Background

My almost-16-year-old daughter is in the 10th grade at a very good
school.  Before this year, she made excellent grades, scored high on
standardized tests, and is not a behavior problem.  She?s a very nice
kid, has many friends, and is much loved by her parents.  This year,
she took a foreign language, Latin, class for the first time.  Her
grades went down, and she is having the most trouble with her Latin
class.  I think the Latin class is taking up so much time and energy
that it is affecting her in other classes.  She was diagnosed as
ADD/ADHD in the 2nd grade but has been able to control the symptoms
successfully until now with medication and a great deal of effort.

I want to give my daughter?s school something that will educate them
about why she has had problems this year and what actions on their
part might help my daughter.  I want to show them that there is strong
evidence that ADD/ADHD affects students taking a foreign language and
that colleges recognize this and take appropriate action and that my
daughter?s school should too.

You may find the following link helpful for getting a handle on
terminology, etc., although I?m not really interested in sites related
to testing.

http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/menuitem.c988ba0e5dd572bada20bc47c3921509/?vgnextoid=5de261a655355010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD&vgnextchannel=fbc7be3a864f4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD

You might also find help on the CHADD website.

http://www.chadd.org/ 


Deliverables

Links to policy documents at 3-5 highly-respected colleges containing
statements indicating that, for purposes of (1) college admission and
(2) college graduation, the school's foreign language requirement will
be waived or that other classes/activities will be substituted for the
language requirement for students with ADD/ADHD.

Links to documents on the sites of 3-5 relevant and
authoritative/respectable organizations containing statements
indicating that for ADD/ADHD students taking a foreign language class
(1) ADD/ADHD has a negative impact, (2) potential appropriate
accommodations by the school/teacher, and (3) potential appropriate
student compensating/study strategies.

Additional links to articles you think might be helpful would be
appreciated as well.  I?d like direct links to the two groups above if
at all possible, suitable for forwarding to my daughter?s school. 
Thanks very much for your help.

Wrs100,
Has there been any significant event recently that may have affected
your daughter in a way? While ADD is a factor, it may have been
worsened at this point by something else. Perhaps the foreign language
may have created some special difficulty for your daughter at this
time and caused some attention difficulties, but that may have to be
observed and confirmed by a specialist. This is not because I am
skeptical, but it may help give you proof for your belief about your
daughter's condition - should it be confirmed. Perhaps certification
is needed from a specialist about your daughter to convince the school
to agree to sit down and talk about possible steps to take to help
your daughter. This is just a suggestion, though, not an answer.

Thanks for your question.  Like most things, there is more to the
story, but I don't want to go there at the moment.  Basically, I want
to test, not in a technical sense, but in a tentative way, the
"hypothesis" I set out by exploring if current research and practices
support it as one *possible* explanation of the facts I described.  I
intended, for this purpose, to ignore the possibilities you raise, but
they are quite reasonable alternative explanations, and I appreciate
you suggesting them as alternatives.  I meant to give background
information only to facilitate the research on the position I'm trying
on for the moment in case something is relevant that I didn't know was
relevant.  For example, maybe the ADD/ADHD affects students taking
Spanish but not Latin.  I'm not so much trying to find Truth (at the
moment) as I am trying to construct an argument in favor of the
position I specified.  I'm not as cold or as stupid as that sounds,
but time is an important factor in what I'm trying to accomplish, and
Truth may take more time to find.  Having the deliverables I described
may eventually help me find Truth as well as get the response I need
from my daughter's school in time to do my daughter some good.  Thanks
very much, and I appreciate any information, and specifically the
information I described, on this topic.