Earlier today I posted some comments about my own un-diagnosed ADD and my observations of the condition as a parent. A couple of people took great offense, perceiving, I guess, that I was projecting myself as some great expert on the subject. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even the "experts" don't know enough. It is an evolving area of study, a "real" condition that is over-diagnosed in some ways, under-diagnosed in others and poorly understood at best.
I am living proof that the condition does not have to be debilitating. So is my daughter. We got there via different paths largely because the understanding of the condition is far better understood today and the fact that medical treatment is more widely available I contend that ADD is mis-named. It is not necessarily a "disorder" - it is a difference. I was fortunate. I learned to harness my condition. The reasons are many and varied. I am well aware that many people no different than I were not so fortunate and fell by the wayside.
The "crazy, lazy, stupid" stereotype still persists today. Many believe that AD(H)D is not "real". There is also a common, if misguided, perception that ADD is a learned behavior or the result of environmental factors. I am personally in the camp that the condition is quite real, and has a very strong brain chemistry component. There may be some truth that environment has some impact, but that can not be applied to either myself or my daughter.
So, let me just ramble for a while about the journey and my observations. Perhaps you will find something to take away from them. I wish I felt qualified to write a prescription for how to be successful with ADD - I am not. I simply hope that sharing my experience might help others in their own journey.
It was apparent from an early age that I learned differently. In the 1950s reading wasn't taught until first grade but very soon into Dick and Jane I had an aha moment where it all just clicked. By third grade I was reading at an 8th grade level and devouring every piece of print in sight. My mother used to joke that it was dangerous to send me out to empty the garbage because I would read the newspaper it was wrapped in. And that typifies my behavior - anything and everything interested me for good or for bad.
I was a "fidgety" kid, a "daydreamer". Not focused, not working up to my potential. Not, not, not. I was given a psychological workup somewhere around 1960. It was rather traumatizing and it begged more questions than it answered. I had a significantly above average IQ, so why was I such a poor performer in school? It certainly wasn't the fault of my parents as they did everything in their power to help me, encourage me, make me do my work. The problem, I know now, is that no one had the slightest clue what was going on inside my head or even what to look for.
At the time we lived in the city of Pittsburgh. It was still during the city's heyday as an industrial powerhouse and they had a very advanced school system for the day. I was placed in a primitive program that today we would call gifted and talented. That helped to a certain degree as it captured my interest. I started learning a foreign language in 5th grade - I was selected to attend a summer enrichment program at the University of Pittsburgh where I was exposed to fascinating new concepts such as the laws of probability and chance, my first exposure to statistical science. I was selected to attend a newly created G&T program in 8th grade.
The laws of chance suggest that my life might have been different had I attended that program. They also suggest that I might be dead. Many of the guys from my block fell into heroin use in their teens. One died young. Another died before his time, even though he got clean later in life. We will never know because my family moved to NJ in 1964. It is one of many random occurrences in my life that simply played out for better or worse.
We moved into a burgeoning suburban community, struggling to contend with the onslaught of people leaving the urban areas of NJ and bringing with them a hoard of baby boomer children. Our community was not unlike many others - money was not a problem, but capacity was. The solution the system chose was to triage the newcomers. Kids coming from urban districts generally didn't get placed among the best and the brightest. Things were pretty chaotic that first year - we were so overcrowded that we were on split sessions, not a terribly conducive learning environment. We didn't know better than to just stumble through and anyway my poor grades were my fault, right? In ninth grade I experienced a seminal event. We took the Iowa standardized tests and I scored in the 98th percentile. This caused an uproar. How could this C- student score so high? I must have cheated! So I was forced to take the test again, under close scrutiny. Why, sumbitch, I replicated the score. That had the immediate positive impact of getting me into slightly better caliber classes. It had the opposite effect in that I was pissed off and completely tuned out. It was also the beginning of my deep and abiding disdain for the public education system.
Despite the evidence that there was a clear disconnect between my grades and my learning performance, nothing was done. In fairness, nobody knew better, including my parents. It was widely believed that non-performing students were just lazy. Throughout high school little changed. I would read the history book cover to cover before the semester was out, yet get mediocre grades at best. Homework was a bother, lectures were boring and pedantic. I couldn't or wouldn't memorize the exact date of the sacking of Constantinople, but I damned well understood it's importance in world history and how it ultimately was the driver of many of the events of the 20th century (and today for that matter). Perhaps my favorite story is a chemistry exam in junior year. I forgot my slide rule for a change. There was no way this particular sadistic teacher was going to lend me one. He hated me (for good reason) as I stood for everything that was wrong with students. So there I was twisting in the wind to figure out a bunch of gas law problems. Aha! The log tables were posted all around the room. It was an ugly way to do math and I assure you I couldn't do it today, but I passed the test. The teacher never figured out how and I sure wasn't going to tell him. Later in high school I got the opportunity to take some advanced course work and typically did better in those more challenging classes. Two and two were never quite put together by the powers that were; I just stumbled through on dumb luck and instinct.
The rest of my behavior at that time is pretty telling. Everything I did was over the top and I never stopped moving. I was never particularly talented at sports, but I trained like a maniac. I always had at least one job, two or more in the summer. I had a car before I had a learners permit, I had two sports cars two years after I got my license. I did everything, good or bad. If it was there to try, I did. Sometimes that was good, sometimes not. The best I can say is that I survived by the grace of God. I will throw this out as an observation, not as a prescription: I never watched much TV, rarely went to the movies, I followed sports casually, but not closely. That behavior persists today.
Characteristically I got pretty decent SAT scores, so despite my lackluster grades I got into a mid-tier 4 year college. That was better, but still too structured for my taste. It is debatable whether it was my choice to leave my first college or theirs, but from then on I pursued an eclectic non-traditional post-secondary education. I took classes on and off for decades (still am). I have attended courses in two land-grant universities and three community/technical colleges. I can't even guess how many PD courses I took over the years. Back in the day that was frequently by mail, eg. American Management Association courses. Whatever I needed or interested me required study. I read three newspapers a day, a city paper, the Wall St. Journal and an industry-specific journal. I subscribed to an untold number of magazines of personal as well as professional interest. There was generally a foot high stack of reading material at all times and rarely if ever any discipline about what got read when. If I saw something of interest, I pursued it. No internet in those days, so that meant the library.
I chose business for my career path, specifically marketing. It turned out I was pretty good at it. Some innate talent combined with my insane appetite for work was a winning combination. I was also blessed with some excellent mentors who saw something in me they liked. I am still close friends with one of the first and arguably most influential of those. Many years later he told me that the first time he met me he described me to a colleague as "coltish". That, I believe, it an adult term for fidgety. It was in this environment that I learned to harness my ADD.
The author and lecturer Jonathan Mooney (Learning Outside the Lines and others) describes ADD differently; he believes that it is not a deficit at all, rather it is hyper-attention to detail for brief periods of time. Think of, "look, a squirrel" more as "look a squirrel, man, his tail is awful scraggly, I wonder if he is sick, maybe it means this winter is going to be lighter than usual, wow I barely missed that sucker, no wonder they call them squirrelly". What that did for me was give me the ability to handle a great many tasks of varying kinds simultaneously. I could instantly change my focus from a statistical analysis problem to a discussion of a creative approach, interrupted with an accounting problem while I jumped over to handle a client concern. I was only really good at a few things, but my diverse skill set made me reasonably knowledgeable about a lot. That in turn gave me the ability to recognize when to bring resources to bear that were beyond my scope, which was almost always. I was least successful when I tried to do everything myself and as I came to appreciate my limitations and weaknesses I became more and more effective. Because I freely acknowledged my limitations, people seemed to like working with me and for me. Success breeds success.
When my younger daughter started exhibiting learning difficulties my wife and I were puzzled. By then (the early '90s) ADD was widely known if quite controversial. Our daughter did not exhibit behavioral problems at school, but she was a holy terror at home. Early on she did fine at school most likely because she is intelligent. My wife, a learning disabilities specialist, couldn't connect the dots at first that she could be ADD because she didn't exhibit the characteristic social/behavioral problems, at least outside of the home. Finally in frustration we had her worked up by an educational psychologist my wife knew and respected. The results were eye opening. We did not hesitate to put her on Ritalin and the results were nothing short of miraculous. The entire dynamic of our household changed after beginning meds. Do I believe there is a neuro-chemical component to this condition? Damned right I do. By the way, my daughter was just as traumatized as I was at being studied as a nut case. She has long since gotten over it as I did.
I will digress for a moment to reflect on the education of my children. I mentioned earlier that I had little respect for public education. That was and is true. Please don't misinterpret this statement. My wife was a talented and dedicated public school teacher. We have many, many friends who were or are the same and even a few administrators. It is not their fault. The system is not geared to handle the needs of those of us who are standard deviants (bad statistics joke). We kept our girls in public school through grade school for the basics, but shifted them into a private school from middle school on. Fortunately we had the means to do so - not everyone does. Our younger was still faced with learning difficulties beyond her ADD and her competitive all-girls school wasn't any better equipped for special services than the public schools were. She received private tutoring throughout school and we became quite knowledgeable in assitive technology. Said daughter went on to earn her masters in IT and if she goes back for her doctorate has expressed an interest in doing her research in the realm of educational technology.
I have burned the candle at both ends and the middle my whole life, with both positive and negative results. In many ways I feel like I have lived several lifetimes in 64 years. But lest you think that has all been roses, let me assure you it has not been. The brightest flame often burns out first. The same malfunctioning brain chemicals, that are implicated in ADD are also implicated in several other mental disorders including depression. I endured a very dark period of my life that nearly killed me. The very characteristics that were my great strengths proved to be my great weaknesses, notably persevering against all odds, insisting that I do things my way and not conventionally. Eventually I was driven to seek help and with the wonders of modern chemistry plus some very good counseling my life got turned back around.
I still have a very active hamster wheel whirling in my head - very little has changed in my personality or my approach to life and learning. I have reached a level of immaturity that I no longer care that people perceive me as off center. In fact, I am rather proud of the fact. As I have said elsewhere, I don't pretend to know enough about this condition to recommend or promote any particular prescription. For me and my family I can only say that a few things have worked: never giving up on ourselves, seeking qualified help and listening to it (a lesson hard learned for me). Don't fear chemicals if prescribed by a trained, qualified health care provider. Don't fall for woo! There is a lot of pseudo-science being touted - it is a trap. If something feels uncomfortable, go for it - it very well might be the right answer. Try. If something doesn't work you have been successful because you have learned something new. Acceptance is critical; we are different, but not defective. We have challenges but they can be turned to our advantage. Think of it like martial arts; sometimes the best response to force is to not fight it, rather use it to the opponent's disadvantage.
Live long and prosper.
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