Clearly then, people who have ADD have the capacity to sustain attention under certain circumstances, so what’s going on? A Dysregulation of AttentionAt its heart, ADD is not a deficit of attention but a dysregulation of attention (Cortese et al., 2025). People with ADD may not be paying attention to the task that they and the people around them want them to be paying attention to, but they are paying attention to something. But even if not, the shift from viewing their neurodivergence as a deficit to a difference may be empowering. So when families come in saying that their child must not have an attention deficit because he can pay attention to video games, I explain the difference between a deficit and dysregulation, and this often, after some time, can help the parent understand.