Lesson 1: Lesson 1: What is ADHD?
Further Symptoms
ADHD children have more difficulty listening and following rules. ADD children exhibit less oppositional behavior, have little hyperactivity, but may experience more chronic inattention, have a more spacey, daydreaming state of mind, and are generally seen as passive or having an anxious disposition. They may have more trouble finishing assignments in school and often lack the drive to compete. They seem to work in slow motion much of the time. They can look right at you while you are talking and not hear a word you have said. Because they seem more passive, they often get overlooked, don’t get diagnosed or get help and may suffer greater loss of self-esteem and confidence.
There seems to be three major core components for ADHD/ADD children: distractibility, impulsivity, and risk-taking/restlessness. ADHD children have the additional component of hyperactivity. Because these two disorders share similar symptoms, I will simply refer to both groups as ADHD. Although this is a disorder that affects both genders, with a greater prevalence for males, I will use the general term "he" instead of "he/she".
Distractibility does not mean a child is unable to pay attention to specific things – they can. They can focus intently on anything that has a strong interest to them. Or they can be very focused when in a novel or new situation. Part of the problem seems to be that the ADHD child’s brain is not screening out enough information. One researcher considers this a “boredom” disorder, because if the interest isn’t strong enough, the brain simply allows too much other information to be attended to. Therefore, they have difficulty remaining "on task" or completing a job. They are easily distracted because they have difficulty focusing their attention (readiness to respond) and have difficulty "screening out" information.
Imagine for a moment that you suddenly become aware of everything happening around you – all the sights, sounds, lights, temperature, outside noises, stomach growling, and other stimuli that intensify as they try to grab your attention. You can see how easy it would be to get sidetracked. You may have enthusiastically started a project of some kind but then all these other things simply grabbed your attention and before you know it you got "sidetracked". That is often what an ADHD child is experiencing. In school, they have difficulty paying attention to school work, even if they wanted to. Even at play they have difficulty sticking to one activity.
When my ADHD son was a pre-schooler, he would bounce from one activity to another constantly. When he got a little older, this would take the form of starting a major project like building a tree house, dragging all the material home and starting to build one day, only to abandon it the next day to start on another major project like digging a cave. When he was in grade school, he wanted to be a part of Indian Scouts, but couldn’t stay focused for over five minutes on the projects that were to be completed with his Dad and himself. In high school he ate and breathed computers, checking out books from the library on programming and studying them for hours. Because it held his interest he could remain focused for hours and never get bored! In fact, it was extremely difficult for him to become "un-focused". He would get very high grades on his scholastic tests, but fail in Spelling and English and any other subject that wasn’t able to hold his attention. When he went to college after high school, he was bored with all the required subjects and ended up taking classes such as Trigonometry, Calculus and Japanese, classes that challenged and excited him. He was very bright, but the standard ways of measuring that were often contradictory.
Impulsivity is "acting-without-thinking" behaviors. ADHD children have difficulty thinking before acting and weighing the consequences of their actions more so than other children in their age group. They have difficulty following rule-governed behaviors such as one would find in playing games or sitting in a classroom. They KNOW the rules; they just are not able to follow through on them. An ADHD child will often make up his own rules as he goes along and not understand why other people get upset with that.
Risk-taking/Restlessness. More than other children in their developmental or age level, the ADHD child doesn’t seem to have a sense of the consequences of taking risks. They don’t seem to have a sense of danger! They often seem bored or restless and have difficulty staying on track unless they are highly motivated or get an immediate reward of some kind. They have difficulty delaying gratification; therefore, have difficulty working towards a long-term goal. They want what they want right away, more so than other children their age. These children require brief and repeated payoffs in order to complete long-term goals and projects. At school they will answer out of turn, lose their pencils and paper and their homework, and seem to need constant supervision.
Hyperactivity or Over-arousal. These children don’t ever seem to be able to sit still. Their hands and feet often seem to be in some kind of perpetual motion. These children have difficulty with containment. Their emotions and energy just seem to be constantly flowing. Even in their sleep, there seems to be a state of restlessness. They wake with their beds torn apart from thrashing about. They are easily aroused and have extreme mood swings (greater and more intense) than other children their age. They may have irregular sleep patterns, either sleeping so deeply that bedwetting can become a problem, or being plagued with nightmares, talking in their sleep and even sleepwalking.
We might even say these children deal with greater intensity in their lives: intense feelings, intense drive motivation, intense focus in one direction (black/white) and can have intense righteous and moral feelings.
