Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - Inattention

Source: National Institute of Mental Health; NIH Publication No. 3572 (extract)

Children who are inattentive have a hard time keeping their minds on any one thing and may get bored with a task after only a few minutes.

If they are doing something they really enjoy, they have no trouble paying attention. But focusing deliberate, conscious attention to organizing and completing a task or learning something new is difficult.

Homework is particularly hard for these children. They will forget to write down an assignment, or leave it at school. They will forget to bring a book home, or bring the wrong one. The homework, if finally finished, is full of errors and erasures. Homework is often accompanied by frustration for both parent and child.

The DSM-IV-TR gives these signs of inattention:

• Often becoming easily distracted by irrelevant sights and sounds
• Often failing to pay attention to details and making careless mistakes
• Rarely following instructions carefully and completely losing or forgetting things like toys, or pencils, books, and tools needed for a task
• Often skipping from one uncompleted activity to another.

Children diagnosed with the Predominantly Inattentive Type of ADHD are seldom impulsive or hyperactive, yet they have significant problems paying attention.

They appear to be daydreaming, "spacey," easily confused, slow moving, and lethargic. They may have difficulty processing information as quickly and accurately as other children.

When the teacher gives oral or even written instructions, this child has a hard time understanding what he or she is supposed to do and makes frequent mistakes. Yet the child may sit quietly, unobtrusively, and even appear to be working but not fully attending to or understanding the task and the instructions.

These children don't show significant problems with impulsivity and overactivity in the classroom, on the school ground, or at home. They may get along better with other children than the more impulsive and hyperactive types of ADHD, and they may not have the same sorts of social problems so common with the combined type of ADHD.

So often their problems with inattention are overlooked. But they need help just as much as children with other types of ADHD, who cause more obvious problems in the classroom.

Source: National Institute of Mental Health; NIH Publication No. 3572 (extract)
Added: 29th June 2007

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