Is this ADHD, or is my child just being a child?

You are asking exactly the right question, and I want to be clear about my own limits before I answer it: I do not diagnose. What I can give you is the way professionals think about where the line falls, so you can decide whether to ask someone who does.

You are right that every six-year-old is distractible, impulsive and physically busy. That is not a disorder — that is a six-year-old. So the question is never "does he do these things?" It is a different set of questions entirely.

Four questions that actually matter

1. Is it happening in more than one place? A child who is wild at home and settled at school is telling us something about home. A child who is the same at school, at Grandma's, at soccer practice, and at a birthday party is showing something that travels with him.

2. Is it out of step with his peers? Not with his sister, and not with the calmest child in the class — with the ordinary middle of children his age, in the same room, doing the same task. Teachers are your best source here, because they see thirty children the same age every day and you see one.

3. Is it costing him things he wants? Friendships. Invitations. Enjoying an activity he used to love. Feeling okay about himself. This is usually the clearest signal — not how hard the behaviour is for the adults, but what it is taking away from him.

4. Has it been going on for a long time, or did it start recently? A pattern that has been there since he was small looks different from one that appeared in the last few months. A sudden change more often points to something in his world — a move, a loss, a change at school, something frightening — than to ADHD.

What tends to be missed

Two groups get overlooked for years.

The quiet ones. ADHD without hyperactivity looks like daydreaming, slowness, "not applying herself", losing the thread mid-instruction. It causes no trouble in a classroom, so nobody raises it. These children are often bright, and often reach secondary school before anyone asks the question.

The ones who hold it together at school. If your child is described as "fine" at school and falls apart the moment he is home with you, that is not proof that nothing is happening. It can mean he is spending everything he has on holding it together, and the collapse arrives where it is safe.

What to do next

Log it for two weeks — three lines an incident: when, where, what happened just before, how long, what helped. Patterns you cannot see while you are inside them appear clearly on paper.

Ask the teacher a specific question — not "how is he doing?" but "compared with the other children in the class, how is he with starting tasks, staying with them, waiting his turn, and remembering instructions?"

Then take both to your paediatrician. That is the right first door, and they can point you to the appropriate assessment.

What I want you to hold onto

Asking the question is not labelling your child. Many parents come away with "this is within the range of typical development, here is what will help" — and that answer is worth having, because carrying an unanswered worry for years is its own weight.

And if there is something to find, finding it earlier is kinder. Not because there is a deadline, but because a child who gets the right support does not spend years building an identity out of a difficulty nobody explained to him.