My 6 year old child's consultant told me he absolutely can NOT diagnose ADHD until the child is at least 7-at the very least!! He is a fantastic paediatric specialist. My son has seen the consultant since being 4 due to his behaviour not at my request but at the doctors request. He is seeing him every few months until he gets to 8 years old and they will take it from there. 4 years old is too young to differentiate between 'normal' and 'un-normal' behaviour.

Hi,
I have 4 children, my oldest Jacob is 13 and he was diagnoised with ODD and then my 2nd child Darrien~12 was diagnoised with ADHD and he is on concerta 54 mgs daily and then my 3rd child was put on concerta 18 mgs and also clonaden (sorry for misspelling) at night time and he takes the concerta in the morning and now he is doing great Darrien and Patrick and now with my 4th child Emma she is having trouble in kindegarden and now i'm going to have to make an appointment to see about if she will need any meds for her behavior...so I know what your feeling its very hard and it really gets at your heart...I'm here if you ever need anyone to just chat with...glad that there is others that I can talk to about it also....

My brother was diagnosed at an early age with ADHD - im pretty sure he was 4 although may have been 5, definetly before he started school, but my brother wasnt just diagnosed by our local GP (like my OHs brothers neice, her mum took her to docs and said she was being naughty, doc diagnosed ADHD there and then!!) My brother was seen by a number of specialists, went to a specialist nursery, had a team come out and spend time with him every other day and my mum, me and my other brother all had to be interviewed to explain my brothers behaviour. We also had to sit in this room for what seemed like ages, it was full of toys, food etc and we were told to wait whilst someone came to assess my brother, little did we know the specialists were sat behind a mirrored wall watching to see my brother, watching the real him, not the boy who performed for the cameras.
My HV has also said that children with ADHD and other similar problems are normally easily detected at an early age because of certain things, as obviously we are concerned that Alfie could have the condition too if its a genetic thing.

My son Jacob is now 7 and when he was around 2 I knew something wasn't right. Everyone said terrible twos but I KNEW that wasn't the case. When Jake would get upset and have trantrums, which by the way were very frequent, he would scream for hours! Trying to console him was pointless and it went on from there. I was referred to Dr. Margret Hurst, who is the best and only one of her kind in our province who does what she does! She has her own ADHD clinic where they do numerous testing at a young age and determine if the child may or may not have ADD/ADHD. My son was diagnosed at 4 years old with his behavioral problems. I believe with the help of parents/care givers/ daycare workers/ specialists a child can be diagnosed at a younger age but not just from one person dealing with the child if I am making this understandable lol.

I go through hell with my son and thank god we are finally getting his tonsils removed, and he is seeing a child psychologist on the 27th, so maybe we will have some light shed on our situation soon!

hey my son brandon has adhd ocd severe anxiety and tourretes' life is a struggle and very hard work he is a whirlwind of anger most of the time but he is the most talented child ive met! he is a great artist he plays the drums and an amazing sports man he is 12 now and goes through life like nothings wrong lol, most children like him are labled trouble causes but dont realise whats going on inside their heads he was diagnosed at 9 but we knew something was wrong but getting the help was very hard, we are with childrens mental health clinic and he gets support at school but people have no idea how hard it is with a child with these problems and for their siblings cus they are usually in the middle of chaos when brandon is having a bad day i have 4 kids luckily the others have showed no signs as yet as i knew with brandon from him been 12 months old i think adhd is very mis-understood !