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> People have concentration issues because they aren't physically conditioned to concentrate for long periods of time.

Like physical exercise is meant to help with that. If there's one thing that's invariably true about physical work, is that people adapt to it by pushing the movements down to subconscious, and letting their mind think of something else.

> You show me a kid with ADHD, I show you a kid whose parents shoved a screen in front of them as a toddler, and a kid whose parents are afraid to make the kid work hard physically.

How does that apply to the generation of the parents, though? Or grandparents, to compensate for US having a TV culture some 20-40 years before everyone else?

(Fortunately, we know the answer is, "it doesn't", as ADHD has a very significant genetic component.)

> I am one of them, although I did take to organized sports as a young teen (which helped me tremendously, but would have helped much moreso if I had started earlier).

I never liked organized sports, and avoided them (and most PE) since early school, for a very simple reason: I was diagnosed with myopia and wore glasses. Wearing glasses for anything non-trivial (i.e. -0.5/-0.5 doesn't count) makes PE a pain, and shuts you out of team sports: most games involve throwing or kicking around high-velocity projectiles, so you either suck at them because you can't see the ball (or teammates) at some distance, or you risk getting your eyes gouged out by the shattered lens after you get hit in the face by the ball. I know, I tried playing with glasses - but after couple cases of being hit in the face and having the (expensive for a lower-middle-class parents) lens pop off the frame and fly a couple meters out, I learned better, and forever since actively avoided any game whose name ended in "ball".

Why I'm writing this? 50% to vent my frustration, 50% as a defense of kids who hate to participate in team sports. Often enough, there are objective reasons for that. Now, I do blame my weight issues on the habitual dislike of PE I developed due to wearing glasses. But my ADHD? No fucking way, that was already beginning to manifest, and all the high-intensity aerobics or gym-focused PE classes didn't help at all.

Let me mention that I've got pretty severe ADHD if not outright mild autism and a pretty strong lack of executive functioning.

Now - with that in mind, let me respond:

>Like physical exercise is meant to help with that. If there's one thing that's invariably true about physical work, is that people adapt to it by pushing the movements down to subconscious, and letting their mind think of something else.

You have a great point, and you're not wrong. That said, having done some pretty intense labor myself over the years, sometimes the body is so shot by the end of the day that letting the mind wander is physically difficult, and concentration is easier.

>How does that apply to the generation of the parents, though? Or grandparents, to compensate for US having a TV culture some 20-40 years before everyone else?

Another great point - and I have a feeling that previous generations were simply called lazy, or dumb, or whatever, because ADHD wasn't really in the educational lexicon until the last of the boomer generation were parents (90s and onward).

The generation of parents who had a TV but not a ton else still got plenty of exercise and physical activity. There wasn't engaging content on the TV 24/7 and cell phones weren't a thing, and there was still encouragement to go outside an play. Kids don't do that anymore.

>I never liked organized sports, and avoided them (and most PE) since early school, for a very simple reason: I was diagnosed with myopia and wore glasses.

I can sympathize, because I had terrible vision problems too (also wore glasses; but also had amblyopia) and being short and skinny didn't help me in most popular team sports. I took up organized sports that didn't require perfect vision, such as tennis (still a team sport but played individually) and swimming (you can count how many strokes it takes you to go from one end of the pool to the other, and try to replicate that). I also ran or did plyometrics frequently. It all helped.

I have two kids with diagnosed ADHD and I can guarantee you that we did not shove a screen in front of them as toddlers and we push them both to exert themselves through physical activity, even though one in particular actively fights it every time.

As someone with ADHD who grew up in the countryside without any screens and with a lot of physical work, that sentence made you seem as clueless as you could be.

I tried an under desk treadmill. Couldn't focus when coding. Just too much body movement even on slow speeds. I returned it.