"ADHD is naughty boy syndrome"

[highten]

My DD has suspected ADHD. I'm fed up with my mum/dad and my MIL/FIL, describing it as 'naughty boy syndrome'. My DD isn't exactly 'naughty'. Is this type of assumption going to continue throughout her whole life?

Maryz that sounds very much like DS, cue lots of shouting and screaming every morning. He doesn't even soap, just sits there and let's the water pour. When he was tiny he used to stand in front of the washing machine and whip his head round in circles along with the washing. It was so funny!

Is it possible for a child to have ADHD and also to be naughty (as a separate thing?
Are there some children who have ADHD and aren't naughty?

I think there needs to be a distinction made between behaviours related to the ADHD which to the untrained eye can appear naughty, and naughtiness that isn't related.

Sadly most people will lump them all together

I love being under a shower. I also fall asleep in MRI machines, which I imagine is sort of similar. Being immersed in the noises, Iyswim?

oh god, yes, you can't tell DS to tidy his room, he just stands there and doesn't know what to do.. we have to be specific.. pick the clothes up and put them away, put the games in a tidy pile...etc

maggie, at the moment, DS isn't 'naughty' the issue he has is impulse control.

Where you and i know we shouldn't hit someone who is annoying us, we might WANT to, but don't. DS doesn't have that filter, he wants to hit them and will.

He's not willfully and deliberately defiant, rude or doing it to wind us up, he just doesn't have the emotional or mental maturity to stop himself from doing/saying whatever he gets the impulse to do.

I'm 48 and was diagnosed with ADHD just over a month ago.

Yes, there are a lot of misconceptions about ADHD. And some of the people with the misconceptions like to hang on very hard to said misconceptions.

Which I am mostly letting wash over me, because all I can do at this stage is focus on reducing the ADHD's impact on my life and contentment. I have no spare time/energy to take on those who will not change their beliefs, despite any quality evidence proffered.

Fuck 'em. I don't need their approval to work on establishing stratagies that make my life better. Anybody who opines in my presence that it's made up nonsense is entitled to that dead wrong opinion. But they aren't entitled to both that tightly held opinion AND being in my "warm and close" circle. They are banished to no Christmas card/no invite/just a breezy "hi" as we pass in the street status only.

The family/friends that matters to me are the ones who are buying me special pajamas for Xmas. (but with pink bottoms)

They have been warm, supportive and made me laugh like a drain about it.

Getting diagnosed was the biggest relief ever. Anybody who isn't on board with me feeling better about life and getting better at life can bugger off out of my life.

I've done my time of being told everything was my fault and if I just tried harder I wouldn't be creating all these problems for myself. I am not going back in that jail cell because somebody made up their mind that ADHD can only be what they think it is....despite all the evidence to the contrary. They can go be the warden in chief of somebody else's shackled happiness, cos mine has walked out of the courtroom and refuses to be judged anymore.

Reminds me of church as teenager, when one Sunday after a weekend of activities at church, the elderly pastor announced their list of lost and found items,
'
..."And we have a 3 pairs of trousers, [pause] how on earth you can come to the house of God and leave your trousers behind I don't know"

Cue roars of laughter from the church.

Maryz tell him to sing the Shakespeare quotes, that's what I did.
I'm doing science now, and I sing formulae, they stick better! Like songs but my own music.
For other folk, having a diagnosis makes a difference. I can wander off in my head during an exam, but a diagnosis means someone can tap me on the shoulder, refocusing me, that's how I got my science diploma. I couldn't have got as far as university without that help. (As well as other stuff).
Dawn donna's other dd.

My cousin had meningitis as a baby. He then had undiagnosed ADHD. He would walk out of school aged 4 and wander home. My auntie had meetings with the school about handcuffing him to the radiators (this was 40 years ago, and shd didn't allow it). My family were very poor and she didn't have the money to keep him in activities/classes and he got bored easily. He started taking drugs and ended up in youth offenders institutes. He was given a million second chances but could never settle. He's now list both of his parents and broke into the local leisure centre just so that he could go back to prison and get help and support and not be tempted by drugs. It's a very sad story but one that could have been helped if people knew what adhd was and could do something about it. He was treated as a naughty boy so became one. He's not innocent in this, he'd done wrong things in his life, but there ways of preventing this life and he was never given that chance.

Dawndonna DD When you say you have music in your head, what exactly does that mean? Is it music being played near you, or a song you like playing over and over in your head?
DS is VERY musical, he plays two instruments and a whizz at them, but again can't remember what he wanted out of the car a minute ago. But can play a complicated piece he's only heard once without notes.

To those thinking ADHD is all made up, do they ever think how can so many people present so similarly.

iam I do that too, only got to hear it once and can play. Dad is the same but doesn't have ADHD but is Aspie. (I'm Aspie, too). The music is songs that I have heard, classical stuff, songs I make up. I think it's something I developed to stop my compulsions, but I'm not sure. I'll check with Mum.
I also learnt a trick from a television programme about an actress with dyslexia, forgotten her name. But if I know I'm going to want something later I say out loud eg. I have put my keys on the kitchen table. For some reason saying it out loud fixes it.

MaddyHatter - this is exactly what DD does. General instructions are met with a blank expression. Everything has to be spelt out.

For us the anxiety is the worst. All unknown scenarios have to be investigated to make sure we don't have a meltdown. DD is surrounded by stuffed toys, they are a huge safety blanket for her. We know something is up when she is suddenly permanent attached to one or the other animal and it was to go everywhere with us. She carried a stuffed wolf through the whole of Paris. Spontaneous trips - no way.

Life with a ADHD child (and DD is not even fully diagnosed, she is too unreliable to get a full diagnosis) is exhausting. You never know what happens next and how the child reacts to a situation. Everything has to be planned and explained.

We are lucky with regards to DD's school. Her school has two permanent SEN sections and they try to integrate these children into the normal classes as well for certain parts of lessons. Therefore there is lots of SEN staff available and the teacher have additional knowledge and are happy to implement unusual tactics, often initiated by the children themselves. For example DD suggested sitting next to her maths table as she found the other 4 children caused too much distraction and invaded her workspace.

The issue is created by people who actually have no fucking idea about ADHD but like to tell people their children have it.

This. My cousin shovels e-numbers down her DS's neck and then when he's bouncing off the ceiling half an hour later, she puts on her best DM sad face and tells us that he has ADHD. It just invalidates the reality of the condition. Btw. I have a serious e number intolerance that used to make me climb the walls and misbehave. A family friend GP that I told about my childhood said that these days, I'd be diagnosed with ADHD, when it was just a poor diet behind it. So that sort of thing really pisses me off. It's easy enough to sort out but it's easier to just pretend that the kid has ADHD. I'm talking very specifically here about my experience and my cousin's. I hope I don't offend anybody.

So in summary, I believe that it exists, but I do think that some people use it as an excuse and that is to the detriment of those for whom ADHD is an unavoidable reality.

arfandarf re your Dad being a teacher , he is probably a similar age to my mother who is a retired teacher . She said that this ADHD didn't exist when she was teaching , she also apparently never taught a child with ASD , in the whole 30 years of teaching ! But then she will describe some of the children who she taught who clearly had one , either or both , but were not diagnosed . What she did do though is see them as individuals and treated and taught them accordingly .

when i think back to when i went to school, it is so obvious now that the 'different' children in my class had adhd, aspergers or autism....they were not known about in the 60s and 70s....so the argument 'we never had it in my day' from older people is ridiculous. I actually think my husband has some ? traits (not diagnosed but definately something)he was the naughty boy at school amongst other things

Hi all,

Thanks for the reports about this thread.

We have been through and removed any posts that we felt broke our Talk Guidelines. We have noticed that many of the deletions have been for disablist posts.

Do take a look at our This Is My Child Campaign especially the Myths about Special needs (specifically the myth about behaviour disorders and 'good' behaviour) and perhaps consider the challenges many parents of children with disabilities, or who have disabilities themselves, face on a daily basis.
Mumsnet exists to make parent's lives easier and if there's one thing we could all do with, it's some understanding and moral support.

ADHD was first described in a medical paper in the 1770s.

If people think it's some kind of 'new' thing they're a bit behind the curve. Maybe you should ask them why they're so slow that they're hundreds of years out of date?

Ritalin was licensed in 1955, so I suspect that there were plenty of people with DX before that, or a pharm. co. wouldn't have bothered to invent a treatment.

But, yes, as a mother of a DD with numerous DX (ADHD, ASD, Anxiety & other things) some people are horribly ignorant and judgemental.

Learn to use a death stare, along with a line like 'oh, you know better than doctors who've been working on this for hundreds of years. Perhaps you should publish a paper and cure the people living with this disability?'

But it is really hard - particularly those people who 'think' they get it, but then start being strict with DD because that's how they'd normally treat a child.