What good?

"I have ADD, I'm better than you."

This is the ONLY way to look at ADD, as a child, as an adult, as a friend, as a lover.

It's not healthy to gloat. But it's emotionally damaging to put yourself down, especially about something that really has no reason to put you down in the first place! ADD is a wonderful thing, and I'll prove it.

First and foremost, ADD has boosted my confidence. The more you try, the more you succeed. When you have ADD, the way you approach things in your life is typically with great impulse. This can be a negative thing, but most of the time it is what you make of it, and it can seriously be to your advantage.

Having ADD is like watching TV with the channel up button stuck. People say things, but you only grab a piece of it before you move on to something else. Unfortunately, in life, there is no Tivo, so pausing life is a luxury only reserved for fairy tails, children's movies, and sci-fi flicks.

In this regard, absorbing important "adult" stuff is very difficult! I struggle with it EVERY day. It's not a memory thing, it's literally an attention thing (thus the name Attention Deficit) But it's not a deficit, a deficit implies that some thing's missing. It's a glass half full sort of theory, but ADD is sort of natural. In the beginning of creation, just living was dangerous, most of the points that ancient man had to absorb were conveyed in a simple, to the point way. Unlike today where the world has become extremely complicated, and organized.. The ADD mind is unable to evolve. In order to evolve into this, man mas had to learn to become passive, follow list upon list of rules, regulations, directions and the like.

The UP side to this is, as the NON-Add minds have been stripped of this natural mind-set to explore the world, they have also lost the drive to explore, learn new things, and most importantly OBSERVE.

Case in point. My wife compares my episodic ADD to the actions of a 7 year old! How flattering! One of the things that babies possess is the uninhibited urge to explore their new world around them! Have you ever noticed how this exploration seems to disappear as they get older? I believe that the reason for this is because as they age, we are constantly beating regimens, schedules, rule-sets, procedures, etc into them and disciplining them (or positively reinforcing) them based on their compliance! This practice is NECESSARY to ensure the safety and social development of the child, but it's also directly related to their sharp decrease in exploration and observance. They now focus all their energy on "doing things the right way" that it's become the only formula and measurement of "success" in modern society.

The ADD brain fights this "training", and forces the child to resist. It's a defense mechanism, not a "deficit". The brain naturally wants to get better and learn more, not fall into place and become a processor for rules like a computer follows lines of code and procedures to get to an end result.

So when they disagree, or argue, or seem to be ignoring you. It's TRULY not their fault. Their brain has switched channels, occasionally switching back to you (mom) They WANT to listen to you, but they can't, and yelling at them only makes it worse because the small bits of information they absorb from you at a time are going to now include irrelevant pieces of your disciplining at well! Now try to lay all this info out, in a brain that's already overactive, attempting to sort out all the info they just received from you, along with trying to absorb the "lesson" you are trying to teach them by yelling/scolding/disciplining them. Almost a total loss.

I digress (typical) :p

Now, onto my original point.

"I have ADD, I'm better than you"..

Because I'm always switching channels, I'm constantly learning new things. Seems like each day I'm interested.. I mean REALLY interested in a new topic. Occasionally one of these flighty ideas or interests sticks around long enough for me to act on it, and BINGO.. I have a new HOBBY!

Don't hinder these impulses, because your child (believe it or not) WILL absorb a TON of information from each new idea or topic or "channel" they move on to!

Since I've tried so many things, and my ADD brain doesn't let me "Stew" on failure long enough, all that seems to stick out are the SUCCESSES!

Let me do the math:

Normal kid will do 10 things in the course of a year that take some sort of effort to learn and fail at 2 of them. This leaves 8 "successes".

An ADD kid will do 100 things, and only stick with it long enough to succeed at 50 of them. Ratios will tell us that the ADD child has a poorer "success" rate at only 50%, whereas the "Normal kid" will have a rate of 80%! BUT you can't lose sight of at the end of the day, the normal kid only did 8 things with some positive sort of outcome, whereas the ADD kid did 50!

AND, because the ADD kid is constantly moving on to new things, the times where he doesn't succeed, he usually doesn't mull on them because he's ALREADY MOVED ONTO another thing!

It's important to try and help your ADD child stay on task, and give them a base set of skills for being organized, and completing tasks that aren't as "fun" as they are important, but it's also JUST as important to let them exercise their brains and act on their latest seemingly "impulsive" thoughts.

*brain switches channels*

It just rained, so I'm going to go look at this flower out front now that for SOME reason these little flying insects seem to LOVE after it rains.

Peace.
-Dom