Is there a link between television and attention deficit disorder in children?

According to some, yes: http://www.whitedot.org/issue/iss_story.asp?slug=ADHD%20Toddlers . But, I would also put money on a correlation between the amount of prescription drugs available for ADD and diagnoses of ADD.

I never even heard of ADD when I was a child, they just called it “being a child”, and I had tv as a child (I’m not THAT old). But nowadays it seems there has to be a name for everything. Everything is a disorder nowadays. I actually saw an article in the newspaper detailing how a guy was being defended on murder charges due to a narcisstic disorder. I mean please people. Take a little responsiblity for yourself here. But, I digress…

I think that television is one of the few things that can help an ADHD patient focus. The compulson to watch TV is an attempt to slow down their brain and escape their rapid thoughts, not a cause of them.

My nephew has ADHD and wasn’t allowed much television as a young child, so in his case: no.

I guess this might get some people angry but that sounds like parental scapegoating to me. I’ve known plenty of people who can name volumes of Shows they watched as kids yet got good grades and did their homework and paid attention in class in elementary school.
Honestly, It seems to me that people forget what it was like to be young and that the world had so much mystery and so many things to discover and experience that it was hard to take in all at once. The world was this big thing with people and objects and buildings and landscapes and countries and plants and animals, oh how I could go on! All the wonderful things we could see, smell, touch ,taste, experience. And all of these came in different shapes and sizes and colors and no two looked exactly alike and we were just so damn curious and just yearned to know. To learn.

That the child is interested in learning varied and interesting news things should not be suppressed it should be encouraged and aided. A parent should learn to harness a child’s energy and spark for learning, so they can grow and be a person of the world at large, not a small world of small experiences. Rather than write it off as an obstacle to their tyrannical control, they should see natural curiosity as an opportunity to teach their kids more than they ever thought they could.

Sorry if I got a bit passionate back there.

This isn’t going to get me much love but I don’t believe in ADD or ADHD.

I was diagnosed with it as a child and was taking Ritalin before anyone knew what it was. It didn’t help because I didn’t have a problem to help.

My parents and teachers just didn’t want to deal with me.

@Blondesjon See! this is exactly what I was talking about!

I think ADD/ADHD have always been with us. It usually was labeled “stupid” or “lazy”. It was the kids whose school conferences went, “She seems so bright when you talk with her, but she doesn’t seem to be able to do the work and turn it in. Perhaps you should consider cosmetology school for her, or a trade.”

I was diagnosed with ADD in my 40’s. While the meds worked, I really didn’t like taking theim. What did help at the time was my boss knowing that I was not late on purpose, nor was the disaster (to him) that my desk was, deliberate. Life got so much better for him when he scheduled important meetings at 9 am instead of 8:30 am, and hired an assistant for me to help with the organizational issues. I was able to do what he hired me to do, and he felt he had some control over me.

@Blondesjon Just because you were misdiagnosed, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

@filmfann . . .True, because having trouble concentrating at times or being overly excited about things is a sickness not just basic human nature.

With my nephew, it was definitely an illness, and the ridalin helped a lot.
My sister didn’t want to medicate her son, and she was stunned at how much it helped.

I think ADD exists but like many “disorders” is highly over/mis-diagnosed.

@filmfann . . .We have horses at the farm I work at, and when the vet comes to clean their teeth we are stunned at how much the tranquilzer we give them helps.

I think the reason TV affects a child, is because they could be doing something more productive instead of watching tv. I don’t think tv itself affects the child.

@Blondesjon Ridalin is the opposite of a tranq. Like most ADHD kids, my nephew was very, very intelligent, but couldn’t control himself for long enough to learn. The Ridalin helped him, and his grades improved.
I am sorry you were misdiagnosed.

@filmfann . . .It is Ritalin and I know what it is. I wasn’t comparing effects I was comparing thought processes.

You are saying it’s not real. I am saying it is.
As I said, ADHD kids are very smart, and you were misdiagnosed.

@Blondesjon: If you were diagnosed with cancer and it turned out to be something else, or a complete false positive, would you stop believing in cancer?

@MacBean . . .No. But then again you can show me physical evidence of what cancer is. Can you link me to an image of ADD or ADHD?

@Blondesjon: Fair enough. How about OCD? Most people have some vaguely OCD tendencies. It’s “just basic human nature.” Does that mean it doesn’t really exist, and people who can’t control it or who need medication and/or therapy to lead “normal” lives are full of shit and don’t really have a problem?

Maybe they just need somebody to tell them to quit washing their hands so much instead of shoving pills in their face.

@Blondesjon You can’t be serious.

This bunny is cute.

@MacBean lurve

@MacBean . . .you wanted a debate didn’t you?

@Blondesjon At first. But when all I get back is idiotic crap like that, there’s not much I can say in reply that won’t be taken as personal attacks and deleted, so it’s pointless. So… bunny.

I don’t think it’s the tv so much as the remote. I grew up watching tv and I have no trouble concentrating…wait, what was I saying? ;)

There is a link in many cases, but it is not ‘cause’ and ‘effect’. It is more likely a form of self-medication.

With the recent advances in brain imaging, there is a lot of proof that this condition does exist (this article formats better in Explorer than Firefox), and a lot more care is taken in diagnosing it.

While while it’s confirmed that ADD/ADHD is real, I stand by my earlier speech-rant and I think that most people are too quick to play the blame game on it and rather than talk it out and try exercises(as in activities to help treat the problem) they jump too quickly to “let’s load this kid up with more chemicals than the ingredients list in my shampoo”

@Resonantscythe Good point. That’s what we did with our son. He is exceedingly active, and was even before he was born. I took him to Mom and Me baby exercise classes, then to Kindergym. I homeschooled him, because he would rather run than read.

He learned to operate a computer from age of two, and in those days it was a lot more complicated than it is now. He learned to swim when he was barely able to stand, and spent most of his first sixteen years in the pool, when he wasn’t playing baseball or dancing.

I have yet to see proof that ADHD or ADD is anything except made-up diseases to keep Big Pharma in business. I’ve researched some of it, and there are indications that many diseases are invented to make $$$ from by creating drugs for them. I had trouble paying attention and was hyper as a child; it was called being a kid.

Drugs for hair loss and erectile disfunction? Come on, if you lose your hair and can’t get a woodie, then find a hobby to make up for the lack elsewhere. Sailing comes to mind. At least the wind won’t muss up your hair. Let’s focus on drugs to combat HIV and malaria and things that are REAL diseases.

@evelyns_pet_zebra Have you looked at the links I provided? There is positive proof.

@evelyns_pet_zebra ; I pray you never have a child with a mental illness. Whether it’s add or bipolar, it is devastation on a family.

@MacBean. . .How very passive/aggressive of you. :)

@Judi, if you want to berate me for my feelings on ADHD, that’s your prerogative. I chose not to have children for personal reasons, and if you must pray for something, pray for some humility and wisdom, it might help. I have spent plenty of time with mentally ill adults over the last two decades, so you can’t judge me on what you think of my response to the difficulties they face. Well, you can judge me if you like, but what you think of me personally doesn’t mean shit to me. You are merely a font on my computer screen. You could be a bot for all I know, or care.

While ADD might be an actual disease, I have read enough scientific articles on ADHD to see that it is the most misdiagnosed disease out there, and to the point that it might not even be a real disease. Such misdiagnoses are even more common than bipolar disorder, which has been misdiagnosed almost 200% in the last decade.

@YARNLADY, I subscribe to two of the latest medical journals that deal with mental disorders, so you aren’t telling me anything new I haven’t already read. There is no complete proof of the disease, and much of what is put forth has yet to be independently verified. ADHD is like Global Warming, or as it should be called, Climate Change. There isn’t enough proof to verify we know exactly what is happening.

@evelyns_pet_zebra “There isn’t enough proof to verify we know exactly what is happening” does not equal “It does not exist.” I have heard this same thing about a diorder that I suffered from nearly all my 66 years of life, and they finally came up with a name and medication for it. Just because a disorder wasn’t diagnosed 5 – 10 – or 50 years ago does not mean it does not exist.

@YARNLADY you are entitled to your opinion; I am entitled to mine. I never said it absolutely does not exist, I said I am skeptical of its existence. I am not the only one, there are plenty of people much smarter than I am saying the same thing. It’s not like I know everything. I’d like to, but I don’t see it happening.

It’s sort of like that whole often believed myth that vaccinations cause autism, which a lot of people believe is true, even though it has been proven that the thiomersol in the vaccine doesn’t have that effect. But people still blame the chemical for the fact that their kids have autism.

As for RLS, I have been diagnosed with it, and I take Xanax for it, which was prescribed to me for another reason, but it works for RLS as well. Beats having to take a whole new drug for a new disorder.

@evelyns_pet_zebra There is a wide gap between opinion and proof. This statement “I have yet to see proof that ADHD or ADD is anything except made-up diseases” goes way beyond “skeptical” and then refusing to accept the proof shown goes beyond a difference of opinion.

@evelyns_pet_zebra ; I will agree with you that it is misdiagnosed often. My son was misdiagnosed because they failed to recognize bipolar as a disease in a 6 year old. I just know what it’s like to do everything you can and be desperate for some help with an out of control child. People who “don’t believe in the disease” usually tend to be judgmental of the parenting of loving but desperate parents who would do anything in the world to reach their hurting and ill child. I apologize if I wrongly lumped you in with that sanctimonious bunch. I get rather defensive since I lived with it for so many years.
By the way, my son is doing much better now with the PROPER medication. (He just turned 25)

I hate this argument, I have been hearing it my entire life. Is ADD real or not? Is it caused by this or that? The truth is I have no idea whether it is real, if it is without a doubt it isn’t caused by TV, Radio, or listening to too much Dark Side of the Moon. What I do know is that people like me (I have dyslexia) have been either diagnosed or misdiagnosed as having ADD, ADHD, or both for a very long time by public schools.

Public schools are big, bureaucratic, and slow to tackle different learning styles. The public schools in my area have only in the last 5 years acknowledged that dyslexia is a learning disability (I was diagnosed 21 years ago). You just can’t rely on them to take care of every student, but the worst possible thing you could ever do is deny a theory about learning (even ADD). The second you deny the existence of a potential learning disability or simply a different learning style (I do not consider dyslexia a disability) you shut the door on any future progress that may help our kids kids get through school more easily.

Also for people who may bring this up in front of kids think about how you discuss the subject, too often different learning styles are labeled as disabilities simply because they don’t fit in the predefined parameters set by public schools. I have seen people who were perfectly intelligent become phobic of school simply because every time they did poorly they were told ”it must be your learning disability”

My two cents.

A very strong link, yes.