Do I need to seek out testing for my 6 yo ds? Anxious mom needs feedback.

[jacqui in mo]

My 6 yo son is beginning to worry me & I don't know if I'm just being a worrywart or if I need to look into outside help. Here are the things that are bothering me:

• He is still having trouble with irregular past tense verbs (ie I cutted it. He hitted it).
  
• Misuse of tag questions: ie He plays ball, do he? instead of: He plays ball, doesn't he. (He asks these kinds of questions all the time)

 

• He has an odd, unusual sort of repetitions at the End of sentences: ie: I got the boxes...xes....xes. I want to hop...p...p. It's time to go....go....go. It's somewhat like stuttering but nothing like I've seen before (I'm a speech therapist).

 

• He still cannot keep his pants dry during the day. We've tried getting on a schedule, using a timer & that works at first, but then the timer may get out of sync with his actual bladder needs & we aren't able to keep him dry.

 

• He gets distracted very easily from doing tasks he is asked to do such as getting dressed. You usually have to stand over him to help him complete a task. (Yet he is capable of doing them on his own, but just not consistently) Makes me very worried about trying to do 1st grade with him this year (while I also have 2 older children to work with)

To give you a balanced picture, he is learning to read & write pretty well and will sit & look through books on his own for up to 20 minutes. He's very, very talkative & will talk to anyone who will listen.

 

So with this incomplete picture I've presented, what do you think? Am I being overly concerned (maybe my ST background & having 2 relatively easy older children are making me more anxious?) Anyone with a child like this?

Jacqui

[Julie in Austin]

Some of those things (i.e., need for constant supervision to stay on task) sound depressingly normal for a 6yo boy to me. :glare:

 

Others--such as not staying dry during the day and the verbal slips seem a little outside of the norm, and perhaps you would feel better if you had him tested. If there's no problem, then that's one less thing for you to worry about. If there is a problem, then better to begin intervening earlier than later, KWIM?

[Amy in NH]

You're the mom AND you have experience with special needs issues. Go with your gut.

 

I'd probably start with his pediatrician.

 

Some of those issues could be unrelated to the others. Just a thought.

[KerriF]

Hi Jacuqi,

 

From what I have seen I don't think it's a problem not being able to use irregular past tense verbs correctly. We have had some of those issues and we just correct them and move on. I would say the same about the tag questions.

 

The one thing that I would question is not being able to stay dry. Has his ped. said anything about it? I think I would start there.

 

I think the getting distracted is normal too. :)

 

I hope this helps some. I am sure some others will post who have more experience/advice.

[Alenee]

With those "symptoms" I think most peds would give a referral to Occupational Therapy. The evals are easy and painless. I'd go for an eval and just see what happens.

[laylamcb]

My dh is a firefighter and has been a paramedic for 24 years. You know what his motto is? "Mom knows. Always listen to the Mom." He'd tell you to trust your gut. You know your child like no one else. The fact is that the specialist will probably tell you that he's fine...and then you'll sleep so much better at night. :001_smile: And if he's not fine, then you'll feel better knowing that you're getting going in the right direction.

[kalanamak]

I don't know about the xes xes...that might just be playing or a ritual type thing. The not dry during the day is rarer than all the rest (night time is still over 5% at 6, AFAIR). For the others, this could be my son, but kiddo is slowly improving. With internal motivation (i.e. something that interests him) he remembers everything and does tiny detail. If it doesn't interest him...lah di dah di doo is his attitude.

 

You should have seen the jump in his reading when I told him he could have a legos set of his choice once he was reading the hardest of the BOB books with fluency.

 

"Do I have fluency?" he asks me after nearly every lesson.

 

Go with your gut, but aside from the dry, I would just keep on keeping on.

[Tree House Academy]

I would say to definitely have him evaluated. No matter how academically intelligent he is, there is something going on there, somewhere. The red flag for me was "can't stay dry during the day." My son with ADHD couldn't stay dry at night, but never had trouble during the day. I think that is pretty rare.

 

My ADHD son actually did do the odd repetition at the end of his words for a while though. The phase passed when he was about 4, but he did it until then. It was like whole word stuttering...it was very odd.

 

I would have to agree with the others...go with your gut. What you are describing is not the norm and I think you are right to at least want to have him evaluated to see if something is amiss. Best of luck to you.