Dr. Sonia Morris:

There are three different types of ADHD. There is ADHD attentive type, primarily; ADHD hyperactive-compulsive type; and then ADHD where both of those criteria are met. How it presents varies from child to child. There is great diversity of presentation. When one is looking at diagnostic criteria, there are a certain number of features that need to be met across each of those categories to reach diagnostic thresholds. How it might present in the home is dependent on the type of ADHD that the child meets the criteria for. If one is looking at ADHD hyperactive-compulsive type, what one would see is a child who would have loads of lovely energy, who would be enthusiastic about lots of different things, and who might move from one activity to the other very quickly because their interest does not hold very well on one thing.

They might be the risk-taker of the family, so they might be the one who climbs the trees. Some might find that need for movement very difficult, because movement is life for hyperactive, impulsive kids. Having to sit still for long periods of time at family gatherings or household meals, they might be the kiddie at the table who is having their meal standing up. There would be a similar type of presentations in the school. It would be the kiddie who makes the excuse to go to the bin in the classroom to pare their pencil quite regularly, or who needs to go to the toilet quite a lot because they just have this urgency or need to get that movement out of their body. They would also be the ones who are quite eager to answer questions even if the answer is wrong. The answer will pop into their head and they just have to say it so they might not be the kid in that classroom who is waiting with their hand up in the air.

Regarding the ADHD inattentive type kid, they are often described as having their head in the clouds and more or less looking out of the window because everything seems so interesting. Having to filter out all of the information going on around them is really difficult for those kids. It might be that the parent at home tells little Johnny to go upstairs and grab his football training boots, jacket and jumper and meet them downstairs in the car. The kid goes up with all great intentions but just loses half the instruction because they were distracted when the instruction was given. Once they got upstairs they saw their favourite video game on the table and decided to pick it up and have a bit of a play. There is that distractibility element and that is also present in the classroom. The teacher might have to repeat a question a few times because there is a kid in the class is fidgeting under the table and the kid is distracted and looking at that. They might be thinking about what they will do later after school and that might be so interesting to them that they are attending to the teacher in the classroom either. That is the kind of presentation, in a very broad way. It is obviously a bit more complex than that but they would be the types of things one would see.