Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) Community Comes Together For First Ever Virtual Conference

I Can't Believe It! It's About Time!

This conference is absolutely awesome! As a single mother, one of the "working poor", there is absolutely no chance that I would ever get to any of the big conferences on ADHD. Even if I could afford the conferences themselves, there are still travel, food and lodging to figure into the budget. I do a lot of research on ADHD for both my 12 year old son and myself, but since there are myriads of issues involved with ADHD, many of which can be debilitating, and since mental health insurance isn't even close to parity, it's incredibly hard to have any contact, other than books or articles, with experts without paying a fortune for anything more than medication monitoring and, I'm sorry, that just doesn't cut it with this disorder.

There are so many children out there that need help and so many parents that try as hard as they can to help them by learning as much as they can within their budgets, and learn it piecemeal, a little here, a little there, so it's hard to incorporate the bits and pieces into a cohesive plan of assistance. It becomes almost a full time job by itself, and families' entire lives revolve around ADHD, often to the detriment of the quality time that is so necessary for ADHD kids to have. Not to mention the havoc it can wreak if both a child and a parent (or both) have it and not only the child's issues need to be addressed but the adult's issues need to be addressed as well and oftentimes, jobs and finances suffer from the effects of ADHD on the parent and family relationships and atmosphere can disintegrate into complete chaos when one or both parents have untreated ADHD.

And then there are those who come into contact with children or adults with ADHD, and, even if the ADHD is brought out into the open, these people just can't seem to "get" it and, especially with children, proceed to punish and denigrate those with the disorder when the symptoms of ADHD are present. The toll this takes on children's self esteem is horrible and makes a permanent mark on them when treated this way on a regular basis.

It's fantastic that the internet can be utilized to get the experts and the "common folk" affected by ADHD matched up at a reasonable cost. I can't imagine why it hasn't been done sooner, especially with the large numbers of both children and adults who are being newly diagnosed all the time. And, the fact that the conference can be "attended" on one's own timetable (as long as one doesn't mind missing the participation of the live conference), makes it better as many parents cannot afford to take off work for this conference, especially on such short notice, if they can afford it at all. Certainly participating is more enriching, but if that can't happen, hearing the speakers and the audience will certainly still be advantageous. There is one session that I myself am going to try to get off of work for, and the other is in the evening when I'm not at work. I could go on and on but I'll just say that I'm so very happy that I was emailed this article in one of the email newsletters that I subscribe to or else I would not have known about it. I'm so excited about this opportunity!

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