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I just started my admissions semester in the teaching program at my local university. My computer prof insisted that kids are just different these days! When designing handouts we should make them so that kids can "scan" them. They simply don't/can't/won't read a paper which has actual paragraphs. We should use bullets and 2 (one 1/3 down on the left and another 2/3 down on the right) graphics...making sure that the graphic is properly sized so as to not be overwhelming and distracting.

The woman insisted that we will have many, many children in our classrooms with undiagnosed ADD and sometimes she just wants to shake those kids' parents because adderal is just a LIFESAVER! I think there probably are kids who are more twitchy than the norm. We have had FReepers, who seem to be very involved and loving parents, who say their child requires medication. I believe them. But how much of this is caused by no one ever demanding that the kids learn the discipline necessary to sit down and read full sentences?

Good luck to you and thank you for choosing such a terrific calling as teaching.

Many children today, and I will speak anecdotely of my cousins children, not mine who have been through "Basic Training" (smile) will NOT wait until an adult is finished speaking before piping up, will NOT sit through a meal without acting like a jack-in-the-box, will NOT go to bed unless mommy or daddy lies there with them until they finally go off to fairy land, and will NOT remain in their own rooms should they awaken to use the facilities or "heard a noise" but must go into mommy and daddy bed for the duration of the night wherein they toss turn and kick and keep everyone else awake.

The "family bed" concept is a recipe for divorce, to my mind. When I was a child, adults had a whole neat "adult" life that included going out for supper without children who knew better than to whine about wanting to tag along.

I always knew we were in for a sitter when my mother showered and put on perfume and pearls and I could smell TV dinners in the oven.

Kids do as they are trained and instructed through habit and example, biology isnt 'different' from years past only expectations.

We send our kids to private Christian school that teaches in old-fashioned ways with memorization of math facts, cursive script writing, and extensive reading from kindergerten on. Our 7 year old starting third grade has read complete adult-level books already (eg Narnia tales) and reads on a level akin to 5th and 6th grader from public school; math skills also ahead of the public school norm by a few grades.

The computer prof is just defining expectations down. Children will rise or fall to expectations and examples set of them. Sure bulleted lists are easier to read, but they can harldy contain a complex deductive argument, unless written in symbolic form.

As for ADD, ADHD:
The fact that some kids have more difficulty focussing on task is no more surprising than the fact that some kids have different IQs, different energy levels, and different preferred modes of learning (learn by doing or learn via verbal instruction or visual cues). Calling this natural difference a "disorder" is imho wrong except in extreme cases, and the fact that suddenly we find 'millions' of such cases is imho clear evidence that teachers are 'looking under the lighted lamppost' for excuses not real causes of getting kids to learn.

I say this even though I too have a freind who told me ritalin saved him from trouble in youth; I also have a nephew being given it and frankly it is a crying shame and not appropriate for him, just medicating what is imho a normal but slightly "spacey" kid with a good imagination.

The "ADD" claims, if they have validity, are related to brain wave functions, ie, inability to keep it beta wave function, and excess of "theta". Except theta waves are a source of deep 'intuitive' thinking, creativity, and loose connection 'insights' (see the book "Tortoise Mind, Hare Brain"). And except that ADD 'diagnoses' use social interaction not any real medical exam. Claims that deviations from appropriate behavior - or deviations from "best" beta wave functions - are a disorder is IMHO dangerous anti-diversity thinking.
Energetic, bounce-off-the-walls people can be vastly creative and wonderful, even if they might make lousy accountants. (OTOH, they can evolve, ie "grow up" and
They pay lip service to 'diversity' when melanin shades are different, but faced with real diversity of thinking skills/modes in the classroom, they want to "medicate" it away. Humbug!

"But how much of this is caused by no one ever demanding that the kids learn the discipline necessary to sit down and read full sentences?" We wont know until the latter case is tried. It is sad that the 'high expectations school our kids are at (which costs only $2800/yr btw, so it bursts the bubble that good schooling costs a fortune), is the exception and not the rule. The list of what kids learn from 1st to 5th grades in the public schools is quite thin. And the students are from many socio-economic backgrounds many quite humble, ie normal average kids.

I am not shocked at all that high IQ boys who have an excess of impulsiveness and deficit in focus are being called "ADD" in a classroom where they are given low expectations and low standards, where the textbooks are made so politically correct they are as bland as cream of wheat, and where competitiveness is frowned on and rambunctiousness is a threat: There is a word for all that - BORING. I was an A student but I sure had plenty of eyes-glazed-out-the-window-bored-of-school times. Undoubtably, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn would be called ADD and their adventures would be about how they hung out at home ate ho-hos and watched Nick TV. Real teachers would take it as an appropriate CHALLENGE to teach to the 'boys' and the kinds of kids 'at risk' for ADD categorization in ways that teaches them properly without medication. JMHO.