"ADHD is not real" - such an annoying and ignorant woman!

[Hulababy]

I can't believe people can be so ignorant :here

It has really annoyed me so much. How can anyone in this day and age not now that ADHD is a real dx. So ignornat - argh!!!

I think you're misunderstanding what is meant by "attention deficit". It's not about a child not being given enough attention. It's about a child's attention span.

Also "hyperactive" can be about far more than just having too much energy. My ds' 'hyper' behaviour is caused by sensory-seeking rather than too much energy.

I should add when I say 'conditions that created the condition' that I mean taking into account and genetic/medical predisposition already exisiting, i.e. as in a a scizophrenic who had genetic predisposition coupled with social 'tailoring' towards development of the illness.

Nature/nurture - will be debated for centuries to come, I'm sure!

It's a different condition, but a relative has recently been diagnosed with Aspergers - at the age of 27.

Before that, he effectively self medicated with alcohol and drugs and lived a reclusive life at his parents home.

He has been on prescribed medication for the past year and is doing a degree and taking part in an expedition to south America this summer.

I think alot of sadness and heartache could have been avoided if he had been diagnosed as a child.

If ADHD is all about the Western world and inadequate parenting can anyone at all explain to me:

a) why it's not the really awful parents I know who have ADHD children?

b) why an ADHD child's siblings often show no behavioural problems whatsoever?

If the parenting was bad enough to cause severe disturbances in one child, you'd expect it to have some effect on the rest, wouldn't you?

ICANDOTHAT, I think I have the psychiatry book downstairs with it in. Hang on and I will look up the reference for you.

Lots of x-posts there.

Did I really first post on this thread nearly 5 years ago?

Sorry the point I was making was that the medication has made a real difference to him and now he is confident enough to take opportunities which he would have shunned a year ago.

(hobbgoblin, that is a picture-perfect demonstration of how to put the counter-arguments - thank you for that.)

copper - you have at least changed your clothes I hope...

Oops I opened this thread because I was looking at ADHD and it intrigued me.

Sorry

www.healing-arts.org/children/ADHD/#How

Oh gawd! I knew I'd forgotten something!

Thanks, Pag.

I'm on there as well coppertop, but a different name.

Gawd how much of my life have I wasted on here....?

hobbgoblin Agree with your point regarding 'self-esteem'. As a result of my ds behaviour traits in school, and the reaction of teaching staff, he's self-esteem hit rock bottom - aged 5!! I have had to work bloody hard to bring him back up, only to have him knocked back down by them again and again. Have considered home ed, but think it would more for my stress than his to be honest. I think if he was truly 'supported' in the classroom, his behaviour would improve ten fold as it has in the home

I was just thinking the same thing about myself, MrsT. I've been here too long.

Just fallen in ..... 5 year thread!!! Bloody hell, you have been digging in the archives kaz

cory, am guessing a bit what you mean by 'really awful parents' but if I assume you mean the 'don't give a crap types' then this fits with what I've read in the book I mentioned.

Part of me thinks that the rise in numbers of sufferers, whilst partly attributable to better and more available diagnostic testing along with better awareness (amongst other things) is in some way associated with the back lash to pre and early post war parenting. it is our generation of parenting (our parents and then us as parents) that has started to shift from the 'seen and not heard' disciplinarian model. However, the upshot has been perhaps a generation of children less aware of their flaws and less able to handle their own mistakes and failings. The title of the book I mention (The Pampered Child Syndrome) speaks for itself.

I hope that in the next few generations we see a shift back to some kind of middle ground between permissive and celebratory parenting and the old boundaried and rigid style of parenting in, say, the 1940s and 50s.

I don't think we have it right yet. I see many well educated, insightful parents creating problems with their parenting in their sheer earnest and determination to make their children feel loved and valued and successful.

This is why I come back to the self esteem thing. Self esteem isn't just about praise and being and loved - it is about self acceptance and self criticism within an environment of safety and love. To have self esteem is to accept oneself warts and all, with realism and confidence. This enables us to accept the warts and all world of disappointment and fortune, morality and immorality, etc. and deal with it wisely and happily.

Taking children to every activity under the sun, hothousing their academic potential, and loving them without boundary does not teach them about the flip side of positive experience and does not teach them to handle fucking up. It does not give them self esteem.

Found it!

Taylor, Eric and Sonuga-Barke, Edmund (2008) Disorders of Attention and Activity in Rutter's Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 5th edition (London, Blackwell)

Interesting sections are:

Subtypes of disorder (p.522)
Is ADHD a Genetic Disorder? (p. 526)

The section on genetics is very complicated but basically says:

1. Proper studies have been done.
2. They are not sure which genes but it is probably DRD4 that is the most likely one, and possibly also SLC6A4 and HTR1B.
3. They probably haven't found all the genes responsible yet.
4. Some of the disorder may be attributable to the interaction between certain genes rather than particular genes themselves.
5. Enviromental risk is also a factor.

They sum it up like this:

"In summary, ADHD is not a genetic disorder in a simple sense. A reasonable working hypothesis is that genetic and environmental influences of small effect, while correlated to some extent, likely act together (both additively and multiplicatively) to create a spectrum of neurobiological risk".

Roughly translated, I think it would be fair to say that some certain environmental factors trigger particular responses in ADHD children that need careful handling. However it is not the same factors for all children with ADHD, as they vary as individuals as well as how they are affected by the disorder.

hobbgobblin you are right. Self esteem is about self acceptance, but surely that truly comes with maturity. Meanwhile, our children, unable to articulate their emotions are being dx adhd, add, ocd blah, blah, blah. What to do ? Is it an inevitable 'evolutionary' change?

Boffinmum Thanks for that

If schools ceased to exist and children weren't herded into groups of 30 and measured against each other so intensively, in age cohorts, many of our developmental concerns would surely evaporate??

Sorry just to relate back to point (!) - , the parents you maybe know with ADHD diagnosis within their family therefore may not fit with what one might expect of a family 'type'.

Even if my assumption is wrong about the type of family you meant, the argument seems to hold true of the families who don't seem to care. Their children will be potentially equally unboundaried and lacking in self esteem as a result and thus more likely to act out in ways that begin them on the path to a diagnosis of ADHD.

In my work I see all family types facing ADHD as a possibility. This is what led me to think that the common denominator must be either secondarily nurture based with a primary genetic predisposition or that there were similarities between the consequences of parenting style.

The sibling issue is answered for me by the real possibility that this condition manifests as schizophrenia does, with genetics at the route and nurture signing and sealing the fate of the individual!

hobbgoblin on Thu 05-Mar-09 14:19:54
"cory, am guessing a bit what you mean by 'really awful parents' but if I assume you mean the 'don't give a crap types' then this fits with what I've read in the book I mentioned."

By awful parents, I mean parents who go to extremes either way: either the completely neglectful, can't-be-arsed-to-look-up-when-little-sod-is-murdering-half-the-toddler-group or the completely-precious- and-exhaustingly-earnest-ones-who-think-there-lo-will-die-if-they-don't-get-everything-exactly-right . Either of those two.

Instead, I have known ADHD children to belong to what seems to me perfectly sensible, reasonable, laidback-but-not-neglectful, middle-of-the-road parents, who have successfully raised other relaxed and happy children. But then there is just one child who is different.

It puzzles me.

hobbgoblin that last line frightens the shit out of me ... it's down to me then ?