Book Review: 10 Simple Solutions to Adult ADD

10 Simple Solutions to Adult ADD by Stephanie Moulton Sarkis is one of those “right time, right place, lifesaver” books, and I’m not sure what I would have done without it over the past month.

One day almost a month ago my boyfriend texted he’d just taken a screening for ADD, scoring a 41 on a test where 35 is considered severe. I’d taught kids with ADD so it wasn’t a new concept and thanks to the commercials adult ADD was at least on my radar. But that was as far as my knowledge went, so my first (and worst) move was to Google “dating someone with adult ADD.”

A few days’ worth of panic attacks later I did what I should have done from the very start. I turned to books. When I found 10 Simple Solutions to Adult ADD by Stephanie Moulton Sarkis its rating wasn’t the highest or the lowest, and it didn’t have the most reviews or the least. The cover was simple, lost among the striking statement covers on either side, but something about the hummingbird on the cover compelled me to take a closer look.

The back cover made it sound like one of those self-help books where ministers claim in 10 easy steps they can cure someone of being gay, but I liked the hummingbird so I downloaded the sample anyway. Five minutes later I was waiting for the full thing to down load because… the person Stephanie described in the Intro was my boyfriend (even though in reality it was some woman named Sarah). I finished it that night.

The book itself is tiny, more a pamphlet with delusions of grandeur than a true book, but the information inside more than made up for any size issues 10 Simple Solutions to Adult ADD might have had.

I think in the beginning the boyfriend agreed to give it a try because he knew it would make me happy, but like me by the time he finished Sarah’s story he was hooked.

Now we read a couple chapters a night, and it's a really helped both of us. Thanks to Stephanie he's realized he isn’t alone, I found out a lot of new things about him, and we both got a lot of really great coping strategies for his ADD.

He spent an entire hour saying “I do that too,” “that’s me,” and “I always wondered why I did that…” I learned why his phone is constantly buzzing, why he repeats everything back to me, and why he is so easy to excite. We both discovered “Plan B,” which in this case has nothing to do with birth control. This Plan B is where a person with ADD has a cleaning buddy who comes over whenever they clean for the soul purpose of handing them trash bags, labeling boxes, and plugging in the vacuum, and for the first time in as long as I’ve known him his apartment is actually clean and organized.

The truth is there are no "simple solutions" to adult ADD, or to loving someone with adult ADD. I once told someone the quote I've come across time after time about being in a relationship with someone with adult ADD "it's like having another kid," and their reply was "except they're an adult so you have to accept that they can be like a kid but still treat them like an adult." It's something I struggle with everyday, and Stephanie's book has been the one thing that has really helped us both find a balance. It helps us both make sure he has the tools he needs so that neither of us have to feel like I'm the care giver in our relationship.

So please, if you have adult ADD, think you might have adult ADD, or know of someone who has adult ADD, please, read this book. If you have adult ADD it might help you the way it's helping him, and if you know someone who has adult ADD it may help you to see what their life is like. It's made more of a positive difference in my life than any other book I've ever read, and I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone.

-Aaron