http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9597240%255E12284,00.html
Growing pains
Driven to Distraction: ADHD
8pm, The LifeStyle Channel
A YOUNG man with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder once described it
as growing up with a tornado in his brain. Tonight, another young man says
it's like having 90 television screens flashing around your head at once,
with the channels constantly changing.
This is an attempt to dispel some of the myths about ADHD - such as, it's
the result of bad parenting - and to give a sense of what it's like to have
or to rear a child with the condition.
It introduces us to several parents and their unruly offspring. The despair
in these families is palpable. Life is lived constantly on the edge. One
woman describes how her two-year-old had temper tantrums that lasted all
day. It's just a phase, people said. "It was so hard to make them understand
I needed help," she says.
"He never slept. I didn't have a night's sleep until he was five," says
another worn-out mum. "His hands are never still, his feet are never still;
if he's sitting still, he's fiddling," says another.
Rather than just a transitory phase, the problems tend to grow with the
child, who's less and less able to meet the expectations of school and
society. Frustration turns to rage and toddler tantrums to explosive
outbursts that get children expelled from school. "I punched my mum so hard
in the face she had a black eye," an 11-year-old tells us.
Ben Polis, 22, the young man who likened ADHD to having a battery of TV sets
in his head, moved through six schools in 12 years and was so violent that
his father almost took out a restraining order against him. (Polis has
written a book, Only a Mother Could Love Him, that gives his perspective on
growing up with ADHD.)
So what makes these children such monsters? The program stresses it's a
neurological deficit, not a discipline one, and gives us a science-lite
explanation of why this is so.
The symptoms can include hyperactivity, distractibility, disorganisation,
impulsiveness and low tolerance of frustration, sometimes to extreme
degrees. People with ADHD often have co-existing language problems, such as
dyslexia, and difficulty putting their thoughts into words. More often than
not they have high IQs that can blind teachers to the underlying disability;
the child will be unfairly written off as lazy and disruptive.
But there is an upside to ADHD. As one doctor tonight says, it can coexist
with many strengths and there are leaders in the sciences, medicine, the
arts and music with the condition.
But how do you tame the ADHD demon? The usual response of doctors is
medication. Many of the parents tonight say Ritalin has transformed their
children's lives. Polis is quite frank: without Ritalin, he'd be in jail, he
says.
But giving mind-altering drugs to children is controversial. "How do you say
to a six-year-old kid, well you're bad, you do naughty things, so we're
giving you drugs?" the program asks.
One psychologist insists while Ritalin might make a child more manageable in
the short term, it does nothing to help ADHD in the long term. He advocates
neuro-feedback - which uses computer games to enable a person to learn to
control their brainwaves - as a permanent solution.
While the National Health and Medical Research Council says this is unproven
therapy, one family tonight says it's paying off for them.
The program doesn't offer any ideal fixes but it does give an insight into
what it's like to be literally driven to distraction.