Wanting to be AS

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It's not the definition, it's a neurological and behavioural finding about people who already fit the definition. Very different.

Your theory that it's caused in any great number by parents failing to make their children 'practise' using executive function can be proven wrong by a number of facts IMO:

1) Empirical studies. Some parents don't do much to encourage their children to do homework or other tasks requiring attention, and some of those happen to have children with AD/HD... most don't. Parents of AD/HD children have been studied and compared to other parents and there is no correlation with parenting style except that those in the former group are on average more stressed out and less responsive to their children until their children's symptoms are successfully reduced by whichever therapeutic means, at which point they become less stressed out and more responsive (showing that the behaviour of the children causes this one identified difference in the parents, not the other way round).

2) Something you mention yourself actually is an example of the second reason I doubt your theory. Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome is one of the many, many other conditions that is highly comorbid with AD/HD. The ones that are especially common include sleep disorders (just as with ASDs) such as sleep apnea - having this long-term as a child may permanently affect your brain's development because it's starved of oxygen every night until the problem is resolved, if ever - learning disorders such as dyslexia and dysgraphia, and dyspraxia/DCD (again as with ASDs). 80% of adults with AD/HD take more than an hour to fall asleep most nights. How did lack of practice concentrating affect their ability to sleep later in life? How does lack of practice concentrating cause motor coordination to be poor in 70% of boys with AD/HD? I'm not saying lack of practice could never cause AD/HD, I'm saying that the idea that it's in any way a common sole cause of AD/HD is not supported by the extremely high levels of comorbidity with conditions that would seem to me to have no connection to a lack of discipline.

3) There are so many things that have been identified as making AD/HD more likely, from even a week's premature delivery, to various genes, to exposure active OR passive to cigarette smoke in vitro, and all of these individual factors apply to such significant percentages of those diagnosed, that if there is a parenting style influence over this aspect of brain development then you have to accept that the people who have been affected by this have almost definitely been affected by one of the other extremely common causes of AD/HD as well, and therefore probably would have had AD/HD regardless, albeit less severe. As we have no way of knowing how significant each factor was in any one person, then assuming that any one cause was behind somebody's AD/HD could be very harmful if certain treatments are immediately assumed to be inappropriate for that person as a result. For example there is evidence that allergies cause AD/HD in some people, however for most getting rid of the allergens doesn't make the problem go away completely, so depriving someone of any further treatment options because you've assumed it was ONLY the allergies behind it would be cruel. Same goes for assumptions about how important any educational factors were and so how helpful more pure 'practice' could be.

Finally, I'll say that it doesn't actually matter what caused the brain's development to slow down once it's happened, unless knowing that allows you to reverse the effects on that person. If it were lack of practice, you couldn't go back in time and make the child get more executive function practice in the past. So what do you propose? The person's brain is different NOW, whatever the reason, just as if someone has very poor muscle tone including a weak heart muscle (ie is very unfit) you can't fix the problem by providing them with physical challenges that are designed for fully fit people. You will injure or even kill them, whether their problem was caused by a lack of exercise or something else. They must build up their strength with relatively mild exercise until they are capable of doing steadily tougher physical exercise. If you make them do something their body is not capable of doing without great strain, you will do them more harm than good.

The same applies to the brain and the mind. Wouldn't you consider it cruel treatment to place a toddler in a class of older children and try to teach them the same things in the same way? That is in effect what you are doing if you demand that someone with AD/HD attempts tasks designed for neurotypicals of the same age. And that is what schools and employers demand of unmedicated people with AD/HD. Usually, they get given the same assignments requiring the same amount of sequencing, planning etc. that their peers without AD/HD are given. Their actual organisational ability is like that of a neurotypical several or more years younger (one third of the way behind their actual age is often cited as a rule of thumb, for children at least), because their neurological development has been slower. Their brain catches up eventually in some cases but not in others. But until it does catch up, medication is usually the only highly reliable way to make their organisational and attentive abilities improve quite significantly in the here and now - which is afterall when they are being ORDERED to use them, so long-term slow-working solutions alone are as inadequate as short-term solutions are often claimed to be by people who aren't dealing with it every day themselves - enabling them to tackle such tasks without developing a mental illness such as depression or anxiety (another very common comorbid), or ceasing to try in order to prevent such an illness developing or progressing.

Thanks for the discussion,
roseblood