randyjim mentioned that it helped his child to hear about famous people who have ADHD. The search engine never works for me, so I don't know if this has been discussed before. Here's a list I found online of famous people w/ ADHD. Source is
http://www.adult-child-add-adhd.com/categories/general/famou s_people.php
Albert Einstein
Ansel Adams
Ann Bancroft
Beethoven
Alexander Graham Bell
James Boswell
Sir Richard Francis Burton
President George Bush (both)
Admiral Richard Byrd
Lord Byron
Thomas Carlyle
Andrew Carnegie
Jim Carrey
Gen. H. Norman Charles
Thomas Chatterton
Samuel Clemens
Samuel T. Coleridge
Christopher Columbus
Tom Cruise
Leonardo da Vinci
Salvador Dali
Emily Dickinson
Patty Duke
Thomas Edison
Albert Einstein
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ernest & Marel
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Edward Fitzgerald
Malcomb Forbes
Henry Ford
Rick Fox
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Frost
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Tom Gainsborough
Galileo
Bill Gates
Susan Hampshire
Handel
Mariette Hartley
Stephen Hawking
Wm Randolph Hearst
Ernest Hemingway
Bill Hewlett
Alfred Hitchcock
Dustin Hoffman
Thomas Jefferson
Bruce Jenner
"Magic" Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Michael Jordan
Carl Jung, M.D.
King Karl XI of Sweden
John F. Kennedy
Robert Kennedy
Jason Kidd
Evel Knievel
Bill Lear
John Lennon
Lewis and Clark
Carl Lewis
Abraham Lincoln
Luci Baines Johnson Nugent
Louis Pasteur
Gen. George Patton
H. Ross Perot
Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf
George C. Scott
George Bernard Shaw
Tom Smothers
Socrates
Steven Spielberg
Sylvester Stallone
Robert Louis Stevenson
Jackie Stewart
James Stewart
Richard C. Strauss
Lord Alfred Tennyson
Nicolai Tesla
Henry David Thoreau
Leo Tolstoy
Ted Turner
Vincent Van Gogh
Jules Verne
Werner von Braun
Lindsay Wagner
Mike Wallace
General Westmoreland
Weyerhauser Family
Walt Whitman
Jamie Williams
Robin Williams
Tennessee Williams
Woodrow Wilson
Henry Winkler
Stevie Wonder
Virginia Woolf
F.W. Woolworth
Wright Brothers
Vince Lombardi
Robert Lowell
James Clark Maxwell
Steve McQueen
Mozart
David H. Murdock
Napoleon
Nasser
Isaac Newton
Jack Nicholson
Anthony Hopkins
Howard Hughes
Nostradamus
Edgar Allan Poe
Cole Porter
Elvis Presley
Dan Rather
Buddy Rich
Eddie Rickenbacker
Guy Ritchie
Joan Rivers
John D. Rockefeller
Nelson Rockefeller
Pete Rose
John Ruskin
Nolan Ryan
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anwar Sadat
Pierre Salinger
Charles Schulz
Robert Schumann
Pablo Picasso
Charles Schwab
This is a great post because my dd really benefited from this sort of knowledge when she was first diagnosed. Sometimes I get negative and think that our family should just cut off it's ADHD gene pool and stop creating these kids that are so hard to raise but then I look at the adults that make it through their childhood years and I find something special. We have mostly very successful adults living with ADHD. It might take them a couple tries but eventually they are fine and some really have contributed to society through their out-of the-box thinking (self-employed often) or their willingness to take a stand for what is right (activists.)
How do we really know that all of these people actually have ADHD? A lot of them are dead so we really don't know. I think the list is based on a bunch of stereotypes of ADHD. I've noticed a trend of classifying anyone who is "different" or eccentric as ADHD. There is a difference between being "different" and actually having ADHD.
I'm not saying that you can't be successful with ADHD. I just think it's unrealistic to assume that every famous person has ADHD. It's overpathalogizing.
I think most site that have a list like that refer to the these people as having ADHD or having traits of ADHD. If you read a biography about Leonardo DaVinci and then filled out an ADHD questionaire, you would strongly suspect that he had ADHD and that it had benefited him.
I think that you are right to warn us that all is not peachy. I think that you are right not to think that famous people all have ADHD but I think that ADHD does sometimes provide the out-of-the-box thought process that can lead to great contributions to society. Obviously, there are some big negatives to having ADHD and society does not appreciated kids with ADHD so they have a lot to overcome to get to the level where they can contribute. This is true of high IQ kids in our country also. The quirky nerds have to keep their self-confidence up despite often being shunned by their peers. It is estimated that one third of girfted children drop out of school.
mamark39541.4167939815Thanks mamark. I was trying to warn people without being too negative. Appreciating people (ADHD or not) is good but it just bothers me when people are too peachy about it. A "good" stereotype is still a stereotype. It's like saying all Asians are good at math or all African Americans are good at basketball.scarygreengiant39541.272037037Bumping this thread for twodoodlesI have fun with cartoon characters picking them out on Nickolodeon.