Symptoms of ADD and ADHD are not like physical ailments such as a broken leg or a bad eyesight. They can only be diagnosed based on behaviour, and it is vital to make sure that the behaviour is not caused by other environmental causes.

I will elaborate on this later, but for now I will give you a small list of symptoms. ADD is the main focus of this article, so I will concentrate on the symptoms of ADD and not on the hyperactivity component.

For my daughter Josh, the following symptoms certainly are recognisable:

• She has difficulties finishing something she is doing, she starts for example a lot of handicraft projects, but never finishes them:

• She finds it hard to follow instructions, she just starts, and when she doesn’t manage, she abandons the project;

• She loses her pencils, pencil sharpeners, eraser, colouring pencils… whatever you can imagine is gone, lost or somewhere she cannot find it. Her mobile phone is never in the place it ought to be. Her bus card even worse, and do not talk about house keys…;

• She forgets to take her books to school, her pens, her purse…;

• She is disorganised, her room looks like a recent bomb attack. Needless so say she cannot find anything. Her wardrobe is even worse;

• She doesn’t pay attention to details, and anyone who does or makes her to do so, is a nitty gritty irritating person, who is definitely not going to teach her anything any more if it can be avoided.

• She thinks soon that any work, chore or project is ready and done;

• She does not like to put sustained effort in anything: she either manages the first time around, or she gives up;

• Planning? What planning? Homework: the last minute, if possible in the car or bus to school. Brushing teeth, even going to the toilet before going to bed, I have to remind her every single day, if not she just is so busy doing whatever occupies her mind, that she will plainly forget;

• She is very easily distracted, either by her own thoughts or by outside noises or things she sees; (typical symptom of ADD and ADHD)

• She couldn’t care less when she makes mistakes. When I or the teacher says she is making a mistake, she gets angry and upset;

• She takes hours to dream about the donkey she wants, the mermaid tail she will get, the beautiful things she will make (although they are so complicated that no living soul would manage);

• She has difficulties maintaining friendships. She is being bullied, or at least she very quickly thinks and feels like being bullied. (Bullies can be easily “attracted” by the symptoms of ADD or ADHD);

• She is often not listening when I (or someone else) is speaking to her.

Now, for being diagnosed as a child with ADD, these symptoms have to start before the 7th year of age, and be present for at least 6 months on a row.

Josh has gone through different phases of ADD. The symptoms she showed in the first years of school, were mainly daydreaming and being distracted, but she never gave trouble. She was mainly seen as a quiet, probably bit unmotivated child. After 3 years this changed, when she changed schools because the little school in our village closed. She suddenly went from a class with 6 pupils to a class with 20 pupils, amongst whom a boy with Asperger syndrome and another boy with severe symptoms of ADD/ADHD.

She then entered in a phase of being very unhappy at school. She started to be very talkative, thereby disturbing the lessons; she became ill when she had to go to school, feeling very sick when there was something she was worried about, which was at least one day per week. She had severe tummy aches, we even did blood tests and our family doctor was worried about an undetected appendicitis; until we found out it was only stress related.

When I found the list of symptoms of ADD, I was in a way happy that I now knew what was wrong with her. Our family doctor is not happy about prescribing drugs to children, and that is why we searched for another way out.

I discovered, that being hyper sensitive is often part of the picture, Elaine Aaron has written great books about hyper sensitivity and how to handle it. So called Indigo children have a lot of these hyper sensitive traits, which can be easily mistaken for symptoms of ADD and ADHD. If you sense that your child could be hyper sensitive, check out Elaine’s site http://www.hsperson.com/pages/child.htm

By accident a friend of mine told me about her nephew, who was diagnosed as suffering from severe symptoms of ADD and ADHD, and who’s grandmother had taken him completely off sugar and all chemical additives. the kid had changed so dramatically, that even the doctors didn’t believe it. He came off Ritalin, and went back to the normal school. This was 10 years ago, and he is still doing very well at school and at home.

We then decided to try this for Josh’ symptoms, ADD-like as they were. The effect was shocking. After 24 hours she started to shift, and after 48 hours it seems we had a different child in the house. She seemed to come from a different planet: she was calm, smiling, relaxed. When I told her to clean something up or to put her toys away, she would just do it instead of shouting at me and stomping off. We were gob smacked, and happy that we tried. Does this mean she has no symptoms of ADD any more? No, unfortunately she does. Whenever she has been eating sweets, especially ones with artificial flavouring and colouring in them, she still flips back into her “old” self. She becomes the drama queen again, she is negative, angry, upset. She yells at us that we don’t love her, that no one loves her, that she would rather be dead. As soon as the sugar and chemical imbalance is restored however, she eases into her “new” happy self again. We do let her have one “sweet” day per week, although without chemical additives because they make her upset much worse than just sugar.

Read on here