This is what my friend has say:
One of my children is being treated for Attention Deficit Disorder. Sunday evening was designated as ‘family game night’ and illustrates the potential problems of interaction between two people with ADD.
Friday evening was spent attending school activities, Saturday was spent on homework, housecleaning, and a birthday party, and Sunday was filled with church and shopping. In other words, a fairly hectic few days. On top of that, I had gotten just a few hours of sleep for each of the previous two nights and was anxious about the coming work week. The weekend was planned to culminate in playing the game “Trouble” around the kitchen table. Oh, neither of us had taken our addaral on Sunday.
In retrospect, this is not a good way to plan quality time, as there is too much potential for negative family interaction. Especially when multiple family members have Attention Deficit Disorder.
The five of us gathered and started to play. Our three year old decided to play for Mom, and moved pieces as seemed fitting for the moment. Cute. Unfortunately, this caused the obvious distractions from game play. The two of us with ADD started to wiggle around, I believe in an attempt to focus our minds better. My child with ADD started to get very wiggly and had trouble with impulse control, thus creating friction with the other siblings. This all caused my own tension to escalate and I blew up a few times as I reached my own limit. As you can see, we had initiated a downward cycle, and this quality time degenerated into a nasty incident which will be remembered in a, er, not very fond way.
It’s ironic that typical ADD behavior exhibited by one person can so easily cause distraction and focus problems within another person with ADD. What a curse!!!
This isn’t the first time this has occurred. During the summer, before our child was diagnosed, we spent a week together in a motor home. Really fun! This trip also served to illustrate that I had to work extra hard with my own issues whenever my child exhibited normal symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder. The close proximity of us all served to magnify the issues so that I could no longer ignore them (and resulted in testing and diagnosis for this child – an experience that will be covered in a future ADD Blog entry).
Here is what I see happen… The situation starts with my own stress. Often times I will be involved in an activity that requires focus (like driving a motor home, playing a game, or even typing this blog). Than, my child starts to have difficulty with interrupting discussion, changing topics, humming, wiggling, etc. and this makes it even more difficult for me to concentrate. My negative reaction to this situation is expressed and this creates more behavior problems with my child. It’s a viscous cycle!
Since Attention Deficit Disorder can be traced through family heritage, I think that there might be many families with multiple ADD sufferers.
I am sharing this information to alert you that this is a problem that you might wish to address if you have with multiple family members with Attention Deficit Disorder. Think through coming events and take whatever precautions you think will work to avoid increasing tension caused by your ADD.
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