It's both. Certainly there are those who legitimately suffer from the condition, as you put it, but there a greater amount of young boys who are misdiagnosed by teachers with no legitimate experience over the ability to diagnose besides: "he's a distraction to my classroom".

This characterizes Zimbardos more recent work on "The Demise of Guys" where you can learn an overview about it here[0]

The great issue is the vast amount of boys being misattribute with the condition, from predominately female teachers.

I was one of those boys, but I was one of the few lucky ones who's father is a doctor and never had me prescribed medicine I didn't need. I ended up excelling in upper school.

[0] http://www.ted.com/talks/zimchallenge?language=en

Hi! As someone also diagnosed with ADD I know what you mean. But that's still a control relationship, whether it's the teacher controlling me or me controlling myself to do something dull.

I don't know about you, but I've never had any problem focusing on anything I found interesting; even in high school 12-hour coding marathons were easy for me. In one of Hallowell and Ratey's books they talk about how a better name for it would be "Attention Inconstancy Syndrome". But we have the name because in our industrial model of education teachers expect controllable students, and so see our difference as a deficit.

All humans have limited attention spans, and different people have different limits. The problem for me wasn't my difference per se, but the expectation that I conform to patterns of behaviors that work for others. Now that I'm an adult and can define my own life, I'm no longer a "problem", just different.

> My experience with ADD is that it's not just "doesn't pay attention to what someone else wants"; it's "I can't pay attention to what I want to pay attention to".

So kids with ADD can't concentrate for hours on, say video games or other interests?

A kid might focus for hours on video games, while telling himself he really needs to write that paper for class tomorrow. Maybe you could say his id is in control of focus, not his ego.

Doesn't that describe pretty much everyone? Or maybe I have ADD as well...

If you're curious, I found the books by Hallowell and Ratey helpful. One of them contained a self-assessment quiz. It's meant to be descriptive, not diagnostic, but it was very useful to me in seeing the pattern. Here's a web version:

http://www.drhallowell.com/blog/adhd-self-assessment-quiz-2/

No that's mischaracterizing what I think the parent intended.

It's not "I can't focus on anything" but "I often have problems focusing on things I _want_ and try to focus on".

Most people, if they could actually choose what they're able to sustain focus on, would not choose video games or other forms of idle entertainment. Wouldn't you rather do something that brings some lasting value to your life?

Since video games are designed to capture attention at the expense of all other qualities, they're like a last refuge for people who want to have the experience of really getting into something, but don't have the focus control for something more substantial.

Unless your comment also applies to novels and films I suspect you haven't got a clear idea about what games are.

It also applies to films and to a lesser extent, novels. Of course, some truly great games provide more than just temporary entertainment, and the same applies to TV shows.

Yikes, what a terrible parallel when we're talking about the unhelpful connotations of infectiousness when the word disease is brought up.