Tell me about attention problems in young kids.

In My Humble Opinion
1

A bit of background first. I have a 6 year old daughter, she’s in a Montessori school for kindergarten. My ex and I separated almost two years ago. My ex and I have an ok relationship, though it could be better. She is now getting remarried in a couple of months and moving to a new place.

A few months after we separated, and about the time my children were introduced to the new guy, my daughter started having problems in school. Her teachers said she wasn’t doing her work, wasn’t doing age appropriate work, and had a hard time paying attention.

Last October the teachers said she was still having some problems and my ex decided to take my daughter to a psychologist. At the time the psychologist said she was fine and if you want to bring her back in 6 months. A few weeks ago we went back to see the teachers, they said she was doing much better, though still sometimes had problems with attention. My ex kept asking about the attention problems even though the teachers said she was much better. A few days later my daughter had her 6 year checkup, my ex said she was having problems and the doctor said she was ok. She insisted that our daughter was having problems, I told the doctor later on that the teachers said she was doing better.

Last week we had an appointment with the same psychologist. This time when we came in my daughter was squirming a lot more, she had just been back to the doctor a few days before for a sick visit. Right now she doesn’t much like doctors. The psychologist kept asking my daughter what I thought were leading questions like ‘Do you like recess’, ‘do you like the monkey bars’, and things like that. What 6 year old doesn’t?

His suggestion was that my daughter needed testing right now because she’ll be in a new school next year. The testing is supposed to be 3.5 hours, though I’m not sure exactly what that entails.

I’ll admit my bias, especially towards the psychologist, since he was sued over the death of one of his patients that he put on drugs. I didn’t much like his attitude, especially when he outright told me that my concerns were not valid.

I don’t think my daughter has attention problems, at least not the ADHD that they want to test her for. I think a lot of her problems are because of all the things that have gone on in her life. She tells me she’s scared of her mother getting married and them moving. She’s asked me many times about my ex and I getting back together. I’ve tried to tell her things are ok and that we both love her, I’m not sure what else I can do in that regard.

Now my questions. What can I expect in the testing? So far I haven’t been told what it even entails. I’d also like some good resources on ADHD. So far I’ve only gotten the extremes with the wo-wo side of the Scientologists and mediums, and the other side saying drugs are the best thing for this ‘disease’. I’d also like some alternative treatments besides drugs since some of the studies I’ve seen say that drugs only help in the short term and not in the long term.

Bonus question of how does one choose a psychologist and counselor? Both of the ones that my daughter has been to I dislike and would like to try and find someone new and will work for everyone.

2

It sounds like your ex and psychologist are trying to “fix” being 6 years old. As someone who is going through the same sort of thing with my son (also 6), I can sympathize. I’m not a doctor, but it doesn’t surprise me that your child is experiencing difficulty - her life is changing fairly drastically. I would consider finding a different psychologist or therapist. We’ve just started family therapy ourselves, and I could’ve kissed our therapist when she said, “I think ADD/ADHD is overdiagnosed in kids. They’re expected to perform a lot more in school with less time to move around. It’s no wonder so many are struggling.”

Best of luck to you and your daughter. I think ADD is a real issue for many, but it also seems to be used as a catch-all for childhood behavior problems.

3

Ask yourself- how would it hurt your daughter to be tested? I can’t think of any way that it would hurt her- can you? And, how would it hurt your daughter to not be tested? I can think of many ways it would hurt her to have ADD or a similar condition and it not be diagnosed and her not be helped with it.

If the time and expense is a problem for you, maybe you could at least have her teacher fill out the Vanderbilt questionnaire for ADD/ADHD that many psychologists use to diagnose.

4

Right on, and the diagnostic procedures vary greatly, as simple as behavior checklists completed by parent and teacher to as complex as a full neuropsychological assessment. An MD must also be involved, of course.

The end result is usually a “trial” of stimulant medication, which may have the desired effect of making the child more attentive at school, which it will have on most children. The question of course, is whether the treatment is addressing the symptoms or the actual cause of the problem. We shouldn’t be medicated a child for a family environmental problem, yet it happens a lot.

It’s useful to have longitudinal data of how the child has done in school…there should be evidence of attention problems to some degree all along. For a problem with attention/hyperactivity to crop up out of the blue suggests other things are happening in the child’s life.

5

1: Who spends more time with her, you or your wife? Why don’t you think she has attention problems? You understand she might have problems with the timing of the move, and have ADD as well? Or perhaps she has an anxiety issue, and the ADD test would rule out ADD and open the door to treatment for other issues. There’s no harm in getting her tested. If you have problems with this particular doc, then you need to get a second opinion. But, if the guy still has a license to psych, then he’s still a doctor. If his previous actions were as egregious as you seem to think, he’d have had that license taken away.

2: Please don’t think I’m planting any ideas or making any assumptions here, I’m not trying to be a creeper; I just have to ask. (And don’t ask your daughter about this either, because if you suspect anything, you really need to let a professional handle it.) But the way you worded the OP (she doesn’t like doctors, she keeps asking you to come back, she stopped working in school, she’s regressing by doing work that isn’t age-appropriate), on top of the *timing *of her acting out, have raised my suspicious hackles: Do you think it’s possible that this guy is sexually abusing your daughter?

**Please **feel free to smack me and tell me I’m totally off-base.

6

Is this person a psychologist, or is it a psychiatrist? Psychiatrists are MDs who can prescribe medications. Psychologists are PhDs and in most places can’t prescribe meds. If it’s a psychologist, then you may want to wait until you get a chance to meet the psychiatrist about if medications are really indicated or not.
I do agree with Rachel that it is important to consider other possible explanations for these symptoms as well.

7

Tap

I’m not smacking you, rachelellogram, or even countering you. We seem to have similar opinions when we post for some reason. However, I’ll dial you back a bit and throw in some experience-based ideas to spice up the stew here:

The daughter isn’t necessarily getting sexually abused. In fact, the daughter might not be getting abused in any way at all. Little hints in the post do seem to suggest she doesn’t like the future step-father, but that could be anything from preferring the OP to the new fiance backing Mom’s insistence that she eat her broccoli (which, despite a young person’s perspective, doesn’t normally count as abuse). I dunno what OP can do to make that relationship work. I’ve never been inclined to foster the relationship of someone with the guy who replaced me – but I’m petty like that.:confused:

Somebody else did notice that, well, the kid is six.:eek: Kids these days are inundated with sugar-filled foods all the time. I was diagnosed with the “Hyperactive” label (ADD/ADHD in its youth) at seven. Part of it was family problems (Mom wasn’t beating me, the brother was – but back then ALL sibling squabbles were considered ‘just sibling stuff’) and part of it was my mostly sugar-and-salt diet (not really Mom’s fault; I just got into the cabinets whenever I could). I’m still “hyperactive” and as an adult people just think it’s odd that I can eat junky food and maintain a decent weight. Maybe the alternative is having the kid sitting around doing PlayStation games all the time getting fat on all that mostly-sugar-and-salt. [I’m being a bit facetious here.] The alternative, when I reached my teen years, was to channel all that abundant energy into cycling, martial arts, and playing racquetball and volleyball as intensely as a contact sport. Then I’d sleep well; then I’d have amazing concentration once I finally got behind a desk. I don’t know how early one can or should try channeling that energy. And, typically, doing so isn’t free and cost could be a factor.

I doubt the girl is quite so devious, but my colleague’s youngest daughter intentionally failed her first year of high school when he moved her and her siblings to a private school. Apparently she figured she’d get to go back to being with her old friends if she ‘proved’ she couldn’t handle the new school. Similarly, my wife’s youngest daughter ‘proved’ she couldn’t handle school in this state by failing her classes - she didn’t even try to do the homework and intentionally answered tests questions incorrectly. She figured she’d be able to live with her biological father if she ‘proved’ her classes here were too difficult for her. [The fact that she got A’s and B’s in prior years indicated something was brewing.]

So it may all just be that she’s adversely affected by Daddy is Being Replaced :(. A psychologist or MFT may be able help her cope and drugs might not be necessary. But, short of rescinding the divorce for the daughter’s sake [don’t even think I’m serious], there might not be an easy fix.

----G!
You see it your way
and I see it mine

. --Don Henley (Eagles)
. Best of My Love
. On The Border

8

We just had my son tested. It was more like 5-1/2 hours but that included a lot of breaks, an hour for lunch, etc. He had a full battery of Neuropsych testing and intelligence testing. He actually had fun doing it (he’s 7).

According to the doctor (who I met, liked, and respect), he does have ADHD, Inattentive type. The doctor said, however, that he thought behavioral interventions should be the first strategy rather than jumping to medication. He’s a traditional diagnostician but prefers to use meds only when proven necessary.

My son also has a counselor who I like a lot (different health centers entirely). My daughter had a different counselor who I didn’t like at all, so it’s not just that I like everyone. :slight_smile: We had challenges in finding both, though. Our first concern was finding someone who would accept our insurance—for the testing, that was difficult and we ended up on a long waiting list. If we had gone somewhere private, we could have gotten in within weeks, but it is $3500 - $4000. So, we started with the list of providers from the insurance company.

For the counselor, it was very important to me to find someone who had a lot of experience and who was more of a systems theorist. I wanted someone who would primarily work with my son but also occasionally see me and my husband to catch us up, see us all as a family, etc. I am so extremely lucky that we were able to find that close to home and covered by insurance. As I mentioned, my daughter had a counselor for a short time and that person basically saw the girl alone and barely checked in with us.

Coincidentally, my son is clamoring for my attention right now and I do need to give it to him. I’m happy to answer questions about the specific components of the tests and how the results were given/will be used. We went into this armed with a lot of research and I’d like to be able to pass the same on to you. You can always PM if you prefer.

9

I’ll try and catch all of the questions here. I don’t think that there’s any thing funny going on with the new guy. My daughters, especially my 6 year old, do what typically happens at this age and time, they want their parents to get back together. I know they have different rules then I do that the girls don’t always like. Other then that they seem to like the guy fine. I try and tell them things will be good and that we love them.

As for the testing, who wants to sit around for 3.5 hours, or as lorene said 5.5 hours. I took similar tests when I was younger and it did screw me up. I had a hard time in school, and when they tested at that time they only reported the things I did poor on and not what I did good on. I was put in more remedial classes and was bored. It was much later on, when I found the tests, and asked a professor of education why they didn’t use the higher math scores and he told me that they didn’t care about that. His response was one of the reasons I didn’t become a teacher. So I do think testing can be a problem, and in this case I think we are rushing into it for the time being.

My ex technically spends the most time with her, though a lot of times they are with the new guy. Even during the week her parents pick my oldest up and take her places. I would say that I know more what my daughter likes and I would say I understand her much better since she’s a lot like me.

I’m really looking for people who’ve been through it, and for books or sites that don’t go to either extreme. I’m having a hard time with the latter. Some of the sites are attached to the Scientologists, which I couldn’t get out of fast enough when I saw that, and others saying how great the drugs are. I want a good over all picture so I can make an informed choice without someone telling me what I need to do based upon 30 minutes or so with my daughter. I’d also like to see other treatments to see what might be helpful. I did find one book that looks interesting suggesting that more outside play is good for kids with attention problems. Other then that it’s been pretty bleak.

10

I sometimes wonder what the “perfect” child would be like, the one who could not be diagnosed with anything. I mean I think every single kid I remember could have been diagnosed with something, lord knows what the kid who stripped naked and pooped on the floor would be labeled with(sex offender fecophiliac :smiley: )

11

Besides the small mark I would think Damien would be pretty close.

12

To be utterly and completely frank, I think you are projecting a bit. Four or five years old is very young when it comes for divorce, and if it is done with minimal drama, it shouldn’t be affecting her that much. She may not like the “new guy” at this moment, but they are getting married and he is her family now. The fact that you are implying that time with the new guy doesn’t count as much shows that you are seem to be having problems digesting that. Time with mom and the new guy is time with family, now. Full stop. She is young enough that she will forget that it was ever any different.

From my analysis, it looks like you have one story in your head (“the divorce and new guy are making her act up”) and your ex has another one in her head. I’d argue that while you may have a solid position here (I’m not huge on drugs for kids), but you should really look hard at that narrative and how much of it is serving you versus how much is serving the kid. I’m not saying you are wrong, but you might be better served by letting go of just a little bit of that story. Focus on the kid and the kid’s needs, and leave the baggage behind.

In this situation, you need to choose your battles. I’d think pretty hard if testing is the field you want to fight things out over. Could you consider testing plus a second opinion if they find something? You are only going to get so many chances for full veto power in your kid’s childhood. Is this where you want to use it?

13

Sometimes attention problems are a very minor thing. When my youngest son was in second grade we got a report from the teacher that he didn’t pay attention in class. I knew what it was right away. He had a tendency not to look at people who are talking to him. I explained to him that the teacher would assume he wasn’t paying attention if he didn’t look at her while she talked. He understood, learned to fix a stare on the teacher, and that ended that problem.

14

As the husband of a school psychologist, I was wondering why this evaluation wasn’t being handled by the school’s special education services staff, but I see it is a Montessori school and I presume private rather than public. Is that correct? Is the “new school” she is going to public?

15

I may possibly be projecting, but every book on divorce says that children will start to ask for their parents to get back together at this age. I don’t believe I said she doesn’t like the new guy, she seems to like him fine.

As for the time, my impression is that my ex goes to her fiancees’ house with the children all of the time. My ex, from what I’m told, does not sit down with the kids to play games, take them to the park and such. She tells me my oldest has problems with her attention, yet I don’t have those problems at all. By spending time with her I mean actually interacting with the kids and not just having them there.

So what you’re saying is that moving three times in two years and having two different fathers in the same time period doesn’t do anything to a young kid? That’s not what I’ve read and isn’t what happened to me. She’s not acting up, she’s not paying attention, big difference.

I don’t have a huge problem with testing, what I have a problem with is ‘Your daughter has gotten much better over the last year, though she doesn’t always do age appropriate work.’ to getting put into a doctors office and saying she needs to be tested and tested in two weeks without actually looking into other causes first. I’d like to slow down and take a look at things, yet my ex and the doctor are pushing full steam ahead. It’s also quite telling when a doctor who prescribed a drug for a child on the first visit and commits suicide at the age of 12, should not be saying on our first visit, ‘we don’t need to talk about drugs until she’s tested’ tells me he’s already got that idea in his head.

So if you were, buying a house, getting married, thinking about a new job or even a new car that wouldn’t take some of your focus away from your job at all?

Again, I’m looking for actual studies and evidence about attention problems, which seems to be very hard to come by. I’m actually, you know, trying to get rid of any bias I may have. I’ve read there are other options besides drugs and such, but one book isn’t going to do it for me. I can’t seem to find any middle of the road type stuff.

16

Yes the new school will be public.

17

I agree that it doesn’t seem to make sense to move ahead with testing if the kid is showing improvement and the teachers no longer say it is a problem. If the psychiatrists evaluation does not involve a classroom observation or at the very least some input from the teachers, that would be a big red flag for me.

That said, I think you are reading into the psychiatrist’s comment a little too much. Presumably there are a lot of parents concerned when looking a possible ADHD diagnosis that their child will end up on medication, so it seems natural to bring up that it is not a sure thing. Of course, the possibility of medication has occurred to him. He’s a friggin psychiatrist. That’s what they do.

As far as finding studies, etc, goes have you tried"Google Scholar"? I don’t know what exactly you are looking for, but that is the best way to find actual academic studies. Unfortunately for many of them you can only access the abstract if you don’t have a subscription to the journal.

18

We are suffering with a similar problem from the reverse side. We know that there is something going on with our daughter and our doctor pooh-poohed us.

She rushes through everything, forgets everything and can’t complete tasks. She’s in grade three.

We were fairly convinced that something was up and then her teacher (who is both adored by and adores our daughter) also suggested that something was seriously wrong.

What’s my point here? Oh, yeah. If the MD thinks the tests are worthwhile, have them done. I have seen them done on my youngest and they really are pretty fun (nowhere near what they did when I was a kid which was boring as all get out). My son thought it was a great time to play with a grown up.

Once the results are in, then you should worry about treatment options or counselling or nothing if that is what is warranted. Having her tested is still a good idea.

19

I’ve gone through the diagnosis and testing process with one of my kids and we’re looking at potentially a second kid also. One thing I can tell you is that nearly without fail, every single professional involved at every step has been quick to assure us up-front “Don’t worry, meds are not a necessity.” I think it must be because they get a lot of parents that are worried that their kids are going to be overmedicated into zombies, and need reassurance that that won’t be the case. I agree you shouldn’t read too much into that comment.

Personally, we saw signs of problems in my kids really early on, like age 2-3. But then, both of mine seem to have Asperger’s in addition to (or possibly instead of; this is a murky area) ADHD, and the Asperger’s stuff is what people tend to notice. When you have a 3-year-old child who can read aloud to you from a Harry Potter novel but flings himself onto the floor in hysterics if asked to participate in a group sing-along, that’s sort of a red flag, if you see what I mean.

Doubt it. Not that it screwed you up, but that the tests were similar. Times have changed. When my oldest had his initial evaluation by a psychologist, it consisted primarily of answering a few lightweight questions in her office and then playing with stuff in the office while the psychologist discussed some things with me (while also watching his style of play and the way he interacted with us). I’m not saying that is identical to what your kid will go through, but I very much doubt that it will be anything like any sort of test that you had many years ago. Also, you seem to be concerned that attention problems, if diagnosed, will lead to a remedial education label for your child. They don’t go hand in hand. My son is in the gifted education program as well as being diagnosed with ADHD. He’s not the only one in his gifted class like that, either.

Personally I don’t think that having your child evaluated and tested can hurt. Having information is generally good.

20

OW!!!

Sorry, your kneejerking got me right in the forehead!

  1. Doctors ask weird questions and waiting rooms are boring and it’s time that you don’t get to go out and play. Who wants to go to the doctor even as an adult?
  2. The doctors keep on asking about school and how things go there, I’m sick of school!
  3. Maybe new guy disciplines harsher than daddy, or doesn’t let her have an extra ice cream. That would make me want daddy back!

Sorry, I just find in that stuff like this, it’s luckily never the worst case scenario, but as humans we’re driven to drama and thinking of the extreme.