12% of children/teens in the U.S. diagnosed with ADHD

[healthy11]

www.yahoo.com/parenting/adhd-diagnoses-soar-43-percent-in-united-states-144844063.html

It's worth reading the entire article, but a key paragraph states: "The findings in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry show that 12 percent of American children and teens had ADHD in 2011, a significant rise over the 8.4 percent reported by parents in the same survey taken in 2003."

[melvinhoward]

Yes, I agree healthy11, but there are certain tools which can help to overcome the reading deficits that accompany ADHD.

[healthy11]

It's important for people to know that NOT all children with ADHD have other diagnosable LDs. Some do have reading deficits and/or math difficulties, but current thinking is that people with ADHD have impaired executive function, and that's what often impacts their learning and retention.

Below are some articles that relate to the topics: add.about.com/od/schoolissues/a/Adhd-And-Math-Skills.htm
and www.fsd79.org/.../512/Reading_Difficulties_Children_ADHD.pdf by Dr. Mary Beth Burns, ET/P about Reading Difficulties in Children with ADHD
"...it has been shown that children with ADHD exhibit impaired executive function, and because executive function encompasses many of the cognitive skills required for learning, including the ability to shift efficiently from one mind-set to another, separate emotion from thought, execute goal-oriented behavior, and to process, store and retrieve information in an efficient manner, reading comprehension performance is often compromised (Barkley 2006; Tannock& Schachar, 1996; Pennington & Ozonoff, 1996)."

[kewpie]

Its also possible that when a person has executive function issues, they are diagnosed as adhd.

After my dd had her EF remediated thru the Arrowsmith program, she no longer uses adhd meds which make me wonder if she really ever had it. Same with my oldest son. The meds didn't really seem to do much for them. They helped my son for a bit when he was in grades 3-4 but not after that.