Friday, December 18, 2009

Adult ADHD and Writing Skills



When an ADDer is thought to have a learning disability in the form of poor writing skills, it is critical to find out if they ever wrote well. I consider myself a good writer of articles of high interest to me, but I can be a sloppy writer with material that does not catch my interest, or when I’m in a hurry and not paying enough attention to details in the written material. Even though I often don’t have the patience to edit my work thoroughly, I’m editing my husband’s science book, and he has been telling me that I’m an excellent editor and have picked up many errors. Why am I so observant in his work and not in my own much of the time? I figured out that the situation with his work is that he’s publishing a whole book, and my arousal level is very high. I’m afraid to miss important errors. The point I’m trying to make is before assuming a client has poor writing skills per se, be sure to find out first if their ADHD inattentive behavior and/or low arousal can explain their poor writing.

P.S. I made so many simple errors in the above writing, which my husband had to edit and correct.

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