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by curioushacking 472 days ago
Similar to another poster. Our 6 year old was just diagnosed with it.

The formal test was a short survey about our childs behavior in various situations. It was highly subjective with questions similar to "My child has difficulty sitting still" (Never, Sometimes, Often).

There was not example of what is considered sometimes or often and what is age appropriate for a 6 year old.

The survey was required to be answered by the parents and kindergarten teacher. That was all that was necessary to have the option of medication.

Even more surprising is that with only slight more effort we now have the option to put our child on an IEP (indivdualized education plan) where there will now be a full additional teacher in the classroom assisting her.

Overall it has been an eye opening experience. Compared to our first child, our 6 year old is more spirited, but is not violent or defiant. She is mostly concerned with her own interests and will admittedly have difficulty focusing for long periods of time. I would be very curious if her behavior is above the threshold for ADHD in other countries.

This was just our experience and it is very possible that our child was an obvious case so further analysis was not necessary. For now we have opted not to use medication. Interestingly our diagnosing pediatrician has two children with ADHD and said that they put both children on medication at 6 years old.

1 comments

> My child has difficulty sitting still

This is like every 6 year old lol. I bet you I would have been diagnosed with ADHD if I was tested, but in truth I was just an active kid who didn’t like sitting in a classroom chair all day.

There is definitely a difference between ADHD not sitting still and normal kid not sitting still.

My kid was continuously falling off his chair because he was creating a tension bridge between his chest on the edge of the table and his feet on the seat of his chair.

It was driving his kindergarten teacher crazy lol.

Related: it was a 15 minute doctor visit for us, but both me and my wife have ADHD so the doctor looked at the survey and said "boy howdy, I think you guys know what you are talking about"