Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional ADHD/ADD Question

I could use some H to increase my productivity.

I'm glad to know that a central issue has been covered. Just was worried thinking about it.

Here's an article that may be of interest:
http://brainposts.blogspot.com/2011/11/neuropsychology-and-cerebellum-part-ii.html#!/2011/11/neuropsychology-and-cerebellum-part-ii.html

One quote from there:
"Greater decrease in cerebellar volumes are seen in children with ADHD not treated with stimulants suggesting stimulant medication may reduce cerebellar abnormalities in ADHD"

Jon, you make laugh out loud.

hmmm so basically adhd is related to this area of the brain and if he needs meds may good to start with trying the stimulants...

Marytheres - I read some prior posts and it seems like your DS may have several other exceptionalities other than being gifted or ADHD. I think you mentioned dysgraphia and also that he has OT or VT for other issues.

When my DS was being assessed for ADHD, other issues were contemplated and ruled out because many other issues can present like ADHD. My DS did get an ADHD combined type diagnosis - his executive funcition deficiencies are fairly typically ADHD - impulse control, behavior issues, getting bogged down in the bigness of tasks and having trouble breaking them down into something he can manage and, of course, distractibility. His working memory is pretty strong but the tips and strategies in Smart But Scattered have been effective with him. So, I guess what I am trying to say is that there are several accomodations, resources out there that can work for people (even if they don't have ADHD) that might be useful. I would google executive function deficit and/or improving working memory. I think one of the keys is to help him routinize automaticity.

I've enjoyed reading the work of Dr. Daniel Amen who has really been on what I consider to be the cutting edge of psychiatry. He has been using SPECT brain imaging to show how brains are functioning and the structurally visible representations of the disorders that have been previously diagnosed (as they have been for over a century) by rather subjective symptomology checklists. I find his work very impressive. One of his most popular books is Healing ADD: The Breakthrough Program that Allows you to See and Heal the 6 Types of ADD. His website is www.amenclinics.com. I find it fascinating to look at the functioning of the parts of the brain.

marytheres, I don't have a child with an ADHD diagnosis (at the present time lol! we've had one in the past...) but my ds dysgraphic *absolutely* has huge challenges with automaticity - related to his dyspraxia and dysgraphia. For instance, he wasn't able to learn how to tie his shoes until late 4th grade because he doesn't have the same learning-by-repetition-which-quickly-comes-automaticity that neurotypical kids do. You might want to do some googling (in all your spare time, eh? ) on dyspraxia or developmental coordination disorder (basically the same thing; neuropsychs will call the diagnosis DCD). The lack of automaticity in everyday skills (things like buttoning a shirt etc) is different than the symptoms commonly associated with ADHD, but dyspraxic people *do* share some overlapping symptoms - one is challenges with organizational and similar EF skills. The book mentioned above will be helpful in that sense (I read it many years ago, personally I think it has some very good suggestions for helping nt kids with organizational skills!).

Our ds was once diagnosed with ADHD but the diagnosis was largely based on what he was appearing to struggle with in the classroom... and once we had accommodations in place for his dysgraphia and we understood his dyspraxia better those classroom symptoms disappeared and when he underwent both an ADHD-specific eval and a repeat neuropsych eval both found no evidence of ADHD.

So that's just our experience - jmo, but the difficulty with automaticity, my guess, is more likely related to your ds' dysgraphia than to ADHD (whether or not he has ADHD ).

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - I didn't have time to reply to your post yesterday - but I was so glad to read you had some answers finally!

I am finding it hard to say for sure but I think my child with Aspergers and dyslexia had way more problems with automaticity than my child with ADHD has. She was not an obvious case of ADHD at all, we got called in to the headmasters office to explain ourselves in fact! But as well as all the attention related improvements ADHD medication has marked impact on her hand writing and general control of her body. She has low tone and is hypermobile and while the medication doesn't take this away she's much less "floppy" on medication, less likely to flop all over the place when having her hair brushed for example...

[quote=MumOfThree She has low tone and is hypermobile and while the medication doesn't take this away she's much less "floppy" on medication, less likely to flop all over the place when having her hair brushed for example... [/quote]

This is interesting that ADHD meds affect your daughter's hypotonia... Have you ever looked into why? I am just curious.

Polarbear, what are the hallmarks of dyspraxia? Who diagnoses it? My DS has had a few evals now, sees an OT regularly, etc.... No one has ever mentioned dyspraxia though it seems like he does have some of the symptoms of it. Are there specific tests for it?

Some things I am thinking about doing:

I am thinking I am going to take all of his testing and evals to a neuropsychologist and get her 'take' - so to speak. I am not sure he can go through anymore testing at this point. He gets evals and testing for the vision every so many months too and I think he is getting burned out on testing. And I do want him to do a WISC for the school psych in the spring so I can see if there is any improvement in working memory, processing speed and visual-spatial that I can maybe correlate with the year of OT twice a week and vision therapy. I think the school psych did a pretty thorough battery of tests and included a lot of observations, etc. that a neuropsych could use to look at and see what if anything jumps out at her.

I was also thinking that over the summer he could do a program at one of those LearningRx places http://www.learningrx.com/main-line/. I know it's a gamble but they seem to work specifically on strengtheing DS' areas of weakness processing and memory. Anyone have any opinion on a program like that? I'd just hate to see his low working memory and processing skills hold him back (and if the cause isn't ADD, what else could I do to help him, ykim?). Seems to me that those (WM and processing skills) would be pretty important for success in school just in general. Anyway, it's expensive - very expensive so it's just a thought right now.

ETA: I guess there is always the possiblity that DS is simply developing asynchronously and his WM and Processing skills will catch up with time. Another reason to see if there is improvement in those specific areas from last year's WISC - again give me an idea if with time and therapies those areas are improving.