Kudos to Bryan X of ADDERWorld for his post about ADD into adulthood:

It used to be believed that ADHD was outgrown, but we know better now. First it was 10% didn’t outgrow it, then it was 20% – 30%, the percentage keeps rising… soon, I believe, the percentage will be closer to 90%. I believe this because of how we learn to cope as we get older and that many with ADHD find good situations where their difficult ADHD traits aren’t that obvious and they have learned to cope very well. With the state of the economy, and the saturated job market, prime situations for people with ADHD aren’t as available as they once were, this is making adults who may have thought they outgrew their innate ADHD tendencies realize that maybe they haven’t after all.

Bryan’s insightful comment shows that he’s a well-informed skeptic about statistical sampling. We all, including professional researchers, need to think beyond the numbers to their implications. Even if the finding “50% of children with ADD continue to have the disorder in adulthood” were replicated in study after study, it would only be a statement about the number of people reaching an arbitrary criterion on an accepted arbitrary “test” of a syndrome defined by researchers.

The most important thing we know about this syndrome is that it’s a whole list of distinguishing features, each of which is a continuum–present to some degree in nearly everyone, to an unmanageable degree in very few people.

In short, people vary in the ease and effectiveness with which they can organize their time and attention. That’s why we created a website about attention and money that doesn’t care whether a learner’s problems are technically ADD or merely “attention money disorder.”  Our job–and yours, reader–is to make tools available to all who need them, along with the self-awareness and acceptance so they won’t hesitant to use those tools.

There’s no membership requirement in this club.