Understand the child behind the behaviour.

The forgotten homework. The meltdowns over small things. The daydreaming through dinner. The friend who says “I called your name three times.” These are not character flaws and they are not bad parenting. They are signals — and the most useful thing you can do with signals is name them.

Attention Snapshot’s child track is a parent-reported screening tool. You answer plain-language questions about what you have observed in your child over the past month, and the snapshot draws a structured picture across all five attention domains the DSM-5 cares about. Your child never has to take a test, sit at a screen, or know what is being asked.

ADHD symptoms in children — what they actually look like

The DSM-5 frames childhood ADHD as two clusters of nine items. Children need six symptoms in either cluster (versus five for adults) and need them to be present in more than one setting and to interfere with daily life. Beyond the symptom count, the pattern across the five attention domains is what makes the picture readable.

Inattention in children

• Difficulty sustaining attention on schoolwork or homework that is not immediately rewarding.
• Mistakes that look like carelessness — skipped instructions, missed parts of a worksheet.
• Listens, but seems not to absorb. The teacher describes it as “in their own world.”
• Forgets daily things repeatedly: lunchbox, homework, school books, bringing the right kit on the right day.
• Loses things. Avoids tasks that require sustained mental effort.
• Easily distracted by anything happening around them.

Hyperactivity-impulsivity in children

• Fidgeting, squirming, struggling to stay seated when expected to.
• Restless in situations where stillness is the unspoken rule (queues, dinner, religious services).
• Running, climbing or moving in inappropriate situations — even after being told.
• Talking too much, blurting out answers, interrupting.
• Difficulty waiting their turn or tolerating downtime.
• Acts before thinking — and seems genuinely surprised by the consequence.

Executive function and emotional regulation in children

In children, executive function shows up as struggling to start tasks, switching mid-activity, losing the thread of a multi-step instruction, or melting down at transitions (turning off the screen, leaving the park, getting ready for school). Emotional regulation shows up as feelings that arrive fast and big, take longer than the situation warrants to settle, and dominate the rest of the day.

Both are core to how attention-related patterns express in children. Most child quizzes do not look at them. The snapshot does, and reports them as their own domains.

How the child snapshot works

1. 1A short reflection. Roughly sixteen plain-language items about what you have observed in your child over the past month. Five-point frequency scale, with examples for each item. No clinical jargon.
2. 2Setting consistency. A handful of items about whether the patterns appear at school, at home, with friends, or only in one setting. Cross-setting consistency is one of the most useful things a clinician will ask about.
3. 3Impairment. A few items about how much the patterns are affecting school, friendships, and family life.
4. 4The snapshot. A radar across the five domains, a recognisable pattern, a warm written summary, two specific shifts to try this week, and a downloadable PDF you can share with a teacher or paediatrician.

When this is worth taking seriously

Some signs are louder than others. The list below is not a checklist — none of these on their own indicate ADHD — but a pattern of several of them in a child you would otherwise describe as bright, capable and well-loved is the kind of pattern worth bringing to a paediatrician.

• Reports from school describing inconsistency: one day excellent, the next day “did not seem to be in the room.”
• Homework consistently taking many times longer than it does for peers — and the cost is friction, not difficulty.
• Friendships that sour around impulsivity, blurting, or difficulty waiting turns.
• Mornings or transitions that reliably end in tears, despite calm parenting and consistent routines.
• A child who knows the rules, can recite them, and yet seems unable to follow them in the moment.
• A long-standing gap between potential as observed in calm one-on-one moments and performance in everyday life.

A note for parents who are tired

Parents often arrive here after months or years of trying to explain to teachers, family members or themselves why a particular child is harder than the others. That is exhausting on its own. The point of the snapshot is not to give you another label to carry — it is to take the foggy, unstructured worry you have been carrying and turn it into something with a shape, so you can do something with it.

Whatever the snapshot returns, the most useful next step is almost always the same: pair it with the voice of someone else who sees your child regularly (a teacher, a coach, the other parent), then bring it to a clinician who knows children. The PDF is structured to make that conversation easier.