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Old 03-07-2012, 08:59 AM   #19
Walter Martindale
Location: Edmonton, AB
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 802
Canada
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Re: The Psychopath Test

Quote:
Roger Flatley wrote: View Post
I don't understand why being younger than someone else would make you more prone to ADHD.

I do agree with the issues related to age difference. I was a bit underdeveloped for my age, and I was also a summer birthday, which meant I was the youngest among my class. Some kids got held back over the years, so I'd literally have kids in my grade 1-2 years older than me. If some of them were mature for thier age, that made the differences even more noticeable. There I was put into social interactions, and was forced to compete with these kids in sports and for girls, when I had an inherent disadvantage just based on my age and development.
Being younger than someone in your same school year doesn't make you more prone to HAVING (should that be "BEING"?) ADHD, but it appears to make you more prone to A DIAGNOSIS of ADHD. Two "grade 3" kids in the same class, one born in January, one born in December. It's September, and the 8-year-old grade 3 kid born in January is paying attention to whatever the teacher is blathering on about, while the 7-year-old grade three kid born in December couldn't give a monkey's about what the teacher is saying but is fascinated by - oh, say, the beetle crawling across the ceiling. The young guy gets sent off to some plonker who doesn't pay attention to the different maturity level who says "a grade 3 should behave this way" and labels the kid ADHD, prescribes a bunch of drugs, when really, the only problem is that the younger guy's brain isn't yet developed as much as the older kid, but they're tossed into the same educational melting pot and expected to fit in the same shelf as everyone else born in the same year. (sorry, run-on sentence)

No, I'm not in trained in the field - there was a discussion of this stuff on CBC radio the other day, and I see this sort of stuff dealing with young athletes..
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