Quotes from an article by, Peter Gray, Ph.D., at Psychology Today:

From an evolutionary perspective, school is an abnormal environment...
School is a place where children are expected to spend most of their time sitting quietly in chairs, listening to a teacher talk about things that don't particularly interest them, reading what they are told to read, writing what they are told to write, and feeding memorized information back on tests

For good evolutionary reasons, members of our species vary genetically in ways that create diversity in personality.[6] People have always lived in communities, and communities--as well as the individuals within them--benefit from diversity. It is good that some people are relatively restrained while others are more impulsive, that some are relatively passive while others are more active, that some are cautious while others are bolder, and so on. These are among the dimensions that make up normal personality.


Read the complete article here:
ADHD and School: The Problem of Assessing Normalcy in an Abnormal Environment


I would like to see the day when we see “kids with ADHD” as normal members of our diverse community rather than labeling them as disabled, and medicating them so they will fit into the abnormal environments we have created. 

The Upside of ADHD

TheUpside of ADHD

Enthusiasm, empathy and high energy among traits the disorder carries

by Marilyn Lewis for MSN Health & Fitness

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) hasn’t changed, but how experts view the disorder is evolving in a new direction. Instead of only focusing on the difficulties posed by ADHD, today, the upsides are likely to be noted, too: the quick-wittedness, the speedy grasp of the big picture and the great enthusiasm for nearly everything. These traits make ADHDers endearing and simultaneously exasperating.

This change may sound like just a new way of describing the same old thing, but to those with ADHD, the difference is profound. An estimated 2 percent to 4 percent of American adults and 3 percent to 7 percent of children have the brain-based disorder. For them, it’s the difference between seeing themselves as broken and thinking of themselves as having advantages, even if they have to cope with being fidgety, distractible or easily bored.

In praise of ADHD

JetBlue Airways CEO and founder David Neeleman is famously frank about his ADHD. He was diagnosed in 2001, seven years after he realized he had it. By then, he’d already founded and then sold Morris Air. He had done so well in his own eccentric way that he felt he was doing fine without medication. Still, Neeleman says he’s not anti-meds: “I have talked to a lot of people who swear by the medication.”

Neeleman credits ADHD with his creativity and “out-of-the-box thinking”—it led him to invent e-tickets while at Morris, for example. “One of the weird things about the type of [ADHD] I have is, if you have something you are really, really passionate about, then you are really, really good about focusing on that thing. It’s kind of bizarre that you can’t pay the bills and do mundane tasks, but you can do your hyper-focus area.” He spends “all my waking hours” obsessing about JetBlue. The rest of his life, Neeleman says, would be a “disaster” if not for his wife, who manages their home and children; his accountant, who pays the bills and tracks his finances; and his personal assistant, who sends him his schedule every day and steers him from appointment to appointment, keeping him on track.

Ken Melotte, 43, of Green Bay, Wis., is quick to credit ADHD for his successes, too. “I have ideas immediately,” says Melotte, who’s on the management team of a national trucking firm. “I instantly start working on solutions, seeing different ways to do things.”

Yet, ADHD has been a struggle for him. Melotte doesn’t care for medication. The disorder vexes him most at work, as a project manager, when he had “a terrible struggle” keeping track of all the details. On the other hand, he believes that ADHD traits like empathy, intuition and the ability to motivate and inspire others made him a successful manager.

A “context disorder”

ADHD is considered a “context disorder,” Thom Hartmann says. Hartmann, an expert on the disorder, is one of the few who saw the positive side of ADHD before it was fashionable.

“If a left-handed person has a job cutting origami with right-handed scissors, that doesn’t mean they have a disability; they have a context disorder,” Hartmann explains. “Short people trying to play basketball have a context disorder.”

People with ADHD “may instead be our most creative individuals, our most extraordinary thinkers, our most brilliant inventors and pioneers,” writes Hartmann in his 2003 book The Edison Gene: ADHD and the Gift of the Hunter Child. He posits that the people with ADHD may carry genetically coded abilities that once were, and may still be, necessary for human survival and that contribute richness to the culture.

A spate of books has come out that echoes Hartmann’s positive spin, including Delivered From Distraction: Getting the Most Out of Life With Attention Deficit Disorder, by Drs. Edward Hallowell and John Ratey, and The Gift of ADHD, by Lara Honos-Webb.

To Hartmann, “Any kind of difference, even those differences that may make life more difficult or be viewed by some as pathologies, have to have some sort of upside, outside of pure disease processes. Otherwise they wouldn’t survive in the gene pool.”

Marilyn Lewis is a freelance writer who lives in Northwest Washington State. She specializes in writing about personal technology, health and medicine, business and lifestyle. Her work has appeared in MSNBC, MSN and The San Jose Mercury News.

http://healthyliving.msn.com/diseases/adhd/the-upside-of-adhd-1?GT1=31001

Modifications for the Hyperactive Student

Modifications for the Hyperactive Student

I bought a book a while back called "It's So Much Work to Be Your Friend" by Richard Lavoie. The book is about helping the child with learning disabilities find social success.

Because life got busy I had to take a break from reading but I recently picked it up again. I skipped ahead to the chapter on Attention Deficit Disorder and immediately found something that I just had to share.
The book made a few suggestions for modifications and adjustments that could be made in the classroom that would allow the hyperactive child to function more effectively:

"These techniques take a "fight fire with fire" approach: rather than constantly battling with the child's need for activity and movement, provide the child with ample opportunities to be active during classroom activities. In effect, you are legitimizing the child's need to move by making movement part of your lesson plan!"
"For example, provide the hyperactive child with a standing desk and allow him to complete written work while standing. This simple adjustment may satisfy the child's need to be active during a sedentary activity. Give the child a clipboard to use during writing activities and allow him to work on the floor or in a beanbag chair. One teacher reported remarkable results after allowing her hyperactive students to sit in rocking chairs during silent reading activities. Another teacher assigned a child two seats in the classroom and allowed him to change seats whenever he needed to move about. Ask the hyperactive child to do classroom chores (e.g., water the plants, erase the white board, deliver messages). You can also legitimize the child's movement by doing quick (thirty-second) calisthenics between class activities. Again, these modifications recognize that the excessive movement is beyond the child's control."

I especially liked the idea of having two seats assigned to the child in the classroom. Wish I'd had this book when my son was in school.

Impulsiveness and creativity

My son decided to make cookies last night. But he threw the butter in before it had a chance to soften. (Impulsive) Hmmmm…now what’s he going to do? Aha!!! He gets out the potato masher and mixes the dough with that. (Creative) Had to work a little longer on it than he would’ve if he’d done it the usual way. But what the heck! It worked. LOL I’ve never seen anyone use a potato masher to make cookies before. There are always surprises in my life with my ADHD son around.  Yup! I DO love him!

Think of all the fun I would have missed if I’d opened my big mouth and tried to “fix it” for him, rather than waiting to see what HIS solution was going to be.

Feb 1, ‘05

10 Things To Do With A Pencil - If You're ADHD

Ten Things to Do with a Pencil –

- If you’re ADHD

1. Blow it across the desk.

2. Fly it through the air.

3. Hold it high in the air and drop it.

4. Stick it in the screws of the chair.

5. Thread it through your belt loops.

6. Pick the threads of your socks.

7. Roll it inside your desk.

8. Poke your neighbor.

9. Sharpen it – re-sharpen it.

10. Lose it.

Taken from - The Hyperactive Child by Dr. Grant Martin

This was my son’s and my favorite quote about ADHD. When he was in grade school I used to print up a copy of this and he would give it to the teacher at the beginning of the school  year. It was a fun way to break the ice.

Benefits of ADHD

Benefits of ADHD

Our society defines ADHD as a disorder, ignoring our essential contributions, and refusing any accommodation to our needs.

• We are inattentive, because we can’t abide boring nonsense, or worse, lies.
• Some of us are hyperactive, always wanting to get on to something interesting and important.
• We won’t do boring, stupid homework or makework in business or government.

Society has traditionally thrown us away as Black Sheep. However,

• Many of us have hyperfocus on what is actually interesting.
• We have much higher than average creativity.
• We have much higher than average empathy.

As George Bernard Shaw (one of us) put it, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

That’s us.

This is something I found at the Forum for Attention Deficit Disorder at About.com. Thank you to Edward Mokurai for giving me permission to share what he wrote here. :-)

About.com ADD / ADHD - Benefits of ADHD

“Hi. I’m glad Suswann asked me for permission to post my thoughts here. I and my whole family have ADHD, and wouldn’t give it up for anything. I know that others have much greater difficulties with it than we have, and offer my help to anyone who asks. (That’s one of the “symptoms”.)” ~Edward Mokurai

ADHD & Co-Existing Disorders

ADHD & Co-Existing Disorders

As many as 40-60 percent of children with AD/HD have at least one other major disorder. Any disorder can coexist with AD/HD, but certain disorders seem to occur more commonly with AD/HD.

Which conditions most commonly co-exist with AD/HD? 
AD/HD may co-exist with one or more disorders. The most common disorders to occur with AD/HD are

(1) Disruptive Behavior Disorders;

(2) Mood Disorders;

(3) Anxiety Disorders;

(4) Tics and Tourette’s Syndrome; and

(5) Learning Disabilities.

Disruptive Behavior Disorders (Oppositional-Defiant Disorder and Conduct Disorder)
About 40 percent of individuals with AD/HD have oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). Among individuals with AD/HD, conduct disorder (CD) is also common, occurring in 25 percent of children, 45-50 percent of adolescents and 20-25 percent of adults. ODD involves a pattern of arguing with multiple adults, losing one’s temper, refusing to follow rules, blaming others, deliberately annoying others, and being angry, resentful, spiteful, and vindictive.

CD is associated with efforts to break rules without getting caught. Such children may be aggressive to people or animals, destroy property, lie or steal things from others, run away, skip school, or break curfews. CD is often described as delinquency and children who have AD/HD and conduct disorder may have lives that are more difficult than those of children with AD/HD alone.

Mood Disorders
Some children, in addition to being hyperactive, impulsive, and/or inattentive, may also seem to always be in a bad mood. They may cry daily, out of the blue, for no reason, and they may frequently be irritable with others for no apparent reason. Both sad, depressive moods and persisting elevated or irritable moods (mania) occur with AD/HD more than would be expected by chance.

Depression
The most careful studies suggest that between 10-30 percent of children with AD/HD, and 47 percent of adults with AD/HD, also have depression. Typically, AD/HD occurs first and depression occurs later.

While all children have bad days where they feel down, depressed children may be down or irritable most days. Children with AD/HD and depression may also withdraw from others, stop doing things they once enjoyed, have trouble sleeping or sleep the day away, lose their appetite, criticize themselves excessively (“I never do anything right!”), and talk about dying (“I wish I were dead”).

Mania/Bipolar Disorder 
Up to 20 percent of individuals with AD/HD also may manifest bipolar disorder. This condition involves periods of abnormally elevated mood contrasted by episodes of clinical depression. Adults with mania may have long (days to weeks) episodes of being ridiculously happy, and even believe they have special powers or receive messages from God, the radio, or celebrities. With this expansive mood, they may also talk incessantly and rapidly, go days without sleeping, and engage in tasks that ultimately get them into trouble. In younger people, mania may show up differently. Children may have moods that change very rapidly, seemingly for no reason, be pervasively irritable, exhibit unpremeditated aggression, and sometimes hear voices or see things the rest of us don’t.

Anxiety
Up to 30 percent of children and 25-40 percent of adults with AD/HD will also have an anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders are often not apparent, and research has shown that half of the children who describe prominent anxiety symptoms are not described by their parents as anxious. Patients with anxiety disorders often worry excessively about a number of things (school, work, etc.), and may feel edgy, stressed out or tired, tense, and have trouble getting restful sleep. A small number of patients may report brief episodes of severe anxiety (panic attacks) which intensify over about 10 minutes with complaints of pounding heart, sweating, shaking, choking, difficulty breathing, nausea or stomach pain, dizziness, and fears of going crazy or dying. These episodes may occur for no reason, and sometimes awaken patients.

Tics and Tourette’s Syndrome
Only about seven percent of those with AD/HD have tics or Tourette’s syndrome, but 60 percent of those with Tourette’s syndrome have AD/HD. Tics (sudden, rapid, recurrent, nonrhythmic movements or vocalizations) or Tourette’s Syndrome (both movements and vocalizations) can occur with AD/HD in two ways. First, mannerisms or movements such as excessive eye blinking or throat clearing often occur between the ages of 10-12 years. These transient tics usually go away gradually over one-to-two years, and are just as likely to happen in AD/HD children as others. Tourette’s is a much rarer, but more severe tic disorder, where patients may make noises (e.g., barking a word or sound) and movements (e.g., repetitive flinching or eye blinking) on an almost daily basis for years.

Tics can also become more noticeable when patients are treated with stimulants or — much less likely — bupropion. While these medicines no longer appear to cause tics, they may unmask or exaggerate tics. Accordingly, sometimes lowering the dose can decrease the tics.

Learning Disabilities
Individuals with AD/HD frequently have difficulty learning in school. Depending on how learning disorders are defined, up to 60 percent of AD/HD children have a co-existing learning disorder. Learning disabled persons may have a specific problem reading or calculating, but they are not less intelligent than their peers are.

Substance Abuse
Recent work suggests that AD/HD youth are at increased risk for very early cigarette use, followed by alcohol and then drug abuse. Cigarette smoking is more common in adolescents with AD/HD, and adults with AD/HD have elevated rates of smoking and report particular difficulty in quitting. AD/HD youth are twice as likely to become addicted to nicotine as non-AD/HD individuals.

Contrary to popular belief, cocaine and stimulant abuse is not more common among AD/HD-individuals previously treated with stimulants: growing up taking stimulant medicines does not lead to substance abuse as these children become teenagers and adults. Indeed, those AD/HD adolescents prescribed stimulant medication are less likely to subsequently use illegal drugs than are those not prescribed medication.

This Fact Page was found at the C.H.A.D.D.Facts web page

Symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder

Symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM IV), the handbook used by those in psychiatric care as a guide for diagnosis, describes three primary symptoms of ADD: inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. To be diagnosed as ADD, the patient needs to exhibit at least six of the symptoms for inattention OR at least six of the symptoms of the combined hyperactivity-impulsivity list. So, with much warning about the danger of self diagnosis and without any further ado, here is THE LIST

SYMPTOMS OF INATTENTION

a. often ignores details; makes careless mistakes
b. often has trouble sustaining attention in work or play
c. often does not seem to listen when directly addressed
d. often does not follow through on instructions; fails to finish 
e. often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities 
f. often avoids activities that require a sustained mental effort
g. often loses things he needs
h. often gets distracted by extraneous noise
i. is often forgetful in daily activities

SYMPTOMS OF HYPERACTIVITY-IMPULSIVITY

Hyperactivity

a. often fidgets or squirms
b. often has to get up from seat
c. often runs or climbs when he shouldn’t 
(in adults, feelings of physical restlessness)
d. often has difficulty with quiet leisure activities 
e. often “on the go”, as if driven by a motor
f. often talks excessively

Impulsivity

g. often blurts out answers before questions have been completed
h. often has difficulty waiting his turn
i. often interrupts or intrudes on others

Of course, this list is very generalized. In fact, everyone probably experiences these feelings at one time or another. In order to be diagnosed, these symptoms must meet other important criteria as well:

A. symptoms must be present in two or more settings (such as work and home)
B. the individual must show “clinically significant impairment” at work or school or with other people
C. the individual must not suffer from another mental disorder that could explain the symptoms

10 Neurological Behaviors That Are Characteristic Of ADD/ADHD People

THE TEN NEUROLOGICAL BEHAVIORS THAT ARE CHARACTERISTIC OF ADD/ADHD PEOPLE

Attention Deficit Disorder is a neurological brain chemistry make-up involving neuroendocrine hormones and the synaptic system which connects one brain cell to another. The following is a list of neurologically (not psychologically) determined behaviors that are characteristic of ADD/ADHD people.

Children are born with their particular ADD/ADHD brain chemistry which evolves and changes with maturation but never fully disappears.

ADD/ADHD can be recognized in children. It is sometimes more obvious during the stress of the teenage years. Various aspects of ADD/ADHD brain chemistry always persists into adulthood.

The diagnosis of ADD/ADHD must be made clinically, not by presently available tests. It is dependent on the presence of at least several of the following TEN neurological abnormalities:

1. (*)Academic underachieving and/or inattentiveness due to difficulty processing and understanding information.

2. (*)Hyperactive or excessively fidgety behavior of varying intensity.

3. (*)Impulsivity: a. Verbal (i.e., blurting or interrupting others) and b. Action (i.e., acts before thinking or shifts from one activity to another excessively).

4. Enuresis (bedwetting).

5. Dyslexia: a. Spatial (i.e., writing with reversals or reversing number sequences) and b. Verbal (i.e., let me invite me to your birthday party (inverted meaning)).

6. Falling asleep slowly (even if tired).

7. Coming awake slowly (unless excited).

8. Frequent irritability and easy frustration.

9. Negativity with or without “awful feelings”: a. Holding on to anger and b. Holding on to negative thoughts.

10. Episodic explosiveness or “rage” or “tantrums” typically over “little things” or minor issues.

(*) based on diagnostic criteria in the DSM-III-R and DSM-IV manual

found at ADD and Challenged Individuals