When does it become a problem?

I have been going through a difficult time because of some issues surrounding my daughter.

Her Grade 1 teacher emailed me last week to say that my daughter has not done any of her work. She is so slow she is more than an hour behind everyone else in class. And the worst is she's not bothered by this.

I then sent her a mail back, saying I don't quite know how to address this. I have noticed that she gets bored quickly at home. She usually goes from one thing to the next without finishing one thing. Although on the other hand, when she is interested in something, like painting a picture, she sticks with it till the end.

The teacher then came back to me saying that she thinks I should take her to the pediatrician to be evaluated for ADD. 

I was a bit taken aback, shocked and a little bit pissed off. 

I know she is a very active child, but we do so well at home with routine. She's happy exuberant, playful, active and sporty. Yes, if she isn't interested in something she doesn't want to do it, and she particularly hates to write, she won't do it, or it will take a lot of persuasion to get her to do it. I have no idea why she all of a sudden hates writing, because last year it was the only thing she wanted to do..

So I had a little freak out. Got a lot of advice from people on Facebook. Called some people, and read up a bit. The Occupational therapist said that before they even consider something like ADD, they have a ton of other things to evaluate for, and they will do that. So we're going with them first.

Then if they recommend it, or if problems are still there then we need to think about getting an evaluation from a Child Psychiatrist.

Then today I went to speak to the teacher face to face, and a lot of things came out. The biggest problem for her is not that my daughter is slow with her work. It is that if she comments in any way about her not finishing her work on time she just stops working, and without showing any emotion she will just not do anything.

After a long chat about how we discipline at home, compared to what happens at school I've actually come to the conclusion that somewhere the relationship between my daughter and her teacher suffered. It's gotten to a point where she might have lost trust in her teacher, and might feel that it doesn't matter if she works hard, teacher is not giving her the attentions she wants for it. Or that she is craving the negative attention from her teacher.

Whatever it is, I think there's a long hard road ahead for us at the moment. Deep down I know that it is possible for her to have some attention issues, with her dad and me and our issues, that's a huge possibility. But I'm also confident that most of her current problems can be sorted out behaviourally, and that medication is not a necessity right now.