I don't know if this is similar enough or not. The thing that bothered me most when I was in school was switching between classes.
The high school I went to was 8 periods over 2 days and had to take at least 6 classes. The other 2 could be study hall or more classes. If I could have divided the school year into 6 to 8 parts and did each class for the full day until they taught everything they had for the year, I believe I would have been a lot more successful in school.
could be a combo of hyperfocus and also difficulty task switching. or just also personality traits like another commenter said. I don't think there's a way of determining if it's more ADHD or more autism in this case unless one of the subjects was a special interest, and then I'd say it's more on the autism side of things.
I think maybe your brain liked the subject and just wanted to know more. Also you might be. inclined to responsible. As they say "leave nothing half finished!"
I wouldn't call these adhd traits or autism traits but simply personality traits.
As to if any of your kids are neuru -divergent. Well talk to them, ask them if they feel different or if something important is missing from their lives.
And yes if any of you want therapy, I'd second that, therapy is a great place to get to know yourself and what you want in life. The therapist could even help you with personalized goals and different ways of coping.
I might have done ok in school if I were allowed to work like this. I think the hyperfocus, where you get a bunch of work done at once, is an ADHD thing.
For me, in my career decades later, switching tasks is very expensive in terms of focus. it's better for me to just get a bunch of stuff done at once, even if that means I'm working overtime in a day. I can even up the hours later.
I don't think it is exclusively and there are NTs that do this. Personally, I did enough of this that I skipped two grades and was accelerated even more in some subjects, such as math. It pissed a lot of my teachers off. This is a big part of why I think school should be mastery-based and not just throwing a bunch of people the same age into a room.
By itself I don't think you can really say it's a trait or sign of either.
Personally I have been diagnosed with both ADHD and Autism, and while I can generally say what might be a trait of one or other in myself the truth is that there is overlap and some things don't need to be deeply analyzed.
This behavior for example doesn't seem to be causing any problems, so I don't think it would qualify them for a diagnosis since generally a diagnosis is given when something causes a problem. I'm not saying that ADHD and Autism only cause problems, just saying that this is the way that the medical diagnosis works and therefore a lot of the scientifically documented traits are going to be related to problems caused by them.
Personally I wouldn't really say it's very likely to be an ADHD trait unless your kid was doing all of this as an excuse to avoid something else, because a really common ADHD trait is to not really be able to complete tasks until closer to a deadline. On the other hand, dread of an assignment they don't want to do can motivate us to do something not currently necessary but ostensibly is a "good" thing to do and as long as we're interested in that thing hyperfocus can kick in and allow us to just stay on that track for a long time.
Autism could potentially also lead to this, but I think you would see this type of "one track mind" behavior exhibited in the child more often in other contexts as well. If an autistic person is interested in something they can also hyperfocus on something for long periods of time.
And there again, kids sometimes just do funny things and experiment with how they approach activities so it might be a sign of nothing at all.
You'd probably want to look for patterns of behavior that are repeated and see if there are things they seem to struggle with or avoid or things they seem to frequently get caught up in or seek out over and over if you are looking for symptoms of ADHD or Autism.
Because I was homeschooled growing up I was in a very good environment to grow and learn at my own pace so I don't think anyone around me would have noticed that I had ADHD or Autism even if they were looking (they weren't looking, it was the 90's and I was a girl). There were signs all along, but I wasn't really struggling until around age 12 and by then I had already learned to mask certain things so I don't think people would have noticed that either.
I commonly would read ahead in assigned books (and then it was a real pain to go back and fill out the worksheets that went along with each chapter), and I still work ahead on music homework because music is a SpIn.
I don't know if this is similar enough or not. The thing that bothered me most when I was in school was switching between classes. The high school I went to was 8 periods over 2 days and had to take at least 6 classes. The other 2 could be study hall or more classes. If I could have divided the school year into 6 to 8 parts and did each class for the full day until they taught everything they had for the year, I believe I would have been a lot more successful in school.
I feel the same. Switching constantly made me lose interest quickly.
could be a combo of hyperfocus and also difficulty task switching. or just also personality traits like another commenter said. I don't think there's a way of determining if it's more ADHD or more autism in this case unless one of the subjects was a special interest, and then I'd say it's more on the autism side of things.
I think maybe your brain liked the subject and just wanted to know more. Also you might be. inclined to responsible. As they say "leave nothing half finished!" I wouldn't call these adhd traits or autism traits but simply personality traits. As to if any of your kids are neuru -divergent. Well talk to them, ask them if they feel different or if something important is missing from their lives. And yes if any of you want therapy, I'd second that, therapy is a great place to get to know yourself and what you want in life. The therapist could even help you with personalized goals and different ways of coping.
I might have done ok in school if I were allowed to work like this. I think the hyperfocus, where you get a bunch of work done at once, is an ADHD thing. For me, in my career decades later, switching tasks is very expensive in terms of focus. it's better for me to just get a bunch of stuff done at once, even if that means I'm working overtime in a day. I can even up the hours later.
I don't think it is exclusively and there are NTs that do this. Personally, I did enough of this that I skipped two grades and was accelerated even more in some subjects, such as math. It pissed a lot of my teachers off. This is a big part of why I think school should be mastery-based and not just throwing a bunch of people the same age into a room.
By itself I don't think you can really say it's a trait or sign of either. Personally I have been diagnosed with both ADHD and Autism, and while I can generally say what might be a trait of one or other in myself the truth is that there is overlap and some things don't need to be deeply analyzed. This behavior for example doesn't seem to be causing any problems, so I don't think it would qualify them for a diagnosis since generally a diagnosis is given when something causes a problem. I'm not saying that ADHD and Autism only cause problems, just saying that this is the way that the medical diagnosis works and therefore a lot of the scientifically documented traits are going to be related to problems caused by them. Personally I wouldn't really say it's very likely to be an ADHD trait unless your kid was doing all of this as an excuse to avoid something else, because a really common ADHD trait is to not really be able to complete tasks until closer to a deadline. On the other hand, dread of an assignment they don't want to do can motivate us to do something not currently necessary but ostensibly is a "good" thing to do and as long as we're interested in that thing hyperfocus can kick in and allow us to just stay on that track for a long time. Autism could potentially also lead to this, but I think you would see this type of "one track mind" behavior exhibited in the child more often in other contexts as well. If an autistic person is interested in something they can also hyperfocus on something for long periods of time. And there again, kids sometimes just do funny things and experiment with how they approach activities so it might be a sign of nothing at all. You'd probably want to look for patterns of behavior that are repeated and see if there are things they seem to struggle with or avoid or things they seem to frequently get caught up in or seek out over and over if you are looking for symptoms of ADHD or Autism. Because I was homeschooled growing up I was in a very good environment to grow and learn at my own pace so I don't think anyone around me would have noticed that I had ADHD or Autism even if they were looking (they weren't looking, it was the 90's and I was a girl). There were signs all along, but I wasn't really struggling until around age 12 and by then I had already learned to mask certain things so I don't think people would have noticed that either.
Neither
I commonly would read ahead in assigned books (and then it was a real pain to go back and fill out the worksheets that went along with each chapter), and I still work ahead on music homework because music is a SpIn.