A few things to consider:
* I’ve been told that puberty can affect how adhd presents, so that may have something to do with it and might be worth looking into further. Additudemag.org has lots of articles available for free.
* you can look at this book: Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults. You can read through the adhd dual diagnosis and misdiagnosis sections to see if that gives you any new insights
* the person assessing adhd was probably a psychologist. But they don’t see all potential issues. What about motor skills? What about vision? What about hearing? What about sensory processing? Sleep apnea? Is there any behavior or experience you’ve had with this child that doesn’t seem to be explained the current diagnosis? Try to get the appropriate terminology for what you observe and see if that comes up as a symptom for other issues.
* if you have a neuropsych report, read back through it and see if there were any parts that you don’t fully understand and read up on those topics, it may lead you to something important. You can also look back through standardized testing looking for patterns.
* ask your kid what is causing problems. My kid would tell us things that didn’t seem logical or supported by the teachers observations …. But, now that we have a better understanding and diagnosis, his responses were incredibly honest and represent his lived experience.
I read my kids neuropsych report a million times trying to understand it. I realized there were some behaviors/experiences it did not explain. I read up on a certain type of memory so I could understand the report results and came across a list of symptoms for a diagnosis that explained a cluster of behaviors. I found testing, he got diagnosed, now he’s accommodated and we understand him a lot better! Literally like detective work.
