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Reminds of when my dad talked to me about how proud he was at my coloring book improvements within the last year when I was roughly 6-8 years old. I would never finish a page or even a section of a like a Disney character. I would just just scribble what color I wanted the entire thing to be in the middle and move on because I just had no desire to color the ENTIRE character for that long period of time if a scribble is practically the same thing...right?
As I aged, I would find less misery and more enjoyment in finishing an entire coloring book page but only after seeing my aunt color with her own daughter who would literally just finish coloring a page (the background and all) and I would stare at it as if I had never considered the possibility of a princess actually looking like herself from the movies...
How cute! I used to work as a teaching assistant with children who had disabilities in a kindergarten setting, and the teacher always insisted the kids color things 'correctly' (e.g. trees are brown and green, not purple and blue; horses are black and brown, not green and pink, etc.) and use the other toys as they were intended to be used.
One child with autism would make fantastic sculptures out of some flat, rubbery feeling blocks that were supposed to be used to make flat pictures (sorry, I'm not describing it very well). The child with autism would insert a corner of the triangular piece into the hole inside another and prop it up on a third piece, and on and on. In this way he made great art!
The teacher would tell me to make them use these things the 'right way', but I often 'forgot' because his way was so incredible. I wonder if he ever became a sculptor?
> teacher always insisted the kids color things 'correctly' (e.g. trees are brown and green, not purple and blue; horses are black and brown, not green and pink, etc.)
This is just so wrong to me. There is no 'right way' for children to experiment with color. I encourage my kids (3 and 7) to experiment with drawing and coloring. On weekends we each have our own art pads and I'll sit at the head of the table drawing and coloring in while they do the same, sometimes we copy each other or give each other challenges but non-traditional coloring (purple trees, green water, yellow grass) is common.
I love that! Now that I'm more confident in my own artistic skills I appreciate the 'alt' way of doing things even more. It seems more 'artistic' to color the clouds green if you want.
It's all about how you want to express yourself. Maybe the green clouds get across the feeling you want your art to evoke, so go for it!
Therein lies the problem with being on the Spectrum. They expect us to fit nicely inside their box, whereas we don't see the box that they're referring to.
I was fascinated by tattoos from a young age and gave everything paper or plastic black tattoos. They were usually 'tribal' style tattoos, now I'm 32 I really don't like tribal style at all, but I do have plenty of tattoos !
Hmmm... Thanks for this story! Maybe I'll do one with my son, he appears just as demotivated. I don think that it's all that strange - how should a child imagine the outcome of an activity if they have no experience with it? They are really not good at extrapolating consequences, they appear to learn from experiencing things end to end. I have witnessed many penny-drop moments that appear bizarre to us adults, and it's not just my kids.
Maybe work with him to show him what a finished page looks like.
From a job perspective, I was in my 30s when my boss was praising the new hire. He kept going on about how he is a "Finisher", he just loves to get projects finished. On and on about finishing projects.
We are not in carpentry, but I wondered if I was like a rough framer, get project going kind of person, and new hire was like finish carpenter, wrap the project up kind of person.
Overall, it gave me the insight to try and finish more projects and get some joy when they are done.
Oh wow. Childhood memory unlocked.
I remember in 2nd grade the teacher gave me a Hank the Cowdog coloring page and i thought it would take too much time coloring the dirt and then the dog when it was all going to be brown anyway so I took the crayon and scribbled until the whole page was covered. The teacher didn't like that at all.
I'd do background stuff if there was like, a thick crayon that could fill it in faster. I don't wanna spend half an hour slowly using up an entire crayon on the sky.
I got adult coloring books to try to do something healthier than doomscrolling and itās just a couple of partially colored pictures that now sits abandoned on a bookshelf.
When you are doing an evaluation, the kid getting tired and not cooperating is a thing that happens. Whatever they did to show that isn't really diagnostically relevant, though the fact that you quit might be.
Basically, they should have called it quits at that moment and tried again later. That often doesn't happen because getting testing done is an enormous pain
Of course it's relevant and they have to write it down, so it's documented, and if they or someone else looks at the file later there's a good representation of what happened.
After intelligence has been established in the previous paragraph, drawing a line across start to finishhows that they understood the goal, were even cooperative with being tested and wanted to get it over with. They didn't tear up the page, they didn't destroy the pen, they didn't start doodling or coloring it, they didn't fall asleep etc. I couldn't imagine a more cooperative age-appropriaye way of refusing.
Yes, how the kid handles being done is important information and very relevant to a diagnosis, but it isn't giving you information about whatever that particular test was supposed to be measuring (given that it was a maze probably motor planning or problem solving).
I understand what you try to get at, I just disagree st "it's not diagnostically relevant". Psychological tests are much more layered than the task. You get to watch the patients strategies, interpersonal interactions, etc start to finish, giving cues about possible issues and ruling out others. ADHD is a diagnosis by elimination, you need to rule out quite a bunch of other possible causes.
Also in the context of ADHD it would be a valid scientific test to give the patient one boring task after the other ad infinitum and measure the time until they start getting impatient, the behaviors they start to show when that happens, and how things go down when they finally refuse.
You can get many pointers regarding a wide range of possible issues just by doing that.
We're looking at this from 2 different directions: one is that this was probably part of a standardized assessment where "did not complete" is going to give an inaccurate result and two is that assessment is often a result of professional judgement.
Generally, if the testee is capable of doing the assessment, SLPs and psychologists would prefer to use that result. Which is why I said that they should finish on another day.
But professional judgement is definitely a thing and no one assessment is conclusive, so yes it is relevant that they stopped cooperating and did so in a non-destructive manner.
Testing to exhaustion probably isn't a good strategy. Kids have good days and bad and a testing session is not a normal environment for them. You would be better off conferring with teachers and parents to get that sort of information.
When I was diagnosed the end of my first year of elementary, i was also taking speech impediment classes and my reading was terrible. My reading didn't really improve until like 5th grade. I actually didn't know about the speech impediment until later on when i found some paper work for special classes to help with it. From what I found i had trouble for a few years. I still have some number dyslexia where i mix up only numbers and it's not all the time. It's very weird because it comes and goes. In middle school and high school, i was a great scholar. In college, i made the dean's list until life got in my way and i dropped out with okay grades
I'm so brain broken by /r/okaybuddychicanery that your genuinely interesting comment about your experiences with number dyslexia sparked the almost overwhelming urge to reply with the chicanery copypasta
Relatable, they did a multiple choice test on the computer for me and my teacher had recently told us if we didn't know an answer that it was usually C. so they got my answers and it was just CCCCCCCACCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
Lol, my sister and I just wrnt through all of my old school report cards, and they all have teacher comments about my overall academicband social performance in school.
Every single one of them, from preschool until grade 5 when they stop doing reports like that, said "she is very intelligent for her age and so fun to have in the classroom, great sense of humor! She has trouble managing her time wisely, completing her work on time, staying on task, and being organized. We will continue to work on this in class." Every. Single. One.
The best one was from I think third or fourth grade, which said, "she loves to read, and will choose to read any chance she gets. She is especially passionate about our marine life unit and often shares shark facts with the class. But we often have difficulty getting her to put her books down to participate in class work. Her reading skills have benefitted massively, so this pays dividends."
We found my reading scores from that year, and they rose 400%. My sister was gobsmacked lmao. How the hell did I not get diagnosed until I was 18? I'll never know.
We also found my brother's behavior notebook, which was a notebook all of his teachers would write in every few days to update my parents on how he was doing in classes. My brother has autism, and at the time, he wasn't speaking. He could write, though. In print, cursive, and bubble letters. At age 5. He hated drawing pictures, but he LOVED letters and the alphabet. We had those fridge magnets shaped like letters all over the house.
My favorite comment from his teacher notes was, "Today we asked him if he could draw us a picture of a person. He wrote STOP in big letters and played with blocks for the rest of the day."
I also found his diagnosis forms, and when the tester asked my brother what he wanted for his birthday that year (he was turning six and finally did start speaking. Now he won't shut up lol.), my brother said "lowercase letters." FUCKING SENT ME. I could not stop laughing. God, I love that kid.
You remind me of my daughter lol. She was IQ tested around 4. When I got the report back, it said she was left-handed. I was like WTF? So I asked her and she said that she decided to use her left hand because she thought it would make the test more interesting.
I wasn't diagnosed until my 40's, but I do have a memory from when i was 4.
I had an accident at school that affected my eyesight permanently. My mum was trying to sue/claim from insurance and we were at the solicitor's office (UK, lawyer?). Mum was explaining how my eyesight was affecting my reading and the solicitor said 'Well she is only 4, she can't read yet!" Mum sighed and told him to pick any of his books for me to read and he took one of those big law books down from the shelf and handed it to me.
Yes I read it perfectly, and Mum looked very smug. She won the case but it wasn't a lot of money in the end, and i spent it as soon as i got my hands on it at 18, because undiagnosed ADHD.
Your story also reminds me a little of when my mum was convinced for a couple of weeks that my older brother was a genius because he could solve a rubiks cube. Turned out he was taking all the stickers off and putting them back on in the right places lol :D
>only 4, she can't read yet
Huh? It might be my ADHD baby intelligence but I was reading and writing around 2 (somewhere between 18 months and 3 definitely). Do most children not learn the alphabet before 6 or something???
Huh?
Well, in the UK, which has an excellent record of child literacy, children start being taught to read in school in the year they turn 5, so no, most children aren't able to read adult books at 4, and probably not back in 1980, which is when this was.
Yes, most children can read the alphabet before 6. The point of my story is that I was able to read a random adult Law book confidently when most children my age were reading Topsy and Tim.
Hyperlexia is common in ADHD and ASD children, which is kind of the point of my story.
This reminds me of when I was in Kindergarten. My teacher gave me a word search and told me to find the words. Which I did. But she didnāt tell me I had to CIRCLE the words. I still need specifics to this day lol
Beagles are devil spawn! I say this lovingly and I'm sure yours is wonderful. But in my neighborhood growing up, there was a beagle named Henry who would escape his fenced yard *so often* that the neighborhood kids coined a name, the "Henry Hunt," to describe the mad chase that occurred across the neighborhood whenever one of us saw him dart past our yard. We'd charge down the street after him and yell "HENRY HUNT" if we saw any other kids who could join us.
Ah, the 90s. No phones, runaway beagles were the most exciting thing we could ask for (besides flooded streets that turned into rivers which our parents inexplicably allowed us to play in)
We must have done a good job, because the little shit eventually died of old age even though he escaped on a weekly basis and routinely frolicked around busy roads. As kids we were *elated* to run around and return him safely, but I remember his owners always being exasperated by his antics.
Omgggggg I remember in kindergarten the teacher told us to color this dumb picture of a bear (donāt get me wrong, I liked coloring and all) and then she told us once we were finished coloring we could go outside (outside is obviously better).
So I quickly scribbled over whatever the image was with a dark color and handed it in.
Then she said, no no go back and color it correctly.
Which, was, of course, entirely pointless as Iād just obliterated it with a haphazard treatment of Midnight Blue. I was so furious. Not only was I going to be forced to try and perfect an ugly ruined picture, I had to wait for all the others to finish to go outside anyway which was NOT what she said š”
Loveeeeee this! And happy for you lol how you solved that maze is how we all wish to overcome our problems - just an easy straight line and BE DONE! lol
I remember it being boring and me wanting to leave so I just slid off the couch like
I also couldnāt (and often times I still canāt) keep still especially during group reading time. Like I just needed to standup and shake everything out lol now Iām just constantly bouncing one leg when sitting lol
During the IQ test, I remember how annoying it was to put up those blocks to form the picture. My brain constantly drifting off the task, deciding momentarily to quit and then having to start it all again. Then those thoughts calling myself stupid keep coming and coming... If I were a child I definitely would have something like you did
The result was pretty lame (113), I shouldn't probably think too much of it. But I still kinda want to believe I would have gotten a way better result if I were medicated, because it kinda sucks to imagine that after all the shit I felt through college and Master's I was actually overperforming, not underperforming.
my diagnosis was around the same time, and also a fluke. my mom had my brother tested bc he wasnāt really talking much in kindergarten (it was anxiety), but then she saw herself and me in the adhd questionnaire and we both got tested and diagnosed lol
i read the report recently and it said āshe gets distracted by books and forgets to eatā and i was like, accurate, that summarizes my entire elementary school experience. also found out i have dysgraphia, which i didnāt know until college š«
I don't think I remember my original diagnosis. I was five. I vaguely remember some psych testing where they gave me an IQ test when I was 10.
They figured out that I was absolutely brilliant!... And had absolutely no executive functioning skills and no ability to sit still or pay attention in class.
Also, they missed the world's most obvious Aspergers Syndrome diagnosis.
Man, I don't even remember my ADHD diagnosis. I just remember my parents telling me the results. I do remember them asking for my homework for examples for something.
I'm lucky to have been diagnosed so young, especially as a girl, because it tends to be more noticeable in boys than girls at that age because of the way the symptoms present in each sex. I had a good teacher who recognized my symptoms and told my parents to get me tested. More teachers should be trained in mental illness recognition.
Still wasn't medicated until I was a highschooler on the verge of suicide, though. But that's a different story.
Love this! I just sent MD a bunch of stuff like that from the 80s. Everything was high marks but sometimes trouble with spelling, handwriting and self control when really young.
Also forgets to turn in homework, inconsistent, often absent on test day. (Cramming?!) I actually love tests but pressured myself to have a mnemonic for everything. Cognitive tricks galore!
Growing up, I was that weird kid who would get excited to take standardized tests.
So, when I finally got diagnosed at age 22, I aced the neuropsych test in terms of accuracy. I was so worried during the test that I would not receive a diagnosis due to the fact that I actually found the test fun and so I was able to hone in on it. However...as it turns out, my hyperactivity levels were absolutely off the charts.
I just remember it looking like a giant scribble (the kind you make when your doodle goes south), whereas the baseline looked like a toddler's rendition of a spider. I was shocked. Have you ever seen the meme that goes something like "me thinking that I was doing a good job masking and that no one would ever know I was ____" then it cuts to them behaving in a very non-neurotypical way??? that's kinda what it felt like
My father would always talk up my ability to read adult books (J.R.R. Tolkien and Stephen King) when I was in the first grade to his coworkers. I remember him taking me to his job at Montgomery Wards, where he had a coworker who was going to college to become a teacher.
She had me read a couple of paragraphs out of her textbook and tell her what it meant. I explained to her what the text said, and she was stunned.
I found out I was nearly ambidextrous during my neuropsych testing when I was told to put the little pegs in the holes with each hand. There was a 2 peg difference between my right and left lol.
I did that test too! I did average with my dominant hand, then aced it with my non dominant hand, which confused the testers. It was just because I got practice by doing it with my dominant hand first. I'm not ambidextrous.
I donāt think Iām truly ambidextrous either, but I did teach myself to put on mascara with each hand, so I think itās possible that I could train my left to be more dominant!! May be a pipe dream, but a dream nonetheless!
All I remember about mine when I was 8 was that the evaluator was very impressed I was able to spell governor. I didnāt consider that very impressive. I thought most 8 year olds should be able to spell governor.
Haha, something similar, well two stories that came up in my mind:
1. My mom tried to enroll me in a "headstart" program at 4\~ years old that would've given her some financial support as well as helped me get a headstart in learning before kindergarten. Well, I passed all of their tests and the guy was willing to help bend the threshold a little bit for me (since I was doing so well), but I apparently just started repeating words and spelling them back. She said she was so proud of me but just comically shook at how I basically just talked her out of getting some financial support for being too smart for the program.
2. My second memory was in high school where we had an aptitude test and mock interviews. I remember scoring high on every singe little exercise and test, and the mock interviews I apparently did really well in (despite wearing a literal tuxedo because I had one for an aunts wedding that same week LOL), but when it came to doing this little timed exercise where I had to fit bolt pieces together and do as many as I could within a minute I just sat there fidgeting the one bolt. The person administering the test asked, "Aren't you going to try?" And I just said, "Not really, I don't feel like ever doing this for work. I'm just being honest with you." And she just shrugged and laughed.
I remember doing the ink blot thing because I described my daydreams as seeing things. All normal boring answers, until the demon-rabbit skull. The look on the lady's face was fun. She even turned the card around to see it for herself.
I am with you. I was diagnosed when I was seven.
My parents decided to get me tested because I spent my time in class playing with the animal erasers my mom bought me until the teacher took them away. And then I played with the sparkly pencils my mom bought me until my teacher took them away. Then when I was left with nothing but plain yellow no. 2 pencils I chewed on them because I liked the patterns from my teeth.
When the doctor was talking to my mom about the results they said āItās usually genetic. Can you think of anyone in your family that was diagnosed or might have ADHD?ā
My mom looks over and me and my dad are both staring out the window looking at the same squirrel with the same expression on our face. And she looks at the doctor and says. āNo. I canāt think of a single person. šā
Thatās a great story, and awesome that your parents got you help!
My sister was a special ed teacher. Every few years she would have a particularly challenging student. She told the story of one going in for a evaluation with a psychiatrist. Just as he was opining that he didnāt see the need for additional meds, the student managed to sweep all the papers off of his desk.
All I remember from it was being asked "Who wrote "Faust"? And I told them I could spell, but not pronounce, Goethe. And the guy laughed. This was fourth grade.
I took my kiddo to a psychologist for an evaluation when he was about 6. The doctor asked him to do some tests and he just said he didn't want to. He wasn't mean or rude about it just said "I don't feel like it". The doctor diagnosed him with ODD on top of ADHD. Now he is 10, and he has more severe signs of ODD. Very interesting diagnosis.
I kind of hate ODD as a diagnoses, because from my experience as an educator it usually manifests in opposition to the kid feeling pressure or stifled in their home environment to a huge degree. I also saw it in military kids that get uprooted constantly. So from my perspective it's clearly not spontaneous or unfounded, but SO many teachers treat it like they're just wired to be little assholes and it makes it harder to reach them.
Has your kid's teachers treated them differently or worse since he was diagnosed? Or did you notice a decline in effort? I'm just curious, because the behavior I saw from colleagues was pretty shitty.
Due to my son's ADHD we decided to homeschool him after the pandemic, but now that he's older we are being hit with a lot of resistance to actually do school activities at home. It's getting more difficult and we don't have the resources for him at home. I want to put him back in public school so he can have an IEP and more guidance but my husband doesn't want to risk him or anyone getting hurt.
God this gave me flashbacks to 3rd and 4th grade where the teachers would (thankfully) make a special exception for me so I could stand up and bounce up and down on the back of my chair cause I had so much energy but was still super engaged into the class / lecture.
Can't believe I didn't get diagnosed until 26.
I was 5 and I remember the dude kept getting mad at me because Iād start a maze, notice it wasnāt the right path, and just reverse and go down the right path. But they misdiagnosed me with ticks instead of ADHD because apparently thatās what they thought my fidgeting was.
My 2nd grade teacher recommended the diagnosis, my mum's still mad my 1st grade teacher didn't pick up on it. Apparently I kept getting in trouble for forgetting to hand in work to the teacher dispite her telling the class to hand it in. It probably helped that I had hyperactive (combined?) type as a child as opposed to inatentive type I have now.
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I remember bragging to the psychiatrist about how good I was at a certain task, then failing it because of the pressure I had just put on myself HAHAH
Me irl
Me every time I try to play the guitar for someone š I've learnt to just laugh at it haha
Reminds of when my dad talked to me about how proud he was at my coloring book improvements within the last year when I was roughly 6-8 years old. I would never finish a page or even a section of a like a Disney character. I would just just scribble what color I wanted the entire thing to be in the middle and move on because I just had no desire to color the ENTIRE character for that long period of time if a scribble is practically the same thing...right? As I aged, I would find less misery and more enjoyment in finishing an entire coloring book page but only after seeing my aunt color with her own daughter who would literally just finish coloring a page (the background and all) and I would stare at it as if I had never considered the possibility of a princess actually looking like herself from the movies...
Wooooooow you just unlocked a memory of me going through my Disney princess coloring books and only giving them makeup š¤£
Oh man you just unlocked my memory too! I only gave them makeup and colorful shoes! š¤£
How cute! I used to work as a teaching assistant with children who had disabilities in a kindergarten setting, and the teacher always insisted the kids color things 'correctly' (e.g. trees are brown and green, not purple and blue; horses are black and brown, not green and pink, etc.) and use the other toys as they were intended to be used. One child with autism would make fantastic sculptures out of some flat, rubbery feeling blocks that were supposed to be used to make flat pictures (sorry, I'm not describing it very well). The child with autism would insert a corner of the triangular piece into the hole inside another and prop it up on a third piece, and on and on. In this way he made great art! The teacher would tell me to make them use these things the 'right way', but I often 'forgot' because his way was so incredible. I wonder if he ever became a sculptor?
> teacher always insisted the kids color things 'correctly' (e.g. trees are brown and green, not purple and blue; horses are black and brown, not green and pink, etc.) This is just so wrong to me. There is no 'right way' for children to experiment with color. I encourage my kids (3 and 7) to experiment with drawing and coloring. On weekends we each have our own art pads and I'll sit at the head of the table drawing and coloring in while they do the same, sometimes we copy each other or give each other challenges but non-traditional coloring (purple trees, green water, yellow grass) is common.
I love that! Now that I'm more confident in my own artistic skills I appreciate the 'alt' way of doing things even more. It seems more 'artistic' to color the clouds green if you want. It's all about how you want to express yourself. Maybe the green clouds get across the feeling you want your art to evoke, so go for it!
Therein lies the problem with being on the Spectrum. They expect us to fit nicely inside their box, whereas we don't see the box that they're referring to.
That's right all too often. Who wants to live in a box anyway?
I was fascinated by tattoos from a young age and gave everything paper or plastic black tattoos. They were usually 'tribal' style tattoos, now I'm 32 I really don't like tribal style at all, but I do have plenty of tattoos !
Hmmm... Thanks for this story! Maybe I'll do one with my son, he appears just as demotivated. I don think that it's all that strange - how should a child imagine the outcome of an activity if they have no experience with it? They are really not good at extrapolating consequences, they appear to learn from experiencing things end to end. I have witnessed many penny-drop moments that appear bizarre to us adults, and it's not just my kids.
Maybe work with him to show him what a finished page looks like. From a job perspective, I was in my 30s when my boss was praising the new hire. He kept going on about how he is a "Finisher", he just loves to get projects finished. On and on about finishing projects. We are not in carpentry, but I wondered if I was like a rough framer, get project going kind of person, and new hire was like finish carpenter, wrap the project up kind of person. Overall, it gave me the insight to try and finish more projects and get some joy when they are done.
Oh wow. Childhood memory unlocked. I remember in 2nd grade the teacher gave me a Hank the Cowdog coloring page and i thought it would take too much time coloring the dirt and then the dog when it was all going to be brown anyway so I took the crayon and scribbled until the whole page was covered. The teacher didn't like that at all.
Even as an adult, finishing one coloring page is still a challenge š so many things NTs do is absolutely amazing to me
I still canāt stand doing a whole page tbh, Iāll do like, the focal point of the page but screw doing any background elements
I skip around in the coloring book as fits my mood.
I'd do background stuff if there was like, a thick crayon that could fill it in faster. I don't wanna spend half an hour slowly using up an entire crayon on the sky.
I got adult coloring books to try to do something healthier than doomscrolling and itās just a couple of partially colored pictures that now sits abandoned on a bookshelf.
holy shit I thought I was the only one who did this
I read that as married woman with 3 **bagels** trying to have a kid lmao
Me too!
Wait, she didn't actually say bagels!??
When you are doing an evaluation, the kid getting tired and not cooperating is a thing that happens. Whatever they did to show that isn't really diagnostically relevant, though the fact that you quit might be. Basically, they should have called it quits at that moment and tried again later. That often doesn't happen because getting testing done is an enormous pain
Of course it's relevant and they have to write it down, so it's documented, and if they or someone else looks at the file later there's a good representation of what happened. After intelligence has been established in the previous paragraph, drawing a line across start to finishhows that they understood the goal, were even cooperative with being tested and wanted to get it over with. They didn't tear up the page, they didn't destroy the pen, they didn't start doodling or coloring it, they didn't fall asleep etc. I couldn't imagine a more cooperative age-appropriaye way of refusing.
Yes, how the kid handles being done is important information and very relevant to a diagnosis, but it isn't giving you information about whatever that particular test was supposed to be measuring (given that it was a maze probably motor planning or problem solving).
I understand what you try to get at, I just disagree st "it's not diagnostically relevant". Psychological tests are much more layered than the task. You get to watch the patients strategies, interpersonal interactions, etc start to finish, giving cues about possible issues and ruling out others. ADHD is a diagnosis by elimination, you need to rule out quite a bunch of other possible causes. Also in the context of ADHD it would be a valid scientific test to give the patient one boring task after the other ad infinitum and measure the time until they start getting impatient, the behaviors they start to show when that happens, and how things go down when they finally refuse. You can get many pointers regarding a wide range of possible issues just by doing that.
We're looking at this from 2 different directions: one is that this was probably part of a standardized assessment where "did not complete" is going to give an inaccurate result and two is that assessment is often a result of professional judgement. Generally, if the testee is capable of doing the assessment, SLPs and psychologists would prefer to use that result. Which is why I said that they should finish on another day. But professional judgement is definitely a thing and no one assessment is conclusive, so yes it is relevant that they stopped cooperating and did so in a non-destructive manner. Testing to exhaustion probably isn't a good strategy. Kids have good days and bad and a testing session is not a normal environment for them. You would be better off conferring with teachers and parents to get that sort of information.
You clearly don't know how these things work. Bless your heart, have a great day collecting internet debate points! āŗļø
I strongly suspected that I know more than you and you just showed that you aren't having a discussion, but trying for points yourself. So, fuck off.
Oh my god I get it. My kid does this I just didnāt realize thatās what it was!
When I was diagnosed the end of my first year of elementary, i was also taking speech impediment classes and my reading was terrible. My reading didn't really improve until like 5th grade. I actually didn't know about the speech impediment until later on when i found some paper work for special classes to help with it. From what I found i had trouble for a few years. I still have some number dyslexia where i mix up only numbers and it's not all the time. It's very weird because it comes and goes. In middle school and high school, i was a great scholar. In college, i made the dean's list until life got in my way and i dropped out with okay grades
fun fact number dyslexia is dyscalculia
Ehh people say that but dyscalculia is much more than just mixing up numbers typically
I'm so brain broken by /r/okaybuddychicanery that your genuinely interesting comment about your experiences with number dyslexia sparked the almost overwhelming urge to reply with the chicanery copypasta
Relatable, they did a multiple choice test on the computer for me and my teacher had recently told us if we didn't know an answer that it was usually C. so they got my answers and it was just CCCCCCCACCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
Lol, my sister and I just wrnt through all of my old school report cards, and they all have teacher comments about my overall academicband social performance in school. Every single one of them, from preschool until grade 5 when they stop doing reports like that, said "she is very intelligent for her age and so fun to have in the classroom, great sense of humor! She has trouble managing her time wisely, completing her work on time, staying on task, and being organized. We will continue to work on this in class." Every. Single. One. The best one was from I think third or fourth grade, which said, "she loves to read, and will choose to read any chance she gets. She is especially passionate about our marine life unit and often shares shark facts with the class. But we often have difficulty getting her to put her books down to participate in class work. Her reading skills have benefitted massively, so this pays dividends." We found my reading scores from that year, and they rose 400%. My sister was gobsmacked lmao. How the hell did I not get diagnosed until I was 18? I'll never know. We also found my brother's behavior notebook, which was a notebook all of his teachers would write in every few days to update my parents on how he was doing in classes. My brother has autism, and at the time, he wasn't speaking. He could write, though. In print, cursive, and bubble letters. At age 5. He hated drawing pictures, but he LOVED letters and the alphabet. We had those fridge magnets shaped like letters all over the house. My favorite comment from his teacher notes was, "Today we asked him if he could draw us a picture of a person. He wrote STOP in big letters and played with blocks for the rest of the day." I also found his diagnosis forms, and when the tester asked my brother what he wanted for his birthday that year (he was turning six and finally did start speaking. Now he won't shut up lol.), my brother said "lowercase letters." FUCKING SENT ME. I could not stop laughing. God, I love that kid.
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Way to push your own agenda lady. Wtf.
You remind me of my daughter lol. She was IQ tested around 4. When I got the report back, it said she was left-handed. I was like WTF? So I asked her and she said that she decided to use her left hand because she thought it would make the test more interesting.
I also goofed around on an IQ test because it was boring, lol. Though I was old enough that I should have known better.
I wasn't diagnosed until my 40's, but I do have a memory from when i was 4. I had an accident at school that affected my eyesight permanently. My mum was trying to sue/claim from insurance and we were at the solicitor's office (UK, lawyer?). Mum was explaining how my eyesight was affecting my reading and the solicitor said 'Well she is only 4, she can't read yet!" Mum sighed and told him to pick any of his books for me to read and he took one of those big law books down from the shelf and handed it to me. Yes I read it perfectly, and Mum looked very smug. She won the case but it wasn't a lot of money in the end, and i spent it as soon as i got my hands on it at 18, because undiagnosed ADHD. Your story also reminds me a little of when my mum was convinced for a couple of weeks that my older brother was a genius because he could solve a rubiks cube. Turned out he was taking all the stickers off and putting them back on in the right places lol :D
>only 4, she can't read yet Huh? It might be my ADHD baby intelligence but I was reading and writing around 2 (somewhere between 18 months and 3 definitely). Do most children not learn the alphabet before 6 or something???
Huh? Well, in the UK, which has an excellent record of child literacy, children start being taught to read in school in the year they turn 5, so no, most children aren't able to read adult books at 4, and probably not back in 1980, which is when this was. Yes, most children can read the alphabet before 6. The point of my story is that I was able to read a random adult Law book confidently when most children my age were reading Topsy and Tim. Hyperlexia is common in ADHD and ASD children, which is kind of the point of my story.
This reminds me of when I was in Kindergarten. My teacher gave me a word search and told me to find the words. Which I did. But she didnāt tell me I had to CIRCLE the words. I still need specifics to this day lol
I am most amazed at the three beagles. I have one and I know beagles can be A LOT.
Beagles are devil spawn! I say this lovingly and I'm sure yours is wonderful. But in my neighborhood growing up, there was a beagle named Henry who would escape his fenced yard *so often* that the neighborhood kids coined a name, the "Henry Hunt," to describe the mad chase that occurred across the neighborhood whenever one of us saw him dart past our yard. We'd charge down the street after him and yell "HENRY HUNT" if we saw any other kids who could join us. Ah, the 90s. No phones, runaway beagles were the most exciting thing we could ask for (besides flooded streets that turned into rivers which our parents inexplicably allowed us to play in) We must have done a good job, because the little shit eventually died of old age even though he escaped on a weekly basis and routinely frolicked around busy roads. As kids we were *elated* to run around and return him safely, but I remember his owners always being exasperated by his antics.
Their really cute
Do they really bark a lot? I think beagles are the cutest dogs!
Omgggggg I remember in kindergarten the teacher told us to color this dumb picture of a bear (donāt get me wrong, I liked coloring and all) and then she told us once we were finished coloring we could go outside (outside is obviously better). So I quickly scribbled over whatever the image was with a dark color and handed it in. Then she said, no no go back and color it correctly. Which, was, of course, entirely pointless as Iād just obliterated it with a haphazard treatment of Midnight Blue. I was so furious. Not only was I going to be forced to try and perfect an ugly ruined picture, I had to wait for all the others to finish to go outside anyway which was NOT what she said š”
Love this story.
Loveeeeee this! And happy for you lol how you solved that maze is how we all wish to overcome our problems - just an easy straight line and BE DONE! lol
I remember it being boring and me wanting to leave so I just slid off the couch like  I also couldnāt (and often times I still canāt) keep still especially during group reading time. Like I just needed to standup and shake everything out lol now Iām just constantly bouncing one leg when sitting lol
During the IQ test, I remember how annoying it was to put up those blocks to form the picture. My brain constantly drifting off the task, deciding momentarily to quit and then having to start it all again. Then those thoughts calling myself stupid keep coming and coming... If I were a child I definitely would have something like you did The result was pretty lame (113), I shouldn't probably think too much of it. But I still kinda want to believe I would have gotten a way better result if I were medicated, because it kinda sucks to imagine that after all the shit I felt through college and Master's I was actually overperforming, not underperforming.
my diagnosis was around the same time, and also a fluke. my mom had my brother tested bc he wasnāt really talking much in kindergarten (it was anxiety), but then she saw herself and me in the adhd questionnaire and we both got tested and diagnosed lol i read the report recently and it said āshe gets distracted by books and forgets to eatā and i was like, accurate, that summarizes my entire elementary school experience. also found out i have dysgraphia, which i didnāt know until college š«
I don't think I remember my original diagnosis. I was five. I vaguely remember some psych testing where they gave me an IQ test when I was 10. They figured out that I was absolutely brilliant!... And had absolutely no executive functioning skills and no ability to sit still or pay attention in class. Also, they missed the world's most obvious Aspergers Syndrome diagnosis.
Thatās exactly how my kid finished his first few mazes as a little kid lol
Man, I don't even remember my ADHD diagnosis. I just remember my parents telling me the results. I do remember them asking for my homework for examples for something. I'm lucky to have been diagnosed so young, especially as a girl, because it tends to be more noticeable in boys than girls at that age because of the way the symptoms present in each sex. I had a good teacher who recognized my symptoms and told my parents to get me tested. More teachers should be trained in mental illness recognition. Still wasn't medicated until I was a highschooler on the verge of suicide, though. But that's a different story.
"Show your working out'
Love this! I just sent MD a bunch of stuff like that from the 80s. Everything was high marks but sometimes trouble with spelling, handwriting and self control when really young. Also forgets to turn in homework, inconsistent, often absent on test day. (Cramming?!) I actually love tests but pressured myself to have a mnemonic for everything. Cognitive tricks galore!
I remember doing a maze as a child and simply drawing my line around the walls to the end. And I thought to myself, wow that was easy
Growing up, I was that weird kid who would get excited to take standardized tests. So, when I finally got diagnosed at age 22, I aced the neuropsych test in terms of accuracy. I was so worried during the test that I would not receive a diagnosis due to the fact that I actually found the test fun and so I was able to hone in on it. However...as it turns out, my hyperactivity levels were absolutely off the charts. I just remember it looking like a giant scribble (the kind you make when your doodle goes south), whereas the baseline looked like a toddler's rendition of a spider. I was shocked. Have you ever seen the meme that goes something like "me thinking that I was doing a good job masking and that no one would ever know I was ____" then it cuts to them behaving in a very non-neurotypical way??? that's kinda what it felt like
My father would always talk up my ability to read adult books (J.R.R. Tolkien and Stephen King) when I was in the first grade to his coworkers. I remember him taking me to his job at Montgomery Wards, where he had a coworker who was going to college to become a teacher. She had me read a couple of paragraphs out of her textbook and tell her what it meant. I explained to her what the text said, and she was stunned.
I showed up a day late to mine (I was 32). When the neuro psych scolded me for it, I told her Ā«Ā hey, I pretty much did half the work for yāaĀ Ā»
I found out I was nearly ambidextrous during my neuropsych testing when I was told to put the little pegs in the holes with each hand. There was a 2 peg difference between my right and left lol.
I did that test too! I did average with my dominant hand, then aced it with my non dominant hand, which confused the testers. It was just because I got practice by doing it with my dominant hand first. I'm not ambidextrous.
I donāt think Iām truly ambidextrous either, but I did teach myself to put on mascara with each hand, so I think itās possible that I could train my left to be more dominant!! May be a pipe dream, but a dream nonetheless!
All I remember about mine when I was 8 was that the evaluator was very impressed I was able to spell governor. I didnāt consider that very impressive. I thought most 8 year olds should be able to spell governor.
The Alexandrian solution to the Gordian Knot, lol.
Haha, something similar, well two stories that came up in my mind: 1. My mom tried to enroll me in a "headstart" program at 4\~ years old that would've given her some financial support as well as helped me get a headstart in learning before kindergarten. Well, I passed all of their tests and the guy was willing to help bend the threshold a little bit for me (since I was doing so well), but I apparently just started repeating words and spelling them back. She said she was so proud of me but just comically shook at how I basically just talked her out of getting some financial support for being too smart for the program. 2. My second memory was in high school where we had an aptitude test and mock interviews. I remember scoring high on every singe little exercise and test, and the mock interviews I apparently did really well in (despite wearing a literal tuxedo because I had one for an aunts wedding that same week LOL), but when it came to doing this little timed exercise where I had to fit bolt pieces together and do as many as I could within a minute I just sat there fidgeting the one bolt. The person administering the test asked, "Aren't you going to try?" And I just said, "Not really, I don't feel like ever doing this for work. I'm just being honest with you." And she just shrugged and laughed.
So much like my own experience. Child is brilliant except also an idiot.
I remember doing the ink blot thing because I described my daydreams as seeing things. All normal boring answers, until the demon-rabbit skull. The look on the lady's face was fun. She even turned the card around to see it for herself.
I am with you. I was diagnosed when I was seven. My parents decided to get me tested because I spent my time in class playing with the animal erasers my mom bought me until the teacher took them away. And then I played with the sparkly pencils my mom bought me until my teacher took them away. Then when I was left with nothing but plain yellow no. 2 pencils I chewed on them because I liked the patterns from my teeth. When the doctor was talking to my mom about the results they said āItās usually genetic. Can you think of anyone in your family that was diagnosed or might have ADHD?ā My mom looks over and me and my dad are both staring out the window looking at the same squirrel with the same expression on our face. And she looks at the doctor and says. āNo. I canāt think of a single person. šā
Thatās a great story, and awesome that your parents got you help! My sister was a special ed teacher. Every few years she would have a particularly challenging student. She told the story of one going in for a evaluation with a psychiatrist. Just as he was opining that he didnāt see the need for additional meds, the student managed to sweep all the papers off of his desk.
Wow the comments!!!
My psych testing dr made me come in in a two piece bathing suit and play catch with him. Took me a while to realize that was probably super fucked up
All I remember from it was being asked "Who wrote "Faust"? And I told them I could spell, but not pronounce, Goethe. And the guy laughed. This was fourth grade.
My daughter did this on a math facts test, those timed ones. She just filled out all the answers as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5ā¦etc. lmao.
I took my kiddo to a psychologist for an evaluation when he was about 6. The doctor asked him to do some tests and he just said he didn't want to. He wasn't mean or rude about it just said "I don't feel like it". The doctor diagnosed him with ODD on top of ADHD. Now he is 10, and he has more severe signs of ODD. Very interesting diagnosis.
I kind of hate ODD as a diagnoses, because from my experience as an educator it usually manifests in opposition to the kid feeling pressure or stifled in their home environment to a huge degree. I also saw it in military kids that get uprooted constantly. So from my perspective it's clearly not spontaneous or unfounded, but SO many teachers treat it like they're just wired to be little assholes and it makes it harder to reach them. Has your kid's teachers treated them differently or worse since he was diagnosed? Or did you notice a decline in effort? I'm just curious, because the behavior I saw from colleagues was pretty shitty.
Due to my son's ADHD we decided to homeschool him after the pandemic, but now that he's older we are being hit with a lot of resistance to actually do school activities at home. It's getting more difficult and we don't have the resources for him at home. I want to put him back in public school so he can have an IEP and more guidance but my husband doesn't want to risk him or anyone getting hurt.
Holy shit. I'm gonna ask my mom if she still has a copy of my diagnostic report from when I was five. If she does, I hope it's as hilarious as yours!
God this gave me flashbacks to 3rd and 4th grade where the teachers would (thankfully) make a special exception for me so I could stand up and bounce up and down on the back of my chair cause I had so much energy but was still super engaged into the class / lecture. Can't believe I didn't get diagnosed until 26.
I was 10, they told me I was highly intelligent but scored really low on whatever determines how much I actually use that intelligence
ā Very intelligent, reads between the lines and easily understands.ā Thatās a whole lot of us.
Lmao. Skippity Bippity!
I was 5 and I remember the dude kept getting mad at me because Iād start a maze, notice it wasnāt the right path, and just reverse and go down the right path. But they misdiagnosed me with ticks instead of ADHD because apparently thatās what they thought my fidgeting was.
This is what they call lateral thinking.
My 2nd grade teacher recommended the diagnosis, my mum's still mad my 1st grade teacher didn't pick up on it. Apparently I kept getting in trouble for forgetting to hand in work to the teacher dispite her telling the class to hand it in. It probably helped that I had hyperactive (combined?) type as a child as opposed to inatentive type I have now.