MrsCac this is very interesting to me as I am suspicious I may be ADD too. I am virtually certain my D6 is and that is what got me to thinking I might be, and my mum definitely manifested symptoms too. I've been playing a little memory game with my kids lately and D6 is completely hopeless at it. I turn cards over with words on them, the kids have to try to recall as many as they can. She gets about 2 or 3 out of 10. However she can read extremely well for her age. If we play the classic memory game with the paired picture cards laid face down she's very good at it.

I think I would score pretty well on the tests you describe, so that's kind of weird. I know I am very strongly right-brained and have a problem processing information in a linear fashion. If someone is giving me directions I have to re-process them into a spatial form. If someone says it's the second on the left, then 100 yds down and first right, down the hill and then cross over the round about and it's the first left - I am mentally drawing a picture so I don't have to remember all those words. If someone asks me directions I point and gesture alot and I tell them something like - you get on the road parallel to this one and when you see XXX landmark you head for the right side of it. Once you pass YYY landmark it's about 100 yds on the left. If someone asks directions to the bathroom in my house I say something like - it's directly above the kitchen. When I was young I had virtually photographic recall which was lucky because I didn't have to process anything (like lists of vocabulary) in a linear way I just took a snapshot in my head and when it came to the test I could pull the page up in front of me. Unfortunately that trick disappeared round about puberty.

I've read that ADD can also be masked by high IQ, when you're at school and the teacher is repeating stuff over for the slow ones you can afford to switch off or you can just figure it out on the fly so the ADD doesn't notice so much. So it's great to hear that you got a high IQ score and that might well explain why your ADD went unnoticed for so long. Have you read anything about ADD and peri-menopause/menopause? There's evidence that people on ADD meds find when menopause hits the drugs stop working so well. In my own case I believe the ADD symptoms have been covered by high functioning right brain activity and high IQ are now rearing their ugly heads with menopause approaching.

The main clue for me is that I need a dopamine rush in order to concentrate. I like to work in very busy environments with a lot of pressure, I like it when the phone is ringing off the hook, deadlines are coming thick and fast etc, THEN I can concentrate. If things are too quiet and orderly I switch off and nothing gets done.

I think if ADD had been better understood in her day my mum would have had a better time of it. She got pretty depressed about her lack of ability to achieve anything and major disorganisation as a housewife. She was a very intelligent woman and underachieving to her potential was a big blow to her self-esteem. She was a very sociable person but hated to invite friends over because she always felt embarrassed by the state of the house, as a result of which her social life tended to be a bit lack-lustre. I'm walking in her shoes, but I just shrug about the state of the house and invite people anyway, because I reckon if people care whether there are piles of clutter all over my house then they're not much use as friends anyway. When the kids were babies I used to get them dressed as quick as I could and leave the house, that way the state of the place could get no worse and it wasn't preying on my mind the whole day. I frankly think I'd be better off living in a trailer where there's less to do by way of housework - or maybe just a tent. \:\)

Fran

if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs
Erica Jong