Host: How can I tell if my child has ADHD?

Dr. Jack A. Naglieri: It is really not a good idea for parents or for teachers to try to decide if the child has ADHD or not. There are many reasons why a child might appear to have ADHD, but that may not be the case. Sometimes children who have anxiety disorders oftentimes seem disorganized, they can t focus, they get distracted by little noises and such, and it is not because they have ADHD, but they have something else, and in fact it is very important if you think that the child may have some kind of attention problem or any other disability, then you take that child to a professional who is trained specifically in these kind of diagnosis and is capable of making an affective diagnosis, and to do it in a way that is most consistent with our current thinking about these disorders. Like most disorders in psychology and education, there is an evolving understanding of what the particular disorder is and what you really want to do is, ensure that you get someone who is very current in thinking about ASHD especially. So, you would want to go to a psychologist or a school psychologist or a pediatrician, who specializes in determining if the child has attention deficit. It is not a good idea to go on the Internet and take a little test to see if my child has ADHD, those kinds of instruments or those kinds of methods have a lots of limitations. You can easily be misled and to think your child has something wrong with him or her when they don t, it is better to go to professional. If you child is in school, you should go to the school psychologist. School psychologist can do these kinds of evaluations and in fact it will be something that could be provided as a service to the parent without cost of a individual licensed psychologist who could also do an evaluation, but that would be at a fee.