Other reviewers on Goodreads have covered ADHD 2.0's flaws in detail: lack of scientific rigor, over-optimistic view of life with ADHD (it's a superpower!), lack of analysis of class/race/gender dynamics that inflect the experience of coping with ADHD, superficial information about various aspects of the condition. This is all true. I don't love that they approve ABA therapy, which is coercive, and I don't love that they speak glowingly of experimental, unproven therapies like antihistamine medications and specific balance-related exercise regimens.
All that aside, this book provides an overview of life with ADHD that could be helpful to a caregiver for a child with ADHD or a person who themself has ADHD. My partner with ADHD feels quite positive about the book after reading it, and I'm considering buying it on audio so I can get my (probably ADHD) teenager to listen to it.
There's an anecdote in here about a grown man who got so hyperfocused on a garden improvement project he and his wife were embarking on that when he went to the hardware store with his wife, he wandered off, made a whole plan all on his own, bought a bunch of things, drove home from the store without his wife, and started to dig up his yard and plant flowers. Not only did he not think at any point that it was important to ask his wife what she wanted to do with their yard, he literally actually forgot his wife entirely at the store.
When his kid asked where her mom was, he tried to give his car keys to the kid, who did not have a driver's license, because he didn't want to stop focusing on his project for the time it would take to go rescue his wife.
I read that, and I thought, that man's poor wife. I hope she divorced him. No one deserves to live in a marriage where their spouse just literally... does not register that they exist. ADHD aside, just. The utter fucking disrespect. The more I think about it, the angrier I get on her behalf.
The authors of this book don't really think about how she felt or was impacted, though. They're concerned only with the man and his state of mind. They present this as a kind of funny story about the extremes of the ADHD brain. I guess they don't notice that this man not only has ADHD, but he also has contempt for his wife. The ADHD is the part they're writing about, I guess. Which, you know. Whatever.
Anyway, I guess there are some helpful things in this book. It's fine. I'll probably go looking for a few other options before I get my kid anything, though.
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