Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Very slow processing...?

This sounds like my DS15 who has had anxiety problems at different times growing up. At 3 when my son moved to the big kids daycare center he spend about a month chewing up the color of his shirts. He has always had problems with transitions but they have gotten better with age. We are going in this week to get a full eval. We know one of his problems is anxiety, the question is that all there is or is there processing problems, ADD, or something else.

Just other things for the original poster to think about. LD's & 2E is a complex thing and there are many possible causes to the same symptoms.

DS started chewing on his collars and sleeves in 1st grade, he had a strict authoritarian teacher who I'm sure has no idea about giftedness, and who is a serious perfectionist (not really a good fit for creative gifted kids transitioning from kinder) He likes her now, but he had a hard time with her in class, and he tends to like all the teachers anyway.

I thought it was something to do with needing to move and not being able to like in kindergarten so I got him a chewable jewel (a necklace you can chew on). We also needed it for second grade, but he kept chewing through it. In third grade his teacher told him he could chew gum, which helped a little bit because he didn't want the necklace anymore.

I didn't think it was related to anxiety, I just thought because he was a kid that needed to move more (I mean he's a boy and most boys need to move more than the public schools allow) that that was why he did it. I bite my nails, I assumed it was that type of behavior and didn't see it as a sign of anything.

However he never chewed through his shirts at home.

blackcat-

I started out by trying to go to our school psychiatrist, who is apparently only at our school once a week (and whom I have never ever seen even though I've been at the school four years now).

I left a couple of messages which were not returned. I may try again when school starts, but I think I wrote them off based on the fact that they never called me back.

And I think you weren't sure how old he was, he is 9 and he just finished third grade. Separation anxiety has been with us a while, but only got really really bad this year. Please note that when I say separation anxiety, he has no problem going on playdates or to school without us, but he can't stand to be alone. If he is alone he is totally freaked out.

Sometimes it can be helpful to try to explore with him how he feels when he is becoming anxious. Try using a feelings thermometer/ruler/rating (e.g., 0-totally relaxed and at ease, 5-melting-down-panic-attack) to get a sense of his level of anxiety under different circumstances. (Google "feelings thermometer" to get an idea of different versions.) The objective is to take away some of the mysteriously-out-of-control dimension of anxiety, by identifying patterns and triggers, and helping him to get a sense of proportion (with some scaling of severity, vs. perceiving every single incident as a total freakout).

He's on the young side for this resource as it is designed, but this is an excellent website aimed at adolescents with mental health concerns (and their families), which might be helpful to those with older children. It includes first-hand accounts of living with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, or schizophrenia, often from mental health professionals, as well as expert summaries of treatments and the current standard of care:

www.copecaredeal.org

This page connects you to some info/resources on separation anxiety disorder, which usually kicks in in late childhood:

http://www.copecaredeal.org/MZ_Articles.aspx?Condition=1&Article=Separation%20Anxiety%20Disorder

Here's a link to the ADAA (Anxiety & Depression Association of America) page regarding children:

http://www.adaa.org/living-with-anxiety/children/childhood-anxiety-disorders

If you haven't already, I would also look into CBT or DBT, which have very good track records with anxiety disorders (right up there with psychotropic meds, actually, for cases of moderate severity).

aeh -my brother had an undiagnosed form of dyslexia... I'm definitely going to look into this, thank you!

PS it's strange, I just saw this message, although you posted it before the last one I read...

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.

I was looking at lists of signs for ADD this weekend, and most clearly state that a child has to have symptoms both in school and OUT of school. Does he do this in a structured but not school environment? (Sports, an art class, that kind of thing.)

My DS15 also spend a lot of time staring at walls/ceiling about his homework/classwork at times. He also really likes to solve entire problems in his head and dislikes using scratch paper. He tells me to leave him alone and that he is thinking. I don't think this is ADD but does because a problem.

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.

This is a case where wording is crucial. Another child might need the direction of "write about your favorite ___" to spur the thinking process but your son already thinks! Instead of writing about a "favorite", he could simply write about an insect but...children are very literal. If you say "write about your favorite", then that is what they will do and if they can't decide on a favorite, then they get overwhelmed. This seems especially common for gifted children IME, as they have a much greater store of knowledge upon which they can draw.

Also, it's boring. My son's great first-grade teacher would ask if he wanted to select a topic for his journal or if he needed a prompt. Some days he just wrote; other days, he wrote about the topic provided. I know he would have been overwhelmed by a question like that in kindy or first grade as his world filters still need work.

This sounds similar to what my DS15 goes through. He would also sit a the fill in the blank question about insects and not have ANYTHING to say. He hates the term favorite and will often just leave this kind of thing blank. We are in the middle of a full evaluation of him right now and I don't really know what is going on yet. It is very frustrating and I'm not sure if there really is a diagnosis that fits.