Co-morbidity Anyone dealing with APD and ADD together?

Hi Kathryn,
I was just reading your other post from 5 days ago, where it is obvious that Michelle is an exceptional Visual Thinker. Which is typical of APD.
Where I wonder if you asked Michelle the question I raised in that topic; ‘Can she easily and clearly imagine and recall the sound of words in her mind?’

Where the symptoms that you suspect as ADD, might in fact reflect a feeling of frustration.
Afterall, you might consider how you would feel, if you couldn’t easily recall/ imagine the sound of words in your mind?
But then, also consider what it would be like if you had no explanation? You dont know that you cant imagine words in your mind?
You just know that, ‘it’s not working’?
Despite trying as hard as you can.
You might cover your face and nearly be in tears, after being corrected?
Also find it difficult to concentrate?

Kathryn, forgive my pushing of this, but it is something that is not tested for by any specialists. Who have all assumed that everyone can do this automatically. Which they term as Implicit Knowledge.
So perhaps you could simply talk to Michelle about this, and see if this is a difficulty?
Where I would add that it doesn’t require buying any special materials.
Geoff.

Thank you for your post. I have seen the same posts from you before. I will ask Michelle this, but it is such an abstract idea that I’m not sure she will even get what I am talking about and if she doesn’t hear the sounds in her head after saying the words, then I’m really sure she will not know what the heck I am talking about. Her biggest symptom is a deficit in her language, so abstract ideas are very difficult for her to grasp.

Here is something interesting, however, she is good at sounding out words, so when she doesn’t know a word that she reads, her first strategy is to sound it out. She now sounds it out in her head before saying the word out loud. Would that be an indication that she can hear her words in her head?

I do find it interesting that we have to sort of “refresh” our memory by playing back a recording in our heads and that we do it without thinking about it, but once you read about this concept or hear about it and then you really think about it, you notice yourself doing it. It’s almost like an echo, but not a grand canyon type of echo, more of small empty room type echo inside your head. If that makes sense…. Anyway, I’ll see if Michelle even understands what I am talking about.

Kathryn

It is very common to have APD and ADD, but I’m not sure if anyone truely knows if they really are 2 separate disorders or one causes the other (if you address the APD, will you also resolve the ADD). I know of parents whose kids had both CAPD and ADD. They did medicate and the response from their child was something like ‘so this is what it is like to be able to pay attention’.

My dd was very precotious (sp?) when she was younger. At 5/6 when she had her testing done, she could be very ‘spirited’ before going in for the testing - twirling on chairs, laughing etc. I always got the ‘look’ like - ‘well we know what her problem is’. But when they went in for testing, they said she was always ‘with them’ the whole way. Very focused. This was a consistent comment from all her testers.

I always wondered if my dd would have that ‘ahha moment’ if we medicated her and I’m sure if I thought we needed an ADD diagnosis, I could easily get one. But my own intuition was that ADD was not her issue. In working with her, I NEVER had a problem with her not focusing or working with me. (although she does like to daydream, but seems to know when it’s appropriate and when it’s not).

I think one has to use their motherly instinct on this one. Do alot of reading on it, weighing the pros and cons. You work with her one on one more than anyone and know her better than anyone. If you are on the fence, you could also consider a trial?

P.S. my dd is hypersensive too. We just have to look at her wrong and she is in tears. She does not take what we think is ‘constructive critism’ well at all.

My son has been diagnosed with both APD and ADD. I think that APD causes ADD-like symptoms but that ADD is a separate disorder. We got improvements in attention when we did FFW—which was due obviously to improvements in auditory processing. Still we got complaints from the school. I asked his teachers (resource and regular) to make notes about when he didn’t pay attention. His resource teacher told me that once she started focusing on it, she noticed how he almost never focused! IOW, it was not specific to certain environments (like listening) or even certain types of assignments. Anyway, I was considering a trial of medication but we did Interactive Metronome instead.

The next fall I had his teachers do the same thing (we had done it at the end of the school year) and the two teachers who were the same (resource and speech) said he was like a different kid.

Now several years later, I will say he is still ADD but that it isn’t a major problem. His attention has improved as his learning disabilities have been remediated. But his attention issues are not exclusively due to APD or other processing issues. His mind just goes to other places (he is not hyper).

With IM and other therapy, we have avoided medication.

I am now doing IM with my youngest who is hyper as well but not seriously LD. IOW, I notice some problems but that is because I have been overly sensitized to them because of his brother. His prescores are much better than his brother’s were so I will be interested to see if we see as much improvement.

I do know people who have used medication with comidity issues successfully. I think we have been able to avoid it because 1. my son is primarily LD and secondarily ADD so remediating his LD has made attention issues less of a problem. 2. We did IM which made a big difference with attention.

Beth

My daughter was just diagnosed with ADD this past month. She is also diagnosed with CAPD. My head is still spinning from all of this. I feel like I’ve been hit in the face with a frying pan. The Neuropsychologist is strongly recommending that we start Ritalin, and maybe an antianxiety med down the road as my daughter apparently is having anxiety over all these learning disabiltiy issues (she also has visual processing problems). I just can’t do the med thing. Not yet anyway. I also am not going to pull her out of her small private school as the specialist also recommended. Maybe I’ll be kicking myself later. But I need to have all of this settle before I start making huge changes. She is progressing remarkably with all the special help she is getting from the small classroom setting and the special services brought in (Occupational Therapy). Anyway, thanks for listening and it is helpful knowing I’m not the only one.