Attention deficit or ?

[sbgrace]

Does this sound like attention deficit or something else?

 

My son is very difficult to teach. He is constantly distracted by something, moving around, telling a story, or just mentally preoccupied. I constantly hear "what?" and "oh, sorry, what was the question?" and sometimes this goes on three or four times before he finally tunes into whatever is happening.

 

Here is what confuses me. This child can spend hours making up a story, building a train set, or reading a book. He talks a lot during all of this--out loud--but he's concentrating on x without issue. It seems his problem is tuning into what isn't his idea or interest. He does have a pdd-nos diagnosis and a dreamer/imaginative/right brain type personality. Maybe that explains it all?

 

I'm having a really hard time teaching him. It's incredibly frustrating that a less than 1 minute "warm up" in math that's purely review will take this child as much as 10 minutes just due to distraction.

[thenichols]

My son has mild autism/pdd & that sounds just like him. Very typical behavior, I'd try things that interest him more. My son hates math, but a colorful book & math drills on the computer instead of paper, work.

We stick to a rigid routine & he works on things in small increments. Lots of rewards, stickers & applause for staying on task.

[PeterPan]

I think the ADHD diagnosis is *assumed* and subsumed by the pdd-nos diagnosis, or at least that's what I read. So no you're not losing your mind. Maybe try a different way of teaching? When my kid blanks out like that, it's because I've been TALKING too much and we've been DOING too little. In 2nd grade there's almost nothing that can't be done via hands-on or his preferred method.

 

Looking at your sig, it looks like you have a lot that is moving toward hands-on. RS goes very worksheety, so if that's not working you may need to change. (We did.) Not familiar with that other math program, but of course needing two at this age is curious. What subject(s) are the blank outs occurring in? That Telling God's Story is just reading to him. You might consider a Betty Lukens flannelgraph or something with stories like Character Sketches (starts with an animal story to teach character or biblical truth).

 

What is he doing in the math warm-up, writing? Are you doing any physical before academics or between things to get him more focused? When my dd was that age, I had her do laps between subjects, and she's not nearly as serious as yours is. I remember this one poster (I don't see her much anymore, come to think of it? Maybe I'm blind?) who lives on a dairy farm with her herd of boys. The boys all go out and do their chores in the morning (hay, shoveling manure, whatever), and THEN they sit very well for academics. That cracked me up when I read it years ago, but then I couldn't figure out how to replicate it, not having a herd of cows, lol. But it is true that when I googled the boards here for ADHD schedules I found numerous people who put things like math AFTER LUNCH. I always got advice when my dd was little to do math in the morning, gotta hit it first, blah blah. But the subjects we did after lunch always went so much BETTER.

 

Sorry that's not helpful. My dd isn't as distracted as yours. Just don't be afraid to bend and try a different way. He's SO young, and there are lots of other ways to teach. I'm fascinated by books like Kitchen Table Math that AOPS sells, Family Math (which actually I recently picked up at a used sale, it's AWESOME!), and stuff by Marilyn Burns. Sometimes your dc is teaching you, even at this age, that for it to work for him he's going to have to be a lot more ENGAGED than the typical dc is with their curriculum. And to get there you can't always follow board advice about what is good. Sometimes you have to be brave and renegade and know it will pan out in the end, eventually. It will, honest. The sum total of what they need to learn until 6th is SO small, so basic, and there are LOTS of ways to get there. Don't be afraid to branch out radically with anything that isn't working.

[homefront]

The biggest help with these types of problems was reading Spark by John J Ratey and a paper (that I can't find) about the use of brain gym in public schools.

 

The behaviors you see are very common if that helps at all.

 

I still can't decide what I think about this book but you might like to read The Edison Trait.

[Crimson Wife]

I actually talked to the developmental pediatrician about ADHD and ASD because there's a strong family history on my side of ADHD. The pediatrician said that it's possible to have both, but most of the time the hyperactivity symptoms are actually due to the sensory issues that are part of ASD (paradoxically all the fidgeting, pacing, bouncing, spinning, etc. actually helps the child self-regulate) and many of the inattention symptoms are also due to ASD.

 

Additionally, if your child is a visual learner, then trying to do a highly auditory program will exacerbate the attention issues. I find that I have to adapt some of the RS exercises with my VSL to make them more visual (using a white board and so on). I'm also supplementing with the Singapore textbook and IP. I think Singapore 1A/B is overall a weaker program than RS B, but the visual aspect seems to help DS' understanding.

[sbgrace]

Thank you all for the thoughts and suggestions. I'll check out those books. I think I'll try 15 minutes of computer time when he gets his school done. I didn't want to link reward to school but I think it's probably necessary.

 

I think I don't know how he learns--engage his imagination and you've got him and that's about it. He enjoys history and science. Telling God's Story has an activity book I use but he's not particularly engaged by crafts and such and you're absolutely right that just reading to him isn't good. I didn't realize that until recently but I think it was because most books we read had pictures. Now if I want him to "hear" what I'm reading he has to be there following along himself. I bet he would like those flannelgraphs actually. I think that might be just the thing for bible for him. I have had trouble engaging him in the bible stuff and it bothers me because it's an important area for us.

 

The biggest problem area is math. I used RightStart A and B with him and it had been torture especially with B. I was puzzled because RightStart is so hands on. I thought maybe it was the switching topics so much and I knew the worksheets they had made him immediately glaze and resist. At any rate by the time we got through the warm ups it seemed his brain was off.

 

That's why I switched to Math in Focus (Singapore approach aimed at US schools). It went better but the basis wasn't as strong as RightStart and I wanted the RightStart mental math stuff so I went back (RightStart C).

 

Now I think the issues with RightStart might be it's so auditory. How could I make it less auditory? Warm ups for example (like count to 100 by 10's) are a mess with this kid and I think it's the auditory stuff. He needs to see it to stay engaged. He's taken to trying to read the manual over my shoulder which would be great if the answers weren't right there!

 

I guess RightStart is a bad fit for him but I really want him to the that basis. He really likes to see/read it seems and if I can engage his imagination we're gold. For that reason word problems are the one thing in math that go well with him. I wish I could figure out a way to make it work.

 

All of your replies have been a great help in thinking this through. I think I've got a better picture in what is going wrong.

Edited December 20, 2011 by sbgrace

[homefront]

I have not used Rightstart for math but had to creative for getting skip counting down. Favorites for my mover wigglers and non-auditory are using a rotating stamp and stamp out the answers. Coloring in the correct numbers on a number chart, this is great for seeing the math. Think hop scotch but in any pattern you like with numbers 1-12 and some silly story line like the only way to save.. is to jump saying the skip counting answers. This also works smaller with action figures. (I got painted Mario mystery boxes in my garage because it was the only way I could get my DS to skip count.)

 

These kind of ideas did pay off big time for us. It did take some time for us to use to the idea that our school is/was going to look very different.

[Crimson Wife]

Now I think the issues with RightStart might be it's so auditory. How could I make it less auditory? Warm ups for example (like count to 100 by 10's) are a mess with this kid and I think it's the auditory stuff. He needs to see it to stay engaged. He's taken to trying to read the manual over my shoulder which would be great if the answers weren't right there!

 

DS just did a great skip-counting section in Singapore 1A IP. The book had a sequence of numbers that were missing several. The student had to figure out the pattern and fill in the missing numbers. I would write the sequence on a white board and then have the student write or dictate the missing numbers.

 

10, 20, ---, ---, 40, ---, ---, 70, ---, ---, 100

[Terabith]

My neurotypical child really, REALLY struggled with the warmups in RS. She just couldn't hold the components in her head. She did do better if I wrote down the problems, but I know that wasn't the idea. But she couldn't hold the problem in her head and do the mental calculations, no matter how much we practiced. Not sure how I'm gonna do it with the younger one.

[PeterPan]

My neurotypical child really, REALLY struggled with the warmups in RS. She just couldn't hold the components in her head. She did do better if I wrote down the problems, but I know that wasn't the idea. But she couldn't hold the problem in her head and do the mental calculations, no matter how much we practiced. Not sure how I'm gonna do it with the younger one.

 

I hate to be really tacky, but when a dc isn't able to do things that most other dc their age are doing, that's a sign they're not nt. The difference could be refusing to color (what my dd did) or whatever, but these things are usually early indicators of stuff going on.

 

I don't recall my dd having trouble with the RS warm-ups btw. They took her a while, but she was fine with them. They would definitely draw on your working memory, processing, etc.