When is trouble with school work a symptom of ADD?

From our video partners

ADHD
Learn how to spot the signs.

Answer

As a teacher of students with Varying Exceptionalities, I've worked with many students who have ADD and ADHD. Your quickest route to go would be to notify the child's pediatrician of your concerns, and request that the teacher begin the process for testing-if her learning seems to be inhibited. It could be a difficulty with memory retention, comprehension, language processing or even avoidance behaviors. As a parent, you could easily help by what you're doing now-research! Keep looking for answers and use each resource available to you-InterNet, books, teachers, school psychologists, and Dr. Try to catch the challenges before the academics snowball downhill fast.

Answer

Being a person who has grown up with untreated ADD, I would like to add my own experience to this. It might help, though all ADD cases are slightly different. Pay attention to the subjects your child is interested in. Do they change often or are they fairly stable? Do they often have trouble concentrating on things like homework but have no trouble learning things about subjects which interest them? As a child in school, I couldn't do homework at all unless it was something that could be done quickly. However, I could often argue (most of the time correctly) or discuss the specific subject and topic with the teacher, and give insights and make connections that the teacher had never even thought of. I tended to read a lot, but only on subjects that interested me. If I had no interest in a subject or topic, I couldn't read past the first paragraph. Math is an interesting subject when it comes to ADD, and if you think your child might have ADD, and is getting confused when trying to learn math, it might be the way the problems are worded or presented rather than the child's inability to understand. as an example, I hated math as a child, and couldn't learn it at all. (to this day I can't do long division, and have no idea how to do anything with fractions except make change) But recently, through testing in Vocational Rehabilitation, I was given a large series of math problems that were "Applied Mathematics" and dealt specifically with situations where a specific problem would come up. I excelled at them. not only did I excell at them, I discovered I actually enjoyed trying to work them out! My advice here would be to try and find out in what ways your child learns best. For me, If I hear something or read something complicated, It becomes gibberish. At some point I realise I have no idea what the paragraph or speaker is saying. but if I see something (like a string of numbers) or am shown how to do something, and am allowed to learn at my own pace, (which is often slower than most people) I almost never forget it. well, I hope this helps some.

First answer by Melissa Willis. Last edit by Mrmiller96. Contributor trust: 108 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 181 [recommend question]