by Bob Welbaum

Created on: November 14, 2007

What does a teacher need to know about Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)?

During my teacher training, I took a course on educating special-needs children, and ADD was the subject I chose to research. The reason was my neighbor,
a divorced mother about my age, and her three children. To me, they seemed like normal, active kids, except the oldest boy has a tendency to reverse numbers, the middle girl has trouble organizing her thoughts, and the youngest boy is so active he seems to almost bounce off the walls.

My neighbor also happens to be a psychologist in private practice, so she knew to have all three children professionally tested. All three showed symptoms of ADD, and all three have benefited from medication. Hence my interest, and this is a summary of what I found.

There is a wealth of available information and not all of it agrees. ADD is surprisingly difficult to define. Many sources go directly into detailed descriptions without ever giving a simple layman's definition. The best definition I found was in the book How the Special Needs Brain Learns by D. A. Sousa: "Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a syndrome that interferes with an individual's ability to focus (inattention), regulate activity level (hyperactivity), and inhibit behavior (impulsivity)."

Note the terminology change from ADD to ADHD. There are three reasons for this.

First, ADD is not new. Since 1902, it has been known by many names: Still's disease, postencephalitic disorder, hyperkinesis, minimal brain damage, minimal brain dysfunction, hyperkinetic reaction of childhood, attention deficit disorder, and today, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Second, the more we have learned about this condition, the more descriptive the names have become. Names basically reflect the thinking of those respective time periods.

Third, ADD is actually a complex category of conditions, and there is some disagreement about which terms should be used. The current term in vogue is attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD); the slash symbolizes the many people, perhaps half who have ADD, who were never hyperactive.

Are there other complexities? Yes, and the exact variants make for more lively discussion. A couple of examples:

Dr. Harvey C. Parker lists three variants: predominant symptoms of inattention, predominant symptoms of hyperactivity-impulsivity, and combined symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity.

Dr. D. G. Amen lists six (labeled Types I through VI): classic ADD,

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