwim?  When you have serious issues like that, I would reward, absolutely.

 

Have you gotten the written report yet?  Hopefully when you get that, you'll find more gems to help you tweak your teaching.  For me, I'd be looking at those achievement scores and going ok, what can I modify to bring things in reach?  

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My DH aunt is a diagnostician, so I'll have her go over the report again with me and brainstorm.  When you say "in reach" do you mean bring the scores up or take his daily work down to where he is?  He is behind in everything but science, history, and reading, but making steady slow progress.

 

I'm a math teacher, so we do all math together.  I think his difficulty came in learning facts and my thinking he had to have them down to move on.  We are over that; he has a times chart.  He gets the concepts well. He did a 2-digit multiplication today without my help.

 

He is supposed to finish his 6 main lessons to play Minecraft.  Even at that, he fights.  I'll check into EF skills, metronome, and Ticket to Ride.  We like to play Monopoly, cheese, and other games.

 

Thank you so much for all your input!

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My older dd has that issue too. She had add and more then likely a slow processing speed. I am pretty sure we all have slow processing speed and it was confirmed in one of my children.

 

Oops I see you already got your report back. I like the suggestion of working on executive functioning and doing games. I just started incorporating more games into our week. I found doing a computer program for working memory really helped my ds. He has made a lot of progress since completing it. I am going to have my older dd do it next.

Edited by MistyMountain
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MistyMountain, what kind of computer game do you use for working memory?  I tried one a couple years ago where he was to watch the screen and push a button when he saw a certain butterfly or something.  He got so distracted during the game; he never made progress!

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I used jungle memory. It took him a while to make progress especially in the one related to speed but once he did start making progress I noticed improvement.

 

I've seen a lot of controversy over whether using these programs actually carries through to improvements in the real world. It's great to hear from someone who actually has seen a benefit!

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The motivation thing is just intrinsic, chemical.  He's going to be most motivated where he's working to get done something so that he can do something else he IS motivated by.  You want to have structure, clear expectations, breaks.  Your sig is pretty trim with no junk/fluff.  

 

I think you're right that school should not be too hard.  You want it at the *just right* point, where it's just enough challenging to be interesting but a small enough step from what he could previously do that it's within reach.  Around that age I had to get my dd some things that made her feel like a ROCK STAR.  

 

Anyways, that timer dinging every 10 minutes as you work through a pile, that was a technique someone told me.  I SO wished I could have gotten dd to do it.  I must have gotten the suggestion too late, because the thought of so many transitions wigged her out.  But, truly, that pace would help.  And you could reinforce it with earning m&ms or something.  It's ok to reward things that are new/hard/formative skills, kwim?  When you have serious issues like that, I would reward, absolutely.

 

OP, you mentioned that he doesn't even want to hold out for Minecraft. That kind of thing usually means something is too hard. It might not be the level of work. It might be even just be a feeling of overwhelm. I would try moving the carrot closer. Maybe he gets a small reward of some sort each time he completes something, and then the Minecraft at the end. You might have to change the work, but I would try the reward first. It sounds like you have a pretty good idea of his capabilities now that you've modified math facts and such. He probably sees that doing all of his work is like eating an elephant, Your job is to make it seem like a few snacks that he's hungry enough to eat. And then increase that endurance or get that competence up (or some variation on that theme). For some kids, this is not going to be bigger stretches before rewards, but they will maybe eventually take ownership of the process. I do not have ADHD, but I remember when I worked, there were days when I just sat and sat in a cube. Overall, I had a good balance of solitude, teamwork, meetings, but things would get stuffy once in a while (usually at Christmas break when I was the newbie that had to work, and all the people that I normally worked with were desperately trying to use up their vacation before they lost it). On those days, I would tell myself, "When you finish this task, you can get up and walk around. After the next task, you can get a drink. When the third task is finished, you can go talk to one of the few people left in the building." These kids need us to do that for them.

 

My older one didn't like a lot of transitions, but what works for him is to see the big picture--what the week looks like (when we're home, when we're out, what appointments we have, etc.). Then we start one subject at a time, and we demonstrate how we can get through the whole unit, chapter, whatever in the specified timeframe. Eventually, he can take a diagram of the week, the list of things he needs to do, and then he can plug them in, but it took meds (!) and a lot of discussion/coaching to get to where things just didn't seem overwhelming. This may or may not be appropriate for you as a near goal, but it motivated my son. More breaks did not help, but more control and more understanding of the overarching goals and end point did (as long as I could make the end point look like a series of fortunate events and not one.big.assignment. of its own, or worse yet, that the more work he did, the more work I would pile on). He's always been like this--when he was a toddler, he'd refuse to eat if I put out a whole meal's worth of food for him. I knew what he would eat (he has a massive appetite and metabolism), but if I put it all out at one time, he'd be overwhelmed. If I put it out a little at a time, he'd eat and eat and eat until he was finally full. 

 

My son is also motivated by competence. Not just getting right answers, but being able to handle what comes his way. What OhE is describing about things being just barely within reach is related to this, but it might look different and play out differently for different kids. I had to prove to my son that he COULD do what I was asking him to do, and also prove that he could do it every day. Until we had meds, this was completely impossible--he was not the same child every day, ever. That contributed to his sense of failure. We had Mt. Everest peaks and Mariannas Trench (sp?) lows. Meds gave us the rolling hills of KY horse country. Nothing I did before meds translated into big enough and consistent enough success to make sense to my son. This is not to make meds something they are not, but to show you that perception is everything to these kids, and you're going to have to figure out how your son perceives things, probably by trial and error. My son certainly could not tell me, but if I figured it out, his relief was profound and visible. If they are already making a major effort (which might be invisible to a parent), that carrot is going to be out of sight, out of mind, and they will feel like they can't do stuff. (A few have no clue, and they overestimate their own consistency, effectiveness, etc., and that is a different problem.)

 

My other kid is more squirrely, and I do have to give him more breaks and more interraction. It honestly drives me nuts. I have learned to keep things next to me to do that are completely brainless, because if I get up, he's done and off task. Actually, more like a thousand miles away. On laundry day, I keep the dry stuff next to me and fold while he does stuff. Between loads, he gets up with me and moves things from washer to dryer, hangs them up, etc. I have a coloring book and some decent pencils, and I often do that while he does his stuff. Sometimes, I just get a big bin of menial tasks and put them right next to us. As long as I can watch him and talk to him, and I'm not on a device, it works. The key is that I do not move and that I can watch his every move.

 

I'm a math teacher, so we do all math together.  I think his difficulty came in learning facts and my thinking he had to have them down to move on.  We are over that; he has a times chart.  He gets the concepts well. He did a 2-digit multiplication today without my help.

 

My kids do much better at math facts through use than through drill, and we do use charts when we get to the point that we see they are needed. I do see a hitch with division facts at times (it's like they know they are the inverse of multiplication but can't seem to file the salient pieces of information in pairs that way), but then we work on factorization. That's more appealing than drilling. We try to do a lot with prime factors--if a number has both 2 and 3 as a prime factor, then what bigger number is it going to divide by? 6. Then, will it also divide by other multiples of 6? Those sorts of questions. If I give my son a list of divisibility rules, he totally checks out, but if we use prime factorization to see those patterns and rules, then he is more likely to use it. It also seems to boost his confidence in his math abilities to discuss that kind of stuff.

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I totally get what you are saying about it just being too hard.  The mountain is too tall to even start.  He kept telling me school was too hard and boring.  I knew that was a problem, so we went for testing.  I do think there might be something auditory beyond inattention happening (his Wj-IV in phonological processing was 67 - 1 percentile).  I'll run it by my aunt and whoever else I can to get some more details, but I think the spelling is beyond his reach, even at this level.

 

Today we did 2 ml (10 mg) of Quillivant and that was enough.  I didn't have to call him more than once to get his attention at all.  He followed a 4 step request (1 was the top).  He did his multistep math problem alone without doodling all over the page.  At the same time, his appetite is there, as well as creativity.  After playing the Ticket to Ride app OhElizabeth recommended, he made his own paper version of the game.  Instead of typing, he starting composing a story on his Kindle.  He loves the auto-fill choice.

 

Thanks again!

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I've seen a lot of controversy over whether using these programs actually carries through to improvements in the real world. It's great to hear from someone who actually has seen a benefit!

 

I have read about the controversy. A lot of things were saying it only leads to improvement in what is being played. It was hard to find reviews from people afterwards besides the testimonials and who knows if they are verifiable. I did see some studies though where it did lead to an improvement in areas not tested. I really felt that one if the biggest things holding ds back was the working memory. I really think working memory is something that can be improved and that one was the cheapest things to try. Once he started doing better at it I starting seeing improvement in his spelling grades and he finally started making progress in reading. He is doing much better in school.

Edited by MistyMountain
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