Hello all,

I'm an independent filmmaker. It's a great occupation for someone with ADD. It keeps me moving and shaking.

I recently started a screenplay about a 13 year old boy who has ADD. The father has ADD as well and the mother is the glue of the family. She's at her wits end dealing with her sons focus problems and teachers telling her to control her kid or put him on meds.

Oh, I should say the story is set in the 80's. I thought it would be a good time period. In the 80's people and professionals were embracing new ideas about the mind, but you still had people hanging on to concepts like: "if you try hard enough"

If anyone has any experiences they would like to share with ADD or any advice on important story points that are a must to have the general audience understand ADD, let me know.

Best,
Tyler

i think its better to have boy/girl with add adhd etc...

with normal perents cos if you have the perent with it as well it wont show what its like to suffer with this,,,,it better to make it more real life an take snap shots though there life an were you think they get poerbelms from more than just the diff in seeing an porceing things,,,,,i look forewadews to seeing your work

dorm good luck

i think its better to have boy/girl with add adhd etc...

with normal perents cos if you have the perent with it as well it wont show what its like to suffer with this
Personally, I don't agree. I mean, first of all, it's a bit more accurate to have the father have ADHD, because at least one parent usually does. (Diagnosed or not; and in the '80s, essentially no parents would have been diagnosed.) So the most common scenario is a kid with ADD (diagnosed?), a parent with ADD (undiagnosed) and a parent without.

Second of all, the ADD parent could have learned coping skills that the ADD child does not have yet. My mother was a bit like that - she had me when she was only 19, and ended up moving across the country with my dad when she was 20 and I was a few months old to live in Montreal. (My dad was 23.) Half of everyone they were surrounded by only spoke French, and they knew NO ONE! They were very alone. I think it forced my mother to grow up fast.

As a result, sometimes she told my dad (VERY non-ADD!) to get off my back, but sometimes she was bewildered by me, i.e. "If I could learn to do this, so can you!" It's a weird tension. And I don't think she fully realized how much my dad stabilized things until he left when I was 18.

(My sister was 15...it's been a few years since, and as my sister and I reached adulthood, we help out my mom more, and we all sorta limp along somehow!)

Finally, the non-ADD parent can intimidate the other one somewhat into sitting back while they have a go at the ADD child so "unwilling" to do what they're told. It's easy for the non-ADD parent to (perhaps not on purpose, but...) prey on the ADD parent's own insecurities about what's always been hard for them.

/my experience, in part. :soapbox: