Russell A. Barkley:
"children with ADHD often react more quickly and extremely than other kids their age. As a result they often end up rejected or avoided by their peers."
"children with ADHD are also likely to have problems with being impulsive. They often:
■
Interrupt or intrude on others and what the others are doing ■
Talk excessively, often speaking or acting out of turn■ Display their emotions very quickly, too strongly, and
with little effort to moderate them so that they are more appropriate for a situation–especially negative emotions such as impatience, frustration, hostility, temper, anger, or even aggression when provoked"
"Children with ADHD often:
■Act as if driven by a motor, moving about a room or setting much more than others,
being nearly constantly in motion ■
Are restless, fidgety, and “squirmy,” moving their arms and legs about while trying mightily to keep their butts in the chair when required to sit still
■ Touch things or even others
■ Act more forcefully and abruptly than others and engage more than others in excessive movements
■
Talk more than others, making more vocal sounds or noises in general than others their age ■ Climb on things excessively when young, running about a room or play area more than others and engaging in all sorts of attention-seeking antics"
"Symptoms of ADHD may often be worse in settings or tasks that:
■
Are boring or uninteresting ■
Involve significantly delayed consequences or infrequent feedback ■ Require working independently of others
■ Lack supervision
■ Involve groups of children
■ Are highly familiar (and thus usually less interesting)
■
Involve parents rather than strangers or less familiar adults
■ Include parents or supervisors who talk and reason too much and
rarely act to control misbehavior■
Require waiting ■
Occur late in the afternoon or evening (due to fatigue in self-control) ■ Place substantial restrictions on movement (like classroom
desk work!)"
"
Maybe you’ve already noticed that these are the situations that typically demand self-regulation. And perhaps you’ve already seen that your child’s symptoms are often milder in situations that don’t require a lot of self-regulation. These could be situations that involve fun activities, highly stimulating or interesting tasks (e.g., video games, cartoons, animated movies), lots of movement (e.g., gym, recess, sports), frequent rewards or feedback, lots of supervision, working in small teams with peers rather than independently, working one-on-one with an adult, highly novel settings, supervisors who speak briefly but back up their rules with consequences,
and little or no pressure to wait for things. That’s because these types of situations don’t demand much from your child’s executive functions."
"Executive functions help a child grow up to become an independent, self-determining person who can make and pursue plans successfully.
Without them, we would all bounce from impulse to impulse with little direction toward any goal we might want to reach."
