My child's easily lost focus.?

Question

My son's 7 years old and he's having problem concentrating on things he is doing. For example, when his teacher asked the class to copy the exercise to their book, his 'channel' is easily switched when a friend sitting next to him starts talking to him or when another teacher come to ask a question to his teacher. His teacher then needs to keep on calling out his name and asked his to keep writing. At times, he gets lost... I mean copying the wrong line (jumped line), so he would missed one part of the exercise that he should be doing as homework.

My hubby and I always reminded him "listen to your teacher and not to talk to friends when your teacher is teaching", "make sure you see carefully what your teacher wrote on the board before you copy" and "when completed copying, check from the beginning to make sure you have copied correctly". But his teacher is still complaining to us that he easily lost focus.

Please advice.

Answer 1

Sounds like ADHD - talk to the teacher about getting your child evaluated by the school psychologist (or equivalent) and also talk to the pediatrician.  Once treated, this can be manageable.

Answer 2

I would have him tested for ADD.  Our daughter has it and we finally got her on some medication that has helped her tremendously.  We tried everything before going to a prescribed drug, but she calls her medicine her 'smart pills' because she feels focused and with it when she takes them.  Your son doesn't have to be hyper-active to have ADD (our daughter is not) - that's ADHD.

I was a classroom teacher for 11 years so I have experience on both sides.  He will feel so much better about himself if he doesn't get reminded in the classroom all the time to get back on task.  His peers will definitely pick up on it and kids being kids, some will choose to use it against him in some way.

Do a little research online about it.  There is an evaluation on webMD that you can fill out that will help you to know if this is in the realm of diagnosis for him.  Also, there is a site that has video of what life is like with ADD (sorry, can't remember it and don't have it saved since my computer had a virus), but it shows what people with ADD experience in a classroom setting - it is very enlightening.

Hope this helps!