OK, I'm going to throw my two cents in here and hopefully not get too many people ticked off. As with many of the posters above, I am also very annoyed at people who use it as an excuse for bad behavior. Out of all of the people that I have met that supposedly "had" ADHD (or ADD), I have not met one that truly
had a mental disorder.
In fact, I am one who believes that ADHD (as it is defined now) does not really exist.
What? Healthy, normal, energetic kids don't like being shut up indoors and forced to sit still for 3-6 hours a day? There must be something wrong with them! Let's call it a disorder and give them "medicine" for it so that drug companies can make money off of it.
Look at the
symptoms list (
page 2 also).
It seems as if it were constructed by adults who fail to see this from the children's perspective. Of course a kid will be "fidgeting, squirming when seated" if they are cooped up in a classroom all day. They are "distracted easily" and "have difficulty paying attention" because they are
bored not because there is something "wrong" with them. They have no idea as to why they are in school or how it is relevant to their life. They simply don't care about it.
If you look at the last section (on page 2), I'm sorry, but all of those "symptoms" are just an excuse for bad parenting. If a child isn't properly taught manners, how could you expect him to display proper manners?
ADHD is just an excuse for bad behavior, bad parenting, and allowing drug companies to make money off god knows what they're giving those kids.
tl:dr
- ADHD, as it is defined now, is not a real disorder in my eyes
- Most of the symptoms are normal for healthy children
- The rest are just an excuse for bad parenting