ADHD

The company I work for has a rather well established Green policy and one part of this is a swap table in the break room where people can put books and other media on instead of throwing them away.  I recently saw a book on the table about ADHD which was written a few years back. Since my son and I have ADHD I am always curious to read any book on that subject to see the latest theory on the “disorder”.  I put the word disorder in quotes as I am not thoroughly convinced that it is truly a disorder.

I read a book a while ago called Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception where the author suggests that rather than thinking of ADHD as being a disorder, that it be thought of as a different personality type.  This theory made all kinds of sense to me.  The author theorizes that there were hunters and farmers in early man times and those personalities have carried over to today.  The reason there are less hunters in the population (ADHD is less of the population) is that hunters are a high risk group and most likely to be killed so that gene was less likely to be passed on through the generations. 

I believe that telling a child they have a “disorder” even if you put it as “special” sets them up for failure.  I don’t think that you should tell your child anything other about why they have difficulties other than helping them cope with things that don’t really go their way during their development.  If you can send them to a school where they are surrounded by other children like them, then they will have less of a problem with self esteem and understand when they get older that everyone is different in their own right.  This is also true by helping your child become aware of diversity at an early age.  By not even thinking that ADHD is a problem and steering them toward thinking of it as a different personality type, then I believe that integration of teaching methods could be done to satisfy all personality types.  Since ADHD is being realized more and more due to population effects, it will eventually become less of a rarity and more of the norm