We live in a fast-paced society that focuses on achievement, and labels you as successful if you do well in a specific collection of skills, like: test taking, punctuality, organization, routine, articulation, etc. But what if you aren't good at some of those things, you have not been nurtured in an environment that values those things, or they are not biologically natural for you? Well like me, you may feel like a failure in a lot of the things that you try to achieve. You are told by others or made to feel that you are irresponsible, lazy, or other-wise a bad person or unable to rise to the occasion.
This is the reality of having so few and inconclusive measures of success. I mean how many times have we all seen the book-smart person who is completely illogical and stupid in real world situations or the intelligent but disorganized and unkempt person? Yet, it is constantly implied that only clean and organize people get anywhere in life! And if you read and get excellent grades you are an intelligent person! Obviously these statements are wrong totally wrong.
Now if this was such a horrid trait to have, why didn't it get selected out? Well it must have been useful or the behavioral traits related to the disorder were not majorly problematic back when our society did not rely so heavily on these false measures of success we've adopted. However I do want to look at ADD through the lens of evolution, and seeing it as a more immediate proximate behavior than a genetic disorder that makes it out to be an ultimate behavior. So, we see people with ADD and ADHD from all walks of lives living at all levels of society. I mean if the behaviors associated with ADD were all that bad, wouldn't we see all the individuals with it, living in gutters and begging for alms on the side of the road? Nope, we don't. What I am getting at here is that having ADD is not incapacitating and there are probably more important factors that would determine success then the few that we have zeroed in on, because studies show that many individuals with ADD behaviors are extremely intelligent*.
The article I mentioned talked about the book "The Gift of ADD" and how we shouldn't look at it as a disorder or focus on the things that this individual can't do, but focus on what this individual's strengths are. In other words change the conversation to, "we are all different and have different abilities. What YOU do really well is..." Now this brings to mind the Funds of Knowledge, which is a theory in educational anthropology that focuses on the child's strengths and cultural knowledge in order to teach in a way that is more relevant to this child's reality and focuses on what they have been brought up to do well based on their cultural values. These are some seemingly incredibly academic ideas but there are a few thousand movies that all focus on this theme and use this method of educating! I mean tons. Really, it should be it's own genre. To name a few "Sister Act", "To Sir, with Love", "High School High", and "Freedom Writers".
So really, all that it would take to improve the lives and success of individuals with ADD and ADHD, would be to work from the opposite direction. Instead of the mindset, "I must be this way, to be good at __", we need to think in terms of "I am great at __, so I will do this." Look to change those outside stressors, when changing yourself is not working. Find those venues and activities where they can succeed, and encouraging those will raise their self-esteem and allow them to see that they have valuable behaviors. I feel this is a major attribute that GT programs get right. They encourage creativity and being different rather than assimilating and forcing everyone to meet the same standards. I was so fortunate to be in GT throughout middle and high school, and I feel it made me into the educated, curious, and competent individual I am today. When I was smaller and was enrolled in a private school, I had a lot of problems. Now I realize they were all due to me being different. I was left handed (and my teacher tried to change that), I was always getting in trouble for not finishing assignments and daydreaming, I was always crying because everyone was always getting mad at me, and just a nervous wreck from all the parent-teacher conferences. Later when I moved schools and got into the GT program, I discovered school could be fun! What a revelation. Rather than only doing worksheets and flashcards, we got to do creative projects and group work and present things in a manner we wanted to do it in. We even had a whole Egypt lesson, where all of out classes centered around Egyptian things. In pre-algebra we learned about the Egyptian number system and algebraically substituted the symbols in equations, in history we learned about the culture and history, and in writing we made cartouches. In high school it was more focused on picking the topics we chose, doing our own research, and sharing with the class in creative and drawing manners. In English we had some really interesting conversations projects where we got to analyze characters and I remember doing a dating profile for one of them. In Political Science/Econ we did a mock stock exchange, produced radio shows, and an advertising campaign for colonial Virginia. So this lead to discussion and many individual's perspectives.
Anyway, we all need to learn some adaptation in our lives, and ADD people can be good at that and multi-tasking too*. So just because they don't do this or that well does not mean they can't achieve it or even think about success in that area. They just need to approach the challenge on their own terms, and find the ways of reaching that goal that work for them.
Being creative and adaptive is the key! Just as in survival, those that can adapt, survive (a damaging misconception is that the "fittest" survive, but Darwin's real message is that those that adapt are the one that are fittest). And we just came full circle there with the evolution, which I'd like to boast was planned... but it wasn't.
So do you have ADD or ADHD? Some doctors do not diagnose the disability if it has no negative affects on your life. Or maybe you don't have it but do have some of the negative behaviors associated with it? Who knows, but it might give you some peace of mind to do some quizzes on the matter.
Here are two that I thought were very comprehensive and asked more in-depth questions:
- 1) From Psych Central. It even offers measurements in the subcategory of hyperactivity in case that is not strong for you or unusually strong, which would alter your overall score. I had a 34 which made me moderate, however my hyperactivity rating was very low.
My results: - From Psychology Today. It is labeled as "Attention" under the test section. I scored a 32/100 on this one. There are some helpful tips oh how to cope with it. But remember, FINDING YOUR STRONG SUIT is really the most helpful.
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