My youngest and my oldest all have a touch of ADHD. My middle son only has a touch of the ADD, which means when he loses his attention he become the rock in the path instead of the blowing leaf in the wind. But the other two are classic ADHD. When they are not mentally engaged by an electronic device, and you know what I mean…television, computer, video game…they are dancing or careening or prancing or whooshing from point A to point B to point A to point B…sheesh you’re making me dizzy!
When my oldest did this, he did it with style and grace like a dancer so we called it dancing. At eleven he’s not too keen on that description, but he doesn’t do it as much as he did when he was younger. Yet it was his movements at two years old, back and forth and back and forth, waving his arms about, that drew my middle son, then a baby, like a magnet. He was absolutely determined to get that most interesting of toys that kept moving about the room.
So he crawled at four months trying to catch it. He was cruising the furniture at five months, still determined to catch it. At six months he developed a scream worthy of any velociraptor in Jurassic Park. This scream would startle the two-year old into renewed and vigorous ‘dancing’ by which the baby would move as fast as he could to chase. By nine months my middle son achieved his goal and began walking, soon to be running after that most interesting of toys…his older brother. He’s been trying to catch up ever since.
But my third boy, the youngest, developed the more interesting habit of sound effects with his point A to point B escapades. (And yes, I am very glad I have hard wood floors!) His constant motion from point A to B (which sadly included the Lazy Boy and the couches) would be accompanied by whooshing and zooming sounds. One day I heard the strangest sound from him and when I listened carefully I realized what it was.
“Conor,” I asked him with a grin. “Did you drink your water?”
“Yup,” he replied proudly, put his hands on his lower back and swung his stomach in a quick move back and forth. The clear sound of sloshing rang into my ears. “Drank it all up!”
Truly something amazing to hear if you’ve never heard it before, especially from a child so little!