First a general comment. Dr Max Pemberton is experiencing the same kind of vested interest opposition that Profs Elliott & Grigorenko experienced several years ago on the publication of their The Dyslexia Debate.

In Elliott and Grigorneko’s case they were not saying that some children don’t have difficulties in ‘learning to read / write’, they were saying that these are ‘normal’ difficulties and not due to a neuro-developmental divergency .Incidently in a separate instance the invective written in comments on MP Stringer’s comments about the link between incarceration and illiteracy and illiteracy being due to inadequate teaching provide just one instance of collective ignorance – some stating that if his view reflected that of the Labour Party they were going to resign their membership!

Similarly Pemberton is not saying that some children have – to use an old fashioned ‘explanation’ – don’t have ants in their pants! (More of which below). He, and his like minded supporters, are fully justified in claiming that ADHD diagnoses are driven by Big Pharma (via the DSM-V5) and those professionals who ride on this bandwagon

To the documentary criticised by so many: I was not at all surprised that Mason’s (a case of nominative determinism- a mason needs to handle tools?) improvement at home was not matched by a similar improvement at school. The single most crucial difference in the two contexts is that at school, pupils need to write with their adept hand. Now, while the documentary showed Mason drawing and writing with his right hand, there was no evidence as to which was his adept hand. Adept hand being defined as the hand which can handle complex unfamiliar uni-and bi-manual manipulo-spatial tasks with seemingly effortless ease. Note that can probably be no more complex manipulo-spatial task than writing since it involves cultural (mind) and body (brain) aspects