Only a Mother Could Love Him: Attention Deficit Disorder

From Publishers Weekly
Diagnosed at age eight with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Australian Polis bullies classmates, downs a power line with a fishing spear on a family vacation and is suspended for stunts like molding a face that resembles a penis in art class. "ADHD kids just don't understand the concept of being subtle," he observes. The first two-thirds of this book, written when Polis was 19, recall his harrowing school days and family life in Melbourne. The last third, written more recently (he's now 23), is more a primer for parents of ADHD kids, particularly boys. Now better able to cope, Polis discusses how and when to use medication, how to teach ADHD children to enjoy reading, and other related issues. Many of Polis's former teachers and classmates are surprised that he graduated from college and is now an author. "It only took six schools, five thousand detentions, three hundred days of suspension and a case of Ritalin," he says dryly. He also had a supportive family, good private school teachers and a caring psychiatrist. There are many guides to managing ADHD, but this powerful inside account is unique. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The title conjures grandmothers whispering together, for it suggests being born in an era when such terms as special needs child didn't exist. Yet Polis, now 19, was such a child, a hard-to-manage boy with attention deficit disorder. His story, one of great hope, tallies the many different schools he attended and the thousands of hours of detention he served as a boy whom teachers labeled problem and who couldn't read a short sentence until he was 11. But he went on to graduate from high school, attend a university, and write this book to supplement medical texts on ADD/ADHD by showing how he overcomes everyday problems in everyday situations. If his early history of distractibility and impulsiveness includes such horrors as, at age four, crushing a neighbor's dog during an ill-fated Evel Knievel stunt (one of several behaviors that drove his entire family into therapy), it yields to strategies for success that will help health-care professionals and lay persons alike, no less here than it has in Polis' homeland, Australia. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


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A fascinating insight into ADHD by one who knows it well.  — Thom Hartmann, author of Attention Deficit Disorder--A Different Perspective


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