INTRODUCTION –What We Are Getting Wrong About Our Children

A parent sits in a meeting and hears a sentence that has become painfully familiar

“Your child shows signs of ADHD.”

What follows is usually meant to comfort.

It is largely genetic.
This is how their brain is wired.
It is not something you caused.

For a moment, that helps.

It eases blame.

It gives the struggle a name.

It makes something chaotic feel more graspable.

A child who had begun to seem difficult, disruptive, lazy, or unreachable can now be seen in a different light. The label can open doors to support, accommodation, patience, and compassion.

That matters.

But something else happens, too.

The question begins to narrow.

It stops being:

What is shaping this pattern?

Why is this happening?

What might still change?

And it becomes:

How do we help this child live with what they are?

Sometimes that is the right question.

But it is not the only one.

And when it becomes the only one, something important is lost.

A diagnosis begins as a description.

Very quickly, it starts to feel like an explanation.

A pattern that has become visible enough to name

begins to look like a fixed truth about the child.

What may have taken shape through development

starts to feel as though it must have always been there,

complete and waiting, from the beginning.

And once that happens, the work appears to be…