Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It

by Gabor Maté

Parents need to be aware of the wide range of their emotional responses, from the functional to what may be called the dysfunctional. They are then much less likely to insist that the child take responsibility for how they feel, regardless of what the child may or may not have done. An enormous emotional burden is lifted off the child’s shoulders once the parent learns to acknowledge within himself the sources of his reactions to the child. That other people do not cause our reactions is a difficult concept, so automatically have we come to associate our feelings with what someone else is doing. The confusion is only natural. When we were very small children, other people did, in fact, cause us to feel this way or that, depending on how they treated us. To the extent that this still remains true for someone as an adult, it reflects the failure of self-regulation to develop. A simple example is the way I might react if someone accidentally stepped on my foot, say, on a crowded bus. I might address the offender politely or in a fit of rage or, if I felt intimidated, I might not even say anything. Although the stimulus in each case is the same, the reaction depends not on the stimulus but on my particular state of mind. Even the same person will react differently to the same stimulus from one moment to the next, so the stimulus cannot be said to cause any one particular reaction. We cannot blame the trigger for the shotgun blast. A person can squeeze the trigger all he wants,...