could ds2 have ADHD

[joybed]

Hi this is my second help post of the day but have been considering this for a while and burying my head in the sand i suppose. Ds 2 is 4 started school this september and was always much more difficult than his twin who is female. As a baby he was colicky, lactose intolerant, cried all the time, difficult to feed and very rigid when cuddling him. the only way he would settle was in a sling. Now as a 4 year old he is very loud, boisterous, aggressive and has lots of tantrums. He is difficult to get dressed, runs around when trying to get him to eat a meal, has poor eye contact and is basically a little whirlwind. When i pick him up from school he complains all the way home that his legs hurt and he needs a rest but then when we get in he is just hyper grabbing random items, demanding food unable to wait for tea to be cooked. Fights with his siblings all the time especially marcus. He seems to have great delight in hurting people and will poke and prod peoples faces, hit them over the head with things. If you tell him no he runs of laughing and gets up to more mischief.

School have said the only problem they have is they can,t get him to sit still on the carpet, ( he is allways shuffling around all the time) and that he appears to be in another world (when they tell the chuildren to stop doing something he doesn,t and needs telling a few times). Lydia speaks for him a lot of the time although he is capable of speach but can,t say L properly. He would rather have a tantrum than ask for help. He is very demanding and if he doesn,t get undevided atttention he throws a major strop. He sleeps fairly well most of the time sometimes late to settle but is not yet dry at night. If he send him to the naughty step he won,t stay their and i am constantly putting him back on it. Dh hasn,t noticed a problem and school havn,t mentioned ADHD but they have a inexperienced teacher who is newly qualified. Isuppose i have always had doubts about him but now becoming stronger. Could this be ADHD

[barb]

Hi this is my second help post of the day but have been considering this for a while and burying my head in the sand i suppose. Ds 2 is 4 started school this september and was always much more difficult than his twin who is female. As a baby he was colicky, lactose intolerant, cried all the time, difficult to feed and very rigid when cuddling him. the only way he would settle was in a sling. Now as a 4 year old he is very loud, boisterous, aggressive and has lots of tantrums. He is difficult to get dressed, runs around when trying to get him to eat a meal, has poor eye contact and is basically a little whirlwind. When i pick him up from school he complains all the way home that his legs hurt and he needs a rest but then when we get in he is just hyper grabbing random items, demanding food unable to wait for tea to be cooked. Fights with his siblings all the time especially marcus. He seems to have great delight in hurting people and will poke and prod peoples faces, hit them over the head with things. If you tell him no he runs of laughing and gets up to more mischief.

School have said the only problem they have is they can,t get him to sit still on the carpet, ( he is allways shuffling around all the time) and that he appears to be in another world (when they tell the chuildren to stop doing something he doesn,t and needs telling a few times). Lydia speaks for him a lot of the time although he is capable of speach but can,t say L properly. He would rather have a tantrum than ask for help. He is very demanding and if he doesn,t get undevided atttention he throws a major strop. He sleeps fairly well most of the time sometimes late to settle but is not yet dry at night. If he send him to the naughty step he won,t stay their and i am constantly putting him back on it. Dh hasn,t noticed a problem and school havn,t mentioned ADHD but they have a inexperienced teacher who is newly qualified. Isuppose i have always had doubts about him but now becoming stronger. Could this be ADHD

 

 

if you have concerns i would ask your gp for a referral letter to camhs perhaps. he may just be a normal four year old thats a bit boisterous which is nothing unusual. i certainly from my experience wouldnt rely on a teacher newly qualififed or not to give an opinion. i hope you get some support to help you towards helping your son.

[bjkmummy]

hi i have boy / girl twins who have just started reception. your boy sounds very much like my boy twin. if you are concerned it may be a good idea to have a chat with your gp or maybe the school nurse

[joybed]

Update from this. Following posting this i asked DH if he had any concerns about Piers and his behaviour and he said he thought he was really naughty but nothing to worry about. I mentioned that i thought he met some of the criteria for ADHD and he was very upset infact we had a row about it (his exact words were we already have one difficult child don,t give me another), I said that whether we liked it or not if their was a problem not knowing wasn,t going to make it go away. He refused to talk anymore so didn,t push it. The following day I asked him to get Piers ready for bed while I did Lydia he was having a real fight getting him to cooperate and in the end Piers headbutted him and ran away laughing. I looked over at DH and he looked at me as if to say I know you are right but I don,t want to talk so i never mentioned it. We have just been away for a few days to Wales and after a day DH said that he knew that he was right but didn,t feel he could cope with going through the finality of diagnosis I pointed out that this could only be a positive thing but he asked me to give it a year to see if he settled down at all. The following day after lots of tantrums and Piers basically doing the opposite of whatever anyone told him Dh suggested we go to the GP when we got back but now after talking to his friend (who says he was just like Piers as a child and not to worry he will grow out of it) he now wants to wait again. I am now almost convinced their is something not right but don,t want to upset DH by going through the process when he is ready but I also feel Piers deserves help and support if necessary. My neighbour is the school nurse and she asked me if I had any worries about them before she did their routine check, I said no as she asked while we were out trick or treating and also because I am not really sure i want to have this conversation with a neighbour i don,t know well but know better than an anonymous school nurse IYSWIM.

[darky]

I have a daughter who is ADHD. So I will start off by explaining a little about her and see if that answers some questions. When my girl was born she was a big baby. She was hungry, insatiably so. She never seemed satisfied at all. When she crawled not only was her hunger insatiable, but she just crawled and crawled. She was not content with being picked up or restrained in any way. In her cot before she could walk she would climb out and fall to the floor. When she pulled herself up on furniture she would crawl to exits, pull herself up and try doors. She would do that all day long. Once on her feet she did not stop at all, I am not kidding, she didn't stop for a second nor sleep in the day. She never learnt not to touch, even when she had been injured. We couldn't put anything down or she would have it. She stole food all the time, and would even drink dirty dish water, her own poo and wee as well as smearing them. She NEVER watched TV or sat. She still cannot sit on a chair at all without fidgeting. I couldn't have a conversation with her that made any sense. She was not interested in other children, not even to hurt them. She came across almost like she was drunk, slurring her words and just not aware of anyone or anything.

 

She hated going out in the car. The restraints on her car seat were no match for her. She would undo them and I would have to keep stopping, and a few times I caught her trying to climb out the car window. She hated the pushchair, putting her feet under the foot rest jamming her feet on the floor. I was having to push her arround with the pushchair tipped backwards and always right down the centre of an aisle in a shop because both of her hands were stretched right out trying to grab everything as she went. She never played with anything, just broke anything and everything she could get her hands on and ripped and paper she could get her hands on. She used to walk with her head tipped backwards, eyes closed barking LOUDLY. She was floppy, had no muscle tone. If I let go of her hand (which she always tried to prise off), she was like a sprinter, head forward, not looking where she was going and 99% of the time, her escape landed in her flat on her face.

 

She started playgroup 2 years old at a private nursery. Even then they said her level of attention and concentration was very poor. She could not be engaged with any activities. She went to another nursery at 3 and they said she was a very hyperactive, impulsive child with no concentration. She started school at 5 and the teacher could not engage with her. She would roll around on the floor under the desk laughing like the jackle, was very disruptive, or would flop over her desk. The immediately gave her one to one and she ended up in a corridor most of the time because of her behaviour. Absolutely none of the disapline tecniques worked at home or school or anywhere else. She was very consistant no matter where she was or who she was with. She started school in September, within days she was refered to the school doctor who immediately refered her to the consultant. She was diagnosed the May after she started school. She was offered a trial of medication, which we accepted because we were desperate. It was amazing. It was like a light switched on in her. She was less floppy, I could have a conversation with her, she was able to sit in the classroom and pay attention. It soon became clear that actually, she was bright and she went from learning 3 sheets of words in 8 months to learning 3 sheets a WEEK. She held my hand, she sat in the car. The weirdest thing was seeing her noticing things. Like ants! She totally freaked when she saw them!!

 

I read the diagnostic criteria and I laugh. It does not sound like much of a list of symptoms when you consider any child, but what you have to understand is the symptoms are severe, and they are always there. Even when my girl was sick she didn't stop. She would be running around throwing up where she stood and demanding food immediately afterwards. 99% of people I met with my daughter could see she was not naughty, but totally unable to have any self control. When you have a child like this, there are always well meaning people wanting to "give it a shot" and they realised pretty damn quick that their strategies didn't work either, and would just say, "how on earth do you cope with that?"

 

So anyway, I know I have written down tons for you to read. I would always suggest speaking to a dr if there are any concerns about a child. In my experience ADHD is a serious condition and it is severe. ADHD is not about bad behaviour, their heads are whizzing far to fast to think about anything including consequences. I think the best way to describe ADHD is to watch your child and see if their minds are ticking over at all at anytime. An ADHD child, you will not see thinking or being calculating, they just do it! It goes "Ahhh a cup" and they are scalded from grabbing it. Another child would see cup "that looks hot, I will leave it alone" Also, do you have a nervous breakdown about other people's houses worrying about potential open windows and doors and substances not locked away that could kill if swallowed. We ended up with high bolts on all our doors, locks on windows, and cctv!

[joybed]

Hi Darky and thankyou for your reply. I have read this a few times over the past couple of times trying to think what Piers is like and if he is as impulsive as you say your daughter is and the answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no. He will occasionally sit and watch TV for a short time but always the same things and always argues with his sister to get his own way. I find it very difficult to be fair as thay are both very determined little people and i try to get them to take turns but sometimes forget whose turn it is and they will always tell me it is theirs even if it isn,t. On the occasions he does watch TV it is usually while flipping upside down or jumping up and doing a few sportacus (from Lazy Town) moves. He is also always prodding or kicking whoever is near him this drives his brother (ASD) to distraction.

Piers is impulsive and appears to have no sense of danger, he sees the kettle boil and likes the light in it so runs and grabs it, he smells the chips cooking and grabs the deep fat fryer and he does grab hot drinks despite repeated warnings about how dangerous this is. Once at the caravan he ran up behind me lifted the just boiled kettle and poured it down my back he didn,t understand he had done wrong. He has been in A+E twice for drinking tea tree oil and then lavender oil and the staff commented on how hyperactive he was. As a baby he was big for a twin and was born with some degree of jaw recession this made feeding him difficult and it would take forever, he wouldnt wait for a feed and if left to cry would get himself in a such a state he would then not take his feed. He was colicky lactose intolerant and suffered from really bad diarrhoea. His worst quality is his inability to do as he is asked it is almost as if he deliberatley does the opposite and he will argue black is white. He is cheeky and often rude. We went to a family christening the other day and he was demanding I put gel in his hair which I did, as i was getting him in the car i touched his hair and said Oh dear we don,t want to flatten your hair do we, He totally flipped called me a stupid girl, demanded I respike his hair and proceeded to kick, pinch and hit me. He threw himself on the floor and i struggled to get him into the car seat. He was in a strop most of the way their and then in the church he fought with his siblings, threw money in the aisle, rolled around the floor, shouted to his cousin and then attacked Marcus at this moment we left. I told him he couldn,t go to the party afterwards if he didn,t behave and did delay going but it made little difference. When he didn,t have to be so well behaved afterwards he was happy still running around doing headstands and rolling everywhere but happy.

He too is always hungry but always for biscuits, crisps sweets etc i do limit these for all the children but he does help himself but so does Lydia Marcus still doesn,t help himself. If we do go shopping it is a nightmare as he runs off all the time and grabs things of the shelf demands toys and has a tantrum if he can,t have them. He also has been known to get lost by wandering of and doesn,t learn from his mistakes. He has never slept well but this has got worse this last week last night i was up every hour on the hour, he knocks at the door rubbing his eyes and clutching his favourite teddy, he looks cute but I could cry and i am exhausted. I then had to get up at 06.00 to go to work. He doesn,t play properly and does like to break things , cutting up paper is his favourite passtime, if you give him crayons he just scribbles. However Lydia also loves to cut paper and until she went to school also only scribbled. He has a poor attention span when getting him to do school work (learning letters etc) and often refuses even if it is turned into a game.

He does however notice of you are sad or angry so I am almost sure it isn,t an ASD. I spoke to his teacher again yesterday and she said she felt he had settled into school well. She said the first few weeks were a shaky start and in her words "she didn,t know where it was going to lead" but she then said he was almost like the other children. However they had a problem yesterday where he became very angry and frustrated with an LSA and argued with her for a considerable lenght of time. Teacher said this was out of character for him and i pointed out that no he was now showing his true colours. DH is adament he doesn,t want a referral this school year he wants to give him the chance to outgrow it but to be honest i am struggling to cope and feel like i am about to crack up. Had a horrible evening tonight trying to get them settled while he was off at his car meeting .

 

[darky]

It sounds as though things are very difficult for you. I remember those feelings well. When my daughter was 3 she did see a child physcologist who said she was "normal but naughty" helpful NOT! The physc said she was doing this for attention, I disagreed with her right there and then, because my daughter never did anything for a reaction. She was always trying to get away from me, and I could never see her looking for a reaction like my boys did at times, if anything she would look at me totally blank and confused as to why I was cross. She did not realise what she had done, which is why I believe disapline didn't work with her at the time. The difficulty is, is that my girl has ASD in the mix. There is a big crossover of symptoms. You mentioned your son was collicky and lactose intollerant. Have you asked about allergy testing? It might be that something in his diet is causing some of this. I would seriously go to see the GP about it.

[joybed]

Thanks again for your reply. I have considered allergies as he really was very ill when he had milk as a baby or even anything with the tiniest amount of milk in it. His behaviour has been eratic this week and they have all had more sweets than usual thanks to halloween but i don,t think his behaviour is any worse than normal but his sleep has been a lot worse.

I am feeling very upset this morning as just had a major argument with Dh about Piers. Lydia woke in the night announcing she wasn,t sleepy so i had just got her to sleep when Piers had a nightmare and semi woke up so consequently I am tired and grouchy this morning. Awoke to get them up for school, Marcus already up and moaning about having to go to school, Lydia awake usual happy self, Piers waking up independently (always a bonus doesn,t like being woken puts him in a a foul mood). Piers came to our room and complained nappy uncomfortable he started to take it off dnd put back on PJs I asked him to get dressed for school instead, he started his usual tantrum too tired too cold can,t dress himself etc etc, all with much thrashing about kicking as usual. I told him calmly that he either got dressed or he lost his star for today (behavioural chart gets dressed without a fuss= gets a star, 10 stars = a magazine). He continued to tantrum so lost his star. DH comes into the room angry with Piers anounces he is sick of his behaviour, he doesn,t like him because he is so naughty said he is obviously not capable of being well behaved and announced that if he doesn,t get dressed he won,t be having any breakfast. Cue even bigger tantrum. I took DH to one side and suggested he was dealing with this in the wrong way that perhaps a more cajoling approach would work better with Piers and trying to understand the reasons behind his behaviour. i also pointed out that i had already punished him by the removal of a star and said that i didn,t like to use food as a punishment and it was important that he ate breakfast before school. Dh reply was that the kids had no hope with me as a mother, i let them get away with murder and don,t back him up on anything. He said that the star chart isn,t working and the only way was to be firm with them. I again said that i wouldn,t send him to school without breakfast and he said, "Do what you want but i am holding you personally responsible for all his problems and I am not supporting you anymore when they misbehave". He than proceeded to have a go at Marcus because he had noticed his school jumper cuffs were chewed and told him the only thing he is getting for christmas are school jumpers and T-shirts. So another child having a major tantrum. He then left for work leaving me to pick up the pieces. i am so fed up of his negativity and we have discussed this time and again. I am fed up of telling him that if you tell a child they are naughty, stupid, ugly, fat or whatever they will believe it and act accordingly (I know, i was brought up in this way so know the damage it does) but he just looks at me like i am talking rubbish and says the kids don,t have enough discipline and he has to be strict because i am not. The thing is i am strict when need be but i want to be the kind of mother who my children can come to when they have problems. Anyway enough of that, sorry for this but needed to talk to someone and don,t want my friends family to hate my husband IYSWIM. Will ring GP I think and speak about allergy testing and at least let them know my concerns then i will prpare myself myself for the argument that follows there will probably be one tonight anyway.

[joybed]

I have just read the info on PDA posted on the resources board and this describes Piers to the letter i think. We have just been to speech therapy where he was quite well behaved until the end when he tried to do a runner and i had to bring him back but he came without a fight. Since reading the info last night I have decided to try to be less confrontational strict but in a letting him think it is his idea kind of a way. I have also asked the school nurse fro a referral to CDC as I think he needs help, I will deal with DH later. Anyone else got a PDA child it almost sounds harder to deal with than ASD. Can my life get anymore interesting.

[madmumof5]

I have just read the info on PDA posted on the resources board and this describes Piers to the letter i think. We have just been to speech therapy where he was quite well behaved until the end when he tried to do a runner and i had to bring him back but he came without a fight. Since reading the info last night I have decided to try to be less confrontational strict but in a letting him think it is his idea kind of a way. I have also asked the school nurse fro a referral to CDC as I think he needs help, I will deal with DH later. Anyone else got a PDA child it almost sounds harder to deal with than ASD. Can my life get anymore interesting.

 

Oh dear you really are having it bad ,not sure what PDA is so cant help there but I have to say my DP finds it very hard to undertsand why ds2 is like he is and gets cross with him rather than trying to undertsand why he is doing something (I do wonder if Dp has aspergers tho ) its like a battlezone most days .

 

I have just realised I quote the wrong post *blush* I was going to say that Elliot chews his cuffs too and I have now refused to buy him more sweaters I just keep buying cheap ones from Matalan and sewing them up ,He has also chewed the top rail of the wooden bunk beds *shock*