What's it like to have ADHD?

May 10, 2007 9:21 AM

What's it like to be a kid with ADHD?

All signs indicate that my four-year-old son has ADHD (among other initialisms). Can any of you who have ADHD tell me what it's like?

I know, that's a weird question -- how can you say what it's like to be you and not be someone else? -- but maybe you've gained insight as you've gotten older. What do you wish your parents had known about ADHD? What did your parents do right?

posted by The corpse in the library to health (18 comments total)

Boatloads of personal stories and parent advice over at ADDitudemag.com. I work for them, so this is not totally unbiased, but I'm pretty confident you'll find some content of value.
posted by sonofslim at 9:46 AM on May 10, 2007

Some quickie thoughts of an '80s childhood with ADD, without medication, but with very understanding parents:

PARENTS:
My parents were really flexible with behavioral rules.

My parents gave me quite a bit of "say" in family activities - choosing movies, for example. I was a very dominant member of our household.

My parents NEVER criticized my sister or myself. I really wish that they would have, because I cannot take any criticism now.

My parents never told me that I was ADD until mid-teenagehood. Perhaps if I had done worse in school, they would have.

SLEEP AND BOREDOM:
I have childhood memories of not being able to go to sleep. (I would read until late in the morning and wake up early. I could never take naps.)) I recall feeling like I couldn't get my brain to shut up. It would keep talking. This bothered me quite a bit. It only really stopped when I was older and got on medication. I still stayed up very very late until medication.

My mother says that I stopped taking naps at age 1.

I remember being at the nurse's office in elementary school and needing to count ceiling tiles to not be bored.

FRIENDS:
I had a very hard time making friends. Generally the friends that I did have I had to dominate them. Sometimes I could be friends with older kids who would dominate me. It was not until adulthood and medication that this resolved (sort of) and it sort of sucks because I am not good at interpersonal friendships now.

ACTIVITIES:
I read books all the time. Many each day. I was lucky that my parents were supportive of this.

My favorite thing to "play" was any pretend game. I had a doll house with little animals that I played with for years. I also liked to invent stories and scenarios for my dolls. I also liked to "write" books.

I also REALLY liked to move. In early childhood this was in a swing or on a rocking horse. In mid childhood this was on a swing set (like, almost all day, with a little portable radio). In late childhood (even teenage years), I would either rock in a big rocking lay-z-boy or spin in an office chair... for hours on end. It seemed to calm me down. As an adult on medication, I don't need this any more.

I loved playing computer games and other than reading, this made me happiest.

BEHAVIOR:
I threw fits a lot when I got frustrated. My mom knew how to calm me down, no one else could (talking very quietly, so I'd have to calm down to hear her.)

My parents let me play alone by myself and that worked out best. I probably did not do well with supervision. I would have found it constraining.

I got (and still get) easily frustrated. My parents would let me work it out on my own and wouldn't force me to continue (being on the t-ball team or whatever).

SCHOOL:
When I had teachers that encouraged me, I did very well. If they let me do what I wanted to do (read), it was fine.

I did very well in school, but I was bored ALL of the time. I wish that I could have gone to a more progressive and competitive school.
posted by k8t at 9:50 AM on May 10, 2007

What's it like to be a kid with ADHD?

Short answer: Normal.

Moderate answer: School sucks, and your kid is likely too damn smart to go there, and get bored with it regularly.

Long answer: I was never diagnosed with AD[H]D, though I'm sure I had it as a kid, as well as now. The main problem being a lacking ability to keep my attention on any one thing for more than a few minutes without 'wandering off'. School kept things regimented, so I didn't have (many) problems there, just being bored and daydreaming constantly. It was easier when I had something to do that was interesting/challenging.. but in the wonderful Georgia public education system that's a joke.

I don't think it's abnormal... kids don't want to sit in class all day, just as I don't want to sit in my cubicle all day (though now, at least, I have the freedom to get up and go for a walk to clear my head). The problem is that kids in school these days get less and less time to be kids and are expected to be adults at a (IMO) frightening young age. I think a lot of this is doctors trying to sell more and more pills on a populace and getting away with it since we are more-or-less ignorant of what we actually need, and when you factor in the modern quick-fix attitude, we are likely to believe that 'teh magac' pills will save us all.
posted by triolus at 10:03 AM on May 10, 2007

triolus: "I don't think it's abnormal... kids don't want to sit in class all day, just as I don't want to sit in my cubicle all day (though now, at least, I have the freedom to get up and go for a walk to clear my head)."

With all due respect, you don't in fact have ADD if that's the attitude you have toward it. It goes well beyond just not wanting to sit at your cubicle all day.

You are doing people who really do struggle with ADD a real disservice by judging them and minimizing their very real condition this way.
posted by loiseau at 10:12 AM on May 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

I've worked with this "population" in a counseling role for about 10 years. By "population" I mean...ADD, ADHD, Sensory Perception Disorder and other Autism-spectrum disorders, Rage and Anger disorders, early-stage schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, etc.

I've also worked with kids w/o a diagnosis (adults too, really.)

Of all the kids I've worked with who actually carried a diagnosis, I would say that only MAYBE 1 in 10 of them needed medicine AND behavior modification, versus old fashioned behavior modification.

One mistake that a LOT of people make, especially oversensitive parents and new teachers, is that kids with ADD/ADHD, etc, do NOT need FEWER expectations. They need the SAME expectations, as well as the calm, gentle support that they need to try *harder* because of their particular __________. Often, they need to go to bed earlier (of course, how many 9 year olds do you know who actually GET 10 hours of sleep every 24 hours?), eat more wholesome, natural meals (less refined sugar), and need a MORE regimented schedule until they learn to control themselves.

What they NEVER need is someone else to make excuses FOR them. (Johnny, you don't have to finish your HW because you have ADD) (Johnny, you can't be expected to sit still during a test because you have ADHD). What they use when counseled correctly, are alternative coping mechanisms, internal dialogues, and hobbies. What they NEED are consequences, but not the "what is wrong with you?!" style of punishment, either.

They don't need "if you do this"'s, they need "When you get this finished"'s. They need plausible, visible appreciation for hard work more than they need candy or presents when they do what they should have done anyway. They need encouragement, but the "hey buddy you did a great job/pat on the back" encouragement, not "WOW HONEY YOU FINALLY DID IT YOU BEAT THAT OLD ADD AND NOW WE'RE GOING TO DISNEYWORLD BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T GET DETENTION TODAY."

Hints:
Bargaining is a ploy that all kids know, those with diagnoses know best. "If I do this, can we do that" will destroy you as the guardian of a child with a brain that never quits.

Patience. You can never have enough. Imagine if 1 of every 4 times you put a dollar in a slot machine it paid out. Wouldn't you keep feeding it dollars? No turning to YES is a jackpot. I've been known, literally, to keep saying "NO" to a kid every time he walked up to me to ask me the same question for a WEEK. Calmly, politely, without sarcasm.

I'll end with a story: I used to work with a kid, we'll call him "Ben". Ben's mom was a doctor, the medical kind even, and Ben was a booger. Great kid. Smart kid. Had the glossy-eye look lots of kids with ADHD have. When we first got to know each other, Ben's style was that he would do something, get in trouble, apologize, and it would be dropped. No pre-set guidelines, no consequences. I changed that. I quietly congratulated him as he went longer and longer without getting into trouble. No prizes, just acknowledgement. He got 1 "oops" every day, one "I didn't think...", and then he'd lose his pool time for the day. He could still do anything else we offered, just no pool---because pool was what he WANTED most of all.

I realize I wrote way too much--but take me seriously. I've worked in environments that require restraint certification (It's really fun when a kid says "YOU CAN'T TOUCH ME, I'M UNDER 18!", and other kids say "uhm...yea he can, and he will if you don't put that down..."), I've disarmed kids wielding everything from words to thumbtacks to broomsticks and pencils and pocketknives. I'm known to be the stern one, the one who sets an expectation and keeps it. I'm also everyone's favorite, because I'm 100% congratulations and every day is a fresh start for everyone. I get the most hugs, the most "thank you's", and an amazing number of teenagers pull me aside to thank me for helping them learn to cope w/ ___________ when they were younger.

Bottom line: Pick a line and stand firm to it. Keep moving that line forward. Medicate ONLY if absolutely necessary. Oh, and for a 4 year old? It's DEFINATELY not necessary.
posted by TomMelee at 11:08 AM on May 10, 2007 [8 favorites]

My brother who has ADD never slept when he was young. When he was four or five his bed time was at 7 or 8 p.m., and my parents would pass out by 10 or 11 p.m. after struggling for hours to get him to sleep. At 2 a.m., he'd still be awake. And then he'd be up again by 6 or 7 a.m.

He was always creating things. When my parents wouldn't buy him Pokemon cards, he took construction paper, scissors and crayons and made something like 100 hand-drawn cards. Ever Pokemon character he'd ever seen, every character he'd ever heard, and dozens that he made up, all showed up.

In elementary school, the teachers didn't know what to do with him. He placed in to an accelerated program for gifted kids, but the program came with hours of homework every night and no amount of effort could get him to do it. Sit with him, walk him through every sentence of every assignment. "Define 'algebra.'" "Algebra? That's a funny word. I wonder who made it up. What kind of language is that? My friend told me it was Greek." (Now, do we correct him and tell him it's Arabic and go off on a 20 minute tangent, or try to stay on task? Either way, there will be pitfalls.) He got Fs on the homework, As on the exams. But he still got bad grades overall.

He got a lot of detentions for being disruptive. In group projects, he'd charm the other kids and get them off task creating something completely different than what they were supposed to do. He threw pencils. He interrupted the teacher.

Three teachers in three years told my parents they thought he'd been incorrectly placed in the gifted program. At least one thought he was mentally retarded or developmentally delayed. But he kept acing every test they gave him.

Medication helped him focus, but he hated it. Sometimes he would go on it, but my mom wouldn't for it, he would go off again.

He failed 7th grade, the same year that he built three web sites and started an online comic book. He managed to get into 8th grade by going to summer school, but he was only at regular, instead of accelerated, levels in several classes. He was more bored than ever. He struggled more. He barely passed 8th grade.

In 9th grade, it looked like he might fail again. My mom offered him $100 for every grade of B or better he got for the year. Apparently that motivated him. He made $500, passed every class. He also organized video game tournaments among his friends, and won some of those. He started hanging out with some kids who are three and six years older than him. He played laser tag and dance dance revolution and pretended to be 18 on the Internet and got really into vampires. He joined the robotics club at his high school. In his spare time, he made a short computer animated film with a friend and entered it into a national contest. They won first place.

Now he's in 10th grade. He's getting Bs and Cs, which is great for him. He seems to have learned to manage himself better. He's not on prescription drugs. He's suspicious of drugs of all kinds, prescription, illegal, whatever. He wants to control his own brain. He wants to take more math in summer school, so he can get back into the advanced math classes with his friends.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 11:08 AM on May 10, 2007

Ugh. Lots of typos. You get the idea.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 11:12 AM on May 10, 2007

Experience visual and auditory distraction. I don't have ADHD, but my partner does, and she's told me the examples linked on this page are halfway decent representations. (Flash required for "try it yourself" examples)
posted by Tholian at 11:21 AM on May 10, 2007

Is that supposed to represent that you can't read because you spend too much time looking outside at the kids playing soccer, or that you can't read because you're hallucinating things on your page?
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 11:55 AM on May 10, 2007

I was diagnosed in grade 3 and was lucky to have a mother who was a teacher and been through it before.

One of the first things my mom did was to talk to my teacher. My main problem in school was boredom, so they decided to give me my own 'special' assignments (which I actually thought was cool at that age). Whenever I finished my work and started bugging people around me, my teacher would start me on my independent work. We also had secret signals the teacher would give me and a score card that was sent home every day.

I started taking ritalyn (sp?) immediately, but only during schools hours. My parents felt that letting my mind run outside of school was a good thing. Starting in grade 5, I would usually skip my afternoon pill cause I hated medicine. There was a fairly major difference in my afternoon grades so it seems the drugs worked.

It took me until university to figure out a couple important things.

The first was to realize that not everyone's brain operated the way mine did, I had just assumed they did. My head jumps from thought to thought super quick. This is great for brainstorming, problem solving, creative writing but it sucks for memorization, a lot of math, and listening. This is also when I realized I didn't want a cure, I like the way I think.

The second realization was that classroom learning wasn't for me, and at that point I stopped going to class (luckily it was university). I could never concentrate in class, I couldn't take notes, if the prof said anything interesting, my mind was off in 100 unrelated places thinking it out. So I stopped going and studied like I normally would. I realize this isn't the best strategy for all.

I think the basic difference is that our brains jump around way more than the regular person. This can take many shapes to outside people. For instance they might seem quiet (cause they are thinking a bunch of stuff), introverted (so much going through their head they can't possibly verbalize it quick enough), absent-minded (you jump around so much you forget where you began).

That feels like enough for now. If you want to ask anything specific, my email is in my profile.
posted by dripdripdrop at 12:08 PM on May 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

great choice of tags btw :)
posted by dripdripdrop at 12:14 PM on May 10, 2007

I have attention deficit disorder, though I've never been hyperactive. I've been told I'm as close as you can get to textbook case, that if anyone has it, I do.

To describe what's it like would turn into my life story. I'll try to just give you a few salient points instead. Amusingly, this will kind of jump around topically.

I have decided not to take medication, even if it means I might not ever function as well as I could otherwise. This resistance started as concern about immediate and long term side effects. You have a choice between amphetamines (Ritalin, Dexadrine) and very new drugs (Straterra). The former class eliminated my appetite almost entirely for most of my early teen years, the latter made me paranoid and depressed. While Ritalin and such have been around for upwards of 50 years, there is simply no way to know what long term side-effects the new drugs could have. The risk is not worth it.

Beyond those pragmatic concerns, the symptoms that those medications treat are too integral a part of my character. They heavily change the way you behave and think, and I simply prefer the way I think naturally over my chemically altered state. It can raise troubling issues in a child, the implicit message being that something is wrong with their character that must be corrected chemically. I completely echo the sentiment:

This is also when I realized I didn't want a cure, I like the way I think.

The way someone with ADD works, thinks, and lives can be fairly different from the norm. It certainly makes a lot of things, like academia, incredibly painful. It will simply take more discipline for your child to study and do certain types of work than the average person.

Zoning out (or "hyperfocus") is a part of life. When some problem or project (I'm an electrical engineering student and open source developer) takes hold of me I can become very detached from the external world. My dad used to get me to eat vegetables (and products of his culinary misadventures) by asking me to talk about the project of the moment, at which point I would eat anything he handed me completely unaware.

My parents were and are wonderful. They respected my decisions about medication, are incredibly patient, and didn't let me make excuses. Don't let your kid feel they are defective, or even worse, that they are oh so unique and special and wonderful. I've seen more than a few ADD teens and adults adopt the attitude that they are too special for school or work and use it as an excuse to avoid confronting their problems. A balance must be struck.

I get through the day with a wide variety of coping strategies. Most of these are fairly individualistic (which hasn't stopped people from writing books about theirs), but I think meditation can help most ADD persons. I recommend this fantastic book as an introduction.
posted by phrontist at 1:04 PM on May 10, 2007

Many great answers -- thank you. Stickers for everybody!
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:05 PM on May 10, 2007

Wow, TomMelee totally nailed it. Read that post every week, and you'll be the perfect parent. I wish I'd had someone like Tom in my life when I was younger (most people, while they meant well, didn't have the strength of will to do that).
posted by phrontist at 1:08 PM on May 10, 2007

I didn't find out that I had ADD until I was in high school. I asked to be tested because it was so hard for me to pay attention in class. Mainly this meant that I spent most of my time in class thinking about who was going to give me a ride home, how I could get a pass out of class, whether or not I wanted to start learning how to bake, how many ceiling tiles there were in the room, ect. ect.

I am sort of glad that I didn't find out that I had it until later because it forced me to find my own ways of dealing with it without medication.
posted by thebrokenmuse at 1:19 PM on May 10, 2007

I found out just last year at 31. I am still coming to terms with viewing my entire life through this new lens, but I can tell you that while I tested really high in kindergarten and skipped a grade, my interest in schoolwork declined over the years as the need to *try* increased. I still got good grades in some classes I liked, though -- I graduated high school with grades everywhere from the high 60s to the 90s. Any good grades I did get were not as a result of doing homework and studying, though. Those were things I just couldn't bring myself to do.

As a result of all this I have always felt I was a smart person trapped in a stupid person's body, and a complete failure in life. I couldn't even manage to accomplish things that less intelligent people could. It is still very difficult to shake perceptions that have been ingrained for 26 years. Of course I have built up a lot of coping mechanisms but I nearly had a breakdown before I was diagnosed because working twice as hard as everyone else for less successful results was exhausting. I am glad I know now.
posted by loiseau at 3:48 PM on May 10, 2007

Just as a different viewpoint, as someone who was a very ADHDesque kid (see below), all the advice in TomMelee's post would have just made me hate you. In fact, many adults tried it on me, and all got was, "Wow, adults are bossy assholes who love to punish me."

Otherwise, I would just say be very sure. Maybe this will negate my point above, but maybe not. Anyway, everyone was sure when I was a kid that I was ADD. The school made my mom take me to a shrink. He looked at the descriptions given by the teacher, and talked to my mom, and was like, "Yeah, no question, ADD." And my mom said, "I really think she is just bored." And he was like, "No, really, totally textbook." Then he met me. Fifteen minutes later? "Wow, she's just really bored."
posted by dame at 6:57 PM on May 10, 2007

Dame---of course, and that's part of the hardest part---which is to say, not minding when the kid dislikes you because you're setting boundaries and enforcing them. I would have never treated you differently, and would have started each day as though the previous one had never happened.

Additionally, any shrink who would make a diagnosis sight unseen needs to lose his license, period.

And......remember that change doesn't come overnight. It's a challenge to teach someone that they can take care of themself WITHOUT quashing their creativity or fluid thinking dynamic, but I think it's necessary that they come to understand that their life is NOT out of their control. Lots of kids have hated me for a day, a week, a month, even a school year---but most of them grow up a little, lose the angsty-fear-and-deprication of 'tween or early teenage years, and we're close pals these days.

Case in point---I'm taking 3 of them paintballing tomorrow. :)
posted by TomMelee at 7:25 PM on May 10, 2007