I think that exhaustion and stress can look like ADHD and executive function issues. I once worked as an executive assistant. I had to coordinate multiple things at once and be able to prioritize and focus on the most important thing at the moment. I was good at it. I was always on time. Now that our family is going through medical issues, the anxiety and stress I feel absolutely affects my executive functioning and it seems so hard to get anywhere on time. My son, who always had trouble sleeping, now has anxiety that is making his sleep issues worse. He always had trouble turning off his mind and now it is worse. He can't fall asleep until almost morning now. It seems like the melatonin stopped working. It feels like things just get harder and harder and harder.
Out of necessity, we are unschooling at the moment and it is just the two of us. One of the reasons we homeschool is the medical appointments and stress that they cause. My son chooses to work on learning Japanese and history and economics and psychology and philosophy and current events. He reads everything he can on the newest advances in technology. He likes alternate histories and likes to imagine what life would be like if some small thing in history was changed. He is very picky about what he reads. If it is boring and doesn't make him think he will not read it. He finds the most interesting articles on politics and he loves to discuss and debate important issues, but all he has is me, his dad and his sister. I let him learn what he wants right now because I feel that he needs this. Mental health and health in general comes first. I just wish my son had more of a support group that included people beyond our family. We live in a town where almost everyone goes to a church that preaches against gays and although he is not gay he feels that people are born this way, just as he was born with disabilities that he did not ask for, and he doesn't want to be around people who would focus on something like that. Our only local homeschool group is very religious and they kicked out a family that had different views on this matter. They post things on facebook that lead us to believe that they think most of the problems of the world have something to do with accepting gay people. I think they would see my son's refusal to think the way they think as defiance. We talk about this a lot lately.
When my son has trouble getting out of bed, he is cranky but I don't see it as defiance. He says that he feels bad all day if he doesn't get enough sleep and I know it makes anxiety issues worse.
The neuropsychologist my son saw when he was 11 didn't think the fact that he hadn't slept much the night before testing and was getting a migraine during the test and had anxiety would affect the results of the test. Since I know these things affect my performance I didn't think the results of the test really helped us that much except that is a picture of his ability when he is exhausted and stressed and has a migraine. It helped me to realize that compensated for these things well in some areas and others, not so much. We got confirmation that he was verbally gifted but there were some test results that did not make sense at all when looking at what he is able to do outside of test situations and the neuropsychologist did not like it when I mentioned this. I hope you get more answers than we did.
It was easy for me to pull my son out of school but I don't think I could put my son back in school. He will have to learn the way he learns best and take college level CLEP tests when he is ready.
I think not being able to do band would be hard. Band is the one thing in our football obsessed small town for smart kids who don't do sports and they just look like they have so much fun together. I used to wish my son could just take band and nothing else but it isn't allowed here either. He used to have friends who were in band as well as musical theater. When my son had to quit musical theater because of medical issues there was no opportunity for him to be around other teens except church and I have been tempted to force him to go, thinking he really needs to be around other teens.
