Undoing the past
ADD and ADHD should not have a stigma
So my mom just found out my brother isn't going to graduate from high school and of course I have to hear all of it. This really isn't a surprise at all. My brother has majorly messed up just about everything he has half-heartedly attempted except socializing. So he will now be part of the 1% of students from that high school that doesn't graduate. Thing is my brother is really ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyper Disorder) - I mean really badly. He has been an unproductive student from the start. My dad is also ADHD and in denial. He too had massive trouble in school yet he has managed to succeed in the business world and he blames all of his academic woes on "the system" - rather than the fact that he has a genuine learning disability which puts him at a disadvantage in the academic world. So every time my mother would try and seek help for my brother, who couldn't care less about his academics, my father would seek to deny this help with the logic that "it is the system hat has problems, not the child" and all the while I would be caught in the middle of this as the one who has to hear all of the complaints. So now my brother isn't going to graduate from high school and he will continue being an unproductive person whom my father believes he can transform into a business savvy salesman. I however am still rather skeptical. You see the difference between my dad and my brother is that my father was on his own and in the army at 17 and had worked jobs prior to that. My father needed to support himself and he had to at least in some small way work to conform to the world around him to earn a living. My brother on the other hand has never worked a day in his life and he has very rarely put his mind to something with the goal of bettering himself - even in those few tasks when an achievement required work and dedication rather than spur of the moment effort he was still unable to focus himself enough to achieve his goals.
The whole situation is chaotic and sad. I really don't want any part of it because no one wants my opinion or my help, they just want to bitch - frankly they all need counseling and my brother would benefit from going back on medication (I believe he took medication for a couple of years and during that time he did well academically - no surprise, he is a smart kid and he could finally focus his mind). My mother is very upset over this whole situation because she thinks her son is just a failure and a slacker but she really doesn't understand what it feels like to be physically unable to focus. Even if my brother sat down to attempt his homework his mind would never be in the same place as his body and after a few minutes this becomes very frustrating and over months and years it becomes easy to rationalize doing other things rather than attempting academics. The logic is something like, "I can sit there and stare at the page and get upset and not make any progress or I can go out and have fun since either way my grade will be the same". Well, when you put it like that, maybe its just better to live it up.
I think that I understand my brother's position. I have always had a personal suspicion that many of my academic troubles were from a less severe form of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder).
Until recently, (the last few years), most female ADD was undiagnosed. Girls with this disability would often do exceedingly well in their classes while they were young and then as they got older their grades would drop off and parents would often blame this sort of behavior on too much time spent hanging around with the wrong people rather than studying. There is an interesting phenomenon that occurs when an ADD person has a personality that drives then to please those around them (such as parents & teachers). When they are young their academics are so easy that they hardly seem to need to open a book the knowledge is absorbed immediately and very little thought is required to complete assignments. This means that despite the fact that their mind may be bouncing around in daydreams they are still able to pull off remarkable grades. As they get older the academics become more rigorous and eventually their grades began to trail off because the work requires a greater level of focus. Although these students initially seem to put in the study time very little of it is effective because their minds spend so much time bouncing around. In the end the result is the same as my brother. No matter how much time they seem to spend studying the grades never seem to get any better and eventually they just give up. The difference is that children with this form of ADD often go undiagnosed for many years because they are not a physical disruption to the flow of the class and initially their grades are not a concern. By the time many of these children receive the help they need they have already fallen into depression. They feel inadequate and unintelligent, as if something is "wrong" with them because they do not succeed the way their peers do. In short, they waste much of their life needlessly suffering because of an undiagnosed disorder.
Without realizing it until recently I have lived through precisely this pattern of success, failure, depression and realization. I was once a 4.0 student but the more I needed to devote my mind the less capable I became of doing so. Eventually I begin to fail classes and eventually this lead to low self-esteem and depression. During my second or third year of college I had a realization that maybe I would get a lot more done if I could actually focus on what I was doing, maybe I had ADD. So I got a referral and got tested for ADD but the problem was that the doctor testing me was using outdated information and according to his testing I suffered from "test anxiety" and the cure was to simply study more and keep studying until I was confident that I knew the material and then I would no longer be anxious. Personally I find this answer to be complete and absolute BS - but at the time I believed it and redoubled my efforts. Again I attempted to take very demanding classes and no matter how hard I studied the outcome would be the same. So finally I've come full circle and I'm going to get tested again for ADD. I need a solution if I ever want to do well and actually graduate. This time I will seek to be more articulate and to push the subject until I can get some sort of treatment, chemical or otherwise, longer testing times would be a good start. Then even as my mind wanders in and out I will still have enough time to complete my exams rather than losing 20% because I couldn't even get to some of the questions. This idea has renewed my hope that their might yet be a golden key that will allow me to sit down and focus on the things that I need to focus on (like studying for my calc final rather than writing and excessively long LJ entry). If I can solve these academic problems then I need not give up my dream of going to vet school. Let's just say I've got my fingers crossed.
My case is not isolated. Certain areas of the world, Southern California in particular may have tons of money and really good schools but it also has alarmingly high rates of Autism, ADD and ADHD. (Autism is considered by some to be part of the spectrum of ADD). So what gives? No one really seems to know why the children in this area are suffering more than others. Maybe it is over diagnoses. Or maybe the rest of the world doesn't have the funding to pay for their children to be diagnosed. Maybe it is the media. I have even heard that some people suspect pollutants in the water. It is a fact that our water in so cal is notoriously hard and filled with all sorts of minerals and chemicals. Whatever the case I really think people should be paying more to this epidemic that is slowly tearing apart their children. All I know is that I want to fix my academic issues, then I want to get the heck out of So Cal. It is a nice place to visit but a horrible place to live. Even so, I'll be here for a few more years.
So my mom just found out my brother isn't going to graduate from high school and of course I have to hear all of it. This really isn't a surprise at all. My brother has majorly messed up just about everything he has half-heartedly attempted except socializing. So he will now be part of the 1% of students from that high school that doesn't graduate. Thing is my brother is really ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyper Disorder) - I mean really badly. He has been an unproductive student from the start. My dad is also ADHD and in denial. He too had massive trouble in school yet he has managed to succeed in the business world and he blames all of his academic woes on "the system" - rather than the fact that he has a genuine learning disability which puts him at a disadvantage in the academic world. So every time my mother would try and seek help for my brother, who couldn't care less about his academics, my father would seek to deny this help with the logic that "it is the system hat has problems, not the child" and all the while I would be caught in the middle of this as the one who has to hear all of the complaints. So now my brother isn't going to graduate from high school and he will continue being an unproductive person whom my father believes he can transform into a business savvy salesman. I however am still rather skeptical. You see the difference between my dad and my brother is that my father was on his own and in the army at 17 and had worked jobs prior to that. My father needed to support himself and he had to at least in some small way work to conform to the world around him to earn a living. My brother on the other hand has never worked a day in his life and he has very rarely put his mind to something with the goal of bettering himself - even in those few tasks when an achievement required work and dedication rather than spur of the moment effort he was still unable to focus himself enough to achieve his goals.
The whole situation is chaotic and sad. I really don't want any part of it because no one wants my opinion or my help, they just want to bitch - frankly they all need counseling and my brother would benefit from going back on medication (I believe he took medication for a couple of years and during that time he did well academically - no surprise, he is a smart kid and he could finally focus his mind). My mother is very upset over this whole situation because she thinks her son is just a failure and a slacker but she really doesn't understand what it feels like to be physically unable to focus. Even if my brother sat down to attempt his homework his mind would never be in the same place as his body and after a few minutes this becomes very frustrating and over months and years it becomes easy to rationalize doing other things rather than attempting academics. The logic is something like, "I can sit there and stare at the page and get upset and not make any progress or I can go out and have fun since either way my grade will be the same". Well, when you put it like that, maybe its just better to live it up.
I think that I understand my brother's position. I have always had a personal suspicion that many of my academic troubles were from a less severe form of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder).
Until recently, (the last few years), most female ADD was undiagnosed. Girls with this disability would often do exceedingly well in their classes while they were young and then as they got older their grades would drop off and parents would often blame this sort of behavior on too much time spent hanging around with the wrong people rather than studying. There is an interesting phenomenon that occurs when an ADD person has a personality that drives then to please those around them (such as parents & teachers). When they are young their academics are so easy that they hardly seem to need to open a book the knowledge is absorbed immediately and very little thought is required to complete assignments. This means that despite the fact that their mind may be bouncing around in daydreams they are still able to pull off remarkable grades. As they get older the academics become more rigorous and eventually their grades began to trail off because the work requires a greater level of focus. Although these students initially seem to put in the study time very little of it is effective because their minds spend so much time bouncing around. In the end the result is the same as my brother. No matter how much time they seem to spend studying the grades never seem to get any better and eventually they just give up. The difference is that children with this form of ADD often go undiagnosed for many years because they are not a physical disruption to the flow of the class and initially their grades are not a concern. By the time many of these children receive the help they need they have already fallen into depression. They feel inadequate and unintelligent, as if something is "wrong" with them because they do not succeed the way their peers do. In short, they waste much of their life needlessly suffering because of an undiagnosed disorder.
Without realizing it until recently I have lived through precisely this pattern of success, failure, depression and realization. I was once a 4.0 student but the more I needed to devote my mind the less capable I became of doing so. Eventually I begin to fail classes and eventually this lead to low self-esteem and depression. During my second or third year of college I had a realization that maybe I would get a lot more done if I could actually focus on what I was doing, maybe I had ADD. So I got a referral and got tested for ADD but the problem was that the doctor testing me was using outdated information and according to his testing I suffered from "test anxiety" and the cure was to simply study more and keep studying until I was confident that I knew the material and then I would no longer be anxious. Personally I find this answer to be complete and absolute BS - but at the time I believed it and redoubled my efforts. Again I attempted to take very demanding classes and no matter how hard I studied the outcome would be the same. So finally I've come full circle and I'm going to get tested again for ADD. I need a solution if I ever want to do well and actually graduate. This time I will seek to be more articulate and to push the subject until I can get some sort of treatment, chemical or otherwise, longer testing times would be a good start. Then even as my mind wanders in and out I will still have enough time to complete my exams rather than losing 20% because I couldn't even get to some of the questions. This idea has renewed my hope that their might yet be a golden key that will allow me to sit down and focus on the things that I need to focus on (like studying for my calc final rather than writing and excessively long LJ entry). If I can solve these academic problems then I need not give up my dream of going to vet school. Let's just say I've got my fingers crossed.
My case is not isolated. Certain areas of the world, Southern California in particular may have tons of money and really good schools but it also has alarmingly high rates of Autism, ADD and ADHD. (Autism is considered by some to be part of the spectrum of ADD). So what gives? No one really seems to know why the children in this area are suffering more than others. Maybe it is over diagnoses. Or maybe the rest of the world doesn't have the funding to pay for their children to be diagnosed. Maybe it is the media. I have even heard that some people suspect pollutants in the water. It is a fact that our water in so cal is notoriously hard and filled with all sorts of minerals and chemicals. Whatever the case I really think people should be paying more to this epidemic that is slowly tearing apart their children. All I know is that I want to fix my academic issues, then I want to get the heck out of So Cal. It is a nice place to visit but a horrible place to live. Even so, I'll be here for a few more years.