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Ah, the joys of parenting. Last week, one week short of his sixth birthday, my son's kindergarten teachers called us in. They suspect he has ADHD—Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Welcome to the wacky, upside down world of psychology. Being a concerned parent, I looked it up on the Web.
It runs out that that ADHD is “not what people think it is.” Just like all other known mental illnesses. Which is to say, it is not what the experts thought it was five years ago. Five years from now, it will be something quite different again.
You probably thought ADHD was a childhood concern. Nope. It is now also an adult complaint. I know. I took the tests online. I have it too.
You probably thought ADHD was an inability to pay attention to what one is doing. Nope. One of its characteristics is now “hyperattention”--the ability to pay much closer attention to a chosen subject than is normal, to the exclusion of all others. No attention deficit involved.
You probably thought it involved hyperactivity? No; not necessarily. Sufferers can appear “phlegmatic.”
So what is this thing? At least, it's a disorder, right?
Maybe. But if so, it’s a strange one. When I chatted with co-workers at this high-tech college about the diagnosis, two of the brightest fellow faculty I know revealed they and other members of their families have the same diagnosis: ADHD. Digging on the net, I learn that Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Richard Branston, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Ludwig von Beethoven, Jim Carrey, Lewis Carroll, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Benjamin Franklin, Galileo, Georg Handel, Ernest Hemingway, Dustin Hoffman, John and Robert Kennedy, John Lennon, Abraham Lincoln, Wolfgang Mozart, Napoleon Bonaparte, Sir Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Pablo Picasso, John D. Rockefeller, August Rodin, Babe Ruth, George Bernard Shaw, Steven Spielberg, Leo Tolstoy, Vincent van Gogh, Jules Verne, Woodrow Wilson, Orville and Wilbur Wright, W.B. Yeats, et al, all also had the distinct symptoms of ADHD. I also learned that, on average, those diagnosed with ADHD have IQs 20 points higher than the general population. That is precisely the difference between average and superior intelligence.
Yes, ADHD is a real thing, and it makes life difficult in many ways. I was struck, reading through the literature, at accurately on some measures it described not just my son, but me. Things I had been trying to convince people of my entire life: like that I cannot safely drive a car. That I must carry a bag wherever I go, or I will forget things. Why my desk and room are always a mess, and I am hopeless at doing things around the house. Why I find it exhausting or even unbearable to be in a large group of people for long. My son and I do indeed have great problems staying alert to what is going on around us in such circumstances.
But this is not because we lack the ability to pay attention; nor is it because we are too lazy to. It is because we are paying close attention to something else, that those around us seem essentially unaware of.
It is the world of ideas.
And these other things, like persistent mosquitoes, keep interrupting our thoughts.
Psychology as we know it is built on a foundation of fallacies. The most pertinent one here is the delusion that the average is the ideal; that anything “abnormal” is inferior. This is obviously wrong. Among other things, it enforces conformity, mediocrity, and discrimination against minorities.
Unfortunately, when someone has an IQ more than 15 points higher than our own, we lose the ability to recognize their intelligence. It is enough ahead of ours that we can no longer follow their reasoning. We are as likely to think they act as they do because they are stupid, or insane.
Beyond the fairly trivial, the problems caused by ADHD are almost entirely problems in communicating with whose who do not have ADHD. And a “solution” that involves shutting down one's brain with Ritalin or some other chemical does not seem entirely satisfactory. It loses more than it could possibly gain.
It looks like I have some hard slogging years of child advocacy ahead of me.
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3 comments:
What makes you think Ritalin would shut down your brain. If you talk with most adults who have been diagnosed with ADHD and are taking medication for this disorder--they would tell you just the oppostite. That taking medicine opened up their brain--that they became so much more capable.
I got diagnosed at age 49 and now I feel my life didn't really start until after that as now I can accomplish so much compared to what I achieved before. Life is so much more gratifying and fulfilling. Please don't close your mind to medication without learning more about its benefits.
Hi, Cynthia!
I appreciate your comments, and I certainly have no problem with using psychoactive drugs in principle. If it works for you, by all means, use it. I would consider trying it myself.
But there is a difference between making a conscious choice as an adult to use a particular drug because you find its effects to your advantage, and obliging your child to do so.
And as drugs go, Ritalin is pretty serious business. Addictive, popular as a street drug, aka "kiddie cocaine." Sherlock Holmes used to find that cocaine did wonders for his concentration too.
God bless you, in any case.
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