Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional is being easily distracted the same as add?

Amen.

Well, the major issue resulting in over/misdiagnosis with ADHD is the tendency to ignore the stipulation that those diagnosed suffer from symptoms that "interfere with, or reduce the quality of, social, academic, or occupational functioning," and that "several inattentive or hyperactive-impulsive symptoms are present in two or more settings." With "several" in this case meaning 6 to 9 symptoms.

It's an exceptionally high bar.

As a (hugely reductive) rule of thumb, if the child in question can focus on more than one non-passive (ie. TV) preferred activity for a sustained amount of time... they generally don't meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD.

Which is not to say that they won't be misdiagnosed...

From a cognitive process standpoint, the deficits in ADHD are primarily in dysregulated attention and dysregulated inhibition. Downstream of these, you then get difficulties with organization, initiation, etc. If a person is distracted in a situation in which any reasonable person would be inattentive, then that's not particularly dysregulated. (Aka, purpose for which the word "boring" was invented.)

And moomin's excellent point that the symptoms must present an impairment in actual function.

And, as another note, plenty of other psychiatric conditions include distractability as a symptom!