My life is one of ADHD. I have ADHD, my five children have varying degrees of ADHD, and I am the founder and director of a private school and center for children with ADHD and other emotional/behavioral challenges. I have seen the misery that can come from ADHD. I also have seen the stress of ADHD turned into success. In my blogs, I will be sharing my experiences with ADHD. My purpose is to give hope to parents of children with ADHD, teachers of students with ADHD, and individuals who have ADHD themselves. Something important to understand about ADHD is that the well-known symptoms are inattention, difficulty staying on task, impulsivity, and forgetting things. However, in addition to these characteristics, there are over 90 other ADHD characteristics. The combination and intensity of these characteristics can vary greatly from person to person. I created a rating scale for these 90+ characteristics for parents, teachers, and individuals to rate each characteristic on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being not at all, and 10 being to a degree that it creates stress, frustration, and/or concern on a regular basis. This chart not only helps identify the ADHD characteristics of the child or adult, but it also helps determine whether or not the person has functional ADHD or problematic ADHD. A person with functional ADHD has a minimal amount of the ADHD characteristics, and those characteristics are mild -- they wouldn't rate over a 5 on the ADHD rating scale. However, there is another category of ADHD. If a person has many of the ADHD characteristics and/or the severity of those characteristics is between 7 and 10, he has problematic ADHD. Problematic ADHD creates just what its name suggests – a whole host of problems. A child with problematic ADHD will, on a regular basis, have feelings of frustration, discouragement, anger, depression, and hopelessness. He is at greater risk for frequent failure, getting in trouble, people being upset with him, social difficulties, having low-self esteem, engaging in risky behavior, having problems at school, and experiencing emotional and behavioral challenges. Problematic ADHD can cause havoc in the home, school, work, and the person’s entire life. Determining the ADHD characteristics that your child, student, or you have, and whether or not it is functional or problematic ADHD is the first step in taking control of the ADHD rather than letting it control your child’s life, or your own. I offer a free download of this scale on my website: www.theadhdexpert.com or you can email me at jaydra@theadhdexpert.com
