Rating: 
Summary: excellent Book give it as a gift
Review: A wonderful book on the insights of ADD. Helpful for Parents who realy want to understand what their child is going through with ADD. How you can help your child cope better with with this problem, and how you can help improve your child.
Rating:
Summary: Life Changing Insights
Review: As a 50-plus woman who was only recently diagnosed, this is by far the best book I have read on ADD. It's a shame that it doesn't come up IMMEDIATELY when a search is done on the subject. Gabor Mate writes with such eloquence and humor about the all-consuming mind that threatens to consume us like a wild beast - a thought I had often had, but could not have put into words (like everything else I feel). His theory on origins is that we are dealing with an emotionally immature brain, due to early experiences in life in addition to genetics - but we can move beyond it, and grow up! Thank you Dr. Mate!
Rating:
Summary: Finally, the Answers!
Review: Do you wonder why you do and feel all of the weird things you do and feel? If it's due to Attention Deficit Disorder, you'll be thrilled with this compassionate, user-friendly book. Dr. Mate is personal, clear, and non-blaming in his explanations, insights, and suggestions for healing. His approach to medication usage is conservative but balanced. He and several of his children have ADD, and he shares honestly about his struggles with the symptoms. The book offers an excellent tapestry of the neurological and the psychological. I found that I now had an understanding of the "neurology behind the psychology."
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful information for both Adults and Children with ADD
Review: Dr. Mate writes a book that is both informative and from the heart. As 43 year old adult female, recently attempting to negoitiate the challanging journey of being assessed for ADD, I found the book both validating and hopful with very practical information about the next steps once the diagnosis is made. The book goes beyond the stereotype of the hyperactive child or dysfunctional underachieving adult to give a more accurate view of the many ways ADD can manifest in adults and children. He also is very realistic about what medications can and can not do. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has ADD, may think they are ADD, has a child, student or significant other with ADD. There is clear concise information for each of these audiences. Thank you Dr. Gabor for such a wonderful book!
Rating:
Summary: An excellent, well researched book . Highly recommended.
Review: Dr. Mate, who has ADD himself and who is the father of three children with ADD, provides information about brain development and theorizes that ADD results from problems in bonding that effect brain development. He discusses addiction as related to ADD and the lack of bonding. He provides a method of treatment that addresses the underlying dynamic rather than dealing more superficially. As someone with ADD myself, experience in working with autistic and learning disabled children, and a strong interest in curative emotional relationships, I have found this book incredibly insightful and useful. It is strongly recommended to professionals as well as clients and families. It is written with respect and compassion and refrains from blaming parents for their children's difficulties.
Rating:
Summary: Please read this book! I don't care who you are, just do it!
Review: Ever since I was diagnosed with A.D.D., (one month after my 40th birthday), I have been a voracious reader of anything to do with
A.D.D. This book is my absolute favorite. Why? Probably because Dr. Mate has been so courageous in his honesty regarding his personal experience. I saw myself in so many of his descriptions of himself and his patients. If you are a person with A.D.D., you have hurt others with your inattentiveness, your carelessness, your impulsivity resulting in many idiotic decisions. You most likely never had any intentions of hurting anyone 99% of the time but nevertheless you did. And you have probably, deep down inside, always felt like there is just something wrong with you, you're just a "bad person" even though you really don't know how to keep yourself from doing these things over & over. This book will not only help you to see that, yes, in a way, there is something "wrong with you" but you are most likely not a "bad person" and you are probably much more harsh with yourself than you would ever be with someone else. But it doesn't stop there. It gives you a way to maybe not "grow out of" A.D.D. but, definitely, to grow beyond wherever it is that you're stuck right now. If you are a family member or friend of someone with A.D.D., you will grow in your understanding & compassion for this person no matter how much they have exasperated & angered you in the past. Believe me, I know because not only do I have it myself but two of my four children have been diagnosed (so far) and I suspect that various other family members do, too. These people will benefit from your increased knowledge & awareness & the fact that you cared enough about them to educate yourself.
Rating:
Summary: After all these Years
Review: Every once in a while, a book comes along that dramatically changes the way you think. After all these years, just when I thought I read everything there was to know about ADD, Dr. Gabor Mate writes such a compelling book, that I must rethink what I have learned and stubbornly believed about the origins and outcomes for children and adults with ADD. In the Footprints of Infancy Chapter, I had an epiphany regarding my own life and the lives of my children. As a school psychologist who works with teachers, I have learned how to better meet the needs of children with ADD in the classroom, and how to explain the power of a teacher to those who work with these children. Read this book! It will give you the knowledge, hope, and the tools to improve your life. Scattered will help you understand your spouse, child and students.
Rating:
Summary: After all these Years
Review: Every once in a while, a book comes along that dramatically changes the way you think. After all these years, just when I thought I read everything there was to know about ADD, Dr. Gabor Mate writes such a compelling book, that I must rethink what I have learned and stubbornly believed about the origins and outcomes for children and adults with ADD. In the Footprints of Infancy Chapter, I had an epiphany regarding my own life and the lives of my children. As a school psychologist who works with teachers, I have learned how to better meet the needs of children with ADD in the classroom, and how to explain the power of a teacher to those who work with these children. Read this book! It will give you the knowledge, hope, and the tools to improve your life. Scattered will help you understand your spouse, child and students.
Rating:
Summary: Merlin:"The best thing for being sad is to learn something."
Review: Having been in therapy longer than Woody Allen, I practice what Karl Menninger called 'bibliotherapy'-i.e., reading widely and deeply in the field of mental or emotional disorders. Since I'm a voracious reader, and since I've been doing this for twenty years, I sometimes feel there isn't much left for a layman to learn, or at least nothing much that could be called new. But Dr. Mate's book is wonderfully helpful on two fronts: first, it is a "why-you-or-your -child-are-like-this" book, and second, it is a "and-here-is-what-you-can-do-to-allieviate-the-condition"book. Not cure it, mind you, just make the cards you drew a little easier to play.On the first front, the neurobiology of ADD, Dr. Mate makes his point conclusively: this disorder arises first in the infant, in how he or she is wired-or not-and it occurs in the make-up of the hypersensitive baby, highly aware and from the very beginning suffering at the smallest slings and arrows life offers. Resilient children roll with the punches; ADD kids are flattened by them and get back up more slowly. Momma used to call this type "high-strung" and, boy, was she ever right. Dr. Mate even points out a study done on the vagus nerve of five-month old babies that turns out to be highly predictive of which of them will later, at fourteen months, prove to be "more reactive to maternal separation." In other words, ADD could as well serve as an acronym for Attachment Deficit Disorder. People who are hypersensitive have a disordered attachment to their caretakers that is pre-verbal and pervasive. One had better learn to deal with the fact that the fault is mainly synpatical, not social. My family doctor told me that my then-nine-year-old son suffered from severe separation anxiety because he hadn't been in pre-school or away from his parents enough. Fortunately, a more knowledgeable child psychiatrist said it was inborn so we could relax and quit blaming ourselves. Whew.... That doesn't mean that experiencing this hypersensitivity isn't damaging, even with a more-than-good-enough mother. Or that nurturing a hypersensitive child is easy. It is much more tiring and trying to deal with the ADD child than it is with his or her more resilient sibling.The ADD child triggers anxiety in even the most competent parent. So, it is on the second front, the practical things to do, that this book is most helpful, even hopeful. I return to it again and again (that is, when I haven't mislaid it in one of my more driven ADD moments) to remind myself what to do and what not to do to help myself and my similarly-wired son. For instance, the section on the counter-will-an idea I'd not heard before-made me understand why I am more often than not so suspicious of authority figures. I used to think it was very adolescent of me, and now Dr. Mate tells me it is, and that this is a component of ADD. It was from this notion of a counter-will that I began my search on ways to strengthen the will itself, so as to disengage this adversarial part of me, the counter-will, that aspect of us that doesn't trust. It has been an interesting and fruitful search and I am grateful to Dr. Mate for giving me new ways to think about this way of being in the world. By the time the ADD child arrives at school, the disconnectedness is ingrained. We are attuned to every slight, intended or not. Other kids find ADDers just as trying as the grown-ups do-it takes a lot of energy to interact with a 'wild child' who hogs the teacher's attention or a distracted one whose hypersensitivity presents the perfect opportunity to torture for fun and profit. I've yet to find an ADD adult who liked the social aspects of school, or didn't have horror stories about cruel peers and teachers... The most important chapters for me have been the ones on medication and on self-parenting. The first, medication, gives the limits of pharmocological help for this disorder. It is very clear about what medicine can and cannot do and the importance of finding a knowledgeable physician. The second, self-parenting, seems like a Mobius strip until Dr. Mate takes apart the results of life-time conditioning and explains the qualities one needs-compassion for self and others, curiosity rather than blame or judgment-in order to embark on a course of change. Whether one has to structure things by herself, or has the good fortune to find competent professional help, Dr. Mate's book is of inestimable help on that journey. In fact, every time my ADD tendencies pop up and I lose my copy of Scattered, I buy another. And now that my stepson has been diagnosed with ADD, I have an extra copy or two to give his suffering parents, though I would not be without this book. Scattered is definitely a keeper.
Rating:
Summary: Still learning after all these years
Review: Having been in therapy longer than Woody Allen, I practice what Karl Menninger called `bibliotherapy'-i.e., reading widely and deeply in the field of mental or emotional disorders. Since I'm a voracious reader, and since I've been doing this for twenty years, I sometimes feel there isn't much left for a layman to learn, or at least nothing much that could be called new. But Dr. Mate's book is wonderfully helpful on two fronts: first, it is a "why-you-or-your -child-are-like-this" book, and second, it is a "and-here-is-what-you-can-do-to-allieviate-the-condition"book. Not cure it, mind you, just make the cards you drew a little easier to play. On the first front, the neurobiology of ADD, Dr. Mate makes his point conclusively: this disorder arises first in the infant, in how he or she is wired-or not-and it occurs in the make-up of the hypersensitive baby, highly aware and from the very beginning suffering at the smallest slings and arrows life offers. Resilient children roll with the punches; ADD kids are flattened by them and get back up more slowly. Momma used to call this type "high-strung" and, boy, was she ever right. Dr. Mate even points out a study done on the vagus nerve of five-month old babies that turns out to be highly predictive of which of them will later, at fourteen months, prove to be "more reactive to maternal separation." In other words, ADD could as well serve as an acronym for Attachment Deficit Disorder. People who are hypersensitive have a disordered attachment to their caretakers that is pre-verbal and pervasive. One had better learn to deal with the fact that the fault is mainly synpatical, not social. My family doctor told me that my then-nine-year-old son suffered from severe separation anxiety because he hadn't been in pre-school or away from his parents enough. Fortunately, a more knowledgeable child psychiatrist said it was inborn so we could relax and quit blaming ourselves. Whew.... That doesn't mean that experiencing this hypersensitivity isn't damaging, even with a more-than-good-enough mother. Or that nurturing a hypersensitive child is easy. It is much more tiring and trying to deal with the ADD child than it is with his or her more resilient sibling.The ADD child triggers anxiety in even the most competent parent. So, it is on the second front, the practical things to do, that this book is most helpful, even hopeful. I return to it again and again (that is, when I haven't mislaid it in one of my more driven ADD moments) to remind myself what to do and what not to do to help myself and my similarly-wired son. For instance, the section on the counter-will-an idea I'd not heard before-made me understand why I am more often than not so suspicious of authority figures. I used to think it was very adolescent of me, and now Dr. Mate tells me it is, and that this is a component of ADD. It was from this notion of a counter-will that I began my search on ways to strengthen the will itself, so as to disengage this adversarial part of me, the counter-will, that aspect of us that doesn't trust. It has been an interesting and fruitful search and I am grateful to Dr. Mate for giving me new ways to think about this way of being in the world. By the time the ADD child arrives at school, the disconnectedness is ingrained. We are attuned to every slight, intended or not. Other kids find ADDers just as trying as the grown-ups do-it takes a lot of energy to interact with a `wild child' who hogs the teacher's attention or a distracted one whose hypersensitivity presents the perfect opportunity to torture for fun and profit. I've yet to find an ADD adult who liked the social aspects of school, or didn't have horror stories about cruel peers and teachers... The most important chapters for me have been the ones on medication and on self-parenting. The first, medication, gives the limits of pharmocological help for this disorder. It is very clear about what medicine can and cannot do and the importance of finding a knowledgeable physician. The second, self-parenting, seems like a Mobius strip until Dr. Mate takes apart the results of life-time conditioning and explains the qualities one needs-compassion for self and others, curiosity rather than blame or judgment-in order to embark on a course of change. Whether one has to structure things by herself, or has the good fortune to find competent professional help, Dr. Mate's book is of inestimable help on that journey. In fact, every time my ADD tendencies pop up and I lose my copy of Scattered, I buy another. And now that my stepson has been diagnosed with ADD, I have an extra copy or two to give his suffering parents, though I would not be without this book. Scattered is definitely a keeper.
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