Being fidgety and easily distracted are two of the most common and recognized symptoms of ADHD, often leading to poor performance in school, the most recognized fallout of the condition. (While she’s not at school, her mother gives her a medication holiday in order to boost her appetite, help her gain weight and grow, all things Vyvance interferes with.) “When we had her tested they said that in 20 years she was the most hyperactive child they ever tested,” says Meenagh, gently removing that errant foot from the table yet again.īut Saorla’s perpetual motion isn’t what concerns Meenagh the most. But if she’s not on her medication-which she isn’t at the moment because we met at her family’s home in a Philadelphia suburb during the summer-she is an exhausting ball of boundless energy. People just meeting her find her adorably sweet, if quirky. She rarely finishes a task and being with her can be as disconcerting as watching television with someone pressing the channel changer every 10 seconds.Īlong with a gift for math and a love for Gaelic sports, Saorla has inherited something else from her father: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD. She sits on her knees, then jiggles, then rocks, then circles photos in a stack of food magazines with a pen, turning off the TV, turning up the TV, turning down the TV, and making part of a bracelet on a Rainbow Loom before she finally loses interest. During that time, Saorla’s actions are as scattered as pool balls in a break.

“I don’t know-random positions,” she says, as her mother, Kerri, a pediatric nurse practitioner quietly pushes her daughter’s bare foot off the table where it has wandered for what may be the 10th time in half an hour. When asked her position on the team, Saorla wiggles in her seat at the family’s dining room table. Saorla, whose blue eyes, white skin, and sprinkle of freckles helped win her a modeling contract with a New York agency-on hold until her braces come off -also plays softball and Gaelic football, a soccer-like game her father, Seamus, a contractor, enjoyed when he was growing up in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. With her long dark hair flying, Saorla Meenagh, 10, (pictured above) can execute a perfect switch leap, one leg out, one tucked under, her arms glued to her sides in classic Irish step-dancing style.

Teens react to the angry red button