ADDHelpline is your ADD Information Source
If you are interested in learning more about how you can receive EEG Neurotherapy right in your home, using your own computer, enter your email address below.
Regular Features
THE
PARENT COACH
Dr.
Steven Richfield provides articles on many different aspects of raising a child
with ADHD.
ASK
THE ADVOCATE
Each
month we our advocate will be answering questions from our visitors about yours
and your children's rights in the educational system.
PARENTS
TALK
A mother is trying to help her teenage son learn anger management.
MOTIVATION
TIPS
Five great ideas for motivation, including The Shoe Race, Trading Places
and more.
ORGANIZATION
TIPS
Organize your child at home, and maybe find some tips that will help you
as well.
ADHD
IN THE NEWS
Headlines about ADHD, Learning Disability and Mental Disorders
Study on ADD and TV
The recent study published on watching television between the ages of one and
three and the possible link to ADD/ADHD did not take many considerations into
account. The author of the study even admits that he cannot conclude that
television watching and ADD/ADHD are linked.
Read the
Article
Back To Parenting Articles Index
HMK – High Maintenance Children
by Eileen Bailey
ADHD is one of the most researched disorders today. It is also one of the most misunderstood. The complications within a child’s life because of ADHD are extremely difficult to explain. Throughout many years, the name for this order has changed many times. Prior to 1940, children exhibiting symptoms of ADHD were considered to be emotionally disturbed or mentally retarded. Once this name had run it’s course, it was changed to Minimal Brain Dysfunction. This really didn’t seem to fit and the name was again changed to Hyperkinetic Disorder of Childhood. In the 1980’s, after additional research, it was deemed that there was more to this disorder than hyperactivity and the name was again changed to Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADD/ADHD.
This is a disorder that has been around for a long time. Medical documentation shows children with symptoms of ADHD for the past 100 years and the quest for effective treatment. Stimulant medication has been around for over 50 years in an attempt to help children cope with the symptoms.
It is my feeling that ADD/ADHD does not do anything to explain the difficulties of this disorder. There are so many aspects to this disorder that have nothing to do with “Attention.” So in our effort to create a name, we have limited our understanding to one or two symptoms of the disorder.
If we start listing a complete foray of symptoms that our children exhibit, we are thought to be complaining and unappreciative of their many wonderful characteristics. This is not true, while we can love and appreciate our children and their energetic, creative, spontaneous personalities, we also understand the challenges they face and work diligently to help them to overcome and work toward helping them fulfill their life dreams.
It is my opinion, that we again need to change the name to
encompass the many traits that seem to run rampant in children with ADHD.
My suggestion is HMK – High Maintenance Children.
I have read many of the books available on the subject, and have learned a lot. I have spoken with parents around the world about my child, their child, their students and have learned more than I could from any book. Our children are more than their attention spans. It is my child that pushed the button and shut down the escalator in the mall, my child that tried to buy a soda with the keys to my new car, it is my son (bigger and stronger now) that broke the dishwasher last week because he didn’t bother to look at what might be stuck and just yanked until everything broke free. It is my child that wet the bed for years after other children stopped and my child that required a second set of clothes to be kept in the teacher’s desk long past kindergarten.
It is my child that is pulling items off the shelves as we walk through a store and it is my child that has cost me extra money at the end of every school year because he lost his text books. It is my child that can’t sit still and gets into trouble every time he is bored. It is my child that tried to make a fireplace out of a pot and some paper. (At least he used a metal pot). It is my child that never felt like he fit in with the other children. It is my child that has failed so much, been misunderstood so much that at 16 he wants to kill himself.
But it really isn’t just my child, it is all children with ADHD. These are wonderful, funny, lovable children that require constant monitoring and care. It is these children that overrun family discussions and private moments with your husband, it is their stories, their adjustments, their crisis, their problems that take over our minds and create turmoil and adventure every day.
I have five children and you would think that when my husband and I discuss the children, their progress, their school, their lives that each child would receive about 20% of the conversation. But this is not true my HMK, receives about 80% and the other children combined receive about 20% together.
And so for the outside world looking in, well, I understand your confusion, for if it was true that all my son could not do was pay attention, well, we really wouldn’t have a problem, but there is so much more to this disorder, and we have only just begun to understand.
They are our HMKs, and we love them with all our heart.
Do you have a comment or a new name for ADHD?
Submit it here: