Driven to Distraction #1

For my book this semester I have been reading Driven to Distraction by Edward Hallowell and John Ratey a book about Attention Deficit Disorder and how to recognize and deal with it from childhood throughout the rest of people's lives. This was an intriguing issue that I wanted to read more about on because as I did not discover until my junior year in high school that I had ADD I wanted to see how parents deal with their kids in recognizing potentials kids of having it and how they deal with it. This disorder is one of the most common disabilities in the entire world and the most amazing this about it is that so many people do not realize that they have it because they are never once in their lives tested for it. Hallowell alluded to this when defining ADD as he said, "Many of the symptoms of ADD are so common to us all that for the term ADD to have specific meaning, rather than just be a scientific-sounding label for the complex lives we lead, we need to define the syndrome carefully. The best way to understand what ADD is and what it is not is to see how it affects the lives of people who have it" (3). The fact that ADD is so common many people don't realize that it could be affecting their lives in some ways and there are ways to fix it, but since there are not scientific labels for it, that is the reason so many don't realize they have it. For me I have always been able to get all my work done on time, but throughout my high school career I have procrastinated constantly and have seen drops in my grades due to poor grades on my final tests. These final tests were always a challenge for me and that was one of the reasons why I got tested on top of the fact that it took me a while to finish up tests, in hopes of maybe getting extended time for my ACT. I was diagnosed with ADD, but didn't havethe credentials to get extended time for the ACT. I have been taking medicine ever since and it has definitely made a significant positive difference helping me concentrate in class and be a much more effective student.