Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ???

[Sisifo]

What do you think of the infamous ADD? To tell the truth I have only heard Americans pointing it out as a real thing, and as a valid explanation of failure at school. Me, being from the old education of Spain I grew up in a "la letra con sangre entra" -Blood makes the texts to get in-, physical punishment system. Maybe not blood, but I had to study often on my knees and received countless knocks in the head when I would miss my answer, and write hundreds of times tedious lines such as "I will not bother the teacher with silly questions..." That sort of thing.

I thought that it was just that my education was too retrograde, but I find out now that in 1997 the British Psychological Society considered "The idea that children who don’t attend or who don’t sit still in school have a mental disorder is not entertained by most British clinicians". That stance changed and in 2007 and 2009, the same institution issued similar percentages of affected children as the USA.

In Spain, still, and also in the rest of the countries where I have lived, it is regarded as mere lack of discipline (not necessarily physical) from the school and household. And actually, they blame each other as too permissive. In China and Vietnam the idea is unthinkable.

I agree with that, but it could be that I am biased by my own cultural experience.

[stripes4]

I'm sorry... I could only read half way. I saw a butterfly.

No, really, in school I used to get up and wander around. The teacher would look up and I would be at the back of the class looking at the library books. It got better with time, as I learned I had to learn to focus, but I still struggle to do one task and see it through to the end before I start on something else. I can have 4 or 5 jobs all on the go at once, in different states of completion. I don't know if it's a 'condition' but I'm used to it now. It's just me...

[Atheist-Lite]

Neurological explanations or dietary explanations are not enough to explain non-confomrist behaviour. What we need is a return to strict discipline and rote learning so that the creative imagination is not simply crushed but utterly removed from the learning, cough indocrination, process.

[redunderthebed]

Neurological explanations or dietary explanations are not enough to explain non-confomrist behaviour. What we need is a return to strict discipline and rote learning so that the creative imagination is not simply crushed but utterly removed from the learning, cough indocrination, process.

Crushing non-conformist behaviour and imagination is the stock and trade of the western education system i fail to see your point.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You know, asthma used to be considered a purely psychological condition. In It the asthmatic boy gets an inhaler of plain water with a drop of camphor from his pharmacist. More work on the subject proved otherwise.

[zmonsterz]

You know, asthma used to be considered a purely psychological condition. In It the asthmatic boy gets an inhaler of plain water with a drop of camphor from his pharmacist. More work on the subject proved otherwise.

boy: *dies from asthma attack*
Doc: ... I marvel at the powers of the mind

[Azathoth]

ADHD is overdiagnosed. Some kids are just little bastards

[JimC]

ADHD is overdiagnosed. Some kids are just little bastards

It may well be over -diagnosed, but I have seen kids whose diagnosis, and subsequent Ritalin prescriptions, worked absolute wonders. In the past, such kids would leave school early and dig ditches...

I am certainly one for reasonably firm discipline, and clear boundaries in educational settings. However, that can work within a rigorous but creative curriculum, that goes beyond wrote learning to develop some heavy duty skills...

[Atheist-Lite]

ADHD is overdiagnosed. Some kids are just little bastards

It may well be over -diagnosed, but I have seen kids whose diagnosis, and subsequent Ritalin prescriptions, worked absolute wonders. In the past, such kids would leave school early and dig ditches...

I am certainly one for reasonably firm discipline, and clear boundaries in educational settings. However, that can work within a rigorous but creative curriculum, that goes beyond wrote learning to develop some heavy duty skills...

Some suffer from poor nutrition. Junk food does things to the brain. I think they did a study with fish oil and found it improved behaviour.

[JimC]

ADHD is overdiagnosed. Some kids are just little bastards

It may well be over -diagnosed, but I have seen kids whose diagnosis, and subsequent Ritalin prescriptions, worked absolute wonders. In the past, such kids would leave school early and dig ditches...

I am certainly one for reasonably firm discipline, and clear boundaries in educational settings. However, that can work within a rigorous but creative curriculum, that goes beyond wrote learning to develop some heavy duty skills...

Some suffer from poor nutrition. Junk food does things to the brain. I think they did a study with fish oil and found it improved behaviour.

Nutrition can certainly be a factor. Some schools in Australia have experimented with providing a healthy breakfast for students, with good results.

[FBM]

I don't know much about it, tbh, but I don't think parents who use TV as a babysitter and who keep the kids engulfed in electronic stimulation every waking hour are doing much to help their kids. A stick, a rock and a cardboard box in the front yard should help the little blighters settle down and exercise their imagination instead of pushing buttons constantly to have their imagination electronically stimulated for them.

[Atheist-Lite]

I don't know much about it, tbh, but I don't think parents who use TV as a babysitter and who keep the kids engulfed in electronic stimulation every waking hour are doing much to help their kids. A stick, a rock and a cardboard box in the front yard should help the little blighters settle down and exercise their imagination instead of pushing buttons constantly to have their imagination electronically stimulated for them.

Modern electronic media are like a blank sheet of paper. A kid can be playing a flight simulator and learning a great deal about self control and system dynamics or they can be playing a photo-realistic first shooter. Violent 'murder simulators' don't do kids or young adults any good although that is a different debate.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

ADHD is overdiagnosed. Some kids are just little bastards

It may well be over -diagnosed, but I have seen kids whose diagnosis, and subsequent Ritalin prescriptions, worked absolute wonders. In the past, such kids would leave school early and dig ditches...

I am certainly one for reasonably firm discipline, and clear boundaries in educational settings. However, that can work within a rigorous but creative curriculum, that goes beyond wrote learning to develop some heavy duty skills...

Brenda used to stop in the middle of the room and try to remember where she was going. I knew she'd forgotten her Ritalin when she did that.

[Svartalf]

Honestly, they did not need to punish me in school to get things to get in, actually, when I felt the lessons were like punishment, I tended NOT to be able to retain the material (which is why I'm so bad at math, or why I was 14 before I started being any good with English)

However, I know there must be some thing deserving of the name "attention deficit disorder", since I've noticed to my immense chagrin that my attention span has dropped immensely since I started suffering from clinical depression... before 1991, I could spend hours and hours bent on a single subject, after my 1991 depression, my attention span never was the same, and in the last years, with depression becoming extreme, it has dropped to a level of a few minutes (less than 10) max... it usually take me more than 3 hours to view a single 45mn video, and several weeks to read a book that would normally have lasted less than a day.

Depression and/or side effects from various drugs (prescribed for said depression) seem to be involved, but I don't know exactly what the problem is.

[Svartalf]

You know, asthma used to be considered a purely psychological condition. In It the asthmatic boy gets an inhaler of plain water with a drop of camphor from his pharmacist. More work on the subject proved otherwise.

bad example... in IT, the boy seems to really be suffering from a psycho somatic problem, and I know that stress has been known to cause bouts of asthma with me, or make them worse.