Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Struggling with Psychomotor Overexcitability

My dd8 is a kind, interested and caring child and struggles with psychomotor overexcitability. Or should I say, she's fine with it, and I struggle She has such boundless physical energy from the second she wakes up in the morning and always wakes up early. She is in constant movement. One would wonder if she's paying attention but when you query her, she's very much on task. She never stops verbally questioning and working out the right and wrong of things. She wants to know great details bout morals and ethics and is extremely black/white. It's almost like she comforts herself with verbal information and gives and needs it urgently. It is exhausting. This Momma needs a break.

She also has speech articulation challenges and poor handwriting. It's almost as if her brain is going so fast that her hands can't keep up. I have her in speech and OT privately. She'll start swim team again next month and is also taking piano and chess. I'm trying to transfer her into a GATE magnet for next year pending testing results. Her current school is not a good fit for her and she's terribly bored and frequently won't pay attention to detail unless she can personalize the topic. She'll compute complex mathematical problems in her head and resist writing her work out.

She's such an amazing kid, a champion of causes and the environment and she really stands up for other kids and what's right. She's just so on all the time. It's a lot and I know her best friend's parents struggle with her energy at playdates. I try to get her to be conscious of how her motor is running and use that language to bring her down, but she loves her energy and resists calming down. It's a problem for her only as it effects those adults dealing with her who interpret it to be something else and get annoyed. It's a problem as it deals with her Dad & I as sometimes we just need some quiet space between words and movement.

I'm hoping that a better school fit will help next year as long as we can get her in. But I'm just struggling. I don't want to be frustrated with her. She's not doing anything wrong. I just don't know how to harness and channel it best and it's kicking my butt lately. Any suggestions?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100223134103AAiEPJv
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/dev-46-3-559.pdf

Here's some thoughts that's helping me reframe how I think about these things. �I am not Mexican. �I did just move from living literally ten blocks from a bridge to Mexico to now living 45 minutes from there. �That's why i'd be googling these things.

Having been raised super-strict and never really reaping the rewards for it I wanna raise pure hippy kids. �The hubby wants better for them. �He wants me to watch the dog whisperer all the time so I can learn his philosophy. �Cesar Milan does explain a lot about how to control an animal's psychomotor over-excitability so they don't leave everybody else struggling and exhausted. �Obviously kids are not animals, but he means about how I should be pack leader, cool and calmly in control. �His actual tips don't work, ie "to control over-excitability wait until they use their nose, that shows they're in their right mind.". But his philosophy is useful for those of us who don't want to discipline because they're not doing anything wrong but it still bothers everybody else.

No, Dr. Phil. It's not working for me. �The boy's constantness still kicks my butt, love him dearly. �But I feel calm and empowered by watching the dog whisperer explain stuff. �Like the other day he told a guy "don't just pet the girlfriend's dog to keep him from being aggressive to you. �Pet him if you want to pet him, tell him to go over there if you don't want to pet him.".�

Feel very silly �posting this, but I lol'd sympathetically to several points in your post because it's many of the same unusual discipline issues I'm researching.

Of course that's not all I got to say. I just read "your child's strengths" which is a summary of the new strengths movement which is teaching us to educate from a place of energizing children and their natural strengths rather than working through their weaknesses they're working through their strengths on their weaknesses. I've got more to say, but I'm at the playground and almost out of battery.

It's a mismatch, plain and simple. There are parents somewhere out there with whom her energy would not be out of place. Most of us only wish we had that level. You are probably a great fit in lots of other ways: empathy level, intelligence, etc.

Like my mile-a-minute brother she will probably end up a CEO. Or ER physician, educator, etc, where that level of intensity is wanted and needed and where she might possibly feel more at home than she ever did as a child (no offense intended to your home, but you should just see my brother in middle-age, when he gets home after work, elated and relaxed at the same time, then has to make an important call to keep the endorphins going - he never maintained that level of happiness all day as a kid, as a kid he was often bored and seldom in enough control of his immediate future).

DH and I have a mismatch with our DS -- it's not so much the level of intensity during the day though he can be intens -- it's that he just doesn't need to sleep as much as I do and only about the same amount as DH. There is simply no time when he's naturally just not around. We're trying to compromise. We often go to bed before him. He knows to wait until 7 to wake us up. I have to sleep, it's just not something I can do without. We also have a hour of quiet time every day. I start that time tired and irritable and by the end of it I'm about an hour short of being ready for the rest of the day with him.

It's truly a compromise. He's not really quite happy with being awake alone at 11:30 at night, and I'm not quite happy with only an hour of quiet time.

I suggest some similar type of compromise with your DD. For example sit down with her and say you wish you had her energy and that you think you would have more energy if you had a rest time at some point each day. Try a written schedule perhaps, with family times and personal times. Nothing that makes her feel excluded of course, but something that gives time for everyone to have quality time with eachother or by themselves. Perhaps a weekly mommy-daddy dinner night where she eats earlier and you and DH have your own relaxing dinner alone (at home) while she does her own thing. A routine is a lot easier to stick to than repetively saying, "I'm sorry hon, that's really interesting but dad and I are trying to talk right now" repeated over and over with a increasing level of inner tension on everyone's part.

As far as her getting overly wound up at other people's houses... you could consider limiting the play time to an hour, or whatever she can cope with to not get too over-charged, when it's going to be indoors in someone else's home. If the parents are mentioning anything at all it's probably way more than they can take.

So perhaps shorter play times at their houses and save the longer ones for your house for right now. She may just not be ready for multiple hours of most-mature-behavior in a row, it's just something to be practical about and incorporate into the playdate planning. Maintaining a stable energy level as part of being a polite house-guest is a important skill to learn and easier to master with short time periods.

If you haven't done so recently, you might explicitly tell her to play with the other child, that she is not going over to chat with Mrs. So and So. That even if the parent acts polite or seems interested they likely have a lot of things they need to do. Because you respect her opinions and because she's bright she may have the idea that other adults want to hear what she has to say. Unfortunately that is usually not a true statement. Bright kids often rub adults the wrong way simply by interacting with them, even in the calmest way, and if she limits her conversation with the adults there she may not wear out her welcome nearly so quickly.

The school -- GATE sounds like a great idea, hope that works out.

Sorry that got so long.

Polly

Do you have my child????

I can relate to everything you have said. Tonight, at dinner, DH and I had to keep making eye contact with each other as a reminder to bite our tongues and just let her be. We KNOW that is doesn't matter what we do or say.... she will just keep being herself. We often have to tag-team to get through the day. She utterly wears us out, both mentally and physically.

There are days when she just fascinates me (the ones where I am well-rested and the house is clean and I am in a stress-free zone) and then there are days when I want to scream at her to slow down and stop asking me questions/talking/jumping/singing (most days!). I do not have any great advice to share. We take it as it comes and when we lose our tempers with her, we apologize. I am trying to keep a journal of her most interesting thought and comments. This helps me to focus more on her message instead of her annoying behaviour.

We just keep telling each other if he wasn't jumping, talking, twisting, singing it would mean he's sick. Rather see him pester us.

Okay, this is TOTALLY off-topic here...


I'm just so incredibly amused that the title that is showing up in my browser next to the forum name as


"Struggling with Psycho-"


I just keep having it catch my eye, and thinking... Wow.
Hitchcock fans, perhaps?

Or was there an intruder?? (How frightening!)

At any rate, it intrigues me. I keep coming back to look, which probably means that I have the working memory of a gnat, since I've looked at the thread several times within the board, where it shows up with the longer, (though much less titillating) title.

Okay. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.


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I can't offer any insights I fear, since DD has always been more like an Engergizer bunny that sort of 'meditates' through the day with occasional verbal outbursts. She's busy-busy-busy, but not kinesthetic/tactile about it. The verbal stuff is hard on me, since I have an auditory OE and I have trouble with her chatter-chatter-chatter. Our compromise there (like Polly, we've had to do that too) is that she has to understand that I can't take more than about twenty minutes at a time of that, and then I need quiet for at least half an hour.

I don't have a wiggly, dancing, climbing bear, though.


I hear that some kids like this REALLY like correctly sized hippity-hop or exercise balls that allow them to sort of wiggle/bounce/roll around and burn it off constantly.

"Squishy" stress balls are another idea.

Good luck!

I don't have much advice, but can sympathise. Our dd5 does not stop moving. All day. Even when she is emotionally exhausted. She wriggles and jumps and dances and runs. At dinner she's up and down off her chair (despite pleas for her to sit while she eats at the very least). We laugh about the fact that at least she'll never end up obese even if she were to spend all day every day in front of the TV - watching TV she's up and jumping or dancing or twisting herself in to various shapes.

She does so much of it unconsciously that even when I have asked her to be still literally a few seconds beforehand (say, when I am brushing her hair), she is back to wriggling because her body just can't stop!

It is exhausting, hilarious sometimes, but exhausting. If you do find a pause switch, let us know!

I came across this older post and I was wondering if any of the posters noticed a decline in the amount of movement as their kids got older.

I was also wondering if you ever discussed OE's with your kid's teachers. I got a copy of Living with Intensity and I thought about sharing it with his K teacher.

I don't want to come off as saying "my kid is so smart he has some undesirable behaviors". Like OE's are the gifted excuse. At the same time I would like them to understand that being in the 99.9% has more implications than just being "smart".

I keep seeing that the Psychomotor OE is often misdiagnosed as ADHD. Has anyone had that happen? How did you or your doctor know it was one and not the other? Combined with possible asynchronous development it seems like it would be very tricky to figure out.

Sorry for all the questions. My kid was a handful yesterday and had me considering his request to be released into the wild. (Just kidding)

We have this issue with dd5. I have done a lot of thinking and reading about ADHD (I have it, but without the "H" and without the psychomotor OE, but dd5 was adopted so no genetic link) and I just don't believe that it is ADHD, and so far psychomotor OE seems the best explanation. I am nervous about K and struggling with what to write in the letter parents can give to school. 2 pediatricians clearly noticed her high energy level and I can imagine them suggesting a diagnosis. She seems to keep it under wraps in school (or did at her Montessori school) but then it is even more, intense, at home. I am praying for the right teacher. In the meantime physical exercise helps. I think gymnastics will be really good for her especially as she is taught at a higher level that requires greater concentration and focus. In the meantime, it is exhausting, and a mismatch, in terms of energy level, and I feel bad because I know she can't help it--but it drives me crazy.