Active, or something more?

I knew my younger son was hyperactive before he was born -- be bruised my ribs from the inside. By the time he was 3 months old, he stopped taking a morning nap, and he stopped taking an afternoon nap before he was 2. He never slept through the night (I'm not sure if he has yet, actually, but he moved out when he was 19, so he doesn't keep me up anymore), and he needed constant stimulation. He was happy most of the time, as long as there was something to see and do.
When he got to kindergarten, his teacher called him "all boy -- more so than most boys." He tested off the scale on verbal abilities, but he tended to learn on the run. His first-grade teacher wasn't very understanding about that.
The thing about attention-deficit disorder with hyperactivity -- ADHD -- is that you can't keep your attention on anything. Everything that passes by distracts you. He did better when he was put in a class with language-lab desks. But at home, he was a handful. We pretty much had to live in his world.
You can't ask a kid with ADHD to clean his room; that's too complex a task. You have to ask him to pull everything out from under his bed, then you have to ask him to throw his dirty clothes in the hamper, and so on and so on. One simple task at a time.
It was a challenge for my husband, who just couldn't understand why Michael couldn't just clean his room without all these reminders. I had to appear at the door to his room every few minutes to keep him on task. It was exhausting to stand in the doorway every five minutes and smile and ask, "How's it going?"
But then, I understand ADHD. You should see me clean house. I work on whatever I see at the moment. Eventually enough gets done so the Board of Health doesn't come in and condemn the house, but it's really scattered. I'll scrub the toilet and on my way to put the cleaner away I'll see the cat litter needs changing, so I go downstairs to get the cat litter and realize I have a load of clothes in the dryer that needs folding and before I put everything away I notice the dresser is dusty ...
The thing with ADHD is that people who have it are very prone to depression. Children who have it also tend to be labeled weird by their peers because they don't pick up on subtle social cues, so they often act inappropriately.
My father used to tell me it was OK because I just had a different perspective than other people, and that's a gift. I used to tell Michael that. It doesn't help a lot when you're 13.
I think part of the problem is that we don't allow for differences in learning. My son was reading Poe in the third grade, but his teacher told me he was slow because he didn't conform to her classroom rules. By the fifth grade he was testing at a 12th-grade reading level, but he was having trouble in school because he couldn't do well in class.
We had a talk about learning disabilities in my Sunday school class this week. My high school students run the range from gifted and successful to a kid with Asperger's syndrome who struggles every day to be with other people. We decided God gives each of us challenges that, with help, we can turn into gifts.