Hello everyone! This is the first article from my series of “An intriguing Sunday morning with Aditi Anand”

There aren’t many Sundays when I am up early with a mug of hot coffee in my hand, safely tucked into bed, chilling with my laptop and there is this unbearable cold outside. It was planned to be one of those me, myself and I Sundays when all of a sudden I came across this ADHD thing on the internet and I was like “What is ADHD?”. Now, one, the name does sound cool even for a disorder and second I am a diehard Biology fan, the craze only intensified by my inability to take it up as a career. So it isn’t long before I am googling for definition of ADHD, better said as the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

If it took me just a minute to get interested in what is ADHD, it takes me just about thirty seconds to get convinced that this is what has happening with me all along. How does it even matter if it is a childhood disorder? The website clearly states- ‘it could well persist into adulthood and old age’. Within no time I am on the phone with my Dad (sometimes it really pays to have a doctor in the family) and even though he is all full of sleep, he knows only well enough that he needs to console his daughter and tell her what is ADHD right now since it won’t be long enough before another call goes home reporting high blood pressure!!!

Here is how the sleepy but patient monologue of my father went for what is ADHD - It is a disorder that is hard to diagnose since children almost always display ADHD symptoms like hyperactivity, impulsive behavior and inattentiveness. The only ground rule goes that, children who unusually display these ADHD symptoms are likely to be having the disorder. (reassuring words) So, every normal child has to be ‘normally’ hyperactive and inattentive; being a little hyperactive doesn’t necessarily mean that you have the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. And moreover, these ADHD symptoms kind of have to persist for sessions of diagnosis and with different settings, like the school, home, the play area etc.

The ADHD categories are divided purely on the basis of the three main ADHD symptoms that the child is likely to display-

• Inattention: This can be predicted only in the later stages of childhood when the child begins to be entrusted with some serious work and I don’t think you need to be told what inattention is…yes indeed everything I do has traces of inattention in it. In the child, it might be shifting in conversations, inability to complete assigned tasks, disarrayed work habits.
• Hyperactivity: Talking too much and all the time, running around, fidgeting, not being able to indulge in quiet games etc.
• Impulsivity: Another name for impatience, the child is found to talk and act without thinking, not being able to wait and other such reckless and spontaneous behavior.

The ADHD diagnosis for ADHD symptoms has to follow a careful process because anxious and over protective parents may erroneously conclude that their children are having this disorder without even understanding properly that what is ADHD. A careful physician can examine after checking for ADHD symptoms that whether it is a case of ADHD or just overly anxious parents.

The ADHD treatment regime adopts a course of subtle therapies to be followed on by medications if results are not satisfactory. Alternative ADHD treatments like supplements and certain kind of herbs are also in vogue now.

Here ends my Dad’s long monologue about what is ADHD and begins his completely ruined Sunday morning. I can’t help but comprehend about what I have just heard. It is strange how that naughty yet dull boy in my class could have had this very ADHD disorder. I mean it is great that we get to see stuff like this on the internet today. And having such loving parents doesn’t help when they are ready to believe anything but the fact that their child might actually have some kind of a disorder. WARNING: ADHD can be chronic, only to persist in adulthood leading to failures at education, job, low self esteem, frequent misconduct and a lot of these which are otherwise almost common in the adults of today :p

So being distracted isn’t always “our fault”, it might just be a “disorder” and you may not even know about it if you don’t know what is ADHD. And I hope you liked my distracting Sunday with the All-time Distracted Hallucinating Disorder (the distracted version of ADHD…)

This was all about my Sunday morning that got me so pissed off; I just had to write about it and tell you my distracted version of what is ADHD. And what? All this while you thought I was trying to talk seriously about some disorder ADHD? How can you possibly read through the entire thing not being able to understand what was I talking about? Now, this is some serious distraction and hallucination!!!! I will have to say, it is high time that you got yourself examined for being a DISTRACTED STUDENT and in the meanwhile also know about What is ADHD!!!