Hi PondLife

I'd like to throw caution to the wind.

Be careful of labeling your son as "bipolar". This isn't something you want hovering around without a psychiatric diagnosis by a qualified psychiatrist. 4 seems a bit young to be labelling him as such.

So, I'm not a medical professional, so what I am going to say is not based on medical opinion, rather based on personal one.

I used to be a teacher.

Students who were on a Differentiated Learning Plan and exhibited symptoms that you have described in your son could be diagnosed with different learning difficulties.

This is best diagnosed, again, by a trained professional (not a therapist who manages symptoms and does not diagnose - it's normally been done through educational psychologists who do a batch of assessment tests).

His cognative recall seems alright.

However, he does struggle with auditory processing. A child in my classroom with this diagnosis would need to be taught using both visual and auditory cues. It's extremely difficult for these students to write down what has been dictated out loud via speech - their brains just don't process it like ours does. So learning through pictures, diagrams, videos, writing on the board etc works.

I will always check that these students have understood my verbal instruction by casually going up to them and asking them to repeat to me an instruction that I have given to them (in a task or an activity). That way I know if they truly got the message for the instruction, or not, depending on their interpretation of how they relay the message back to me.

The other time I have scenarios similar to what your son experiences sometimes stem from those with ADHD. (Apologies anyone with ADHD, this is the perspective of a teacher - jump in and correct me). Lots of stimulation can be going on. At that age, your sons brain is working through a lot of stimulation.

Take the "simple" instruction you gave him today.

He had to:

*Go to your bedroom
*Look for the glass cleaner
*Remember to look on your dresser
*Remember why he went to your room in the first place when he sees everything else there
*Recall what the glass cleaner looked like the last time
*He then got distracted by some lovely brown coffee cups
*He was then interrupted by all this gazing with you walking into the room and asking him questions.

WOW. So much going on for him.