Hil - Ooh, ooh, me too. I was recognising words visually, like the 'Kelloggs' on the cereal box, aged under 2 - but standard ways of learning to read were useless. My creative parents still had me reading before school, via flashcards and Mr Men books and the like.

That sounds like ADD.

What? There was a cat outside -- oh, hey, Antiques Roadshow is on. I ought to get that old oak table -- What? I'm supposed to be working? It's been three hours already? Oh.

Yeah. Well, you might be right.

I live with it every day. The hyperfocus/extreme distractability, the way time is not a fixed measure, the way little fiddly details are suddenly the most important thing in the world ever and have to be taken care of right now or OMG the fucking world will END.

I know that not all people with those characteristics have ADD. But Occam's razor suggests that it just might be. t /stillnotadoctor

When we were required to write everything in cursive in third and fourth grade (and maybe fifth, too?) I would avoid words with certain letters because I could never remember how to write them. If what I wanted to write began with a capital Q, I would find some way to rephrase it so that the word beginning with Q was somewhere in the middle of the sentence, because I could remember lower case q. I reluctantly used lowercase r, because there was no real way to avoid it, but I did not like it. Capital M and N could each have anywhere from one to three humps. And then once I'd stopped to remember how many humps the letter I wanted had, I had no idea what word I was planning to write anymore, let alone what sentence.

Also, the library has new giant trash and recyclable cans, with spectacularly bad placement right below the elevator buttons. I had to stand on my toes and stretch my arm to be able to reach the button, and that hurt. Someone a few inches shorter than me, or someone in a wheelchair, probably wouldn't be able to reach it. I looked around for someone to tell about this, but the only person who seemed to work there was the work-study undergrad who was checking out books, who I know has no power over anything.

I live with it every day. The hyperfocus/extreme distractability, the way time is not a fixed measure, the way little fiddly details are suddenly the most important thing in the world ever and have to be taken care of right now or OMG the fucking world will END.

Sounds like my DH. I drives me crazy. I love him, but it drives me crazy. And yeah, no ADD diagnosis for him, but I often suspect that's because when he was younger they usually only pinged hyperactive kids, and hyperactive he's not.

The hyperfocus/extreme distractability, the way time is not a fixed measure, the way little fiddly details are suddenly the most important thing in the world ever and have to be taken care of right now or OMG the fucking world will END.

Actually, this sounds like my boss. It really would explain a LOT.

Sounds like my DH. I drives me crazy. I love him, but it drives me crazy.

It drives me crazy, too. It's not his fault, and he never uses it as an excuse, and I know all that, but it still drives me crazy.

And yeah, no ADD diagnosis for him, but I often suspect that's because when he was younger they usually only pinged hyperactive kids, and hyperactive he's not.

The Boy wasn't a hyperactive kid, so he didn't get diagnosed as anything but "lazy underachiever." He wasn't diagnosed until his 30s. Some people aren't diagnosed until they're in their 60s.

Heck, I drive me crazy.

OK, I found the email address for the library student liason on the website, and I emailed her. Got a bounce-back email that that address doesn't exist.

Owen's next IEP meeting will include an LD teacher AND the gifted & talented teacher. The school is finally picking up his diagnosis of Autism, after a year and two reports from a developmental pediatrician.

But they're going to have to figure out what to do with a five year old who can read the newspaper and do addition and subtraction but can't keep his hands to himself or stay on track during a full school day.