"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!!!

sorry, just read your last post, hobgoblin. Yes, I would imagine the most likely possibility is a genetic predisposition. And that such things as stressful school environment, insufficient outdoors stimulation etc could well be triggering factors.

I also know (as the mother of a physically disabled child) that most consultants are predisposed (whether genetically or from nurture I could not say) to ascribe disability in the first instance to the parenting abilities of the mother.

Ah, but ICANDOTHAT - nurture takes place, er, all over the place! Physical environment, the many relationships a child has... As Primary carer one has a lot of responsibility on the nurture front but it isn't the whole picture. Plus, how can there be a very clear model for exemplary nurture when the genetic make up of one child will demand that he is parented a certain way in order to avoid ADHD as opposed to his sister - perhaps carrying a similar gentic disposition - who requires another?

I am not well up on the science here, but I do think that a basic model of good parenting is possibly helpful, but after that what can anyone really do to avoid ADHD in terms of how we parent? And who is to say that in avoiding one condition we haven't increased the likelihood of developing another?

Also, you cannot control issues such as sibling order/gender and the influence these fsactors have in determining the outcomes if the primary genetics are in place for developing certain conditions.

No ICAN

it sounds as if hobbgoblin is suggesting something like the greenspan model of child development. A baby is born and develops through interactions with their caregivers. Some babies have challenges to interaction- so they may be over-reactive (eg so touch is painful) and may protect themselves by reacting in a way which takes you down an ADHD pathway.

Some children may be able to be helped with these challenges. Eg if they're fine without food dyes, then remove those, interactions become normal hey presto typical development.

Others are not so easy to fix. My son for example is non-verbal which huge attention problems, and sensory perceptual problems. So for him having normal back and forth interaction aint going to happen. Doesn't mean we can't do stuff (remove gluten to stop headbanging etc) to help, but a normal developmental pathway is not an option.
His is more complicated in that he was probably on that normal developmental pathway until a viral infection caused brain damage of some sort.

Complex and a mixture of genetics and environment.

Hos youngest brother shares many similarities physiologically - he almost certainly has a pre-disposition. But was never triggered.

At the end of all this- no its not your fault!

Mrsturnip puts it so well.

And going back onto a more global scale, if we see an overall greater number of ADHD, this might mean one of three things:

a) misdiagnosis

b) more children born with the gene

don't know how or if it is inherited, but if it is then numbers would be affected by numbers of children in previous generation surviving to adulthood, number of those succeeding in finding partners, number of children in next generation surviving etc- you could imagine variables here in different types of society

c) more triggers to children who have the gene

things like food, school environment etc

Yes cory - I think that is what is making me cross - parental "deficiencies" are so not overlooked when these things first arise. Indeed it's usually the opposite.

Certainly when I first had anxieties about ds the general suggestion was that I might need some help (of a medical kind, not actual practical help you understand!)

oh yes bink me too. I was told I wasn;t speaking to ds1, that I was speaking over him, that I was doing everything for him.

Well aged 9 he's still not talking and that helpful crowd have buggered off back under whichever stone they intially crawled out of. It's always the mother's fault until proved otherwise (not the father's, the mother's )

Well, I'm a well-known Munchausen parent, I am. My dd had the effrontery to claim that her legs hurt when the consultant had already decided that they couldn't...

Know your place woman- in the wrong!

"Mumnnanny Thu 05-Mar-09 12:21:52
Attention deficit - Lacking in attention."

Mumnanny - you do realise that the Attention Deficit part of ADHD is a lack in attention ON THE PART OF THE CHILD, don't you?

Because the way you are speaking implies that you think it is a lack of attention GIVEN TO the child. Not the case.

Too much information (and not enough understanding) in the wrong hands is v. worrying is all I can say.

If it were not for the patronising 'I'll make it easier for all you mums, intellect clearly buried under the laundry pile, to understand' condescension, I could ignore the 'percifically' and other words jostling to make sentences of some value.

She's gone .......

Mumnanny - With all your studies in psychology have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?
This is an interesting phenomenon whereby people who have little knowledge systematically think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge, and tend to lack the insight to realise this
It has been demonstrated in many circumstances and populations- ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

Try to temper your enthusiasm with some humility - you may feel you are a genius with the acumen and understanding that can sort out the problems of any child but I am pretty certain that more experience will prove this wrong.

Pingviner, quite right, she's apparently the grand old age of 21, she's done a psychology course (not a degree yet, obviously), and she's not read the literature on the subject properly, as demonstrated by her failure to cite any mainstream work at all, such as the chapter on Rutter. Just encountering 300 kids in school or pre-school does not constitute evidence.

She may indeed have thoughts and/or opinions on ADHD (Haven't we all? Isn't that sort of thing what MN is for?) but she did not articulate these very thoughtfully at all, which further undermined her position, and made her comments appear quite judgemental and unkind. The big question is why is everyone engaging with her at length like this? She hasn't even come back to the thread.

As an aside, one thing nobody has flagged up so far is the concept of difficult temperament, which is not technically a disorder or condition, but a (possibly) genetically influenced factor in a child's behaviour that presents similarly to ADD or ADHD. There has been some research done on this, but not a great deal so far (maybe because it's overshadowed by the ADHD/Ritalin industry). However it may well be that the 'case study' the OP describes involved a child with this, rather than any kind of ADHD. That doesn't mean going after a label or diagnosis is wrong, because the strategies for helping the child are largely the same, and labels are useful as a shorthand for indicating the kind of help required.

So it's indeed a lot more complex than the OP realises. But I think many of us are aware of this.

Reported Dentro's post

Am fascinated that some troll would re-open a thread that was last active 3 years ago just to post something that needed to be deleted.

You really have to wonder what they're on...