Dealing with Distractions and Overreactions

     More than five million American children and teens have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder¹, a condition that makes it difficult - if not impossible - to focus and complete tasks. When Katherine Ellison found herself yelling at her son constantly to shut up, she didn't know that he had ADHD, nor that she had it too. Together, they embarked² on a year-long quest to understand the disorder（失控）, investigating and trying different treatments.  Ellison chronicled their experiences in a new book, Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention.

    Buzz Ellison had many problems in elementary school. He could not sit still, and was constantly jumping up and down in class, not paying attention to his teachers, not focusing on the task at hand. As a result, his mother Katherine Ellison says, he was always in trouble.

    "His attitude towards school really changed. I think he got bullied³ both by his peers and his teachers who insisted that he could do things that he really wasn't capable of doing at that age and remembering things and they gave him a lot of negative feedback," said Ellison.

    Katherine Ellison, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, says she didn't understand why he behaved like that, and admits, her behavior was also contributing to the situation.

    "I was making things worse often by being anxious or being impatient or not understanding him. I realized at some point that I really hadn't hugged him in a while. I wasn't smiling when he came into the room because we were having such a hard time," recalled Ellison.

    Buzz was diagnosed with ADHD when he was nine. And, like many parents of children with ADHD, Ellison learned she had the disorder as well. She was in her late 40s.(本文由在线英语听力室整理编辑)

1 disorder   

n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调

参考例句：

• When returning back,he discovered the room to be in disorder.回家后，他发现屋子里乱七八糟。
• It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder.里面七零八落地装着许多信件。

2 embarked   

乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事

参考例句：

• We stood on the pier and watched as they embarked. 我们站在突码头上目送他们登船。
• She embarked on a discourse about the town's origins. 她开始讲本市的起源。

3 bullied   

adj.被欺负了v.恐吓，威逼( bully的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• My son is being bullied at school. 我儿子在学校里受欺负。
• The boy bullied the small girl into giving him all her money. 那男孩威逼那个小女孩把所有的钱都给他。 来自《简明英汉词典》