A Parent’s Question… How do you know if your child has ADHD, or if they’re struggling due to an environmental situation, or when they’ll need professional help?
There are 5 Hallmark ADHD Symptoms.
- Short attention span
- Distractibility
- Disorganization
- Procrastination
- Poor internal supervision
That being said, most parents and teachers focus on the inability to stay focused. While Attention Deficit Disorder sounds like you don’t pay attention to anything, the reality is that you pay attention to many things. That is why your attention span is short. Your mind switches to another topic and another topic and another topic instead of sticking with the first topic.
Most Critical ADHD Symptom
One of the most important pieces in knowing if your child has ADHD is that the above symptoms occur in all situations. If you have ADHD, you have it in all places…not just in one or two situations. If the ADHD type behaviors are occurring only in certain situations, there is a problem with that particular setting, but it is NOT ADHD. If your child has the behaviors all of the time, you may want to find out more about ADHD. There are a lot of free checklists online that you can tap into. If the checklists confirm, then you will want to seek a diagnosis by a professional. And, know that there are a lot of alternatives to dealing with ADHD with medication.
This is really important…Teachers cannot officially diagnose ADHD. They can suggest that you might want to have a professional check your child for ADHD. If they do suggest ADHD, do yourself a favor and go online, download one or more of the free checklists. Then, if they confirm ADHD, seek a professional.
Three Resources to address ADHD Symptoms: Two books and an on-line course:
and the comprehensive course ADHD Classroom and Teaching Strategies (also availabel for CEU Units)
Have a question? Get answers here!
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