ADHD: A Path to Success
Chapter 4 of
first 6 Chapters
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The Conditioned Attentional Avoidance Loop Model
Developmental Vulnerability to Family Conflict and ADHD
Clinically, ADHD children appear to be exposed to many and sometimes severe early stresses. In fact, in the hundreds of families I have worked with, I have seldom found an ADHD child from a family that did not have a history of problems.
Marital conflict, parental illness, divorce, economic strife,
verbal or physical abuse, or one of many other things are often the stressors.
Few of these ADHD children seem to come from stable "Leave it to Beaver"
families.
This may be one reason why twice as many boys as girls have ADHD. Boys develop
more slowly, so more of them would be ill-prepared to cope with such problems.
And being forced to deal with such early stresses shapes the child's ability to
focus his attention.
In other words, since the child is forced to deal with disturbing stimuli in an unpleasant environment, he develops a preferred, attentional style
— he avoids the unpleasant by focusing his attention elsewhere.
This is called attentional avoidance … the Conditioned Attentional Avoidance Loop.
Conditioned Attentional Avoidance Loop Model
The Conditioned Attentional Avoidance Loop Model hypothesizes that ADHD behavior could be a result of a child's exposure to interpersonal stress before the child is developmentally equipped to handle it.
Indeed, attentional avoidance may be the only mechanism for a young child to escape these early stresses, since their physical mobility to escape is restricted and they do not have the verbal or intellectual skills to change the stressor.
Once this adaptive strategy garners some negative reinforcement, it is refined and resorted to more and more frequently. When the stresses of school arrive, the child has a well-refined escape mechanism to deal with the new demands. It works well for young children and we call it ADHD.
According to the Conditioned Attentional Avoidance Loop Model, ADHD children avoid negative emotional experiences and direct their attention elsewhere via anger, performance anxiety, social deprecation, frustration, and ultimately boredom.
First Sentence: With terror in my heart, I can still remember sitting in emotional and almost physical pain at Palm Elementary School in Beaumont, California. 
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