Just what is ADD? It’s probably easiest to describe as a person’s difficulty with focusing on a simple thing for any significant amount of time. People with ADD are described as easily distracted, impatient, impulsive, and often seeking immediate gratification. They have poor listening skills and have trouble doing “boring” jobs (like sitting quietly in class or, as adults, balancing a checkbook). “Disorganized” and “messy” are words that also come up often.
Hyperactivity is more clearly defined as restlessness, resulting in excessive activity. Hyperactives are usually described as having “ants in their pants.” ADHD is a combination of hyperactivity and ADD.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, a person has ADHD if he or she meets eight or more of the following paraphrased criteria:
Can’t remain seated if required to do so.
Easily distracted by extraneous stimuli.
Focusing on a single task or play activity is difficult.
Frequently begins another activity without completing the first.
Fidgets or squirms (or feels restless mentally).
Can’t (or doesn’t want to) wait for his turn during group activities.
Will often interrupt with an answer before a question is completed.
Has problems with chore or job follow-through.
Can’t play quietly easily.
Impulsively jumps into physically dangerous activities without weighing the consequences.
Easily loses things (pencils, tools, papers) necessary to complete school or work projects.
Interrupts others inappropriately.
Talks impulsively or excessively.
Doesn’t seem to listen when spoken to.
Three caveats to keep in mind: The behaviors must have started before age 7, not represent some other form of classifiable mental illness, and occur more frequently than in the average person of the same age.
Let’s look at the characteristics generally ascribed to people with ADD in more detail.
Easily distracted. Since ADD people are constantly “scoping out” everything around them, focusing on a single item is difficult. Just try having a conversation with an ADD person while a television is on.
Short, but very intense, attention span. Though it can’t be defined in terms of minutes or hours, anything ADD people find boring immediately loses their attention. Other projects may hold their rapt and extraordinarily intense attention for hours or days.
Disorganization. ADD children are often chronically disorganized—their rooms are messy, their desks a shambles, their files incoherent. While people without ADD can be equally messy and disorganized, they can usually find what they are looking for; ADDers can’t.
Distortions of time sense. ADDers have an exaggerated sense of urgency when they’re working on something and an exaggerated sense of boredom when they have nothing interesting to do.
Difficulty following directions. A new theory on this aspect holds that ADDers have difficulty processing auditory or verbal information. A major aspect of this difficulty involves the very common reports of parents of ADD kids who say their kids love to watch TV and hate to read.
Daydreaming, falling into depressions, or having mood swings.
Take risks. ADDers seem to make faster decisions than non-ADDers.
Easily frustrated and impatient. ADDers do not suffer fools gladly. They are direct and to the point. When things aren’t working, “Do something!” is the ADD rallying cry, even if that something is a bad idea.
What should you look for in a school setting to make it more palatable to a son or daughter with ADD? What can you do at home to help your child (or yourself)?
Learning needs to be project- and experience-based, providing more opportunities for creativity and shorter and smaller “bites” of information. Many “gifted” programs offer exactly such opportunities. The problem for many kids with ADD is that they’ve spent years in nongifted classroom settings and may be labeled with underachieving behavior problems, effectively shutting them out of the programs virtually designed for them! Many parents report that children diagnosed as ADD, who failed miserably in public school, thrived in private school. What’s usually different about these schools? They inevitably boast smaller classes and feature more individual attention with goal-setting, project-based learning methods. These factors are just what make ADD kids thrive!
Create a weekly performance template on which both teacher and parent chart the child’s performance, positive and negative.
Encourage special projects for extra credit. Projects give ADDers the chance to learn in the mode that’s most appropriate for them. They will also give such kids the chance to make up for the “boring” homework they sometimes simply can’t make themselves do.
Stop labeling them “disordered.” Kids react to labels, especially negative ones, even more than adults. Saying “you have a deficit and a disorder” may be more destructive than useful.
Think twice about medication, but don’t discard the option. Many professionals are concerned about the long-term side effects of drugs normally prescribed for ADDers. However, if an ADD child cannot have his or her special needs met in a classroom, not medicating him or her may be a disaster.
Practice, practice, practice the memory techniques in this book. ADDers tend to have trouble listening and are easily distracted. As a result, they may fail to remember things they simply never heard or paid attention to. Work on the visualization techniques. Practice making mental pictures when having conversations, create mental images of your “to-do” list, and visualize doing things to which you’ve committed or for which you are receiving instructions or directions. Practice careful listening skills. Many of Harry Lorayne’s memory books (especially his classic, The Memory Book [Ballantine Books, reissue edition, 1996]), which stress “picture-oriented” approaches to memory problems, would be invaluable additions to any ADDer’s library.
Write everything down. This is something I recommend everyone do, but it is absolutely essential for ADDers. The more you write down, the less you have to remember!
Utilize pictures, mapping, diagrams, and so on in lieu of outlines or “word” notes—even the abbreviations and shorthand I’ve recommended in other books.
Tape-record lectures (again, despite what I wrote in How to Study). This will enable them to relisten and reprocess information they may have missed the first time around.
Create distraction-free zones. Henry David Thoreau (who evidently suffered from ADD) was so desperate to escape distraction he moved to isolated Walden Pond. Organize your time and workspace to create your own “Walden Pond,” especially when you have to write, take notes, read, or study. ADDers need silence, so consider the library. Another tip: Clean work areas thoroughly at the end of each day. This will minimize distractions.
Train their attention span. ADDers will probably never be able to train themselves to ignore distractions totally, but a variety of meditation techniques might help them stay focused longer.
A special thank you to Thom Hartmann, author of many books on ADD and ADHD, for allowing me to paraphrase his suggestions in this chapter.