I think my son's SPD can sometimes look like ADHD and the developmental pediatrician he saw at age 7 told me that some people might think he has ADHD, but he doesn't. He is capable of incredible focus. I think SPD is what causes him to sometimes have problems with time management.
I have noticed that my son and I are both overly sensitive people. We sometimes go into a sensory overload state. We both have anxiety when we know that we have to do something that we know from experience will overload our senses. For my son it is usually medical related, like trips to the doctor who tells us if his scoliosis is getting worse or the neurologist who prescribed a stong medication that my son is worried about taking. My son says his heart starts beating faster when he sees the doctor's office. By the time we have been sitting in the waiting room for an hour with all the sights, sounds and smells, his blood pressure is high. When he braces himself for the bad news, I can see the anxiety in his eyes but there is still no behavior problem. He takes the bad news and keeps it inside. Ask him to do math or do anything that requires thinking the rest of the day, and he might look like he has ADHD and executive function issues. When we are in this state, we don't have behavioral issues that other people would notice. What happens to us is happening inside. For instance, I don't want to talk, my heart beats faster, my blood pressure goes up, if I try to read anything it doesn't "stick" in my mind and I can't control the worries that keep popping into my head. When my son is also in this sensory overload state it is hard for him to do any homeschooling and I don't have good enough executive functioning to make him. On those days we do only what is absolutely necessary around the house and try to forget about the rest. We usually end up reading interesting history or science articles, listening to music, watching youtube videos, anything to distract us so we can get our overly sensitive bodies to calm down. But our lives just keep getting more challenging and we can't keep taking days off. We are looking for ways to control our internal reactions and learn to focus through the difficulties. We don't want to take any kind of medication.
I have been cleaning out old files at home and ran across lots of evidence that I once had very good executive functioning--like copies of employee appraisals from when I used to work and used to have a normal life. I also found my scores from testing done at a university that I was transferring to after completing two years at a community college while also working full time. I was also a single parent at the time. Most of my scores were above average and my critical thinking score was my highest score. There is no way I would score that high now. I can't focus enough to even read an article in the newspaper because I can't get all the problems out of my mind. I forgot to take lunch to my parents one day because I was too focused on my son's difficulties so I definitely had dysfunctional executive function that day. I often feel like I have ADHD now because of all the stress.
