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(Applause)
When Heidi asked me to come up a to speak to you
and an invitation by the way for which I'm grateful and honored
the I thought what am I gonna say to
what is largely a believe a group of parents in loved ones have
people with ADHD in and so she wanted me to do something a little new in a little
different and i sat down and I said you know
what ideas what I want any family that we had seen
in our clinic to understand by the time we had finished working with that family
by the time we finish the evaluation and
the counting of that family what what would be the thirty take home ideas
I tried to reduce it to 10 by the way but that's just not possible
and 30 was even a bit of a struggle there's another 30 I left out
but I I think I've these as sort of the touchstone ideas that a family
needs to understand if they really are going to appreciate the both the nature
of this disorder in a child
and what it means for the raising and management love that child successfully
so we're gonna have some fun with this because I've not done
this presentation in this way ever before and you may advise me never to do
it again
we'll see obviously the first idea is to
know the disorder and we begin at a very elementary stated this disorder
this is a developmental disability that is the first thing you need understand a
disability i've what
there are two psychological traits that are not developing
in this child on time so
let's clarify that a developmental disability means that you were showing
age inappropriate behavior doesn't mean that your behavior is pathological
it just means it's not appropriate for your age
so understand one thing ADHD is different from normal
in a quantitative way not a qualitative way
developmental disorders differ from psychopathology
us a psychopathology is a gross aberration in your behavior that we can
recognize
at any age if you are bipolar if you are schizophrenic
if you have major depression we don't need to adjust the criteria for your age
because those are grossly abnormal conditions
autism would be another one those are not developmental disabilities
a developmental disability is a delay in the rate
up a normal trait what distinguishes this child
from other children who don't have the disorder
is the degree of the delay they will go through the same stages that others
would go through
in normal development but not at the same time
and when the streets reach their ultimate
maturity which by the way is your early thirties
the person with the ADHD will be leveling off
at a degree well behind it
that up where the general population has leveled off
in that rate so delay does not mean
lag it doesn't mean temporary this is a chronic
lag in the development up the straits
but the important thing is that the difference between this child and other
children
is quantitative it is like someone sitting next to you who is
shorter or taller it is like someone who is
more athletic or less athletic these are not qualitative differences
the quantitative so that is what separates your child from others the
decree
above the delay is the distinction I say this because so many trade books written
for parents
have argued that ADHD is a qualitatively different human
your child is a little hunter and he has to go to school with farmers
your child has a gift that other children do not have
this is nonsense this is utter gibberish there never was never will be
any science don't support those ideas ADHD is not a qualitative
different state of humanity from other people
it is much more like being better or worse
at writing taller or shorter in your height
better or worse at language those are quantitative differences
that's important because otherwise we stigmatize these people as coming from a
different planet you know one is from Venus another from mars
to popularize or two take up a popular
view gender differences between men and women but you get the point
people with ADHD are not different from normal
other than in the degree of the delay