Ideas for ADHD symptoms

[LNN]

I'm pulling this question from Worried Dad from another thread because I wanted to see what ideas everyone has on ADHD -

 

"has your son started exhibiting any ADHD tendencies? Since the OCD has receded, this has become more of an issue for our son: difficulty sitting still, focusing, concentrating on homework for any length of time. Have you seen this?"

 

When we had a setback in January, my son had terrible ADHD/OCD mix. One day, the kids were supposed to work on independent work for 30 minutes and the teacher emailed me, saying that she could not get my son to concentrate for more than 30 seconds at a time, despite constant reminders. When I asked him about it later, he told me he kept having the sensation that someone was staring at him and he had to keep "checking" and looking around the room to make sure no one was staring. As soon as he started back to his work, the feeling/compulsion would come back. So this was OCD presenting like ADHD. Other times during homework, he seemed to have genuine ADHD and could not stay focused - very frustrating for both of us.

 

We started a prednisone burst and things got better. But in the interim, I met with the teacher and we talked about OCD and ADHD and Pandas. I explained to her that my son isn't really motivated by "pleasing others". He has never really cared about pushing himself beyond his comfort zone just to make someone else happy (unlike my daughter, who lives for praise and affirmation). I also explained that when you're sick, the things that work to motivate "regular" kids don't work as well. The teacher had gone home the day before with a stomach bug. I said "When you felt horrible, you wouldn't have been motivated to stick it out just because someone would compliment you. You went home. But if the reward for sticking it out was $1000 or a week's vacation, you probably could've forced yourself to make it through the day." When you're not feeling well, sometimes the rewards have to be higher to get you to push through the hard stuff.

 

So we developed a reward system to help my son with his ADHD. My son and I developed a "menu" of items he could buy with "attention points" - points the teacher would give him every time he stayed on task. 8 points would buy an ICEE at the grocery store, 20 points would earn him staying up late on a Friday night or being able to eat junk food for breakfast, 50 points earned him a family trip to the ice skating rink. So if he had a bad week and only earned a few points, he could still get a reward. But if he really tried and was willing to "bank" his points over a few weeks, he could earn something really big (he generally earned 3-5 points per day). Of course, things got easier as the prednisone kicked in and the PANDAS went away, but he was still rewarded for learning to fight back and take ownership of his actions as best he could. Praise or stickers wasn't going to cut it.

 

We use a similar reward system for ERP, with different rewards. I was wondering what other things parents do to help with either OCD or ADHD...

[MomWithOCDSon]

I think my DS is very much like yours, except that he IS motivated by "doing well" and being perceived as a "good student" and a "good person," especially by people of authority. He's considerably less peer-sensitive, but when it comes to his teachers, he's all-in for proving himself to them . . . sometimes too much so. In fact, that can serve as the basis for his inattention and distraction; first he's flooded with the perfectionism, and then he gets stuck worrying about putting down the wrong answer or having missed a part of the teacher's instructions or whatever, and it seems to spin in on itself. Then he sort of "checks out" and lets the OCD/ADHD take him away mentally so that he doesn't get visibly overwhelmed and cause a scene.

 

When DS was younger, we were able to use a rewards system similar to the one you've advocated. And it worked fairly well through, say, 5th grade. But now that he's older and the exacerbation that much more intense, and the rewards just by their very nature have to be grander to serve as adequate incentive, it's less effective overall. While the promise of a treat at the convenience store, his favorite food for dinner or even earned "points" toward a desired video game used to help motivate, those carrots just aren't juicy enough anymore. And we would go bust financially if we tried to incentivize him with anything substantive enough at his ripe old age of 13! Plus, frankly, sometimes what he REALLY wants -- like, literally, more hours in the day to spend as he would choose --- we're not able to give him.

 

So, now that he's healing and more mature emotionally and mentally overall, we're trying to coach him about the inherent rewards in doing his best, staying focused and achieving his goals. And we're also giving him some additional leverage with Intuniv.

[faith]

When we had a setback in January, my son had terrible ADHD/OCD mix. One day, the kids were supposed to work on independent work for 30 minutes and the teacher emailed me, saying that she could not get my son to concentrate for more than 30 seconds at a time, despite constant reminders. When I asked him about it later, he told me he kept having the sensation that someone was staring at him and he had to keep "checking" and looking around the room to make sure no one was staring. As soon as he started back to his work, the feeling/compulsion would come back. So this was OCD presenting like ADHD. Other times during homework, he seemed to have genuine ADHD and could not stay focused - very frustrating for both of us.

 

What stands out to me here is that this may not be exactly ADHD (in the sense of not being able to pay attention), but actually OCD driven. Maybe some ocd that he's had in the past has gone, but what is described above, sounds like a form of ocd to me. So what I'm saying is that it may not be that he is not able to pay attention and that that part is getting worse, but that the ocd of these thoughts are interfering and causing him to 'appear as if he's not paying or unable to pay attention'.

 

I kind of went thru this with my son. We felt that he had some ADHD (non hyperactive) as a comorbid issue, but what I came to realize was tht it was obvious in class and at home, because he had the OCD of erasing and retracing of his letters. What I came to figure out (long story short) was that he was so uncomfortable and had so much anxiety about knowing that he was going to start erasing and feel uncomfortable and bothered by his feeling of wanting to erase, that he would basically 'avoid' or 'delay' the writing, and this in turn, made it seem like he was not up to snuff, he would do everything but. he would fool around, get up, allow himself to get distracted, look for something to eat or drink, go sharpen his pencil, anythng else would be better than the anxiety he was about to feel when he picked up that pencil.....

 

He is now doing ERP therapy for several weeks, and I can see already how he is much more able to complete his work more timely, one because he is not erasing or retracing (as this is part of the therapy, to 'practice' not doing it until he can see its no big deal or that there will be no consequences, little by little, it supposedly gets easier), and two, he can get to the writing faster and just do it, because he's not worried or having as much anxiety about what will happen when he gets the pencil/pen in his hand, he's more in control right now. Not saying things are perfect and he probably still has some other attention problems, but I can see that alot of it had to do with this.

 

So basically I am feeling that for some, there may some OCD components of the difficulty of paying attention, some anxiety that is not visible on th surface. So worrieddads boy is having some thoughts of people watching him, and that is the distraction. Is it OCD, not sure, but something to think about.

 

Faith

[LNN]

So worrieddads boy is having some thoughts of people watching him, and that is the distraction. Is it OCD, not sure, but something to think about.

 

Faith

 

Just a note - it's my son who had the feeling of being watched, not worried dad's - and yes, that incident was certainly OCD - a checking compulsion. But there are other times he doesn't seem to be able to focus or sit still and will be near tears because he doesn't understand what he's supposed to do on an assignment (even tho when he's healthy homework only takes him 5 minutes). So in our case, I think there's both, along with hyperactivity/mania. So we're trying to help my son learn to cope with both. That's why I was wondering what tricks others might have up their sleeves.

[faith]

So worrieddads boy is having some thoughts of people watching him, and that is the distraction. Is it OCD, not sure, but something to think about.

 

Faith

 

Just a note - it's my son who had the feeling of being watched, not worried dad's - and yes, that incident was certainly OCD - a checking compulsion. But there are other times he doesn't seem to be able to focus or sit still and will be near tears because he doesn't understand what he's supposed to do on an assignment (even tho when he's healthy homework only takes him 5 minutes). So in our case, I think there's both, along with hyperactivity/mania. So we're trying to help my son learn to cope with both. That's why I was wondering what tricks others might have up their sleeves.

 

 

oh, sorry, I thought you were qoting that whole thread from worried dad.

I wish I could give advice about the reward system, nothing like that really helps with my son, he manages to get around it all, like if he doesn't earn it, all I'll hear is "mom, give me another chance, give me another chance, can I have another chance...".... ugh. drives me nuts, he just opens up a whole other can of worms. But I really like that analogy you gave to the teacher, the incentive does have to be set pretty high for someone to step out of their comfort zone.

 

I guess my point was that once I talked to my son about what these distractions were all about and question if this was the reason he was fooling around and not paying attention, it kind of releived him a little, in the way that he was able to sort of come clean as to what was going on in his head and why he was having this trouble. Had I not sat down and started talking about it to him and asking if I was right that the ocd was interfering, it helped 'me' to understand more what was going on and that he truly couldn't help it. I knew he was erasing, but did not know how much of an effect that one thing had on his ability to stay on task. All I did was get aggravated and yell at him before. It was the first step that at least helped me to get the ball rolling being able to communicate with him about this, keep the teacher informed of what was going on, as well as figure out that he really needed some formal therapy for this. He did not really know what OCD was before this, I had to explain. It has really helped for this to be out on the table for us. So hard for these little minds to understand their what is going on in their own little world, the anxiety they must feel for not understanding what or why they have these thoughts.

 

ha, sorry if I can't help with anything, but it might help for some to figure out how their child's symtoms of one thing, i.e. OCD, can snowball or blend into others.

 

Faith

[GatsMom]

I'm pulling this question from Worried Dad from another thread because I wanted to see what ideas everyone has on ADHD -

 

"has your son started exhibiting any ADHD tendencies? Since the OCD has receded, this has become more of an issue for our son: difficulty sitting still, focusing, concentrating on homework for any length of time. Have you seen this?"

 

When we had a setback in January, my son had terrible ADHD/OCD mix. One day, the kids were supposed to work on independent work for 30 minutes and the teacher emailed me, saying that she could not get my son to concentrate for more than 30 seconds at a time, despite constant reminders. When I asked him about it later, he told me he kept having the sensation that someone was staring at him and he had to keep "checking" and looking around the room to make sure no one was staring. As soon as he started back to his work, the feeling/compulsion would come back. So this was OCD presenting like ADHD. Other times during homework, he seemed to have genuine ADHD and could not stay focused - very frustrating for both of us.

 

We started a prednisone burst and things got better. But in the interim, I met with the teacher and we talked about OCD and ADHD and Pandas. I explained to her that my son isn't really motivated by "pleasing others". He has never really cared about pushing himself beyond his comfort zone just to make someone else happy (unlike my daughter, who lives for praise and affirmation). I also explained that when you're sick, the things that work to motivate "regular" kids don't work as well. The teacher had gone home the day before with a stomach bug. I said "When you felt horrible, you wouldn't have been motivated to stick it out just because someone would compliment you. You went home. But if the reward for sticking it out was $1000 or a week's vacation, you probably could've forced yourself to make it through the day." When you're not feeling well, sometimes the rewards have to be higher to get you to push through the hard stuff.

 

So we developed a reward system to help my son with his ADHD. My son and I developed a "menu" of items he could buy with "attention points" - points the teacher would give him every time he stayed on task. 8 points would buy an ICEE at the grocery store, 20 points would earn him staying up late on a Friday night or being able to eat junk food for breakfast, 50 points earned him a family trip to the ice skating rink. So if he had a bad week and only earned a few points, he could still get a reward. But if he really tried and was willing to "bank" his points over a few weeks, he could earn something really big (he generally earned 3-5 points per day). Of course, things got easier as the prednisone kicked in and the PANDAS went away, but he was still rewarded for learning to fight back and take ownership of his actions as best he could. Praise or stickers wasn't going to cut it.

 

We use a similar reward system for ERP, with different rewards. I was wondering what other things parents do to help with either OCD or ADHD...

 

I'm all about the reward system but there was a point at the tail end of my son's middle school exacerbation where all of the reward in the world couldn't help him to focus of keep from being impulsive. Our DAN! suggested using P5P and L-tyrosine and we also added pycnogenol. All naturals and they worked pretty well for him taking the edge of the impulsivity that really causing trouble in the classroom. We used a blend of the reward system that was geared exactly toward what he was capable of achieving in combination with the naturals and got through 8th grade. Hope that helps.

[JMTho]

Article of interest to this thread:

 

http://www.jaacap.com/article/S0890-8567(08)60102-1/abstract

 

(I can email the .pdf file to anyone who'd like the entire article.)

[T_Mom]

Article of interest to this thread:

 

http://www.jaacap.com/article/S0890-8567(08)60102-1/abstract

 

(I can email the .pdf file to anyone who'd like the entire article.)

 

 

Thank you! What a nice study to add to the file to take to doctors!!!

Great!