As it has been explained to me (I am not a psychologist), ADD is not the inability to focus, it's the inability to focus when it's not engaging. The inability to choose to do the right thing now to avoid problems later. The inability to choose to stay focused in the face of distraction. Just because my child can focus on reading a book or playing a computer game or tests well 1:1 in an ideal environment with an engaging tester does not mean they do not have ADD...

Ironically enough we have had the opposite problem with DD#2, we felt she had ADD, school thought she was fine. We had her diagnosed, started medication and saw a dramatic improvement in homelife (getting her attention, following instructions, completing tasks, general functioning, homework, ability to respond verbally to people). She herself was clear from the first day that medication made her life easier and she wanted to keep taking the medication and for it to work all day.... It was like a child with bad eyesight seeing clearly for the first time "Wow is this what the world is supposed to be like? Yes I want to wear glasses!". Handwriting improved, writing improved, reading improved. Overnight improvements, some of which disappear again off medication.

But school think we are nuts, because she's well behaved, sits nicely at mat time and looks like she is paying attention, and doing well in school. Not doing well relative to her IQ, but doing great relative to her classmates, particularly given her age and grade skip. All the problems like producing pretty much no work when alone at her desk, being unable to keep track of her possessions, return library books in library lessons (which are always right there in her bag), regularly failing to correct follow instructions the school has dismissed as "age appropriate". In a (very wriggly) boy heavy class she's an ideal specimen and we look crazy for thinking there was a problem.

We feel pretty anxious about putting a small child on serious medication, but I feel more anxious about the long term mental health problems I felt she was at risk of from NOT being able to perform as she was capable of. Depression, anxiety and other serious mental health issues are rife in the family and I could already see her going there.

Last edited by MumOfThree; 10/08/12 06:46 PM.