Seems to me the idea of working with what you are gifted with is the best way forward, since you can then take advantage of how you already are. sure, everyone needs to modify some things, but if you can harness this situation, that’s way cool.

I was a ritalin kid, and it totally screwed me up. I’m not a doctor so I won’t say that these types of drugs don’t work. I will say that people don’t know how to work with ADD people. I know a bunch of people who have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD and have been really successful. Learning to harness that energy and turn it into something productive is something that a lot of educators/ bosses/ spouses don’t seem to get. I’ve been really lucky to be able to articulate my needs, and have people accomodate my scattered work style.

Funny thing is that these people will be better suited to deal with the CPA world. Moving from one task to another seamlessly and quickly is something ADD people do really well. They are better suited to more demanding jobs where a lot of stuff is happening quickly and they have to be able to manage a lot of tasks at once. Think of the life of a CEO or Minister for example. That’s an ADD life.

Definitions are always a problem. If you have a borderline case and choose to diagnose, the kid is saddled with the stigma of disability, but if you don’t they will not get extra support.  Clinically, you diagnose through standardized tests and then give accomodations based on the diagnosis. I’m not sure that naming a particular set of behavior attributes as a disease is a good thing in this case.  On the other hand without a positive diagnosis for a particular sickness, the kid will have no options for support and accomodations at school. 

But the accomodation needs to match the disability. When I was a kid I was diagnosed and the accomodation was to give me more time to write tests or extend deadlines. This is exactly the opposite of what I actually needed. I needed to be able to pace around, speak into a voice recorder and think, then have time to take those scattered thoughts and put them into some kind of order. I didn’t need more time to do things, I needed space and lack of rigidity.

“Treatment” is not a term that I like to use for ADD people. Let them be. Give them tools to express themselves and then watch them go. I hate the fact that a lot of people don’t know how to deal with a certain type of behavior, and thus assume it is a sickness that needs to modified. Some cases are worse than others, and teaching a kid (or adult for that matter) to live in the scripted confines of modern life is difficult.   When a kid is bouncing off the walls and you can’t find a way for them to engage with anything, medicating them seems like a pretty logical thing. I would argue that parents and educators should be searching for ways to bring that kid back to the moment.  For me it was technology. 

This conversation has totally veered off track, but I needed to get that out.  My wife is an educator who specializes in speacial education and has done a fair amount of research into working with the learning disabled.   We’ve had some spirited conversations as you might guess.  But on the whole educators are dealing with these things much better now than when I was in school, and kids have access to many tools that I would have really benefited from.

Thanks for giving me an opening to talk about this Christina.  You might see some more posts on LDs soon.

/rant

Because you mentioned it, what I’m really curious about now is seeing how in the future, because of the nature of increased inputs in a system in which communication is increasingly easier to access, cases of people with ADD or ADHD will be documented/diagnosed/treated - can you really medicate away the fact that someone has new technology?

I agree that disconnecting sometimes is important. Again, I have a strategy for this. On the weekends I read but do not respond to email and blog posts. This is nice as I don’t feel any pressure to respond to people. Although I not really removing those inputs.

Another thing to note is that I am a “net native”, meaning I have grown up with the net and had a broadband connection for almost as long as I can remember. As gen X/Y/Z get older I bet we will see some drastically different net useage. For me and my family, the net is already ubiquitous, and the rest of the world are still getting use to that. Although I don’t have children yet, I’m sure that they will learn to live life on the network. This is simply the way things are going.

Learning to cope and enjoy this new environment is going to become a life skill that we’ll all need to embrace eventually.

Again, thanks for the comment. I really enjoy your blog.

However, that said, there is something great about disconnecting now and then (another technique) to focus on one thing and not be distracted by he noise. I think everyone needs to find their own balance point to keep control of things — for me that means regular disconnection, but for the most part, going with the flow (within limits).