ADHD Should You Treat?   Frank Barnhill M.D.
 

We must keep in mind that the treatment of ADHD may include changing a person’s home, school, or work environment, helping them learn and apply positive changes in their behavior, as well as teaching them new skills for coping with life’s many ups and downs.  A more realistic question would be should everyone who is ADHD receive treatment?  The answer is yes in 100 percent of those who are ADHD.  Whether that treatment includes medication, modifications, to their surroundings, or just positive skills training, cannot be determined without an adequate, accurate assessment by a qualified health care provider.

Now, before you jump to the wrong conclusions, let me again stress that treatment can simply be helping change that person’s ability to function in life.  Treatment does not, I repeat, does not have to include medications in about twenty to thirty percent of ADHD’ers.

In order to help you further understand the complexity of our perception of ADHD, let’s look at a couple of real life situations.  If your child seemed to be born with the ability to throw a baseball at 70 miles per hour and really wanted to play baseball, I’m sure you would do all you could to help him or her learn to focus on throwing the ball accurately.  Such training would help make him or her an athletic standout in school, and possibly help get a scholarship.  Boy, you’d really be proud wouldn’t you?  You could tell everyone in town about your star player with the really big scholarship.  Why, he or she just might become a pro and make millions!

Now, let’s look at the ADHD child in a similar situation.  You discover at any early age that your son has an unusual ability to calculate all types of numbers in his head.  He never seems to need pencil and paper, much less a calculator.  He just also happens to be the worst reader in his fifth grade class.  He’s often told you he’d life to be an engineer just like his uncle Tony.  He has the math abilities, but you know he won’t make it in engineering school if he can’t focus on reading.  He probably also won’t qualify for a scholarship to college due to his poor reading skills.  Since, he’s very difficult to teach and oppositional at times, are you going to just step back and decide he will probably amount to nothing?  No, you decide to enroll him in a reading program such as Sylvan Systems.  The road to success will be a little rocky, but when the time comes, you can also be just as proud.  Especially when he gets that scholarship and matures to be successful in life, with a great paying job and a family.

So, what’s the difference?  I talk to parents everyday who are willing to go the extra mile for the first child.  What about the second child?  Can you imagine the difference it would make in that child’s lifetime, if he or she were able to function on a normal academic level.

Well, the biggest difference lies in you frustration tolerance.  The first child won’t be as difficult to teach as the second.  That’s what makes teaching and raining an ADHD’er such a challenge.

The absolute worst thing that could happen would be to treat a person, who did not need treatment.  Everyone has a few traits found in ADHD children, but not everyone is ADHD.  So, once again, let me stress how important it is to make an accurate diagnosis.  Just because your Aunt Mabel said your son is ADHD, doesn’t mean it’s true!

Well, by now I suspect you agree that behavior training does have a place in ADHD.  I also suspect you’ll witness a truly surprising thing when your ADHD person learns to focus and organize.  Suddenly, their lives become very productive and satisfying.  They have a relentless drive to succeed, can learn new work skills rapidly, tend to be highly creative, and can develop great personalities.  Guess what?  Your life will also become easier and more satisfying.  You can take pride in what you have done.  Hey, it’s just possible that your ADHD’er could be the next Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, a "million-dollar-per-picture" movie star, or even president of the United States.  Boy, that would really be something to brag about!

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