Attention deficit disorder (ADD) describes a condition in which a child shows an inability to pay prolonged attention to a single task and is easily distracted. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) describes a condition in which a child shows an inability to stay still and needs to be in constant motion. Both terms are becoming increasingly common as diagnostic labels given to restless children with wandering minds when they misbehave or are particularly disruptive at home or, especially, at school.

In addition, there are often two “deficits” at work, not one. There is the inability to pay enough attention, and there is also the inability to get enough attention. Perhaps because these children receive so much negative adult attention, they hunger for positive attention even more. They are often “attention getters.”

Parents and teachers often find ADD/ADHD children difficult to manage. Children who suffer from ADD/ADHD are constantly corrected and frequently punished by frustrated and angry adults, and they often internalize the negative treatment they are given by thinking of themselves in negative terms.

“I'm bad.” “I'm stupid.” “I'm a troublemaker.” “I'm a misfit.” “I'm a loser.” They see that adults view them like this, and they come to view themselves the same way. Such name-calling is used to justify treating themselves badly and only lowers their self-esteem.

Growing Up in an Overstimulating World

Consider the world of experience and play in which today's children grow up. For many parents it seems different from the one in which they grew up.

• Children are given more information about life and the larger world at a younger age than ever before.

• Children are growing up in a world with an ever-increasing rate of social, cultural, and technological change.

• Children's entertainment is increasingly sensational, violent, and quickly moving to excite interest and appeal to a short attention span.

• Children are given more consumer choices than they know how to make.

• Children are enrolled in more after-school activities than most of their parents ever were.

• Children are given more aggressive media advertising — promoting all that is new and different — than they can resist easily.

• Children are given more electronic forms of entertainment that require changing attention quickly and doing multiple tasks at the same time.

• Children are given more new toys and possessions than they can use.

• Children are exposed to more fad and fashion than they can keep up with.

• Children are becoming increasingly dependent on external sources of entertainment to escape boredom, becoming less able to entertain themselves.

Stimulation Overload

Given all the stimulation from information, entertainment, and sheer number of choices that children are given today, is it any wonder that they grow up in a state of stimulation overload? Is it any wonder that they become culturally conditioned to let their attention wander, to be restless, or to become easily dissatisfied? Is it any wonder that they have a fascination with novelty, a hunger for the new and different, a need to be occupied by multiple tasks, an intolerance for boredom, an aversion to routine, a disinterest in the old and the same, and a horror of inactivity?

Our society has created a disconnect between how children are conditioned by culture and how they are expected to behave at school — to sit still, to be quiet, to follow directions, to focus on one thing at a time, and to spend sustained time working on unexciting instructional tasks.