How old were you when you 1st remember your ADD being related to problems?

[Tara]

How old were you when you 1st remember your ADD being related to problems?

I was about 10 when ADD started becoming a problem for me. I was also a disorganized as a child and alway thought out of the box but 5th grade was when things really started becoming hard for me.

[krisp]

I started having some problems in grade school ... I already knew how to read when I started, and the slowpoke teachers bored me to tears. My differences became more and more apparent to the other kids every year, with the #$*! hitting the fan at the 5th grade mark. Academic problems didn't hit me until college, though.

[Keppig]

I remember having problems in Middle School but my High School was good, being energetic and smart and being different was cool then, while not in Middle School. Mostly Social stuff.

[MRB]

As I look back on it with the information I have NOW, I was four. I remember not being able to figure out why I couldn't keep my room clean.

Of course, the reason why no one could TEACH me to keep my room clean was b/c I was an only child and we all know that ADD is genetic and I got mine from both sides of the family. NO knowledge of spatial relationships in the household.

[Piupau]

I got my dx when I was 26 but I've had problems all my life. In kindergarten I was pushed away by the teachers because i was ruining the other kid's play. Didn't understand the rules. Escaped over the fence and ran away etc. I was fighting a lot and climed in every tree I found. Climbed the walls in narrow corridors (foot and hand on each side and then just monkey-climb to the cieling). Always played football or ride my bike in the forest. I buildt myself a bike of pieces I found outside and made the -80's first mountainbike/bmx crossbreed in Sweden D*MN it was cool!

[fasttalkingmom]

I quess I'd have to say when I first started school.....I was a painfully shy kid and had trouble playing with the other kids. I'd sit by myself and not talk to anyone. Out side I'd swing and swing all alone....I remember how I hated school, I left no one understood me. I cried alot, felt scared,alone and stupid. It didn't help any that my kindergarten teacher was a very mean old lady....Back then I was looked at as a spoiled child.....

[emtchick]

Socially, I'd have to say as early as first grade. I never had many (if any) friends and didn't seem to be able to interact socially like everyone else.

Academically....well, my grades started to decline in high school, but everyone assumed it was depression or other factors (a lot of bad things happened to me for a few years there) but I didn't get diagnosed until very recently. Like...a week ago!

I'm a junior in college and decided to take pre-med courses as well as my major, and while I was doing fine in my major the science classes were killing me. I couldn't even get the book read. So I asked a therapist and lo and behold.....I was right what I'd been saying all these years and no one listened to.

Me? Bitter? Nah...

[kat_in_mich]

emtchick you sound like me in school...although i just took the being alone as a fact of life like i wasnt a likable kid...although in 3rd grade i made a friend and we have been friends ever since....and we are both 30 now....but i loved school until about sophmore year. and then i just didnt feel like being there.....it was boring so i didnt do the work. and of course my parents expected me to do well. i have never been diagnosed and probably never will be...not that i dont want to know i just dont like verbally in person talking about things like that. i have 2 children who have been diagnosed though and thier counselors say that it doesnt necessarily mean that me or thier father has/had it....not always in the family she said that there are other factors....one thing that i have noticed with me though is i seem to drift off into daydreams like space out...but i still know what is going on....its weird anyhow just thought i would put my 2 cents in...

[Jellybean]

I remember sleeping disorders since babyhood.
I remember at 4 having trouble reading a whole book through even though I was a good reader.
I was eons ahead in grade school till 3rd grade then I realized I couldn't focus. I thought it was because I never had to pay attention before in class. That I didn't learn how.
I never could do homework, just couldn't focus or remember what I was supposed to do..
One summer when I was 8 I took a very special Marine biology course, you had to be a certain kind of kid to get in. I loved it and wrote 2 reports, one on manatees and one on single cell protozoas. I wrote these incredible organized reports with refrences and charts. That class and 1st grade were the high point of my school life.

[kat_in_mich]

wow janine...sounds like you had a great time that year.....isnt it kinda fun to think back at how you were as a kid??? LOL

[Emma S]

I am not sure if I understand the question
How old when add was first recognised by self or how old it caused trouble from even if it was diagnosed or not?

I didn't know until this year I had ADD,but I know I have always been out of control and was going to be put in a special school but my parents fought to keep me in a mainstream school.I do not know whether that is because they felt it was defeat to them as parents or denial.

[bnsforu2]

31 Paul

[pembroke]

i think i misunderstood the question, too. i was diagnosed 5 years ago, but i have always had trouble in school due to disorganization and not being able to pay attention. had my first grade teacher not inspired me to learn to read as well as i did, i would probably have done much, much worse in school. i only "caught up" in 10th grade, and that wasn't by much - just managed not to flunk out.

[FlakeyGirl]

I can remember being discovered crying and frightened in vacant classrooms and in the far corners of barren playgrounds as early as the second grade. It seems I would get lost in hallways on my way back to class after using the bathroom or I didn't notice the bell ring and a couple hundred kids running in one direction. I also used to get off at the wrong bus stop and get lost all the time. I think I was so tiny and quiet, they didn't notice me missing for awhile. Of course, my parents have no recollection of these incidents. I am sure the school never even notified them.

I can recall actual academic problems from about the same time, like doing the first two problems on a math test, spacing out for probably twenty minutes and being jarred back to reality when all the kids were finished and getting up to turn their papers in. That reminds me, does anyone else have painful memories of teachers shouting things like "Earth to FlakeyGirl, come in"?

Disorganization really took hold in fifth grade. I think that was the year we started having different teachers teach different subjects. Each seemed to want their work done a unique way.
Why couldn't they just let me alone to read my book? I wasn't bothering anyone.

I can remember lying awake terrified on the nights your parents would go and meet your teachers. Would my teachers rat me out for all the missing and incomplete homework? That occured year after year into high school.

[pembroke]

my only memory of fourth grade consists of the teacher yelling at me in the hallway. don't remember what he said; it was a regular occurence....
in first grade, even my adored teacher pointed out my messy desk to the other kids going out for recess -- i had to stay in and clean out said desk.
never getting instructions right - caused messy papers.
being called lazy; being told i was bright but just didn't try.
my third grade teacher wanting to hold me back; can't remember why. even my grandfather, who had never heard of ADD saying "she just cannot pay attention".....
incomplete homework, missing homework.... ah, yes, memories, memories - which i had hoped i had blocked!!!!