There is a significant hereditary contribution to ADD—sensitivity,

but I do not believe any genetic factor is decisive in the emergence of ADD traits in any child.

Huntington’s is a fatal degeneration of the nervous system based on a single gene that, if inherited, will almost invariably cause the disease. But not always.

Genes can be activated or turned off by factors in the environment.

Studies do show that if parents or siblings have ADD, a child in that family will have a greatly increased statistical risk for having ADD as well.

ADD is also found more commonly in people whose first-degree relatives are alcoholics or suffer from depression, anxiety, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder or Tourette’s syndrome.

The family atmosphere in which the child spends the early formative years has a major impact on brain development.

It is obvious that brain/mind problems such as ADD are far more likely to develop in families where the parents are struggling with dysfunction or psychological problems of their own.

Given that emotional security is an absolute human need in infancy, it is astonishing that adoption is so often forgotten as a possibly crucial influence.

Environment has far greater impact on the structures and circuits of the human brain than was realized even a decade ago. It is what shapes the inherited genetic material.

If a mother has eight children, there are eight mothers.

SUPPERTIME. THE EIGHT-YEAR-OLD daughter is taking her time leaving her toy or book or reveries. “Hurry up. We want to eat,” the father says, tense with hunger and work overload. The daughter covers her ears. “Don’t yell at me,” she complains. “I am not yelling,” the man answers, this time hearing himself raise his voice. The child’s face turns into a picture of pain and despair. “Mommy, Daddy’s being mean to me,” she cries. If the decibel count in that kitchen had been measured when the father first instructed his daughter to hurry, it would not have registered at levels most people would define as yelling. The daughter’s reaction, however, is genuine. She picks up, senses, experiences the tension in the father’s voice, the edge of controlled impatience and frustration. That is what is translated in her brain as “yelling.” She is feeling exactly the same fear and outrage as another child would if shouted at in an angry manner. It is a matter of sensitivity, of the degree of reactivity to the environment. This child is emotionally hypersensitive.

Each is exquisitely apt as a description of the ADD child: 1. Very open to or acutely affected by external stimuli or mental impressions. 2. Easily offended, or emotionally hurt. 3. (As of an instrument) responsive to or recording small changes.

People with ADD are hypersensitive. That is not a fault or a weakness of theirs, it is how they were born. It is their inborn temperament. That, primarily, is what is hereditary about ADD. Genetic inheritance by itself cannot account for the presence of ADD features in people, but heredity can make it far more likely that these features will emerge in a given individual, depending on circumstances. It is sensitivity, not a disorder, that is transmitted through heredity. In most cases, ADD is caused by the impact of the environment on particularly sensitive infants.

Sensitivity is the reason why allergies are more common among ADD children than in the rest of the population.

children with ADD are more likely than their non-ADD counterparts to have a history of frequent colds, upper respiratory infections, ear infections, asthma, eczema and allergies, a fact interpreted by some as evidence that ADD is due to allergies.

Almost any parent with an ADD child, or any adult living with an ADD spouse, will have noticed in the ADD person a touchiness, a “thin skin.” People with ADD are forever told that they are “too sensitive” or that they should stop being “so touchy.” One might as well advise a child with hay fever to stop being “so allergic.”

Infants with a higher baseline “tone” in the vagus nerve were also “more emotionally reactive to both positive and mildly stressful stimuli.” These same infants at fourteen months were more reactive to maternal separation.

Unlike instruments, however, the sensory equipment of human beings is not easily shut off.

These are the children who go pale with “inexplicable” tummy aches and are dragged from doctor to doctor, from clinic to emergency ward, from specialist to specialist, subjected to examinations, tests, X-rays and over and over again are pronounced “perfectly healthy.” The parents are assured there is no reason for the pain. There is reason. Their child’s body is a barometer for the stresses on the whole family system, his symptoms the markings on a minutely calibrated instrument.

The existence of sensitive people is an advantage for humankind because it is this group that best expresses humanity’s creative urges and needs.

Sensitivity is transmuted into suffering and disorders only when the world is unable to heed the exquisitely tuned physiological and psychic responses of the sensitive individual.

The microcircuitry of the brain is formatted by influences during the first few years of life, a period when the human brain undergoes astonishingly rapid growth.

the brain mass of humans will have tripled by age four.

By adulthood, the size of our brain will have quadrupled, meaning that fully three-quarters of our brain growth takes place outside the womb following birth, with most of this increase occurring in the early years.

the mother, the word should always be understood