Scattered - Mate's thoughts on ADD

I recently read the book Scattered by Gabor Mate, where he looks at the condition of ADHD through a lens of brain development and outward influences. It is an excellent read even if you have no direct concern about ADHD because of how it promotes understanding of how natural predispositions interact with the environment to help or hinder learning and functioning. Here's some quotes:

Sensitivity

Sensitivity is the reason why allergies are more common among ADD children
than in the rest of the population.Although the flare-up of allergies can certainly aggravate ADD symptoms, the one does not cause the other. They both are expressions of the same underlying inborn trait: sensitivity.
People with ADD are forever told that they are “too sensitive’ or that they should stop being “so touchy”. One might as well advise a child with hay fever to stop
being “so allergic.” (59)
Sensitive children come to be called “difficult” because adults have trouble understanding their temperament and because parenting methods that work with other children are frustratingly inadequate with this group. Like the related phrase “terrible twos,” “difficult child” shows grown-up bias. In the child’s experience, it is
the adult who is ornery. Were children the arbiters of language, we would hear
of the “difficult parent” and the “terrible thirties.” (60)

Attention

Given their automatic tuning out, ADD children forever find themselves being
told to “pay attention” – a demand that completely misunderstands both the
nature of the child and the nature of attention. The obvious monetary
connotation of “pay” is that attention is something the child owes the adult,
that the child’s attention belongs to the adult by right. The phrase takes for
granted that being attentive is always a consciously chosen act, subjest to
one’s will. Both of these assumptions are faulty.
Like language or locomotion, being attentive is a skill we acquire. As with all other skills, the conditions necessary for the development of attention have to be present. It is not an isolated attribute of the child’s but the product of a relationship between the child and her environment. (121)

Children's actions

We think that children act, whereas what they mostly do is react. Parent who
realize this acquire a powerful tool. By noticing their own responses to the
child, rather than fixating on the child’s responses to them, they free up
tremendous energy for growth. (160)

Emotional language

Helping the child to label her feelings … is …an important step in promoting
autonomy. Words are symbols. They stand for feeling and actions. Without the
capacity to put things into symbols, children are driven to act out every strong
feeling and every urge – it is the only way they can express themselves. They
are thus unable to take charge of themselves, impelled as they are to act by
emotions they cannot identify. Without learning to symbolize emotions they are
also likely to experience everything in terms of simple and opposing categories:
people are alternately mean or nice, good or bad. It’s either “I Love you,
Mommy” or “I hate you.” The child has greater autonomy, a greater choice of
possible responses, when she can say, “I didn’t like what Mrs. So-and-so said to
me in class today, “ than when she is restricted to “Mrs. So-and-so is mean.”
Language supports freedom, including freedom from one’s own impulses. (208)

Parental love and understanding

Parental love is such a wise and powerful force of nature that when parents extend themselves in an effort to understand who their children are and why they do what they do, the right words and actions will follow almost of their own volition. An open mind, compassionate curiosity toward the child, letting go to the idea that one "knows” what the child thinks and feels and a striving to accept the child unconditionally will go a long way toward binding wounds inflicted by past mistakes, misjudgments and the parent’s own emotional blockages. Such attitudes are just as important when the ADD adult embarks on the journey of self-healing. (272-3)