seaturtle, I went back and re-read your previous post about your ds. What you've described above - distraction with clutter in the field of vision, inability to retain what he's read, distraction in the classroom - sure, those could all be symptoms of ADHD, but they can also be behaviors caused by difficulty with vision - and your previous post mentioned your ds had been evaluated by a behavioral optometrist who found he had visual processing issues. I understand from what you wrote in the previous post that you may have been skeptical of the optometrist's assessment, but as a parent of a child who's had the very same type of behaviors and issues and who used to have people suggesting all the time that she had to have ADHD based on her behaviors... my dd didn't have ADHD, she had vision challenges. I was a total skeptic that things like tracking/convergence/etc could be causing major issues, but they were! I was very doubtful at first, but we took a chance on vision therapy and it made a huge difference in my dd's life. Her reading ability skyrocketed, she started actually *loving* to read, and most of the distracted behaviors that looked like ADHD went away.
Sooo... just my two cents, but rather than worrying about ADHD at this point - when your ds is doing well in school and it doesn't sound like other people are concerned about it (teachers etc), I'd think through the vision info you have first and reconsider what the optometrist recommended.
Also, just wanted to throw this out there - my dd had really REALLY bad vision issues (including double vision)... and at 8 years old, none of us realized it, including my dd - she thought everyone saw the world the way that she did! She also had 20/20 eyesight in each eye at the time, so her regular eye dr didn't find any issues with her eyes. The key was her eyes, although they were individually seeing 20/20, weren't focusing together.
Best wishes,
polarbear
