Can we talk about ADHD?

[MEmama]

DS's doctor is making him an appointment with a neuro psych, and I have questions.

If your young adult was diagnosed with ADHD (especially *without* the H), how did their signs present? Looking back, did you always have suspicions or did it seem develop later? If later, were there triggers? Are there triggers that make functioning more difficult for your young adult, or are their symptoms constant?

This is new territory for me and I appreciate any input anyone is willing to share. 

[prairiewindmomma]

https://chadd.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ATTN_02_08_Executive_Functions_by_Thomas_Brown.pdf
 

I feel like every parent dealing with a kid with ADD-I needs to read this. It’s a great summary of executive functioning skills and it’s where I see breakdowns in skills outside of attentiveness.

Medication helps my kid during school time. I also won’t let him drive without meds. He needs to shift focus a lot while driving and that’s glitchy without meds. I still see social thinking issues. Be sure they look at that too.

[MEmama]

3 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

https://chadd.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ATTN_02_08_Executive_Functions_by_Thomas_Brown.pdf
 

I feel like every parent dealing with a kid with ADD-I needs to read this. It’s a great summary of executive functioning skills and it’s where I see breakdowns in skills outside of attentiveness.

Medication helps my kid during school time. I also won’t let him drive without meds. He needs to shift focus a lot while driving and that’s glitchy without meds. I still see social thinking issues. Be sure they look at that too.

This looks like a fantastic resource— thank you!!

[Carrie12345]

My dd and I (both inattentive) present as completely different people in almost every regard. Unless you count the blank looks we give each other, lol. Or our depression, but even that appears different on the outside.

[Melissa Louise]

Inattentiveness, EF deficits, but with hyper-focus on topics of interest. Was co-morbid with anxiety, dysphoria and coeliac.  The inability to focus on eg schoolwork was becoming a major source of poor self esteem. 

I totally missed it when he was younger. Totally. I'm poster child for 'sometimes homeschoolers miss stuff'.  Looking back, behaviours I thought were 'child free of constraints of school' may have had an ADHD element? But could also be a post-disgnosis bias. 

In good news, medication has allowed massive life improvement. I'm talking going from teen who barely left his room for 18 months to teen working around 30hrs a week, getting good feedback and increased responsibility from boss. Who has self-generated job and financial goals which he plans and meets. 

Triggers? Not sure. I think it's more the case that the untreated ADHD triggered the co-morbid stuff. 

Post coeliac. No idea what triggered that either. Viral?

Edited March 23, 2021 by Melissa Louise
Typo

[ktgrok]

I'm ADHD, as is my oldest, and likely my younger son as well. 

I was diagnosed as an adult, but looking back, I was that kid that never had a pencil in class or paper (I always had one or the other, just not both, lol). I'd forget to ask my parent to buy more paper. Or I'd get some, then leave it in my locker. Or lose my pencils from one class to the next. Thank the Lord for good friends who were always carrying extra pencils and paper - but school was really extra stressful because of that kind of stuff. Or forgetting my textbook and PRAYING thy didn't call on me to read in class. 

I often DID my homework, but forgot to turn it in. Tests were great, daily work..ugh. 

My father I'm sure has it too - he'd often be late to pick us up from school. Chronic lateness is typical. ADHD kids tend to think of time in two ways - it is either "now" or "not now". No actual increments. Needing to be somewhere 3 hours from now and 3 minutes from now are the same - they both fall into "not now". Then suddenly it is time to be there and then you race off because it is "now". 

Now, some people compensate by seeming MORE organized than everyone else - that is my sister. But meds help her as well. 

For me the biggest thing was that meds gave me an overriding "voice" in my head - a manager - who could tell all the other voices to shut up. So if I was heading to the store - one I go to frequently that has multiple ways to get there, my brain would be shorting out trying to figure out which way to go, constantly flipping through options. With meds, I can pick one, and move on with my life. Without meds, I see that piece of trash on the floor, but by the time I think about picking it up I've moved on to some other thought. With meds, I can focus and actually pick it up before moving on. I also remember names and faces better because I can focus on what people are saying when they say their name, and that helped my social anxiety SO much. Before, I would literally forget their name as they were saying it. So that trick of saying their name back to remember didn't work. 

I also control my temper more easily, which is nice. I hadn't realized that impulsivity can relate to emotions, not just things like running around th room or whatever. 

The How to ADHD channel on youtube might be useful for you. She was diagnosed in college I think. 

[kbutton]

As for symptoms, the title of a book about ADHD, Late, Lost, and Unprepared, was pretty descriptive of what I see with 2/3 of the ADHD folks in my home. We could add another descriptor: over-compensating. So, I have one that is so sure he's always going to be late, that being on time means leaving earlier and earlier. At one point, for a job a mile from home, he was leaving an hour early. Did he have things to do before work? Yes, but that pre-work routine just kept growing as he left earlier and earlier. 

I have two with one set of symptoms and one with totally different symptoms, but they all have inattentive ADHD with varying levels of hyperactivity and impulsive behavior.

The one of mine that isn't like the others also has ASD, which I think changes some small things, but it cannot at all explain how shockingly different his ADHD presents from the other two. By rights, he should be more impaired than the other two, and he is definitely not. He should also have a harder time learning new stuff than they do, and he does not. On meds, he is now calm and unbelievably organized, etc. He sometimes overshoots and does something really cool while missing a very big detail that makes it all worthless, but that doesn't happen as much now that he is older (for example, he once detailed the bathroom to perfection...but he cleaned the toilet first and used the toilet rag on everything else afterwards, lol!!!). Without meds, he is fatigued, anxious about details that he feels are running around like ants from a scattered ant hill, and impulsive. He's been on meds long enough that his lifeskills have developed concurrently with the good effects from the meds. Off meds, everything is harder, and he's more likely to get grouchy and overwhelmed, but he knows how he functions and feels on the meds, and the habits he's been able to successfully learn while taking meds take over, and he can function, just sub-optimally and with great stress. Even on meds, he sort of has a point where he's "done" for the day (or week) and has to recharge, but I don't know if that is ADHD or not since my whole family of origin is like that. He likes his belongings and environment neat and tidy. He has some trouble breaking down novel tasks, but once he's comfortable with something (both experientially and in an "I've accepted that I have to do this task whether I want to or not"), he's like a machine in his precision about completing that task. He has, over time, learned to be a super patient teacher for the others in the family who are not so organizationally inclined.

The two that are more alike are scattered--they lose belongings, put things in odd places, don't have any idea how to break down tasks, get overwhelmed with details, can't "multi-task" (no one actually multi-tasks, but I really do mean can't do "think and do" simultaneously in many respects or "talk and do"--there are multiple ways this manifests), etc. Re: putting things in odd places--there are SO MANY reasons this happens. They might have something in their hands, and they can't think while holding something, so they put it wherever they are, and don't even know they are doing it, including important items. Organization is very sketchy, and they don't do well managing a lot of belongings or competing needs for their belongings. They tend to sort of just ooze stuff all over, and when new possessions arrive, they often don't know how to group them together. For instance, if you are doing a painting project, the stuff you used this time might go in a drawer, box, or cupboard. When you have to paint again, it might be obvious or not obvious where these things are, but any new supplies needed don't get added to this stash, they go into whatever space is handy and vacant. So, if you have a garage, shed, whatever, you might find that every nook and cranny has a variety of things in them that don't go together--the paint supplies might be in five different cupboards, boxes, or drawers. In our old house, my more organized son and I tackled a storage/work room to organize--we literally found pieces of sandpaper in every box, bag, drawer, cupboard, and container in the entire room--tiny pieces, used pieces, new pieces, you name it. Ditto for nails, screws, etc. Additionally, they might have something small that has no related tools or accessories in a spacious storage spot, while another spot is crowded with things that could be reorganized and fit the bigger spot much better. Just no rhyme or reason. They are very attached to doing things their way, but their way is often torturous, inefficient, and stressful, and they get agitated when shown a less error prone process (eventually, they can adapt, but it's fraught and stressful even though they're way often isn't successful, is harder, and is less intuitive)--and "their way" can literally mean what just popped into their head vs. some tried and true process they've used for years! They also don't tend to just blend in with a group that is working together--they need solo tasks. They can't organize things in a way that everyone in the group has something to do, so other people just give up and wander off. If someone else in charge, they will find my ADHD people wandering off because they have no sense of how the group is working together. Things are frequently slapped together and not done well, or they are amazingly perfect, and you never know which it will be. Oh, and any information that is not needed "right now," no matter how important it is for later, is likely to be dumped out of their brain or banned while it's still hitting their ears. Useless information often sticks just fine. 

HTH

[ktgrok]

 

Edited March 23, 2021 by ktgrok

[ktgrok]

Having ADHD means I can be thirsty as heck, get a drink, set it next to me, and 1 hour later still be thirsty because I forgot to drink it. 

Daily. 

[TravelingChris]

3 hours ago, prairiewindmomma said:

https://chadd.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ATTN_02_08_Executive_Functions_by_Thomas_Brown.pdf
 

I feel like every parent dealing with a kid with ADD-I needs to read this. It’s a great summary of executive functioning skills and it’s where I see breakdowns in skills outside of attentiveness.

Medication helps my kid during school time. I also won’t let him drive without meds. He needs to shift focus a lot while driving and that’s glitchy without meds. I still see social thinking issues. Be sure they look at that too.

Hey thank you so much.   I need that for me- even though I am ADHD combined.  Executive function skills are my biggest bugaboo.

[TravelingChris]

5 minutes ago, ktgrok said:

Having ADHD means I can be thirsty as heck, get a drink, set it next to me, and 1 hour later still be thirsty because I forgot to drink it. 

Daily. 

Exactly

[PeterPan]

Fwiw I think ADHD is unremarkable (ubiquitous, not drawing attention) when it's the norm in a family. 

Yes to the issues with driving. Yes to reading about EF=executive function. 

Low processing speed was the sleeper. Also look at social. https://www.socialthinking.com/Articles?name=social-thinking-social-communication-profile  There's often going to be something comorbid like some anxiety, whatever whatever. Not always, just often. 

Mindfulness or doing a brief body scan is both good for their self awareness AND good for their EF, giving a 30% bump in EF for just 5-10 minutes of work on mindfulness. So it's an evidence based practice he can begin immediately to improve how he functions. 

https://www.mindful.org/mindfulness-meditation-guided-practices/  Here's a brief link on how to do it. Doesn't have to be too voodoo. Just pay attention to each body part and say how it feels, working top to bottom (or bottom to top or whatever). Alternately, you can take a pulse oximeter and just sit, trying to feel your heart for several minutes.