If you suspect that a child, or a friend's kid may be suffering from ADD it might be because you are exasperated by his or her behavior.

For instance, your child who you know is quite intelligent might keep coming home with failing grades even though he thoroughly passed a home oral examination with flying colors the night before.

Adults can get I too. Your spouse may repeatedly bouncing checks or forgetting to pay bills even after you have resorted to leaving reminders printed in bold letters taped to the refrigerator. You might be concerned about a friend, who keeps storing her purse in the refrigerator and the milk in the medicine cabinet.

Another common scenario is the co-worker who starts several projects and never finishes them, leaving you to pick up the pieces. In order to cope with the person with ADD, you may have become a codependent or a caretaker who lives in a state of perpetual resentment. This is because you always have to clean up, cover up or fix the perpetrator’s mistakes. This resentment is also always accompanied by a feeling of guilt, as you may feel so baffled, frustrated and weary of your loved one’s antics that homicide is becoming one of your favorite fantasies. It is hard to think about killing your kid every day but that is how frustrating a child with ADD can be.

As the nature of ADD is essentially cunning baffling and confusing, the first thing you need to do is realize that you are feeling the resonance of this disease. You are in the same pickle that partners of alcoholics or manic-depressives are as you can’t help but react to mysterious and hurtful behaviors that seem to be “on-purpose.” If you are trying to cope with ADD by mirroring the sufferer’s own behavior back to them – stop. An individual with ADD almost never learns by example. Put your energy into understanding the disease and learning not to take it personally. The most important thing you can tell yourself is “This is not about me.”

As with most behavioral or psychological disorders, the symptoms of ADD are engaged according to the degree of severity. Everybody at one time or another displays at least one of the major traits of an ADD sufferer. We all get distracted, impulsive and restless. The difference between a so-called normal individual and an ADD sufferer is the frequency, duration and length of these symptoms.

I think my nine year old has ADD but I am sure he thinks I have it too. If you have a kid that doesn't seem like he or she is listening to you then before you jump to conclusion figure out if he or she is just mirroring you. How often are you listening to your kid? It may not be ADD at all but just a reflection back of what your child has learned from you.