The ADHD Advantage: What You Thought Was a Diagnosis May Be Your Greatest Strength Paperback – 9 Aug. 2016

It is a fantastic book . However , it could be improved by using a neurodiverse approach. Most people with ADHD have dyspraxia and / or dyslexia and most people with ADHD with ASD traits or ASD. Multitasking might not work for a dyspraxic or an autistic person !

Here is why I wanted to read this book: there is a teen in my family with this diagnosis and I wanted to understand more about the condition. I’ve never read any other books on this subject.The first five chapters are introductory to a great extent, but they do put some emphasis on young children and teens with this diagnosis and how the number of kids now having this designation has grown to nearly epidemic proportions. Dr. Archer provides some good ideas for how families can learn to incorporate their treatment plan of an ADHD child within their family. He discusses when he feels medication is most appropriate and when it might be better for the child to not medicate. He also discusses the do medicate/do not medicate issue regarding adults. He comes down probably a little more firmly than I had expected on the non-medicated side. There is a “test” within this section to find your personal number if you know you are ADHD or if you just suspect you might be. I'm afraid this test might make it easy for someone to come up with their own diagnosis concerning ADHD. Frankly, none of this information was new to me simply from standing on the sidelines and watching one daughter deal with ADHD children in her teaching classroom and the other daughter exploring every avenue for her child with ADHD.Beginning with Chapter 6, what stands out to me the most was Dr. Archer saying that he had diagnosed himself as being ADHD. It is not stated in this book if he consulted professionals in the proper field to help him confirm his own self-diagnosis. Since he has written another book on this same subject, perhaps the information is contained there. Many of the individuals Dr. Archer uses as examples for how a person can use some of the manifestations of their ADHD to do great things in their lives are either very famous or very rich or both. There are only two examples of what I like to think of as ordinary people, both of whom have achieved their own levels of success utilizing strong ADHD qualities. Because there appears, to me, to be such an emphasis put on the rich and famous I soon began to feel I was reading one of those magazines you can pick up in the check-out line of the grocery store. With so very many of the references the doctor was using coming from non-medical sources I lost the feeling I was reading a serious, medically oriented book dealing with a complex condition. The New York Times, CNN, and his own previous book seemed to come up much too often as sources with some references to scientific research, just not enough to give the book the weight I would have expected.I can certainly understand an adult with the medical diagnosis of ADHD finding many examples of their own trials in dealing with this condition in this book and being inspired. Maybe there will be enough examples to help someone deal with their hyper ability to multitask, or perhaps it was new information to have someone suggest they make written lists for their constantly “bingo-brain” activity and this will help them look and see what is truly important to do next. Or perhaps they had not noticed that having physical exercise prior to an important event can calm them down enough to deal with situations better. But, really, boredom cannot be alleviated for every person with ADHD by suggesting changing the location where they live. I understand that advice was not stated, but it certainly was implied and given examples of so often it began to seem like advice. I think I was most disappointed in the fact that this book was – to my perception – not a serious look at ADHD. Rather it was a way to show how some very wealthy people with connections readily available to most of them have coped and even thrived while dealing with their ADHD. Can the ordinary ADHD person benefit greatly from most of this advice in anything other than a pep talk manner? I would say, probably not. Certainly I would not think this book would be of much practical help to parents of a young child when they are simply trying to understand what is happening in their offspring’s brain.I received an e-ARC of this book through NetGalley.