Losing focus... ADD? normal for an almost 8 year old?

[ssavings]

My DD (almost 8 now) has a series of diagnoses from a variety of evals.. All the "dys-", memory deficits (all the memory), processing speed deficits, auditory processing, visual processing, etc.

Since pulling her out of school, I'm noticing that she loses focus VERY easy, and when she does, it derails everything we've been doing. She'll be understanding just fine, then suddenly you can visually see her get distracted, generally by something I'd not even notice. And then she's totally lost whatever concept we're working with.

While I know that, if this is ADD, fixing it obviously won't fix all her problems; and I know we have a lot of remediation to do to get her to a level where she's functional and able to do things like hold a job, etc.. My question is could ADD contribute to any of these thing? Is it worth asking her doctor?

[OneStepAtATime]

Yes.

[nature girl]

Although addressing ADD won't "cure" her of the other diagnoses, it can certainly make attempts to remediate go more smoothly and quickly, and could very well help with her memory issues. So yes I'd definitely recommend getting her evaluated for attention issues. There's also a chance that it's not ADD, that she just loses attention quickly because she has to work so hard to compensate, but that's something that can only be detangled through evals.

[PinkyandtheBrains.]

Although addressing ADD won't "cure" her of the other diagnoses, it can certainly make attempts to remediate go more smoothly and quickly, and could very well help with her memory issues. So yes I'd definitely recommend getting her evaluated for attention issues. There's also a chance that it's not ADD, that she just loses attention quickly because she has to work so hard to compensate, but that's something that can only be detangled through evals.

 

This.

[PeterPan]

That's a little odd to have SLDs in reading, writing and math diagnosed, APD diagnosed, etc., and not have had them run an EF survey to look at ADHD. Odds are they did. You might want to reread your evals to see what was done and what the results were, because honestly that would be shocking for them NOT to have run it. You shouldn't need it again; it was probably already run. 

 

So that's the first thing, look at the report again.

 

Next, if by some fathomable way an appropriate screening was run and it's NOT ADHD, then that's also pretty significant. Like then you do your Sherlock gig and you go that when you've eliminated the possible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the explanation. In other words, if it's not ADHD (like you look to see what tool they ran, look at it again, make sure your report says definitely definitely not ADHD), then I'd look at the APD as the explanation. Or absence seizures.

 

So sure it's fine to ask whether they got the ADHD question right and whether it was run, because frankly what's left to explain the symptoms is a lot more dramatic and serious than ADHD. 

 

How thorough were your APD evals? You went to a clinic with a full booth? They made recommendations? You use an FM system? 

Edited February 15, 2017 by OhElizabeth