“Phillip has become forgetful,” you tell your doctor. “The other day we were cleaning up the yard, and I asked him to pick up a pile of leaves. He just went on raking up the leaves. I shouted at him a second time, but he ignored me. I got mad, but when I went over to him he claimed he hadn’t even heard me. He seems to be doing that a lot lately.”
“It could be a lot of things,” your physician replies. “As you know, adolescents often have selective hearing. It could be that he was listening to his Walkman, or daydreaming, or just tired of being nagged. Could he be taking drugs? Since you say that he has been having a lot of these things, I suppose that they could be seizures, the kind we call absence or petit mat. Let me get him to overbreathe (hyperventilate) a little bit and see if we can produce a spell.”
A teacher may describe a child as “daydreaming a lot” or as “not paying attention.” Or, on occasion, a child herself may report that she is missing short segments of her lessons or brief parts of a TV program. Without seeing a staring spell, it will be difficult to interpret such brief events. Such spells may often be precipitated by hyperventilation in the physician’s office; if an episode can be made to occur, the physician can see the spell and interpret for herself.
Daydreaming can be very difficult to differentiate from the brief lapses in attention caused by absence seizures. We will discuss this further in Chapter 6. Daydreaming, however, is common in situations which are boring or when a child is tired; absence seizures can occur at any time. Absence seizures may be seen at meal times and interrupt a conversation or eating, whereas in these situations a child is unlikely to daydream. Daydreaming can usually be interrupted by calling the child’s name or touching the child. Absence seizures cannot be interrupted.
*22\208\8*
EPISODES OFTEN MISTAKEN FOR SEIZURES: IS IT DAYDREAMING OR A SEIZURE?”Phillip has become forgetful,” you tell your doctor. “The other day we were cleaning up the yard, and I asked him to pick up a pile of leaves. He just went on raking up the leaves. I shouted at him a second time, but he ignored me. I got mad, but when I went over to him he claimed he hadn’t even heard me. He seems to be doing that a lot lately.”"It could be a lot of things,” your physician replies. “As you know, adolescents often have selective hearing. It could be that he was listening to his Walkman, or daydreaming, or just tired of being nagged. Could he be taking drugs? Since you say that he has been having a lot of these things, I suppose that they could be seizures, the kind we call absence or petit mat. Let me get him to overbreathe (hyperventilate) a little bit and see if we can produce a spell.”A teacher may describe a child as “daydreaming a lot” or as “not paying attention.” Or, on occasion, a child herself may report that she is missing short segments of her lessons or brief parts of a TV program. Without seeing a staring spell, it will be difficult to interpret such brief events. Such spells may often be precipitated by hyperventilation in the physician’s office; if an episode can be made to occur, the physician can see the spell and interpret for herself.Daydreaming can be very difficult to differentiate from the brief lapses in attention caused by absence seizures. We will discuss this further in Chapter 6. Daydreaming, however, is common in situations which are boring or when a child is tired; absence seizures can occur at any time. Absence seizures may be seen at meal times and interrupt a conversation or eating, whereas in these situations a child is unlikely to daydream. Daydreaming can usually be interrupted by calling the child’s name or touching the child. Absence seizures cannot be interrupted.*22\208\8*
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