According to estimates, seventy to eighty percent of children diagnosed with ADHD do not have ADHD. These children have difficulty coping with today’s hustle and bustle and cannot relax. They are wrongly labeled as ADHD. If a child has ADHD, one of the parents probably also has it; eighty percent of ADHD is hereditary.

When does someone have ADHD?

According to the Trimbos Institute, someone has ADHD when he or she has six of the following attention problems several days a week:

• making careless mistakes and paying little attention to details
• poor listening
• difficulty following directions and completing assignments
• poor organization
• dislike tasks that require a lot of mental effort
• losing things
• get distracted easily
• forgetfulness

Hyperactivity and impulsivity are also clear characteristics of a person with ADHD. However, not everyone diagnosed as having ADHD actually has ADHD. Even the Dutch medical organization KNMG admits that ADHD is diagnosed too often and too quickly. According to the KNMG, doctors often have insufficient expertise to make the diagnosis with certainty. Furthermore, there are close ties with the drug industry, which means that doctors can easily and often prescribe ADHD medications.

ADHD or chronic sleep deprivation

In the past, children went to bed earlier and slept longer. Nowadays dinner is served later and there is still a lot to do in the evening. This can cause children to go to bed overstimulated and have trouble falling asleep. Children with chronic sleep deprivation are busy and have difficulty concentrating. As a result, these children can incorrectly be labeled with ADHD. If you want to be sure that this is not the case with your child, it is best to go back in time for a few months. Be very consistent with the three R’s (rest, cleanliness and regularity), even on weekends. So lots of rest in the house, going to bed on time, little to no television, playing outside. The same rhythm every day.

ADHD or wrong nutrition

There are more and more voices suggesting that ADHD is the result of diet. A diet has been developed by scientist Lidy Pelsser especially for ADHD patients. The so-called Restricted Elimantion Diet (RED). This individual diet should then be followed for five weeks. After this, the ADHD would have disappeared in many patients. It is a fairly strict diet that requires eating a lot of rice, fruit and vegetables. After five weeks, you can eat normally again, although there are often three to five foods that the child will have to continue to avoid. The Northwestern University Medical School has also determined that nutrition has a major influence on the behavior of ADHDers. They want to conduct further research, but so far it seems to be the case that a healthy diet can cure a large proportion of ADHD patients.

Well, ADHD

What remains is a percentage of twenty to thirty percent of children who actually have ADHD. When a child really has ADHD, the symptoms are already visible before the age of seven. A lot of research has been done into ADHD in Canada. This is because it was discovered that early students (children whose birthday was before October) were more often diagnosed as having ADHD than late students. The age difference of almost a year made the students stand out negatively in class. They were busier and had more difficulty sitting still. Behavior that is appropriate for the age, but because the children stood out in class, the parents were soon confronted about the behavior and research followed, resulting in the label ADHD. When this came to light, they started diagnosing more carefully in Canada. They made the following list.Children with ADHD have:

• suffer from excessive activity
• lack of normal fears
• sleep problems
• difficulty sitting still
• more accidents
• enormous difficulty waiting for their turn
• a tendency to wander among their toys without actually playing and showing interest in one toy
• the tendency to talk a lot and busyly (speech waterfalls)
• the tendency to start everything, but rarely finish anything
• trouble with concentration, they daydream a lot.