He diddles and he dawdles and he gets distracted. Last night, he was supposed to be doing his vocabulary cards and I checked on him and he was looking up the word "traipse" in the dictionary. ME: Oh, is that one of your words? Him: No, I just wanted to know it's precise definition. Me: Why's that? Him: I just want to". He'll go to the bathroom and if there's any reading material within 10 feet, he'll read in the bathroom. He also has trouble getting through the tedious stuff. He wants to move on to the next thing because, of course, that's much more interesting than whatever he's doing. If he's supposed to read one chapter, he'll read until I make him stop. If he's supposed to be doing math, he might be reading the newspaper or his science report or playing with the dog or whatever.
For example, yesterday, he got home at 4:30 and had a snack and then went to piano lesson, and got home about 5:40. I told him to get right on his homework because he had a scout meeting at 7 and he asked for 5 minutes of downtime. So, 5 minutes later, I told him his time was up, and to get busy. He finally got around to getting his homework out at about 6:20. I have no idea what he was doing in that time - daydreaming, creating sand castles in his head, solving the mystery of the universe, who knows? Ten minutes later, supper was ready so he ate and went back to his homework about 6:40. He "worked" on it until 8:00 when I told him to put it away and play with his dad. "What'll I do about it? It's due tomorrow?". I told him I didn't know but that he had had plenty of time to do it. Then, he realized that he had missed scouts and started calling himself stupid.
petunia, everything you've written above sounds like something that would happen with my ds if we put him in the situation of having two different activites after school and add in homework. It's just a lot of stuff for any kid to handle. My ds12 does *not* have ADHD but he has the same relative dip in processing speed that your ds has. School days are long for him - he gets tired because the dip in processing speed does impact him academically. I don't know if it is impacting your ds, but it might be and perhaps no one realizes the way it impacts him simply because he's so bright.
When our ds gets home from school, he needs downtime for at least 30 minutes and a snack. If he has one activity in the evening, he needs some time to get back in gear mentally before taking it on. He needs to know he has plenty of time to finish his homework, and he stresses if he thinks he has more to do than he can accomplish. He wants to get good grades in school. He feels like he's slow, even though his processing speed really isn't slower than average - but it feels that way to him. Boy Scouts is meant to be an add-on, but if his Boy Scouts is like my ds' Boy Scout experience, it includes a lot of work too - it's not just throw-a-bunch-of-boys-into-a-room and let them play, kwim? You'd never realize to look at my ds from the outside in without knowing all that that he's tired or stressed or worried about school - it comes out differently. He's 12 and it can look like he doesn't care or like he's a space cadet. But he's not - he's a kid who is challenged in school by his processing speed and who is never probably going to a rock-star I can do everything and do it great and hold-it-all-together kid. BUT - he does really well when we give him a schedule and structure and room to breathe and relax.
Perhaps none of that applies to your ds - I just thought I'd offer it up as food for thought. Your OP asked about the possibility of an impact from the dip in his processing scores and working memory - from what you've said above, it sounds like it would help to have a full neuropsych eval if you haven't had one to explore further what's causing that dip. My ds is also in 7th grade, and the workload is really increasing. No matter how intellectually higher level work may be, if there's a challenge with processing speed and working memory, just *getting the work done* at school can be mentally exhausting.
polarbear
