It does exist. I was also an undiagnosed case because I didn't act our in class. I drifted, daydreamed, drew pictures, and it was rarely that I didn't try to pay attention. The way it is for me is like trying to grab and hold onto oiled nylon ropes, it would just slip away from me. In college this hurt bad, eventually I left wondering why I couldn't hack it in a class room. In my adult life I believe this has led to me going from job to job and always looking for the next horizon.
Now thatI have identified it, I am using strategies to help me focus. Knowing is a lot of the battle.
It does exist. . . Now thatI have identified it, I am using strategies to help me focus. Knowing is a lot of the battle.I feel the same way, just knowing that there is a battle to fight helps.
The neuro-normals among us have a hard time accepting that some people's brains are just different.
I like your analogy, although my favorite is that living life with ADHD is like playing tennis with a pickaxe.
Now I can stop and enjoy life. Spending time with my kids, sitting on the porch in the evening, reading... I can finally be the man I've always wanted to be. Methylphenidate has been one of the best things that ever happened to me.
Subjects that will trigger boatloads of uninformed hoo-hah on FR include:
Pit bulls (it ain't the animal, it's the person that raised it); reporters and "automatic" weapons (hey, the AP got an esoteric fact wrong on a rare weapon, so the whole report is biased; circumcision (it's barbaric and kills all sensation...and gives the "victims" of it something to bitch about their whole adult lives); and of course ADD and ADHD (it ain't the animal, it's the person that raised it).
Even if there were scientific and medical evidence proving the existence of these conditions (as there is, by the way), 80 percent of the people here discount them out of hand--as a conspiracy from the MSM, the NEA, Big Pharm and Big Med (where do they meet, to work out the details--and do they ever get into squabbles, with other, overlapping conspiracies?).
Why can't this be a reasonable assumption: the conditions are real, but sadly they are much overdiagnosed in our society. Didn't anyone here every have a brother, uncle or cousin who "just couldn't stay with anything"--couldn't keep a job, friends, often didn't finish things? For those of you who say, It's the way the parents raised him...uh, why were his sisters and/or brothers successful, and he wasn't? Did the parents raise three kids right...but dropped the ball on this one? A lifetime of failing gets hammeered into a person over years, and soon enough, he lives right up to everyone's low expectations.
I checked out the expert from the article--she seems incomprehensible to me.
I'll leave you all with two thoughts:
If the condition doesn't exist...why the hell is she curing it?
How is that so many people on this forum can be reasonable and intelligent one moment, but the second that their particular trigger-issue comes up, they turn into knuckle-dragging ignoramuses?
Note how everyone here who claims to have ADHD describes their experience differently. The ADHD theory is too simplistic, and the testing for it is too subjective. ADHD is just an umbrella term for a list of behaviors.
One of my sons fits the description to a tee. I've known so many other parents whose kids were labeled ADHD, but their behavior doesn't even come close to the impulsivity my son exhibits. He's constantly distracted. I have a friend whose young son was diagnosed with autism, and even her little boy has commented on my son's behavior. In every situation we've put him in, he behaves the same way - sports, homeschool group activities, library activities... He drives his coaches, librarians, and other moms bonkers. And I am a tough mom. My other two sons do not exhibit the same behaviors. That's one reason why I homeschool - I suspect a school would label him with some kind of disorder, as that's the thing to do these days.
But I know what it's all about. He's highly active and easily bored. He can focus very well when he's interested in a topic. But he needs the information processed very quickly. He can pick up information very quickly watching TV/video or using a computer CD, and he has an excellent memory. He just doesn't have much patience. He's very kinesthetic - he has to move around, not sit still.
It's one thing for an adult to take a medication to help him focus. But kids are being given those risky drugs just so they'll behave in what is a very unnatural learning environment - being forced to sit in a classroom everyday, expected to learn what a grownup tells you to learn, at the pace the grownup decides is appropriate. That just doesn't work for every child.