As an eleven-year-old child, I had never heard of Attention Deficit Disorder. My older brother and I were the well-behaved, well-mannered, perfect children. When my younger brother came along, we did not know what to call his behavior. We called it “wild” before we had any technical name to call it. We just figured it was the terrible twos. Then the terrible threes came along and then the terrible fours. Every year we would say “he will grow out of it” but to our disappointment, he never did.

There are also non-stimulants available to the ADD child. Catapres, Tenex, and Imipramine are three. These are used when the symptoms do not get better with the stimulants named above. Also, non-stimulants are used when the side effects of stimulants become an overwhelming problem. The stimulants and non-stimulants alike work like miracles to these children that did not know how to focus and sit still prior to this pill. Not having ADD, it is hard for me to understand what it is like to all of a sudden have this feeling of control. Some explain that the medicines are like filters, purifying what comes through the brain. Others say that it is a lens that takes the light from the world and focuses it into a point. Another explanation is that it is a screen to keep the distracting mosquitoes out of their brain. No matter how you put it, this drug is helping many children as well as adults live a normal life from day to day.

There are many different ways thought to treat a child with ADD. You can change their diet, their daily routine, you can give this vitamins or medications. There have been many studies on megavitamins, some showing them to work, and some showing them to do the complete opposite. In one study of megavitamins “four children exhibited more disruptive behavior on megavitamins than when they received the placebo” (Ingersol and Goldstein, 25). A man names Dr. Levinson thought that ADD and ADHD may be related to the inter-ear system, as with dyslexia. A study was conducted where one hundred ADD children were given anti-motion-sickness medication, 90 percent of the children responded positively. Some suggestions also include changes in this things the ADD child eats. Suggested are additive-free and low sugar diets, but are not actually proven to help.

The only two cases I currently know of ADD/ADHD are in males. This made me wonder about the male to female ratio of ADD. In many of the older books I have researched they say that ADD is much more commonly found in males than females. In more recent books this is said to be wrong. In 1997 it is said that “recent predictions have even suggested that the male to female ratio may be as low as 3:1 or even 2:1” (Quinn, 6). This shows that hundreds of thousands of girls in the United States are affected by ADD. The reason for misdiagnosis in girls in the past is that many girls with ADD show different symptoms than those of boys. Girls with ADD lack the typical symptoms of hyperactivity and impulsions that the boys have. ADD girls tend to develop symptoms of anxiety and depression, which causes them to be diagnosed as mood disorders and not attention disorders (Quinn, 6). Girls with ADD have severe problems starting at puberty such as: emotional over reactivity, mood swings, and impulsive thoughts.

Studies indicate that fifteen to fifty percent of children with ADD outgrow, or are no longer affected by the symptoms. (Quinn, 93) The others continue to have difficulty with functioning into pre-adulthood. Out of those adolescents, fifty p

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