Myths about ADHD - boldness

Professor Philip Shaw discusses how children with attention problems have been mislabeled as 'bold' or 'naughty.'

I think maybe if we went back 30 or 40 years ago, everyone could think of children in their classroom that were labeled very naughty or stupid, and they were neither. They were children who had real problems with attention and they were children who had real problems in sitting still and completing tasks – they weren’t naughty by any stretch of the imagination. Because there was very little public understanding of ADHD then, these children and their families and teachers didn’t have access to the appropriate steps to help these kids reach their full potential. So in a way, I think their was in some ways a missed generation of kids who really struggled with ADHD. It wasn’t recognized and it would have often been mislabeled as a child just being naughty or underperforming willfully at school. These kids really struggled to do their best and they are fully deserving of the appropriate accommodations at school and certainly of the best access there is to good mental healthcare.