3 ms·

How much time have you spent reading aloud to your kid? Does the kid have the same trouble following material heard read aloud that they have for material they

How much time have you spent reading aloud to your kid? Does the kid have the same trouble following material heard read aloud that they have for material they are reading themselves? * * * Anecdotally the times in the past when I would forget material I was reading came from either being profoundly sleep deprived (e.g. pulling an all-nighter in college) or mentally highly engaged with some other idea/problem and therefore extremely distracted while trying to read. More recently (I have a 4-year-old) I have been doing lots of reading of kids books, and have developed the new ability to read a familiar (or unfamiliar but simple) picture book aloud including funny voices for all of the characters etc. from start to finish, while working on an unrelated problem in my head, and end up with no memory of what I read in the picture book or what happened. Reading picture books is apparently (sometimes) now separate enough from my conscious attention that the effect is almost like short-term memory loss.

austincheney 6y ago
I have been reading more aloud to the child at night for about 20-30 minutes before bed. Sometimes the material is well received other times the child has snuck a book or device into bed and has no idea what was read. I haven’t determined how well the information is retained yet. On an unrelated note playing games with the child results in conditions that look like sleep deprivation. They cannot slow the game down with excess talking or bullshitting and after about 10 minutes become utterly exhausted forgetting the game rules and wanting to lay their head on the board. I do understand that some level of mental fatigue is common to children that age, but it appears intensely amplified in the child with ADHD especially compared to dyslexic children who seem to have a longer period of focus than normal.
- jacobolus 6y ago
  One thing I learned tutoring fellow students in math while in high school / college was that trying to do hard unfamiliar things (or just something they didn’t choose to do) makes plenty of people who do not have ADHD feel overwhelmed/fearful/anxious/tired, especially when they are put on the spot. Some people have a “play dead” kind of response to stress, while others get angry and start fighting. It’s not clear to what extent these board game / reading issues are related to ADHD per se. Plenty of people with ADHD are excellent at learning/playing board games and are fast fluent readers with careful attention to detail and excellent retention of what they read.
  - tgaj 6y ago
    To be honest, inattention to details is one of typical symptoms of ADHD. So there are probably people with ADHD who do not have this problem, but I would say that most of the time they are probably misdiagnosed.

austincheney 6y ago

I have been reading more aloud to the child at night for about 20-30 minutes before bed. Sometimes the material is well received other times the child has snuck a book or device into bed and has no idea what was read. I haven’t determined how well the information is retained yet. On an unrelated note playing games with the child results in conditions that look like sleep deprivation. They cannot slow the game down with excess talking or bullshitting and after about 10 minutes become utterly exhausted forgetting the game rules and wanting to lay their head on the board. I do understand that some level of mental fatigue is common to children that age, but it appears intensely amplified in the child with ADHD especially compared to dyslexic children who seem to have a longer period of focus than normal.

jacobolus 6y ago
One thing I learned tutoring fellow students in math while in high school / college was that trying to do hard unfamiliar things (or just something they didn’t choose to do) makes plenty of people who do not have ADHD feel overwhelmed/fearful/anxious/tired, especially when they are put on the spot. Some people have a “play dead” kind of response to stress, while others get angry and start fighting. It’s not clear to what extent these board game / reading issues are related to ADHD per se. Plenty of people with ADHD are excellent at learning/playing board games and are fast fluent readers with careful attention to detail and excellent retention of what they read.
- tgaj 6y ago
  To be honest, inattention to details is one of typical symptoms of ADHD. So there are probably people with ADHD who do not have this problem, but I would say that most of the time they are probably misdiagnosed.