My father, brother, and sister all have ADD. My mom, meanwhile, is the most together person I've ever met. I don't know how she's put up with us all these years!

My twin sister and I are fortunate enough to be very "high functioning." We both graduated from high school and college with honors and have steady careers--she's a seventh grade teacher and I'm in the nonprofit sector. Neither of us were diagnosed until we were adults, as we got stellar grades all through school. We both tend to overcompensate for our ADD. I'm a major organizer and neat freak (which led to my being misdiagnosed with OCD in college) and she developed an eating disorder.

My brother is ten years younger than my sister and I, seventeen. His experience with ADD has been much different than ours, and I'm wondering if any other women have seen this sort of thing with their ADD brothers. Our brother is such an intelligent, creative guy, but was failing all his classes in high school. He is now being home schooled, but still finds it next to impossible to do his school work. He lives with my parents on the West Coast, while my sister and I are on the East, but I hear about him all the time from my mother, who is worried sick about him. He seems to be slipping further and further into depression and my mom just can't relate. She just emailed me saying she's thinking of getting him a blackberry for xmas so that he can stay organized. That is NEVER GOING TO WORK.

My mom often uses me as an example when she's speaking with my brother, telling him I love my psychiatrist, how well I've done on my meds, etc., but I think this makes him feel worse. He's grown up with the same teachers my sister and I had and has had to hear all about what great students we were...I don't think I serve as a viable example to him.

I wish I could go home and hang with my brother, help him to see things from a new perspective, etc. But I'm not sure even I can relate to him. Is it often just different for the guys?

It doesn't help that my father is a terrible role model. I strongly believe he has Aspergers in addition to ADD. He does very little other than obsess over his audio equipment and talk to people online all day. I don't know if he and my brother have EVER had a serious conversation. :(

Hi,

My family shares similarities with yours (except I'm male and all my siblings are to). I went well at school whereas my younger brother did not. My brother had the exact same academic opportunities as I did yet I managed to almost double his final year grades. My brother has good reasoning and logic skills which are very apparent when solving puzzles (brain teasers, riddles, fitting blinds, gaming, chess ...). There was nothing any1 could do about my brothers academic performance. Pushing my brother in some ways made it worse. ADD treatment or not didn't seem to make much difference to my brother whereas for me it made huge differences. It hasn't mattered much in the long term. Even without uni level tertiary education my brothers earning potential thanks to the mining boom is equal if not greater than mine and he enjoys his work. I wouldn't worry too much about poor high school performance it might not matter much in the end. What did help my brother was facilitating and helping out in the transitional period just after school.

As for the dad thing. I've never had very serious conversations with my dad. My dad would offer advice if asked but didn't try to "sort me out". My mum always interpreted this as a lack of concern and lazy parenting. My dad realised he didn't always know what was best for us and avoided making decisions for us. In contrast my mum always had a very active role in our lives. My mum was the one who sought add treatment and pushed me and my brother. Looking back im thankful for both approaches and while my relationship with my dad doesnt mirror that of a best practice parenting book I'm very happy with it. Maybe both your brother and dad are to.

Are you writing about MYYY little brother? Down to the homeschooling and everything, EGADS. YEEES. The thing with him was that he had some Asperger's thrown in there too. Is your brother medicated? Sometimes I think moms shelter the boys more, but that just might have been my mom. My little brother went into the Army and made some progress in life, but only after he met and married his OCD wife. What a match made in . . . . well, I pray for them a lot. My brother had an issue with motivation and also, he doesn't perceive the future. Not like, he doesn't think about it, but he has this lack of imagination where he can't project into the future, like he's blind to it, and he doesn't plan.

Medicine helped my brother a lot, but his wife doesn't want him to take it. Long story. He's in school for geology right now, new baby -- he is still eking by but he's making it. And he is still the sweetest person ever, which is why everyone puts up with his foibles. You just know he's not doing it on purpose.