Flight ADHD Now Boarding

I am cutting and pasting a recent email sent to me by my sister which describes, so perfectly, an accurate description of ADHD.

Why?

Because we have a very deep crevasse of a hunch, that this is indeed what is contributing to Harper's frustrations and anxiety.

While ADHD is quickly passed off as a behavioral disorder where the kid is merely jumping all over and can't sit still (and, yes, this IS a component), the following reveals a side to ADHD which gets dismissed all too easily:Comprehension and ADHD are linked.

Think of it this way...people usually say that kids with ADHD are very distractible and inattentive. That's actually inaccurate. What they are is hyper-attentive, which means that they are attentive to everything around them, not being able to filter out that which is not relevant for the task at hand.

So a kid with ADHD while trying to do his work is attentive to the pencil sharpener noise, to another kid moving his chair, to the door opening and closing, to the itchiness of his shirt tag against his skin, to his hunger pains, to random thoughts that the work brings to mind. All these things come to the forefront of these kids' minds vying for equal attention. Kids without ADHD may hear/see/feel/think these same things, but are able to file away the random distraction or thought, set it to the side, in order to focus on what they're supposed to. For the child with ADHD, that filter is not there, or has not been "turned on".

So, absolutely, Harper could be "reading"/parroting the words out loud, but not comprehending the story, its details, etc because that tiny, little, amazing brain of hers is going a 100 miles a minute recording and responding to everything around her.

As of yet, we don't know for sure that ADHD is the culprit, but as we document all that has happened with Harper over the past few years, we seem to continually land here.I honestly never thought we'd be on this flight, but we're coming in for a landing, and once we do, we need to find luggage claim and retrieve the right help for my little girl with the travelling mind.

Let's just hope we can find our luggage and get moving!