Thomas Armstrong

Thomas Armstrong is a psychologist, teacher and consultant. He maintains that tracing the cause of a child's attention and behavior problems, rather than masking them with medication and behavior modification, helps the child and parent. His books include: The Myth of the A.D.D. Child, Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom, In Their Own Way and Awakening Your Child's Natural Genius. 

We are sorry, this full transcript is not available at this time.

The question is, what accounts for this? Is it a medical disorder called ADD (or ADHD as it's sometimes called)? I think not. I think instead that what we've learned to call ADD is instead a number of things all jumbled up together under this simplistic label. Kids can be hyperactive for any number of reasons: because they're anxious or depressed, because they're allergic to milk, because they're bored with school, because they have a different kind of mind and aren't being challenged, because they're overstimulated from television and video games.

I could go on. The point is that the ADD label makes it too easy to ignore what might be going on beneath the surface of things. "Oh, he has ADD? Whew! Glad we know what the problem is now!" But perhaps we don't really know at all. Although there is a great deal of support from the medical and scientific community for ADD, once one looks into the literature, things become less clear.

Nobody can actually tell you, for example, how many kids have ADD. Though the literature traditionally says 3-5% of all children have ADD, I've seen statistics in textbooks that have ranged from .019% (in England where its far less common) to 10% and above. ADD is in the eyes of the beholder. Many of the "tests" that are used to diagnose ADD are flawed.

The behavior rating scales that ask parents to rate their kids on a scale from 1 to 5, for instance, in terms of hyperactivity, impulsivity and so forth, are very subjective and parents and teachers often don't agree on what they see in the same child. The continuous performance tests that are often used to diagnose for ADD are a joke. One of them is a box that sits on a table.

I'm very concerned that the literature on ADD has so much to say about what these kids can't do, and virtually nothing about what they can do. In my own informal research, I've seen countless examples of kids labeled ADD who are musicians, dancers, athletes, leaders, and creative in many other ways. Why don't we see these kids as basically healthy and creative individuals who may not function as well in certain kinds of environments (for example, the worksheet wasteland of many classrooms), but do great when given a chance to learn in their own way. Many kids labeled ADD in fact do great when they're fixing an automobile, or doing experiments in their nature lab, or performing in a theater piece. Many kids with behavior difficulties grow up to become great individuals. People like Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Sara Bernhardt, Louie Armstrong, and Albert Einstein. Why don't we start using models of growth to describe our highly energetic kids and throw this ADD disease label in the trash basket where it belongs?