We took our daughter to a Dr. who practices psychology and neuropsychology.  He did a battery of tests lasting 3 days which sifted out ADHD.  You say your daughter is not hyper - she may just have ADD.  Can your pediatrician recommend a good doctor for testing? Why does she have the IEP - because of her non-verbal learning disability?  What are they doing to accommodate her in school?  Without the proper diagnosis, she can’t receive the proper help.  I’d start with your pediatrician and see who they recommend.  If they don’t have someone, I’d check with others in your area whose children have ADD or ADHD and see who they’ve taken their children to for testing.  Good luck with things

Her school tested her in kindergarten and labeled her “borderline NLD.” Her school worked with her to try to come up with some strategies for it. After no success I took her to our primary care physician for further testing in 4th grade to get a doctor’s diagnosis so we could get an IEP established. We filled out the paperwork as did she and her teachers. When we went back the doctor said she wouldn’t give us the diagnosis because she wasn’t hyper. I told her that I’m not looking for an ADHD diagnosis but an ADD diagnosis. She suggested that we ask the school for an IEP instead, I explained that we needed the diagnosis first to which she said, “oh, okay then, I’ll give it to you.” Needless to say, it didn’t fill me with great confidence in medical profession’s ability to properly diagnose learning disabilities. She’s had it in place ever since and has had many specialists who have tried to help her but we can’t seem to find any strategies that actually help.

Recently my sister (who use to work in a school district with LD kids) told me that ADHD can present itself very differently in girls than boys. Instead of being hyper they can seem spacey. I’ve since done some reading and I’m intrigue enough that I want to revisit her diagnosis but I want to make sure I’m going to the right person this time. I actually believe she doesn’t fit neatly into any one category, she seems to have traits of multiple LDs. We really need to find someone who can help us sort through it. She’s about to start 8th grade and if we don’t address the problem soon, I don’t see any way she will ever be accepted into college which would be a shame because she’s actually quite bright and extraordinarily creative.

Hi there,

There are many professionals who are qualified to diagnose ADHD. ADDitude lists them—and the pros and cons of each—in this article, “Who Can Diagnose ADHD?”

Hope this helps!

Mary

When my DD was 16 she was diagnosed, I knew she was ADHD before then but never had her diagnosed.  So I went to her pediatrician and did all the paperwork, interviews, forms, tests, etc.  Went back in after that and he talked with her and asked her a bunch of questions and basically told me “well maybe she is just lazy” and “she should go to Sylvan Learning Center”.  I was furious to say the least, I said to him to you want to give me the $2,000 it costs to go to Sylvan Learning Center!  Anyway he referred me to a Neurologist who specializes in ADHD.  They are great!  Got her on her meds, she gratuated HS and is now in college and doing amazing!  Don’t stop looking you will find the right person to treat her.  My DD would study and study and know the material inside and out and get a C on a test.  Now if she is getting a C she either didn’t study or isn’t taking her meds right.  I still remind her to eat right and all the stuff but I am glad I didn’t give up I know my kid and you know yours, keep at it!!

Thank you so much for your story. It gives me hope. School is about to begin and I’m dreading it, we spend every night doing homework from the time we get home around 5:00 until bedtime stopping only to eat dinner. She’ll be tired and will often break into tears, and sometimes so will I. Meanwhile, our other daughter gets ignored every night because all of our attention goes to her sister.

Last year we had a teacher ask us at conferences if we knew anything that would make her pay attention. I was a bit stunned. All I could say was “I can tell you all of the things we’ve tried that haven’t worked.” Our daughter had a special 2 hour class each day specifically for kids with IEPs so they have extra time to organize and work on projects, plus study hall three times a week and an hour after school each day in the library to study. She still managed to fail some courses and barely pass others. She simply checks out mentally so it doesn’t matter how much time she has. You have to sit next to her and snap her back into reality every couple of minutes for her to get much done.

We’ve been told meds probably wouldn’t help her (because she isn’t hyper) and we’ve honestly tried everything to avoid them. But at this point, I’d do a voodoo dance in my underwear in front of my boss if I thought it would help! I need to feel like I’m working with a professional that has a clue before I start pumping drugs into her though.

My daughter is also suspected to have a form of NLD but does not have a formal diagnosis because she is too young.

I will say that an assessment by an neuropsychologist is the best way to go.  It does sound that your daughters traits are consisent with NLD from what I know.  Inattentiveness is common as with NLD, they struggle to take cues from the environment of what to attend to, and how to organize themselves.

We have benefitted from some good social skills training and cognitive behavioural therapy as anxiety is a common secondary issues with NLD.

The expert neuropsychologist in this field was Byron Rourke and the link for his website is here:

http://www.nld-bprourke.ca/index.html

Often it can help to work with a qualifed SLP on the social communication issues and an OT to help with orgnaizational strategies.  We work with the iLAUGH model of social cognition from Michelle Garcia Winner.  It seemd to help us understand our daughter quite a bit better and why she struggles even though she is so bright.

Here it is:
http://www.socialthinking.com/what-is-social-thinking/ilaugh-model