Right time to start a new discussion me thinks

ADHD.

There has been a lot of press about this condition in the press and on the news.

What are your views? Is it a condition an illness bad parenting or what?

My view is that it is a condition in some children. But then where a child has bad parenting it is an easy label to give a child and therefore easy to calm them down with pills. In my day there was no such thing, there was also discipline in schools (I had the cane more than once). Parents were allowed to smack a naughty child etc. I also ask does ADHD stop when kids become adults. I think not as there some people that are constantly in your face, very loud, must be front of the cue. We call them people with bad manners.

Discussion now open over to you.

It wasn't known in my younger days so who knows? but maybe some of these things are also to do with diet lets face it most kids these days live on junk

I have been reading about this recently and its a difficult one to say exactly what it is although I do think that BGT has a point there could be any number of reasons why and how but here are some thoughts..

Altered brain function and anatomy. While the exact cause of ADHD remains a mystery, brain scans have revealed important differences in the structure and brain activity of people with ADHD. For example, there appears to be less activity in the areas of the brain that control activity and attention.

Heredity. ADHD tends to run in families. About one in four children with ADHD have at least one relative with the disorder.

Maternal smoking, drug use and exposure to toxins. Pregnant women who smoke are at increased risk of having children with ADHD. And alcohol or drug abuse during pregnancy may reduce activity of the nerve cells (neurons) that produce neurotransmitters. Pregnant women who are exposed to environmental poisons, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), also may be more likely to have children with symptoms of ADHD. PCBs are industrial chemicals that were widely used up until the 1970s.

Childhood exposure to environmental toxins. Preschool children exposed to certain toxins are at increased risk of developmental and behavioral problems. Exposure to lead, which is found mainly in paint and pipes in older buildings, has been linked to disruptive and even violent behavior and to a short attention span. Exposure to PCBs in infancy also may increase a child's risk of developing ADHD.

PCB's I would say are unlikely to be a major cause. A lot of the PCB's that I was aware of in my working days were transported to Canada where there was a plant that could dispose of them safely. If my memory serves me right the only one in the world at that time (probably changed by now). Unless Children could play with scrap then no I don't think a cause.

Eating Junk, again nothing new there even at an early age I think we all eat junk food of one type or another. Fish &
Chips cooked in pure fat, Wimpy etc. Dripping on bread. But then again to agree with your statement, we did not have the quantities of sweets and fizzy pop that there is now. Once a week if we were lucky. In fact on Dads pay day a bag of 10d's worth of sweets and a bottle of Tizer.

But I love the research cheekychops. I hope this becomes a fruitful discussion.

My sister has a problem with one of her children who has ADHD so I asked her to add something here hope no one minds because she isn't a member

I used to think ADHD was something of a joke, an excuse. I believed there was such a thing as a hyper-active child, just didn't understand why parents and counsellors made such a big deal about it. So the child can't sit still, what child can really?
I'd been stepmother to 3 children, and had 2 children of my own. They were all active in some way or other. I used to tell people that my daughter wore me out emotionally and my son wore me out physically. Children are ever evolving and learning, so of course they're active, and some are hyper-active. That's just the way it is.
Then I had my youngest, Flint. There was something different about him almost from the start. He wasn't a troublesome baby, in fact of my three, he was probably the easiest. Perhaps I'd just become experienced, I thought. But I found myself telling people that it was like Flint had an "
old soul"
. He just seemed to pick up on things without having to really be taught.
As he became a toddler, I noticed certain things about him that I hadn't experienced with my other children. He was terrified of loud noises. He didn't seem to notice when he got hurt. He could sit quietly for hours telling himself stories, but couldn't sit long enough at the dining table to eat a meal. He seemed to notice everything around him and could remember places and events that his siblings and I couldn't recall. Yet he couldn't learn to tie his shoes, and was often found running around half dressed. He often wandered off on his own, and though he understood my rules, seemed to always be "
forgetting"
to follow them. He wasn't being defiant, just "
forgetful"
.
Flint is a beautiful, creative, sensitive child. He's very smart. But the older he got, the more troublesome he grew. I was not liking my child very much. I felt like I had to follow him around all day saying, "
Flint, do this"
;
"
Flint, don't do that"
;
"
Flint, why are you saying that"
...I couldn't understand why teaching him to follow basic rules and how to take care of himself had become so difficult. He just didn't seem to "
get it"
. I was starting to think he had a touch of autism or something similar.
His PCP told me to take him to counselling. All through the sessions, Flint would ask random questions, look out the window, ask to draw on the whiteboard, but otherwise, couldn't follow the flow of the conversation with the counsellor. The counsellor just didn't seem to see that Flint wasn't gaining anything from her, since he wasn't even paying any attention. After only 4 sessions, I stopped going out of pure frustration with both the counsellor and Flint.
I wrote a letter to a specialist in child development, and finally, I received the response I was looking for. They agreed to evaluate Flint. I almost couldn't believe it when they told me his diagnosis was ADHD. What was even more amazing was when I began giving him the medication. I found that I actually like him after all.
What I've come to learn over these last 9 years of raising Flint is that perception is so much different than reality. I've learned that ADHD isn't just some excuse parents use to explain their child's bad behaviour. I've learned how draining it is to care for a special needs child, even if it's "
just ADHD"
. Even with the medication, I still have to remind Flint how to dress every morning, and how to keep himself safe and clean throughout the day. Flint still has a hard time grasping the intricacies of social situations, and gets into fights often. But the bottom line is, I haven't been a bad parent. I just had to find the right people to explain to me Flint's needs. If only I could make the rest of the world understand.

Children with special needs only want what we all want - to be accepted.

It is Special Education week, and this is
in honor of all children who learn a little differently

I don't think I can add to this because I don't know enough about it, but my heart goes out to those who have to deal with it

This is the latest from the Lancet

Rare chromosomal deletions and duplications in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: a genome-wide analysis

Background

Large, rare chromosomal deletions and duplications known as copy number variants (CNVs) have been implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders similar to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We aimed to establish whether burden of CNVs was increased in ADHD, and to investigate whether identified CNVs were enriched for loci previously identified in autism and schizophrenia.

Methods

We undertook a genome-wide analysis of CNVs in 410 children with ADHD and 1156 unrelated ethnically matched controls from the 1958 British Birth Cohort. Children of white UK origin, aged 5—17 years, who met diagnostic criteria for ADHD or hyperkinetic disorder, but not schizophrenia and autism, were recruited from community child psychiatry and paediatric outpatient clinics. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were genotyped in the ADHD and control groups with two arrays;
CNV analysis was limited to SNPs common to both arrays and included only samples with high-quality data. CNVs in the ADHD group were validated with comparative genomic hybridisation. We assessed the genome-wide burden of large (>
500 kb), rare (<
1% population frequency) CNVs according to the average number of CNVs per sample, with significance assessed via permutation. Locus-specific tests of association were undertaken for test regions defined for all identified CNVs and for 20 loci implicated in autism or schizophrenia. Findings were replicated in 825 Icelandic patients with ADHD and 35 243 Icelandic controls.

Findings

Data for full analyses were available for 366 children with ADHD and 1047 controls. 57 large, rare CNVs were identified in children with ADHD and 78 in controls, showing a significantly increased rate of CNVs in ADHD (0·156 vs 0·075;
p=8·9×10−5). This increased rate of CNVs was particularly high in those with intellectual disability (0·424;
p=2·0×10−6), although there was also a significant excess in cases with no such disability (0·125, p=0·0077). An excess of chromosome 16p13.11 duplications was noted in the ADHD group (p=0·0008 after correction for multiple testing), a finding that was replicated in the Icelandic sample (p=0·031). CNVs identified in our ADHD cohort were significantly enriched for loci previously reported in both autism (p=0·0095) and schizophrenia (p=0·010).

Interpretation
Our findings provide genetic evidence of an increased rate of large CNVs in individuals with ADHD and suggest that ADHD is not purely a social construct.

I'm with Krypton on this I can't comment for lack of knowledge