by Cheryl Chastainn

Created on: April 13, 2008

There are varying degrees of ADHD. This can make it difficult to diagnose if your child has a mild case of ADHD. Often, though, their will be a specific cluster of disorders that tend to be associated with ADHD, and you will have been aware of them since early childhood, perhaps your pediatrician will have noticed them and has been giving you advice or special therapies.

I am the mother of 16 year old daughter with an extreme case of ADHD, and a professional at the MA level, having worked in an acute psychiatric hospital and have observed various forms of ADHD in children and teens. If your child has a medium to severe case of ADHD you are probably very aware that your child is different and that you are very frustrated. So I pull out the DSM IV and will use their guidelines with more specific and perhaps bizarre behavior that you might be seeing in your ADHD child.

"Failing to give close attention to detail" can be observed in their school work. Perhaps the child fails to complete assignments or like my daughter she used to subtract backwards. I thought she had a math learning disability, but it was nailed down to attention. Many ADHD children do not pay attention to their hygiene. They don't brush their teeth well and if you do not step in, will walk out the door with uncombed hair and shoes untied and dragging the ground. I found Velcro shoes a positive choice!

"Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities." ADHD children often move quickly from one thing to the other and fail to complete things because they get bored quickly. On the other hand, with a very high IQ child, like my daughter, she was frequently reading 5-6 books at the same time and would alternate from one to the other and be able to tell you about each one. So their can be the upside that an ADHD child may appear to be remarkable at multi-tasking on things they enjoy doing!

"Does not seem to listen when spoken to directly." Many children are like this, and they really have tuned you out. Especially when you have asked them several times to do a task they do not want to do. This is true of the ADHD child; however, the ADHD child is hearing you and then they forget to follow through with what you have asked them to do. They can frequently repeat what you said word for word and when you ask them why they didn't do it, they say,"I don't know!"

"Often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish school work and chores." The ADHD child is not organized and they

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