Have any of you heard this one? "Well, your child may be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and here are your medication based options." The implication can sometimes feel like a death sentence. Often the reaction of the parent is severe given the understanding that is prevalent regarding this variation in functionality. I call it a variation because we are all different, we each see the world through our own eyes, hear through or own ears. We can vary in how we approach problem solving, in how we integrate information, in how we learn. The issue is that while we may learn differently one from another, we are all taught the exact same way. We are taught to the middle so to speak. We are taught to the norm. So many brilliant children fall outside of this area. These can be the minds that think faster, that are far more visual and kinesthetic when it comes to taking in information, these are children that can work at lightning speed, these are the Einsteins of the world the Davincis and the Edisons. Those that harness this ability rise to the top they become corporate heads, owners of their own companies, emergency room Doctors, elite athletes. There is actually a fair amount of documentation showing these professions to be populated with a a statistaically significant concentration of those with "ADD".
When you think of it, there is logic to this possibility. Anyone who has visited an Emergency Room can understand that an ER Doctor is functioning at a frenetic pace assessing, concluding making decisions and moving on to do it all over again. The Corporate head will be talking to you while mentally being decisive and moving on to the several other things that need their atention. The elite athlete is an interesting one, this is an individual capable of doing things that only a small percentage of the population can do. Who can process the speed and trajectory of a 90mph fastball while deciding whether it is a ball or a strike and then co-ordinate body movements to intercept the path of the ball with a bat? The Hockey goalie is notoriously ADD, just watch them when the puck is not in their end of the ice, they are in constant motion keeping that synaptic response primed for reflexive movement to the possibility of a puck flying at high speeds from varying angles even with changes in direction involved. The point is that these are special people capable of so much more than the "ordinary" human. How then do we clasify this exceptionality as a disorder in children when it is more often the system of education that is unable to meet nor understand their learning style rather than them having an inability to learn.
Here is a story I love to tell because it is probably the most vivid reminder to me of how wrong we can be about someone. I had a little girl come to my office for a Central Auditory Processing assessment a number of years ago. This child was 9 years old at the time and could not read, not even a little bit. To make things more complex she was adopted, and at that time her parents new little to nothing of her birth history or of family genetics. As a nine year old, all kinds of possible diagnosis had been sugested by the "professionals", some suggested Autism spectrum disorder, others severe Attention Deficit, Dyslexia, the list went on and on. The school system was not meetig this childs needs and they did not know what to do with her. When I saw her, she was slated to be moved into a "life skills" class which in and of itself was to give up on this child. Finally after much discussion, her mom blurted out to me, "but she is not dumb!"
This emotional outburst led to further discussion and the revelation that this child could go grocery shopping and calculate the contents of the cart, with tax! I was blown away! How could this child possibly be labeled in such a way that she would be categorized as "mentally limited". We talked a long time and decided on a course of action. The long and short was that with this exceptionality in mind further appropriate assessment was done and indeed it was found that when it came to language bases learning she was severely remedial but when it came to logical mathematical thinking she was off the charts brilliant. The problem had been that she couldn't read the math problems to do them. The school system did not know what to think, what box did she fit in? Simply put and in the terms that were obvious, was this child smart or dumb ? Well, of course, she was brilliant. This exceptionality demanded that this child needed one on one attention emphasizing her strengths while strengthening her weaknesses. Long term she became a brilliant math student winning provincial math competitions annually. In high school, she was taking University math courses. This young lady was one of the brightest and the best but remained a lousy reader.
I happen to have a wife blessed with ADD. This woman is capable of organizing events and people at a blurring pace. I can watch with amazement the chaotic come together with purpose. I am sometimes woken in the middle of the night to hear of the racing of her mind creating undertakings that the "mere mortal" would never consider possible. I recognize that my slow functioning mind is limited while hers is like a very fast sports car zipping around. How can this be a "disorder"?
My thinking is that we are all different with varying capabilities and strengths. The categorization of disorder is a necessity precipitated by a system of learning that is incapable of appropriately accommodating for variance amongst us. There is nothing "wrong" with the ADD child in a pathologic sense but we have to categorize this way due to our inability to adapt to their style of function. We reference "the box," some being in the box learners and some out of the box learners and thinkers. More and more, I am wishing to be capable of out of the box thinking because there is were excellence lies, there is where people stand out in society, these are the leaders in industry, the in the box thinkers remain ordinary. So yes "I wish I had ADD"!
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