For better or worse, you now have an ADHD diagnosis. Use it. Request a 504 plan for your child. In the plan, request "a sensory diet" of exercise and activity in the middle of his day, separate from his recess. It can include doing things like being sent on errands carrying books to the library or heading out into the hallway to do pushups and jumping jacks or whatever works for your child..
I respect geofizz' opinion on this - our parent advocate in elementary also suggested we do the same when ds had an inaccurate ADHD diagnosis and an accurate "other" diagnosis and we were struggling tremendously to get him qualified for the services and accommodations he needed at school. We chose *not* to do this (although we could have), and I am glad, in our ds' case, that we did not - so please know I'm not disagreeing with geofizz and others, just offering an example of why a parent might not want to do this, when they are unsure of the diagnosis:
1) We were fortunate in that, when this was suggested, we already had private testing that showed clearly our ds had other challenges, so that we could target remediations and accommodations specific to his *actual* challenges. If you write up a 504 assuming the diagnosis is something it isn't, you are running the risk that the accommodations put in place aren't appropriate. While that usually isn't going to do any harm to a child, it also most likely isn't going to provide significant help, and it may result in time lost from class or other therapies that is really needed.
2) Paperwork is going to follow your child in school. Once the school has a record of your child having a diagnosis, you're going to have to prove your child *doesn't* have that diagnosis to get it off of their school paperwork. We actually had to do this (see why we did this in #3 below) by paying for a private ADHD evaluation, which, while it is good info to have (knowing that he doesn't fit an ADHD diagnosis), it was also something that we knew as parents already and that we didn't really want to have to pay for.
3) Having the ADHD diagnosis on his paperwork tended to focus the school staff on that diagnosis during his IEP eligibility review, when we really needed them to be focusing on his actual disability diagnosis. It was also used as a "possible reason" that he was having difficulty with written expression, when he has a diagnosis of a written expression disability. The impact of that was two-fold - the school tried to use ADHD as a reason to prove that ds' struggles with written expression were only due to focus and therefore he didn't need any individualized instruction in written (which he did), and the staff also tended to look at ds as a "kid with ADHD" rather than a student who was trying but unable to perform due to his LD not being addressed. We also had the school tell us he should be medicated in order to properly assess his written expression - and this is simply irresponsible. All the ADHD medication in the world would not have addressed ds' challenge simply because it wasn't ADHD. I won't go into how inappropriate it was for school personnel to suggest meds!
4) The school staff (in our school at that point in time) was used to seeing a lot of students diagnosed with ADHD (and I think correctly diagnosed, at least among the students I knew well), but they didn't see as many students with LDs and since there is such a wide range of LDs and how each LD impacts a student, it was just "easier" to see ds as a student with ADHD, and not acknowledge that there was something more/different going on - and ds really *needed* that recognition that he had something different going on - that was the first step toward getting ds help that was meaningful and effective.
So - food for thought re why *not* to use a diagnosis to get services if you aren't sure the diagnosis is appropriate. We definitely would have had an easier time getting accommodations for ds if we'd let the school write a 504 plan for ADHD, and some of the accommodations would have overlapped accommodations he receives for his actual diagnosis/challenge. But we would have also caused delays down the line in getting *appropriate* services/etc for ds at school.
I suspect that what you need at this point in time, for your ds, is an evaluation that looks at the whole student, and includes how he is functioning both at school and at home. You can initiate that type of evaluation through your school, or you can opt to have a private evaluation - but one visit to a pediatrician isn't what you're looking for.
Best wishes,
polarbear
