This sounds like my 7yrs. old son and my younger brother.. Talk to his teacher and see if she/he will let him listen to an MP3 player is class... When i was telling my mom mom about my son and how he couldnt' sit still ong enough to do any school work or homeowrk she suggested to me about the Mp3 player. I tryed it at home during homework time and it helped. Then I talked to his teacher and she let him use it too.. She was impressed that it worked, so for the rest of the year he used it in class... Plus he was takeing intuvna at the time too... Try it maybe it'll work and maybe it wont..... Good luck!

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I've never heard of this kind of "block" before, but I sometimes experience something similar. I used to hate writing assignments because I could never think of anything to write fast enough to start and finish before time was up. The assignment would be written on the board, and I'd sit at my first/second/third grade desk with my composition book open in front of me, and just stare at the pages. Seven times out of ten, my mind would be a complete blank, although I could feel thoughts and ideas whirring around where I couldn't get at them. It was kind of like being in a covered hamster cage, where I'd be running for dear life on my little wheel while listening to voices muffled by the cage's cover. The other three times out of ten, I'd have an idea, but it would be sort of vague, and trying to figure out how to put it on paper was where I would draw a blank. This time, it was sort of like listening to someone speak a foreign language: I'd get the gist, but the actual meaning and details would escape me, and I couldn't ask for a translation because I didn't speak the language, and neither did anyone else. It got a bit better when I got a special ed teacher, because she was able to help me take off the cover or translate the language, but even today I still have moments where I hear or see a question, and I'm back in the covered hamster cage, spinning my little wheel and trying to distinguish what the voices I can hear from outside are saying.

My theory for this is that there is so much going on in the ADHD brain-- thoughts, ideas, stimuli, emotions, impulses-- that the most forward part of the mind, the part where we consciously formulate responses, gets overloaded and can't handle the influx of activity, effectively drawing a blank. The closest example I can think of is what happens to my computer when I'm waiting for something to load and I try to speed it along, because it's taking too damn long even though it's only been thirty or forty seconds. Input too much stimuli-- rapid clicking on what I want to load, rapid switching between windows, more rapid clicking-- and my loading browser suddenly freezes and the title bar says "(insert browser name) is not responding". Neither my forward mind nor my internet browser can handle how much stuff is happening at the moment, and therefore they both freeze.

Now, this may not be exactly what's happening to your kid when he tries to start writing, but I'll bet money that if you have him plan out something to write and attempt to do it, and then ask him what he feels as he's trying to start, he'll probably come up with something similar to this. One of the hallmarks of both ADHD and the dys- disorders (dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and others) is a disconnect in various forms between different areas of the brain that control various functions-- all parts function relatively normally, it's just the wiring that connects them that's a little screwy. With comorbid disorders (such as your case of ADHD and dyslexia), the problems caused by the faulty wiring are compounded, and determining what causes what can sometimes be nigh impossible. ADHD also has the added bonus of affecting motivation, causing the act of sitting down and starting something to be exceedingly hard if it's not something you want to do. Ask me to write a paper on mental disorders, and I jump for joy and practically break my keyboard in eagerness, but ask me to do twenty calculus problems, and if you're lucky and I like you, I might average two per hour.

The "start/stop/start" problem could possibly be a lesser known symptom of the dyslexia. Dyslexics often have problems with fine motor skills, such as the movements involved in writing, and the fine movements involved in putting a pencil down on a piece of paper and actually moving it in the shape of a letter may be just different enough that he's having trouble with one but not the other. This would explain why he finds writing cursive easier, since print writing involves a lot of picking up, moving to another point, and putting down again, but cursive, once a writing utensil is in position to begin, is one long movement with very little "start/stop/start" action. Another hallmark of dyslexia is an affinity for oral work over written, which in my opinion is nature compensating for itself.

Have you ever tried speech-to-text programs? There's a lot of new technology on the market nowadays that can make the lives of anyone with writing difficulties a lot easier. Speech-to-text involves the author basically narrating into a microphone on a headset what he wants written down, and the program, usually installed on a computer, translates it into writing in an open word processing document. This cuts out handwriting and even typing completely, making writing a lot easier for people who have issues with those things, usually people with dyslexia, fine motor skills issues, or just have a hard time translating thoughts into words.

Talk to your special ed teacher to verify before going further. I'm speaking more from personal experience and personal research than clinical knowledge, so anything and everything I've said here may be wrong, but hopefully this'll give you a place to start figuring out what's going on. Let me know what you find-- I'm studying to become a special ed teacher, so this stuff fascinates me and I'd love to hear how you and your son get on.

Best wishes, SPEDKid1992

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