it must be a universal experience among adhd sufferers  when i was in elementary school i was as frustrated as everyone else — my parents my teachers — at why despite gifts i could not pull it together no matter how much i wanted to  this was way before the concept of attention deficit disorder was even a gleam in a therapist’s eye i remember trying to sleep at night around age eight thinking that someday a doctor or maybe a coroner would find i had a steel plate stuck in the middle of my brain why else would an idea or an attempt start in one part of my mind never reach the finish but it wasn’t until i had a middle school daughter that adhd began to be recognized