Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Updated again: no CAPD

Yes, I agree. DD had a workup for depression and anxiety. We also sort of covered ASD...it was a long session. She was not given any actual tests, though we filled out a lot of questionnaires. She was interviewed privately, as were we. They did give her an anxiety and depression dx. My feeling is that the anxiety one may not really be right but that the depression one is correct.

Interestingly, we have seen a lot less of the really distressing behavior at home recently. I have no idea why this would be, since school doesn't seem to be going too well. She has always been kind of on-again, off-again. We will have weeks at a time of relative peace and then things will go south and we see day after day of major problems. We have been doing a bit more behavior management/token economy stuff, which is always a mixed bag with her because she gets so upset when she "fails," but maybe it's helped.


Thanks! Times like this I do wish we had results from a longer IQ test. But I have a very strong suspicion that DD would have a strong processing subtest score, which doesn't seem consistent with ADD. I've mentioned here before that we have played around with online "brain games" that test digit span--she tests very, VERY high in that.

CAPD eval is scheduled for early October. Yay!

I'm paying more attention to ADD-like behaviors. One thing I do see is that DD needs a lot of reminders to stay on task with homework. The hard thing for me is that I don't help any other 8yos with their homework, so I don't know how typical this is, or if she does this in school. I do tend to find her in her room cleaning her fingernails with her pencil, staring into space, etc. (She does her HW in her room because she can NOT do it in the common area with her noisy 4yo brother bouncing around...she definitely needs quiet.) She is NOT hyperactive. She sits still and quiet. But she's not on task. She wastes a lot of time this way.

Well, DD had her CAPD evaluation today and it was very conclusive: no CAPD and no hearing problems. In fact, she blew through the assessment, by all accounts. Because I mentioned that her teacher has been bringing up attention-related concerns, they also administered an attention screener and were attentive (ha ha) to that issue during the 2-hour testing. They said they saw no attention problems at all and "did not have to refocus her even once."

So...well...huh. On to the next specialist, I guess. (sigh)

First, it's great news she doesn't have CAPD or attention issues. On the other hand, I totally commiserate with you on the disappointment of once again not having the answers.

Arggghhh.

She does have anxiey and depression diagnoses. So...she isn't diagnosis-free. (Um, yay?) It may be that we are barking up lots of wrong trees and looking for neurological answers where what we have is a kid whose dual exceptionality is simply and singly emotional.

Of course, they aren't ADD experts and they made that clear. But they were pretty clearly implying "ADD? Is her teacher nuts?" (I don't have a copy of the report yet, but I got the impression she blew the tests out of the water. TBH, it's not at all surprising to me that DD was easily able to concentrate on this novel task with a bunch of very sweet women giving her a lot of positive reinforcement. She said afterwards that it was fun.)

As it has been explained to me (I am not a psychologist), ADD is not the inability to focus, it's the inability to focus when it's not engaging. The inability to choose to do the right thing now to avoid problems later. The inability to choose to stay focused in the face of distraction. Just because my child can focus on reading a book or playing a computer game or tests well 1:1 in an ideal environment with an engaging tester does not mean they do not have ADD...

Ironically enough we have had the opposite problem with DD#2, we felt she had ADD, school thought she was fine. We had her diagnosed, started medication and saw a dramatic improvement in homelife (getting her attention, following instructions, completing tasks, general functioning, homework, ability to respond verbally to people). She herself was clear from the first day that medication made her life easier and she wanted to keep taking the medication and for it to work all day.... It was like a child with bad eyesight seeing clearly for the first time "Wow is this what the world is supposed to be like? Yes I want to wear glasses!". Handwriting improved, writing improved, reading improved. Overnight improvements, some of which disappear again off medication.

But school think we are nuts, because she's well behaved, sits nicely at mat time and looks like she is paying attention, and doing well in school. Not doing well relative to her IQ, but doing great relative to her classmates, particularly given her age and grade skip. All the problems like producing pretty much no work when alone at her desk, being unable to keep track of her possessions, return library books in library lessons (which are always right there in her bag), regularly failing to correct follow instructions the school has dismissed as "age appropriate". In a (very wriggly) boy heavy class she's an ideal specimen and we look crazy for thinking there was a problem.

We feel pretty anxious about putting a small child on serious medication, but I feel more anxious about the long term mental health problems I felt she was at risk of from NOT being able to perform as she was capable of. Depression, anxiety and other serious mental health issues are rife in the family and I could already see her going there.

I'm aware of this--however, while I see why DD would find this testing relatively rewarding, it isn't really THAT interesting. You have to sit there with headphones on and decipher text in one ear while nonsense is played in the other--that kind of thing. It was also 2 hours of sitting in a soundproof room mostly alone and following directions over a headset. I don't know what the attention screener was, but I assume there was some kind of distraction and she had to focus.

This is not to say that I am 100% sure that DD does not have ADD-inattentive. I see some things. I just don't see a LOT of things that match, and the things that do match seem like generalized "child having some problems" (or even "bored kid") issues.

I just want to chime in to say our ADHD-acting DD5 was tested and, in a quiet, focussed testing room without any other stimuli, and with lots of interesting, challenging tests to take, has laser focus. And we are laughed out of the testing office. When she went to the jungle-gym-looking, primary colored, fun house that was the occupational therapist's testing environment, she went berserk and took nearly three one hour sessions to be able to focus on a test that normally takes (other kids with sensory processing disorders) one hour to complete. I have no answers for you, just wanted to sympathize with regard to testing. :-/

Mum of Three - I appreciate your post - I'll think about that for our DD5.

Interesting. I did have to laugh a little when they were telling me how great DD's focus was as she spun back and forth on an office chair next to me. (She was pretty obviously SPD-ish when she was little--now you don't see it nearly as much, as she's learned to rein it in, but girlfriend still can't resist a spinny chair.)