Let’s give thanks! Thanks to you, me and ADHD!

I thank G-d everyday, for the gifts my children and I have recieved for our ADHD. Hugs, Gail

A great post Brian. The work you do on this site is an inspiration and a gift to be grateful for.

Gratitude is amazing in its abilitay to heal our lives. Two of my friends, Colleen & Trevor Wigglesworth taught me a great way to harness it. Every morning they start their day sharing the top 3 things they are grateful for.

For example, today I am grateful for:
the sunshine illuminating my day in the Badlands;
the terrific people I have in my life for support; and
the blessings of having my animal companions (Lizzy Maddy & Breosaighe) in my life.

keep up the great work

Great post. Considering how many millions of individuals are affected by ADD, its psychotherapeutic and psycho-educational treatment is a much-neglected topic. Part of this neglect is due to an inexact definition of ADD, one that overemphasizes dysfunction, and part of the neglect is due to a complex and variable clinical picture that overlaps and is complicated by other conditions as you mention above. Thanks for this.

I like your blog. I did not like this particular post. For a dozen years, I have called out into the cyber world, the universities, searched in books and collared all my colleagues for some evidence that AD/HD carries with it any special faculties. No one has ever responded. With science.

There are stories, assertions such as yours (“ADDers tend to be creative and unorthodox thinkers who offer new insights and perspectives which lead to new inventions and creations”) and the infamous Ned Hallowell, but never has anyone actually shown us a shred of science about it.

My thinking about it goes like this: Smart and creative people hang out with smart and creative people. Not so smart people hang out with others who are not so smart. The fact that you are smart and creative means you will be interested in others who are, too. Among them will be some with AD/HD. Then someone always says, “Aha! See, I told you so!”

The prisons are occupied by many people with AD/HD (A much greater proportion than in the rest of society). The drop out rate of people with AD/HD is high — and yes, I know, the schools do not fit them (I am one of “them,” myself). If you consider the ability to be successful adults, while high school is not a prerequisite for it, being able to function effectively is. I am using “successful” loosely, because there are many ways to be successful other than the narrow way it is defined in our society.

A question for you: How do you reconcile your assertion with science, and (corollary) how do you reconcile it with Russell Barkley’s definitive statements which clarify that gifts occur in people without respect to whether they have AD/HD, or not. He also said that AD/HD is the most debilitating of all the mental disorders except schizophrenia.

Respectfully written, I want you to be aware.

Bryan, for some reason I had not realized until right now that you had replied to my post. Thank you. I only want to clarify one thing: I don’t consider myself a negative thinker, not at all. There is a big difference between that and regret, sorrow and sadness. I have had too many people tell me to stop being so hard on myself, when I am not being hard on myself. The expression of sadness and disappointment is legitimate for anyone, most particularly anyone who works as hard as we do to stay abreast of the mundanity we militate against from within our craniums (crania?).

We do have a choice of lenses through which we will look as we survey our lives and futures. Pasts, too, if only we could remember them on demand, without having to wait until someone else jogs our memory by hitting the right button that unlocks the drawer in which it was misfiled.

I, too, do not need to understand things. I mean, how does a telephone work? Or — as a mother who has given birth — I still don’t really know where babies come from.

When I said ADD is the scourge, I meant it, but good heavens; I do not dwell there. There are so many things to do. And things to see, and sort, and admire and break and out together again and even to write about.

Actually, so you know I haven’t poisoned my daughter’s mind with my regret at not having been born with a standard-issue brain, I’ll tell a short story about our lives. Over many years from age seven through fourteen when I told her to stop trying to make her body take her to school anymore, our long drive was usually a sad one. In the rear view mirror, I could see her face, showing the tiredness of the third night in a row of fewer than six hours’ sleep.

Tears rolled gently down her sweet cheeks as she sat, looking out from under the mass of dark curls, focusing on nothing much. What was a mother to do? I was profoundly distressed by this, we were making no headway with the school, no one got it, I was assumed to be meddlesome (can you say “denial?), and no end in sight. I did what I could: I reached back, patted her leg and said, “Sweetie, I do not know this day what we will do to solve this problem, but I can tell you for sure, I never give up on what is important. And you are important.”

I still say this frequently and I still mean it, and I have not given up and we all have benefited from that. It is not ungenerous of me to say that the cost to me has been severe. I would never even consider doing this life otherwise. There is no getting around facts, though, and some of them – the things I have been unable to do and will never do, now – create grief for me, regularly. Do you see what I mean? I have been unable to go to the coast for two years now; for three years we could not go out to a movie or a restaurant. Vacations don’t happen anymore. I haven’t attended a national AD/HD conference since 2001.

I’ve been hampered by my own Quirky Brain, by hers, and by the ignorance of so many people who ought to know better. Barring that, the least they could have done was listen to the child, and if she was unable to speak, to her parents. I am ready to say “Denial” all over again.