Child #2? Oh boy!

So, at the beginning of the (pre) school year, my DS's teacher pulled me aside and said, "I think you need to have your child tested for ADHD."

Inside I screamed, but not aloud.
Instead, I smiled nicely, brushed it off, and went home and cried.

Even though I've come to terms with the fact that my oldest has ADD, all I could think was, "Not again!" I was partly offended that she would jump on this idea so early. And partly scared that she was right. Could it be possible that I have another child with ADHD?

We did nothing right away. He was still so young, and new to the school environment, that we wanted to give the year more time. A few months later she mentioned the same thing, but this time I realized she didn't hate my son. She wanted HIM to have a good experience in the classroom. I got brave and asked if he was distracting others, and she said no...it was him that was missing out, and then I understood that I didn't need to be offended. She wasn't kicking him out of school, she was simply trying to help him. She was trying to help ME help him.

I talked to my husband, who was still frustrated about the idea of having him tested, but after a third mention from the teacher, I figured we'd better get him tested. We had a good resource already, and I wanted ammunition for the next time, or when he went into Kindergarten and they started saying the same thing.

So we had him tested. And his results indicated:

He is very bright. VERY bright. In fact he tested (on almost every classification scale) as above average to superior in his age group. But he did have two tests that showed mild deficits, and these were both designed to challenge the 'planning' part of the brain. This part of the brain is in charge of picking up and following through on cues, including oral commands, and social situations. These are the areas we see he struggles in. We wondered, because his test results were so extraordinarily different from his brothers, what this meant. Apparently not much. See, the way we rated him, the partnered teacher ratings, and the deficits (despite his intelligence) still gives him a diagnosis of ADHD. (For those friends and family that are interested in this fact, we were recommended to have some genetic testing done as well because of his epicanthal folds, which may indicate that he could have some genetic reasoning behind his specific behavioral issues, other than ADHD. We need to find out if our insurance even covers it because it can be costly.) I guess the next step is to talk with his pediatrician, and go from there.