My daughter has a few symptoms that do not seem to fall into the ADHD category (to me).

1. She is very emotional and has been since she was about three. When relatives leave or when we have to come back from a vacation she always cries. No amount of consoling helps. We understood a few years ago that this is the way she is so we just let her cry for a while and then it goes away. This shows up in other areas too, but it is these situations where we clearly see it. Our 5 yo does not understand why the 8 yo gets so upset.

2. No empathy. For years we thought it would come with age, but she is still very lacking in the empathy part. Does not understand or care when people get upset with her. Basically thinks everyone should feel how she is feeling. When she cries, thinks everyone should cry. When others cry, she does not care.

3. Delay in gross motor skills. She did not walk until 17 months. Lacks coordination in most sports. Difficulty with handwriting and holding a pencil. Very difficult for her to tie her shoes. Turned 8 this month.

4. Extremely sensitive to criticism. Hates her piano teacher and refused to speak to her after she accused my daughter of not practicing enough. (it was in a very nice way). Very sensitive to any criticism of any kind.

Most of these symptoms do not seem related to ADHD to me. Are these common symptoms? As her psych evaluator told us, we have a handfull. However, at least now I understand my handfull.

Given what you have described it could be several things. Mind you, I am no doctor but I'd recommend you have her evaluated and consider the possibility of asperger's syndrome along with ADHD. Another possibility is a personality disorder (unlikely), or perhaps bipolar disorder (also unlikely).

good luck, and god bless you.

ME :D



My daughter has a few symptoms that do not seem to fall into the ADHD category (to me).

1. She is very emotional and has been since she was about three. When relatives leave or when we have to come back from a vacation she always cries. No amount of consoling helps. We understood a few years ago that this is the way she is so we just let her cry for a while and then it goes away. This shows up in other areas too, but it is these situations where we clearly see it. Our 5 yo does not understand why the 8 yo gets so upset.

2. No empathy. For years we thought it would come with age, but she is still very lacking in the empathy part. Does not understand or care when people get upset with her. Basically thinks everyone should feel how she is feeling. When she cries, thinks everyone should cry. When others cry, she does not care.

3. Delay in gross motor skills. She did not walk until 17 months. Lacks coordination in most sports. Difficulty with handwriting and holding a pencil. Very difficult for her to tie her shoes. Turned 8 this month.

4. Extremely sensitive to criticism. Hates her piano teacher and refused to speak to her after she accused my daughter of not practicing enough. (it was in a very nice way). Very sensitive to any criticism of any kind.

Most of these symptoms do not seem related to ADHD to me. Are these common symptoms? As her psych evaluator told us, we have a handfull. However, at least now I understand my handfull.

Hey, I have an eight year old daughter with ADHD and I have it too -- believe it or not, I have learned in the past year that all of these symptoms can be a part of ADHD -- I'll see if I can quote some sources a lot more authoratative than myself. I'd recommend you look up the book by Yale professor Thomas Brown called Attention Deficit Disorder: The Unfocused Mind in Children and Adults --he does a great job of covering the waterfront on the latest discoveries about ADHD.

My daughter has a few symptoms that do not seem to fall into the ADHD category (to me).

1. She is very emotional and has been since she was about three. When relatives leave or when we have to come back from a vacation she always cries. No amount of consoling helps. We understood a few years ago that this is the way she is so we just let her cry for a while and then it goes away. This shows up in other areas too, but it is these situations where we clearly see it. Our 5 yo does not understand why the 8 yo gets so upset. This area is probably one of the biggest problem areas for my daughter and I. Brown discusses in in his section on Managing Frustration and Modulating Emotion (p. 40).

"The diagnostic criteria for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in the DSM-IV do not include any items referring to emotions. Yet many clinicans report that patients with ADHD struggle with managing their emotions. Paul Wender (1987, 1995) described how individuals with ADHD have 'affective lability' and frequently demonstrate a bored or demoralized moode, irritable complaining, angry outbursts, or insufficently controlled excitability. Wender also noted that individuals with ADHD appear to have a low tolerance for frustration and often find it difficult to perservere through the many stresses of daily life; they readily experience feeling 'overwhelmed' or 'stressed out'.

"My own clinical research with children, adolescents, and adults has led to similar conclusions. ADD symptom rating scales I have developed from studying each of these age groups include a cluster of symptoms related to managing frustrating and modulating emotions...In analyzing reports from patients with ADHD, I have found that their problems with emotions seem to fall into two closely related types: a very low threshold for frustration, and chronic difficulty in regulating subjective emotional experience and expression." (emphasis mine)

2. No empathy. For years we thought it would come with age, but she is still very lacking in the empathy part. Does not understand or care when people get upset with her. Basically thinks everyone should feel how she is feeling. When she cries, thinks everyone should cry. When others cry, she does not care.ADDers are often accused of lack of empathy. In truth they miss a lot of social cues -- whether this is due to inattention or is part and parcel of ADHD is still being studied. They also are slower to mature by almost 30%. Russell Barkley in his book Taking Charge of ADHD (p. 35) discusses the developmental lag experienced by ADHD children:

" Those with ADHD will lag behind others in this ability, perhaps by as much as 30% or more. That means that a 10-year-old child with ADHD, for instance, may have the attention span of a 7-yar-old child without ADHD. This will require that others step in to help guide, supervise, and structure their work and behavior for them."



He also discusse the impact their difficulty in controlling impulses causes them (p. 39)

"So the second problem seen in ADHD is a decreased ability to inhibit behavior or to show impulse control. Those with ADHD have considerable problems with holding back their initial response to a situation, so as to think before they finally act... They also respond to what others say or do to them on impulse, sometimes emotionally, and wind up being judged critically for doing so."



Brown described what happens when strong emotions take hold (p. 41)

"This man's analogy to a computer virus illustrates an aspect of emotional experience described by many with ADD syndromes: a feeling that an emotion, in this case irritation, floods one's mind, taking up all available space. This overwhelming intensity of feeling then can cause one to lose perspective and become, for a few moments or much longer, so preoccupied with that particular feeling that other relevant thoughts and feelings are displaced, ignored, or overlooked.

"The immediacy of the emotion then can have too much influence on thought and action, causing one to speak or act in ways that don't adequately take account of other feelings, ideas or information that may also be important."(emphasis mine)



I'm having trouble locating the source (I think it was Shadow Synromes with I loaned to a friend), but there was an excellent discussion of how apparent lack of empathy could result in part of the missing of social cues as one tunes out too quickly and is too involved in their own internal world and/or it could also be as a result of ADHD itself as it falls on the spectrum including Autism, OCD, Tourettes, etc. If I find it, I'll post it. But combine that with delayed maturity and impulsity and lack of empathy is quite common. Sam Goldstein (www.schwablearning.com (http://www.schwablearning.com/)) states that teaching ADHD kids to be empathic is one of the most important determiners of their future life success.

3. Delay in gross motor skills. She did not walk until 17 months. Lacks coordination in most sports. Difficulty with handwriting and holding a pencil. Very difficult for her to tie her shoes. Turned 8 this month.Paul Wender in Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Adults writes (p. 17) under Motor Abnormalities: Hyperactivity and Impaired Coordination - Childhood:

"Impaired coordination is present in many but not all ADHD children. The difficulties may be in balance, hand-eye coordination, or fine motor performance. Such children can be slow at learning to button buttons, zip zippers, and tie shoelaces. In kindergarten they have difficulty cutting along or coloring between the lines. In elementary school, the child's printing is sometimes legible, but his script is hard to read (handwriting may improve substantially in response to stimulant medication). On the playing field, poor hand-eye coordination affects the children's skill at sports." (emphasis mine)
4. Extremely sensitive to criticism. Hates her piano teacher and refused to speak to her after she accused my daughter of not practicing enough. (it was in a very nice way). Very sensitive to any criticism of any kind.ADDers are known for having very thin skin. They don't have the filters nor the response delay time to inhibit their initial reaction to any critism real or perceived.

Brown describes this reactivity (p. 44)

"Many with ADD syndrome describe themselves as 'overly sensitive' and reacting too intensely to even minor slights or criticsm." (emphasis mine)

Most of these symptoms do not seem related to ADHD to me. Are these common symptoms? As her psych evaluator told us, we have a handfull. However, at least now I understand my handfull.Sorry for the long answer, but they were important questions. Everything you asked about can be related to ADD. That doesn't necessarily rule out other comorbid conditions that frequently accompany ADD, but they are behaviors that are frequent to many ADDers.

Scattered

Wow, Scattered. Thanks for the detailed response. It does seem like everything can be covered by ADHD. I love how you gave me quotes from sources.

Speedo, she is seeing a counselor and has had a learning dissabilities evaluation. She does not fit the Ausbergers syndrome because her language is good and her social skills are "medium". She does not have the mood swings associated with Bipolar.

Back to your response Scattered. I see that you have quoted sources that attribute all of the symptoms to ADHD, but then I wonder, How can that be? Your sources even attribute mood swings to ADHD and the attribute "difficulty in reading social cues" to ADHD. It really makes me think that the ADHD diagnosis is WAY to broad. I don't see how all of those symptoms can be related to just one dissorder.

Changing subjects. I can see how it is so important to learn empathy. Although it is also very difficult to teach.

You hit the nail on the head with the easily frustrated part. One sport that we were very successful with was swimming. She really saw how the practice made her times get much better. We point to that experience over and over in order to teach her that you need to practice things in order to get better.

Oh, I just went over to Amazon to read reviews of Brown's book. I also noticed that it was his questionares that were used when evaluating my daughter. I will have to read his book.

Thanks again for the long detailed response.

Your welcome. I'd be interested in hearing what you think of Brown's book once you've read it. I've found your posts thought provoking. ADHD does cover a lot and Brown explains that too. It also frequently comes with company (anxiety, depression, learning disorders, ODD, etc.). Since executive functions in the brain function kind of like a conductor of an orchestra, if the "conductor" is impaired there will be many more things affected than if a "player" in the orchestra is impaired. What I found for myself when I started medication last February (I had also been diagnosed but never treated as a child) was that a number of things improved, executive functions, listening, patience, memory, but the most immediate and dramatic was the release of the huge knot of anxiety in my stomach. I can tell you from first hand experience that living with untreated ADHD very much has an emotional component. Hallowell and Ratey (Driven to Distraction) describe it as difficulty putting on the brakes. Barkley (Taking Charge of ADHD) refers to it as a behavioral inhibition disordrer -- either way there is trouble turning off the feelings and stimulus response just as there is in holding still or leaving a boring task for something more interesting.

We're currently homeschooling our little ADDer and she exhibits most of the symptoms you described, so the whole topic is of much interest to me. Therefore the long response :rolleyes: -- I wanted to review the answers for myself too.

Loving, consistent parenting makes a huge difference for an ADHD child. With my family's love and support I was able to finish college and two master's degrees, have successful careers as a teacher and counselor, get married (19 years now) and have two great kids. Without them that would not have happened -- what you're doing makes a huge difference!:)

Scattered

Scattered,

That was impressive (as usual):)

As you know, I love references whenever possible.

Here's something that I think applies to the subject at hand.

The best ADHD Parent Checklist on the market (imo) is the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF).

It has 8 Clinical And 3 Summary Scales.

One of the Clinical Scales listed under the Behavior Regulation Index (BRI),which summarizes the 3 scales related to hyperactivity-impulsivity, is the Emotional Control Scale.

This scale...." addresses the mainfestation of executive functions within the emotional realm and assesses a child's ability to modulate emotional responses.Poor emotional control can be expressed as emotional lability or emotional explosiveness.Children with difficulties in this domain may have overblown emotional reactions to seemingly minor events."

That's from the BRIEF Manual on p18. :)

Thank you, McT!:)


Can the BRIEF be obtained by parents and teachers or only doctors and psychologists? Where would one obtain them?

Scattered

Our 12 year old fits a lot of the things you describe about your daughter. He didn't walk until he was almost two and it took him two summers to learn how to ride a tricycle. He has little empathy, not real good with social skills, has never liked to be cuddled (even as a baby) and is not athletic at all. He is gifted in drawing, and playing piano and trumpet. He's also very smart.

We've been treating him for ADHD and anxiety the past few months but the meds just aren't working. So digging into this further, the doc thinks he may have "Pervasive Developmental Disorder" (PDD). Autism and Augsperger's both fall into this category. He doesn't strongly have either, but does have traits of them.

So, we've just started a new med called Namenda and we'll see how it works.

LacyLew, I recommend you check out Ratey's book Shadow Sydromes. It discusses the milder forms these different disorders and give suggestions for treatment and lifestyle modifications. His co author Catharine Johnson has a son with autism.


Scattered

My daughter has a few symptoms that do not seem to fall into the ADHD category (to me).

1. She is very emotional and has been since she was about three. When relatives leave or when we have to come back from a vacation she always cries. No amount of consoling helps. We understood a few years ago that this is the way she is so we just let her cry for a while and then it goes away. This shows up in other areas too, but it is these situations where we clearly see it. Our 5 yo does not understand why the 8 yo gets so upset.

2. No empathy. For years we thought it would come with age, but she is still very lacking in the empathy part. Does not understand or care when people get upset with her. Basically thinks everyone should feel how she is feeling. When she cries, thinks everyone should cry. When others cry, she does not care.

3. Delay in gross motor skills. She did not walk until 17 months. Lacks coordination in most sports. Difficulty with handwriting and holding a pencil. Very difficult for her to tie her shoes. Turned 8 this month.

4. Extremely sensitive to criticism. Hates her piano teacher and refused to speak to her after she accused my daughter of not practicing enough. (it was in a very nice way). Very sensitive to any criticism of any kind.

Most of these symptoms do not seem related to ADHD to me. Are these common symptoms? As her psych evaluator told us, we have a handfull. However, at least now I understand my handfull.
I would say this is very much consistant with ADHD.

Scattererd,

The BRIEF is a standardized test,so it's only available to clinicians.

The peds around here use have used the Conners for years, so I suppose they might be able to get it as well.

There's also a Pre-school and an Adult version now;however, I don't work with either population,so I haven't seen either.

Two of my colleagues who do though, have them at the office and seem pleased.

I agree with Naomi, my little guy possesses all those traits. But I don't think that the symptoms are cut and dry. Some children with ADHD posess traits that others with the same disorder do not. They/we are all unique individuals. This is why ADHD can be difficult to diagnose sometimes. For my son, it is fairly obvious!! LOL

I pulled this off the internet -- it is a CEU class for mental health professionals on Russell Barkley's material (he is one of the most respected experts in this field). It listed associated developmental impairments in the following areas (all were referenced with studies backing up their inclusion in the list):

* physical fitness, gross and fine motor coordination, and motor sequencing
* speed of color naming
* verbal and nonverbal working memory and mental computation
* story recall
* planning and anticipation
* verbal fluency and confrontational communication
* effort allocation
* developing, applying, and self-monitoring organizational strategies
* the internalization of self-directed speech
* adhering to restrictive instructions
* self-regulation of emotion

If you want to read more you can find a link to Russell Barkley's homepage at www.schwablearning.com (http://www.schwablearning.com).

As has already been mentioned, ADDers are a very diverse group. This list isn't exhausted, nor will every ADDer demonstrate all these deficiencies.

Scattered