Before you say a child is ADD...
When a medical label becomes part of everyday jargon, watch out! Soon, just
about everyone will have the disorder. Of course, the disorder-of-the-day right
now is ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder (or ADHD if you add in the hyperactivity
that is sometimes associated with the disorder). No matter where you go, people
will tell you their kids are ADD or "Hyper" even if no doctor has ever been
consulted.
Be careful, it's important to remember that many things can create an ADD
behavior pattern. For instance, children who live in chaotic environments at
home and/or at school tend to develop a set of behaviors called "agitation" and
agitation mimics ADD. To understand this, just think about how you feel when
you've been through a day that is completely out of "sync", when nothing has
gone according to plan. By the evening, your ability to concentrate would have
disappeared, your social skills would be terrible, and you would respond
impulsively to situations. Now, imagine what it's like to deal with that every
single day.
Also, keep in mind that the word "disorder" is supposed to be reserved for
serious cases. Unfortunately, the label doesn't allow us to distinguish between
those children for whom ADD is, in fact, a disorder and those for whom it is a
set of traits. If specialists could use an alternative term such as "Attention
Deficit Traits", it might stop people from overusing the ADD label. This would
be similar to the way doctors distinguish between Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)
and Fetal Alcohol Effect (FAE). It this system were applied, then we could
finally recognize that in most of the cases presently labeled ADD, the children
actually have these behaviors as a set of traits - an annoying set of traits,
but still just a set of traits.
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