Don't mess too much with the emotions of an ADDer

klassyguy:
I have two lovely kids with my wife - a girl and a boy. My son is six years old while his sister is eight. Both were born here in the US. I’ve done what I feel is right as a father to train these kids, but I know not everything can be done accordingly.

My son is restless. He has the attention span of three seconds before he gets distracted by something else. My mum tells says he is a copy of me when I was his age, but that was in the eighties and the way children were handled back then is totally different from today. He hardly wants to do anything in terms of school work and almost every day I get complaints from his teacher that he does not do his work or he is disruptive in class. When other students are doing their work, my son will be the one falling off his chair or hiding under his desk. His teacher told me he acts out when being corrected. Only yesterday my wife told me the teacher met her when she went to pick them up in school and told her that my son started yelling when the lights in the class started flickering. His behavior got so bad, they had to call the school security officer before he calmed down.

This behavior is really bothering me. I know my son is smart. His pre-school teacher once told me he was the smartest student she had. My son can do complex mathematical equations off the top of his head that even his older sister struggles to do. He has a very good memory and can list off all the types of trains that exist in the US, things that even I don’t know. It’s sitting down to be serious about work that he can’t do and can’t seem to focus on.

I enrolled him in a soccer club to see if that would help him expel his excess energy. At first he seemed to be lazy as he gets frustrated easily, and rather try harder, my son would rather give up and cry. I mostly have to encourage him to put in more effort, and most of the time he does not pay attention to what the coach says. The coach told me a couple of days ago that he wants to move him to a lower group level to see if he can build his confidence there.

I want to believe it’s his being the last born for now that’s worrying him. He seemed to start being a bit more mature when my wife got pregnant last year and he learnt they had a younger sibling on the way, but unfortunately, she miscarried and we lost the baby. I’ve been thinking for a while now whether to move back to Nigeria with everyone so that we can build some sense into both of them (my daughter’s story is another one). I’ve thought of taking them both for an ADHD test, but my wife is against that. The only time my son pays attention is when he’s doing something he likes, and that is when he’s playing the PS5 I got them or watching videos on YouTube Kids.

Any advice would be welcome from parents out there.

Please do all you can(convince your wife) now, when they are still very young whether its ADHD or not. Mine started at about that age, my smartness back in the days masked my symptoms. I wasn't diagnosed till late last year...when i turned 31.
Reason: ignorance
Effect: it wasted a lot of my years

Again, please don't relocate yet...take good care of them in a country where mental health's got good attention.