Thanks for all the responses. She's a very young 1st grader (she was too young from her birthday but they made an exception for her). Her previous school definitely talked a lot about focus issue and like I said it was a Montessori school that made a point to work ahead with her on math (she was doing multiplication there, for instance). Her teacher remarked that even when she was doing subjects that she enjoyed (typically math/science) that she was easily distracted.
Her school does have a psychologist, so would that be the best route to go through for an evaluation? We were initially thinking of talking to her teacher directly after she was there for a few more weeks so she had known DD longer.
Honestly the line between SPD/ADD is confusing for me since there's a lot of overlap on the checklists and DD seems to hit most of them on both sides. Even as a young child we suspected she might have SPD but couldn't get it evaluated due to where we were living. It was only last semester after talking to her K teacher that we thought more in the ADD line.
I don't think many people doubt that ADHD is real. They just doubt that it is as prevalent as it has become. Also I think one of the diagnoses points is certain behavoirs persisting past the age of 7? As far as I know diagnosing a 5 year old with ADHD is a bit of a dubious practice.
