Do Schools Cause ADHD?

 

Q. What is behind the enormous increase in the diagnosis of Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder? What can parents do to help?

 

            There've always been kids who are antsy, owly, itchy and distractible. They didn't need a wide range of psychotropic drugs, therapy, special education classes and other expensive interventions. They just needed some simple rules to follow with clear consequences carried out if they didn't, a good diet minimizing pop and candy, a strict limit on overstimulating TV watching, and most of all, an understanding teacher and loving parents.

            They grew out of it as their interests focused in later grades.

            But now we have all these ADHD kids doing poorly in the classroom even though they have normal or above-normal intelligence and often excel in other areas, such as dramatics or sports, that require superior intelligence, discipline, focus and self-control.

A growing number of people think the problem has a lot more to do with the schools than the kids:

n      Traits of gifted kids are remarkably similar to traits of kids labeled ADHD. Could they just be bored? Intelligent, creative kids need good fuel for their high-octane brains or they'll get "flooded."

n      Most kids labeled ADHD are boys. Most boys are abstract thinkers. Most grade-school teachers are female. Most females are concrete thinkers. Could it be a simple mismatch of teaching style and student needs? Abstract thinkers need lots of structure in the early going – like phonics, traditional math and so on. Hardly any schools offer them any more.

n      The chaos and noise of the overprogrammed school day with all its group activities does nothing for any child's concentration, focus and memory.

n      More and more people say that if children were taught to read, write and figure correctly, ADHD would vanish.

Parents should urge schools to teach reading with systematic, intensive, explicit phonics, and make other changes to help kids stop, look, listen and learn.

 

Homework: See www.adhdfraud.com and "Fifty Tips on the Classroom Management of ADD" in the book, "Driven to Distraction" by Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., and John J. Ratey, M.D.