In Barcelona, the annual Exporecerca Jove science fair is getting underway. The event is basically a science fair for the under-18s, and this year, a pair of Shanghai students are attending.

Participants in Exporecerca Jove are mostly just everyday children with special interest and talent in science. What makes these Shanghai students special is that they have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: ADHD. 

ADHD is a mental health condition characterized by difficulty in maintaining attention, hyperactivity and often, inappropriate behavior.

Yaya Lin, 12, and Kevin Meng, 11, have chosen a subject close to their hearts. Yaya suffers from ADHD; Kevin has a mild case. Some 3-7 percent of the population have the condition to some degree, and it is widely misunderstood, causing many difficulties for the kids themselves, but especially for parents and teachers.

A Shanghai Daily reporter met Yaya and her father Lin Wenxing in a café last week. She was wearing only a T-shirt despite the winter cold. Father Lin sat nearby, wrapped up in winter clothing.

“She is so energetic. She told me it is not cold today at all,” Lin said.

He still has a lot to learn about ADHD, he said, but he is coming to grips with it, and with how it affects his daughter.

When Yaya was in first grade, she was highly disruptive. Her parents and teachers found it almost impossible to contain her reckless enthusiasm. She would suddenly lie down on the floor during a class or make loud noises that disrupted the class, said Lin.

She also had difficulty writing. Her handwriting, according to her father, was “beyond obscure.” Low grades abounded, and Yaya became defiant if her parents tried to discipline her.

“Her mother would spank her,” Lin said. “But it only made matters worse.”

When Yaya dropped out of third grade, her parents were distraught, yet in the café, it was hard to see any difference between Yaya and other girls of her age. 

Everything seemed normal when she was talking, but when her father began to speak, she fidgeted restlessly. She plucked an ice cube from a cup of lemon tea and played with the straw. Suddenly, she stood up and started kicking her legs. People stared but their reactions didn’t faze her.

Lin said he and his wife were at their wit’s end until he met Meng Lili, Kevin’s mother, last July. At the time Kevin was looking for a partner to work with him on an ADHD project.

Kevin is really smart. He skipped a grade in primary school and is an exceptional basketball player.

“ADHD kids have problems, but they also have gifts,” said Meng. “Understanding and cultivating those gifts is crucial.”

That was when Lin started paying less attention to Yaya's problems, and more attention to her talents. For one thing, she was a rapacious reader.

“I can stay up all night reading,” Yaya said. “My favorite books are the Harry Potter novels and Jin Yong’s ‘Sword Stained with Royal Blood.’”

Yaya can compose a poem in minutes and generate vast screeds of imaginative fiction ad lib.

When Yaya met Kevin, it was a match made in heaven. Kevin immediately invited Yaya to join him in his research project and the pair started working together. Meng set up a WeChat group for families with ADHD children that now has 288 members.

“It’s a mixture of feelings, knowing that so many parents share the same pain as we do,” Lin said. “It is also inspiring that we are finding better ways for Yaya to learn.”

Together with other 10 ADHD children, Yaya and Kevin started to work on their project, and soon needed some help organizing it, so they turned to Zhang Jingsong, a child mental health specialist at Xinhua Hospital. She was astonished to see such a creative project conceived by children so young. She helped them revise their proposal and taught them research methodology.

“When I first saw their proposal, it looked like they wanted to save the planet by studying ADHD,” Zhang said, only half in jest. “But simply doing the research means a lot to them.”

All research on ADHD in China today is done by doctors or academics, she said. It was a novel idea for patients to study themselves.

“They wanted to record not only their progress and communication skills,” she said, “but also how they felt and expressed themselves.”

Kevin and Yaya designed a survival test as part of their study. They divided participants into three groups: one with no ADHD kids, one with only ADHD kids and one a mixture of both. Each group was given the same sum of money and asked how they would use it to earn more by selling fans.

In the end, the exclusively ADHD group performed best, but it was also the group where most conflict occurred during the process.

“They can be impulsive and have little empathy,” Zhang said. “That’s why many parents don’t know how to communicate with them.”

Misunderstanding is the arch enemy of ADHD, Meng said. People don’t really know what is going on with these children, their pain is often ignored. People must face up to the condition squarely and in the right way. When Kevin and Yaya return from Spain, she wants to establish an NGO to support children like her son.

“We don’t have enough resources for this kind of mental condition among children,” she said. “A good number of ADHD children, who are actually quite brilliant, are forced to quit school because the teachers don’t know how to get through to them.”

The project attracted the attention of Wang Xiaozan at East China Normal University. She invited Kevin and Yaya to join a task force at the university to study treatment for ADHD children. Zhang, from Xinhua Hospital, is also a member of the group. The group is applying for funding from the China Youth and Children Research Center.

Meng told Shanghai Daily that from March 12, Wang’s group will go to Huagao Primary School to screen all students to see if there are any ADHD kids in the school.

“The school did it years ago and found 20,” said Meng. “There are many children bothered by ADHD but nobody realizes it. They are often simply tagged as bad students.”

Once diagnosed, the hospital will work on helping the kids based on their own situation. 

Yaya said she is thrilled to be able to go to Barcelona and highlight the needs of ADHD children on a bigger stage.

With the right attitude and a lot of physical exercise, she gets better every day. Yaya returned to school last September. 

Lin said that despite his daughter's reckless behavior in the past, he now cherishes the genius in her.