Originally Posted by Minx
Originally Posted by blackcat
Is there a school psych? If so see if she/he can go into the classroom and do an observation. I actually went into the first grade class and watched as well for about an hour and was surprised at what I saw because DS was very off-task there and he's not usually that bad at home. However even with that I couldn't figure out if he just didn't WANT to do the work, if he couldn't figure out what to do, or if he was distracted by what was going on in the room. He was just sitting there staring off and looked a bit irritated. Then the school psych went in and observed while he was dong a paper-pencil math test and said he was on-task 49 percent of the time and it should be more like 80 for a first grader. When he wasn't doing the work he was looking out the window, playing with his eraser, etc. I STILL am not sure if this is ADHD or if this is DS being lazy or dysgrapic or fatigued from writing so much. It can be really hard to figure it out.

My son does this when he tests. He won't use scratch paper to solve problems, preferring to think them out in his head or stare at something in the classroom to help him. It looks very much like him not being on-task which is why I asked him about it.

It has been difficult to get him to show work for math (for instance he did the woodcock johnson achievement without writing anything down except for the fluency section where he had to). When he was "Star of the Week" the teacher had his talent be "Math Whiz" and DS was on a "stage" and the kids asked him multiplication questions. Teacher said he wasn't looking at them when he answered he was looking over them. So maybe he does this "staring off" when he's thinking. I don't know. When I went in and observed he was supposed to be writing about his favorite insect. The teacher had it on the smartboard basically in outline form like "My favorite insect is ____ because _____. This insect lives____" and the kids were supposed to copy it. The other kids in his group wrote like 10 sentences and he wrote maybe 1-2. I asked him why he didn't do the work and he said it's because there are thousands of species of insects and it's impossible to have a favorite one. So I think that's why he looked irritated. I told the teacher that I don't know if it's a focus issue or if he just didn't want to do the assignment and she said he's always like that and work just piles up. I talked to the doc and she agreed to do a trial of meds, which we did for just a few days and teacher said he sped up a lot and was doing work the same speed as the rest of the kids. The teacher also said that when he takes the math/reading computerized achievement tests he looks very focused and is able to sit there for like an hour at a time and does fine....so I don't really understand why he's focused with some things but not others, or why the meds would appear to have a dramatic effect if it's not really ADHD. I didn't notice a difference at home with the meds. I tried timing him in terms of math fluency, for instance, and he was about the same medicated vs. unmedicated but when I just had him write, he wrote a little more medicated (like 80 words in 10 minutes vs. 60). He's not medicated now but in the fall I'll have to take him back to the doc and talk to the new teacher and see what we can figure out.