Can You Pay Attention, Please?
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Section 1:
- Often does not give close attention to details or make careless mistakes in schoolwork, work, or other activities.
- Often has trouble keeping attention on tasks or play activities.
- Often does not seem to listen when spoke to directly
- Often does not follow instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace (not due to oppositional behavior or failure to understand instructions).
- Often has trouble organizing activities.
- Often avoids, dislikes, or doesn't want to do things that take a lot of mental effort for a long period of time (such as schoolwork or homework).
- Often loses things needed for tasks and activities (e.g. toys, school assignments, pencils, books, or tools).
- Is often easily distracted.
- Is often forgetful in daily activities.
Are you seeing anything that sounds familiar? I have problems with all of the above. Doesn't sound like fun, does it? ADHD certainly isn't but at times it can be. When you read about my experiences, you will understand.
How Often is Often?
It is up to the individual professionals to determine how often, often is. I may say, Often is at least 20 times a day but another might say 7 times a day. Because of this discrepancy, some have problems with using these criteria for diagnosing ADHD.
This is also one of many reasons why people say ADHD is a fraud and doesn't exist. It can be said that everyone has these problems often.
The problem is that it is very easy to pick out the child or adult that has ADHD from everyone else. (Most of the time)
I would like to share with you some ADHD Inattention experiences in my life.
Remember to check out the ADHD alternative treatments page. You will see a page on an ADHD ADHD video game treatment that helps with inattention.
Clean Up Task Activities
I have trouble with keeping attention on tasks.
When I go to clean I look at every single piece of thing that needs to be done. Focusing on one item at a time is almost impossible. So I pick up an item and put it away then I see something else that I have been looking for.
So I start to play with that or remember what I needed it for and start using it. Then I will spot something else and put the initial thing away somewhere. This will happen many times over.
Eventually, someone will (my mom use to but now my girlfriend) come and see what I am doing. Of course it seems that nothing has been done.
So I get yelled at because I haven't done anything. But I was having a good time and that is all that matters.
Other times I will get frustrated and even sometimes cry because I just can't clean up. There are too many things and it seems impossible to pick up hundreds of things and find a place for them.
If you know that your child has ADHD Inattention problems, than understand that they may have these kinds of problems and help them.
Listen Up
Listening skills, what are they? This one I get beat over the head with constantly. I can pick up almost every noise and see everything going on around me. The bad part, it isn't filtered like a normal brain. All this information is coming in and floating around. When I am being talked to, it is just another thing floating around.
When I was younger, my mom would send me to the store. She would tell me, get bread, milk, cheese, and soda.
I walked to the store and what did I get? Nothing. I am standing in the store trying to remember what to get.
I couldn't remember one thing. Every time I had to call her and ask what I was suppose to get. Sometimes I would still come home missing something.
I wised up and wrote everything down and kept it safe in my pocket. No more phone calls home or missing merchandise.
Imagine mixing the listening problems with a girlfriend. Talk about disaster. She complains that she is not important in my life because I don't listen to her (this is evidenced that I don't retain much of what she tells me. NOT FAIR!). She tends to ramble on when talking or dragging sentences out veryyyyyy looonnnngggg. So, I have a lot of problems staying focused.
ADHD Inattention can be a bad relationship breaker. Talk about something major to work around.
I tell her to keep it short to the point. Impossible for her to do. Then I am always distracted by other things (building this website as an example). It is easy to see how relationship problems occur by having this disorder.
It is a real paing talking to someone with ADHD Inattention symptoms. We have to learn together how to work through it.
Instructions are for Organized People
I have a terrible time with instructions. Especially when building things. I hear what is said, Men don't follow instructions with or without ADHD Inattention symptoms.
Anyway, I just want to rip the thing out of the box and build it already. If something doesn’t look right, I will look at the pictures and put it together. I don't have the patience or time to read the introductory stuff.
Finish the project? Now that is a difficult thing. It is so exciting to start it but then it is too familiar and boring to continue. So as you can discern, things like homework, work, tasks, projects, and chores will end up boring and incomplete.
If it is verbal instructions, well, we have that listening problem showing up again.
I didn't Lose it
Losing things. My brain was so wired that I never knew I had something to lose.
Keys. That is something we all lose. Have you every lost your keys in your hand? How embarrassing. I have walked around the house looking for my keys because they were lost.
At some point, 10 minutes later, I realized that I was carrying them all a long. That is how bad ADHD Inattention can be.
I have been using a liquid vitamin and mineral supplement. I have better control of my ADHD Inattention symptoms now that I am using it. It gives my body what it needs and brings it into order. There is more information about vitamins and natural supplements in the alternative treatments section.
I spent most of the early part of my life without a diagnosis. I was diagnosed when I was 18. My parents never thought that the way I acted was abnormal.
When you read about some of my other experiences with ADHD, you may wonder how my parents could have thought I was normal.
I hope you enjoyed some of my ADHD Inattention stories and I am sure you may have some of your own or those of others.
Click here to go to ADHD Hyperactivity
Return to ADHD Symptoms Page from ADHD Inattention
If you have any questions about ADHD Inattention complete the form below.
TJ Chambers
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