As a developmental pediatrician for over 30 years, I've been seeing parents in my office with concerns about attentional problems and their worries about whether their child may or may not have ADD or ADHD. The first thing I go about doing is sitting the parents down and taking a careful history, particularly how far back the symptomatology goes. It's very unusual in children with ADD for it to begin at 8 or 10 or 12 years of age although that may be the first time that it's brought to my attention. Secondly, I want to be sure that there are no other social problems in the family so I want to make sure that this is a good intact home situation and there are no stressors in the family that may be masquerading as ADD or ADHD. I'd like to also gather information from all the teachers that I came to and particularly I use Conners' Rating Scales or other scales to do that and I also talk to tutors or anybody else that's intermittently involved with the child's education. Lastly, I review any test results from the schools or neuropsychologist or educational psychologist that may have been done in the past.