Richard Lavoie, special-education consultant in Barnstable, Massachusetts
Eight-year-old Josh stands alone at the edge of the playground, watching the other kids play. He'd like to join them but has no idea how.
Eleven-year-old Tina sits on the porch steps in tears. From the next block, she can hear the sounds of a birthday party to which she wasn't invited — even though she thought the birthday girl was her good friend.
Fourteen-year-old Tom spends all his free time alone, on his computer. No one calls him, and he calls no one.
Is anything sadder — or more frightening to parents — than a friendless child with attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD)? "Parents fall apart crying about their child's situation," says Richard Lavoie, a special-education consultant in Barnstable, Massachusetts, and the author of It's So Much Work to Be Your Friend. "And it's never about academics. It's always about the pain of social isolation their child is facing."
It's hard to overstate the importance of friendships. Mary Fowler, the Fair Haven, New Jersey-based author of Maybe You Know My Teen and the mother of an ADD son, says that having close childhood friends can make "the difference between things going well, or becoming a hard-to-manage teen, dropping out, abusing substances, and being in trouble with the law." Experts say that having positive social relations in childhood is a better predictor of adult happiness than is I.Q. or academic achievement. "Friendships are not a luxury," says Lavoie. "They're a necessity."
Missing cues, lacking skills
All parents worry about their children's friendships. But for parents of ADHD children, the concerns are especially pressing. Making friends requires hundreds of skills—talking, listening, sharing, and so on. These skills do not come naturally to children with ADHD.
"They miss social cues that other kids learn by osmosis," says Carol Brady, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in Houston. "Having ADD is like trying to watch six TVs at once. While you're deciding which one to pay attention to, some subtle information passes you by."
ADHD children have friendship trouble for all sorts of reasons. Some aren't good listeners. Some yammer on and on about a specific interest — oblivious to the fact that other children might not share the interest. Others drive away potential friends by impulsively blurting out unkind comments.
One mother in Hawaii says her "mother hen" daughter alienates peers by trying to micromanage their lives.
In some cases it's unclear what the precise problem is. "I just think some kids have an air around them that other kids pick up on as a target," says one mother, worn out from years of worrying about her ADD child's awkwardness and social isolation.
