“Sit Still and Pay Attention!”

Living With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

“All along, Jim had said that Cal was just spoiled and that if we—meaning me—cracked down on him, he’d shape up. Now here was this doctor telling us that it wasn’t me, it wasn’t us, it wasn’t Cal’s teachers: something really was wrong with our little boy.”

CAL suffers from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a condition characterized by inattentiveness, impulsive behavior, and hyperactivity. The disorder is estimated to affect from 3 to 5 percent of all school-age children. “Their minds are like TV sets with faulty channel selectors,” says learning specialist Priscilla L. Vail. “One thought leads to another, with no structure or discipline.”

Let us briefly consider three major symptoms of ADHD.

Inattentiveness: The child with ADHD cannot filter out unimportant detail and focus on one topic. Thus, he is easily distracted by extraneous sights, sounds, and smells.a He is paying attention, but no single feature in his environment stands out. He cannot determine which one deserves his primary concentration.

Impulsive behavior: The ADHD child acts before he thinks, without considering the consequences. He shows poor planning and judgment, and at times his actions are dangerous. “He rushes into the street, onto the ledge, up the tree,” writes Dr. Paul Wender. “As a result he receives more than his share of cuts, bruises, abrasions, and trips to the doctor.”

Hyperactivity: Hyperactive children are constantly fidgeting. They cannot sit still. “Even when they are older,” Dr. Gordon Serfontein writes in his book The Hidden Handicap, “careful observation will reveal some form of continuous movement involving the legs, feet, arms, hands, lips or tongue.”

Yet, some children who are inattentive and impulsive are not hyperactive. Their disorder is sometimes referred to simply as Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADD. Dr. Ronald Goldberg explains that ADD “can occur without any hyperactivity at all. Or it can occur with any degree of hyperactivity—from barely noticeable, through rather annoying, to highly disabling.”

What Causes ADHD?

Over the years, attention problems have been blamed on everything from bad parenting to fluorescent lighting. It is now thought that ADHD is associated with disturbances in certain brain functions. In 1990 the National Institute of Mental Health tested 25 adults with ADHD symptoms and found that they metabolized glucose more slowly in the very areas of the brain that control movement and attention. In about 40 percent of ADHD cases, the individual’s genetic makeup seems to play a role. According to The Hyperactive Child Book, other factors that may be associated with ADHD are the use of alcohol or drugs by the mother during pregnancy, lead poisoning, and, in isolated cases, diet.

The ADHD Adolescent and Adult

In recent years doctors have found that ADHD is not just a childhood condition. “Typically,” says Dr. Larry Silver, “parents will bring in a child for treatment and say, ‘I was the same when I was a kid.’ Then they’ll admit they still have problems waiting in line, sitting through meetings, getting things done.” It is now believed that about half of all children with ADHD carry at least some of their symptoms into adolescence and adulthood.

During adolescence, those with ADHD may shift from risky behavior to delinquency. “I used to worry that he wouldn’t get into college,” says the mother of an ADHD adolescent. “Now I just pray that he stays out of jail.” That such fears may be valid is shown by a study comparing 103 hyperactive youths with a control group of 100 children who did not have the disorder. “By their early 20s,” reports Newsweek, “the kids from the hyperactive group were twice as likely to have arrest records, five times as likely to have felony convictions and nine times as likely to have served time in prison.”

For an adult, ADHD poses a unique set of problems. Dr. Edna Copeland says: “The hyperactive boy may turn into an adult who changes jobs frequently, gets fired a lot, fiddles all day and is restless.” When the cause is not understood, these symptoms can strain a marriage. “In simple conversations,” says the wife of a man with ADHD, “he wouldn’t even hear everything I said. It’s like he was always somewhere else.”

Of course, these traits are common to many people—at least to a degree. “You have to ask if the symptoms have always been there,” says Dr. George Dorry. For example, he notes that if a man has been forgetful only since he lost his job or since his wife gave birth, that’s not a disorder.

Furthermore, if one truly has ADHD, the symptoms are pervasive—that is, they affect almost every aspect of the person’s life. Such was the case with 38-year-old Gary, an intelligent, energetic man who could not seem to complete a single task without being distracted. He has already held more than 120 jobs. “I had just accepted the fact that I couldn’t succeed at all,” he said. But Gary and many others—children, adolescents, and adults—have been helped to cope with ADHD. How?

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