ADD and ADHD: Learning Disorder or Sociological Shift?

My son was diagnosed several years ago as having ADHD with severe impulsivity. Ring of fire, they called it, because of the way the brain scans of a person with this type of ADHD appear to create a ring of orange and red fire around the lobes of the brain.

When I first learned of the diagnosis, I had heard of ADHD. After all, I owned and worked in a day care center years prior, and it was impossible not to hear that at least one child in the group had been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. However, my experience with ADD and ADHD as a child care provider was very different from my reality of living with an ADHD child.

First, I must say that the consensus is that ADD and ADHD is over diagnosed and frequently misdiagnosed. Many parents who are simply lazy and impatient parents do indeed end up medicating their children instead of taking the time to work on correcting certain behaviors. Not all parents, but some do.

However, even if a large number of children are misdiagnosed or over diagnosed as having ADD and ADHD, there are still a large percentage of children (mostly inattentive type ADD without hyperactivity and mostly female) who go undiagnosed and even more who go untreated.

That being said, in 2006, 8-10% of the elementary school-aged children were diagnosed or being treated for ADD or ADHD. Up to 80% of the children diagnosed with ADD and ADHD will carry those symptoms into adolescence and on into adulthood. (CDC)

A common misconception about ADD and ADHD is that children diagnosed with this disorder are unable to learn in traditional settings, or that their learning is in some way impaired. This is actually not true. In fact, to be more accurate, it would be safe to say that these children simply learn and process differently than their non-ADD/ADHD counterparts.

It is this different way of processing and learning that draws attention to ask the question as to whether ADD/ADHD could be a distinct sociological shift in human brain development and evolution.