Symptoms of attention problems

CATHARINA HARTMAN: The previous exercise was meant to show how symptoms of ADHD can be different. You’ll now see a couple of videos showing how people experience the symptoms themselves.

SPEAKER 1: I can dream away endlessly. It’s like there’s no outside world. Schoolwork’s always been really hard, especially when you’ve lost your attention after five minutes. It takes forever. The consequences are is that I have to bring my work home and then do it there. I usually bring in half done, or just I don’t bring it in because I forget. And then when people talk to me, I dream away too. They’ll ask me a question; and I’ll be like, eh, what did they say? And then also at school, the children always make a joke of me. The teacher will ask me a really simple question. They’ll say my name like five times, and I wouldn’t hear them.

And then I’ll realise, and I’ll realise that the children have been laughing at me.

CATHARINA HARTMAN: Let’s start with some examples of inattentiveness. People with ADHD often deliver sloppy work with lots of mistakes. They don’t check their sentences or their math problems properly. It’s not that they don’t understand their math, rather they get too distracted. A long text or lesson is boring for most people, but they usually manage to fulfil this task. People with ADHD often don’t fulfil this task properly, because they get too distracted.

SPEAKER 1: Now I’m in high school, everything’s way worse. I have to arrange things all by myself– things like planning and getting to school on time, and also homework. [SIGHS] My attention still remains a battle, though. I can’t really focus as well as my friends. I do know that I am way sloppier than them. And when I do a paper, I should probably look at it again; but then again, I don’t really want to.

CATHARINA HARTMAN: Inattentiveness is not only a problem at school when you have to listen to your teacher. Young people with ADHD tend to cause chaos. They’re not good at planning and find it difficult to do a task step by step. Cleaning your room, for example, is a task that you have to do step by step. People with ADHD are not good at that. Their rooms turn into chaos– their bag and their locker too. People with ADHD lose things in this chaos. They may come late for appointments or don’t show up at all. In short, ADHD is not only a problem in school, but also in many situations in daily life.