My dd looked ADHD til.., well, she still looks that ways sometimes. But she does not have it. She is super organized and can focus when needed, though it is painful and her threshold for boredom is low and she will become hyperactive when as a side effect.

I'm nodding here.

My DD very much looks ADD inattentive-- when she is listening to the perfectionism monster under the bed in her mind.

This is her personal demon. She even has some of the other features that (mystifyingly, to my mind, honestly) make it onto checklists-- the hyperfocus (I mean, really, what PG kid doesn't have hyperfocus??) etc.

But it's entirely situational and it's entirely dependent upon her own internal state of mind.

Do stimulants improve her ability to stay on task? No, not really-- but they do work to the same degree that they do on pretty much everyone. There is a reason that study drugs and caffeine are a thing on college campuses, YK? It's not because all of those kids have ADD.

I'm very very sure that ADD exists. I've known some people in my life who are clearly experiencing something profoundly different from normative in executive functions, and the impairment is such that they do not experience life the same way that others do. I have ZERO problem with psychoactive meds for those people-- but what I do question is the use of such meds in children who are (at most) borderline cases.

If the environment is the problem, changing elements of that environment and fostering flexibility in the CHILD seems to me to be the better long-term strategy, not applying some corrective measure to the child... I'm probably not stating that well, but it just really bothers me that classroom teachers are seemingly losing sight of the fact that there is a RANGE of normal development in children... and pathologizing parts of that range in the name of doing things the way that they like seems REALLY wrong.

So not providing large motor breaks? Whoah-- that's a red flag to me. This is something that even kids without actual ADD/ADHD are going to find hard in this age group-- well, some of them will, anyway.

frown

Medications are not benign. They are a permanent choice-- you cannot "un-do" a trial of psychoactive meds. Period. There are persistent shifts in neurotransmitter function that occur when one of those stimulant meds is offered repeatedly.

That's fine if there is an underlying neurochemical abnormality. Not so fine when it's someone who didn't use to HAVE anything 'wrong' with that biogenic amine neurotransmitter system. Particularly so in those whose brain development isn't complete. Bad, bad, bad juu-juu.

I have VERY strong feelings about this. But I have pretty good reasons.

Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.