I first heard about “attention deficit disorder” in the 1980s, when I started working as a consulting pediatrician in Prince Edward Island. I started being referred these children, most often boys, who had difficulty in school and were always disrupting class. Many parents didn’t believe in ADD. They would say, “My child is just a little hyperactive, what’s wrong with that?” In the late ’80s, the name was changed to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Over time, more people began recognizing it, and we were able to help children, to a degree, with medicines.
At first, I saw more boys than girls. Studies showed the ratio can be as high as ten to one. The main reason is that people were only looking at boys that disrupt the classroom, the so-called troublemakers—frustrated, lashing out. Generally speaking, girls, while they were sitting there, looking at the teacher as if they were paying attention, were zoning out and daydreaming. Among adult patients, the gender gap has been significantly narrowing. What I’ve learned is that everyone’s ADHD is different. I’ve never seen two people with identical symptoms. I even have patients who are twins that are very different. It’s a genetic condition. I’ve seen one family with three generations affected by ADHD: a parent, their four-year-old son, and the grandfather.
