Thom deserves my thanks for helping me see that ADHD is not disorder, but another way of being in the world. At this point in time, people with the gift of ADHD often don't fit in places created for the majority and need to find their own way.
In what may be true ADHD fashion it took me a week to get to this. My own journey started before being tested at the age of ten and diagnosed with an IQ of 140. ADHD was part of that diagnosis. At the age of eight I was dealt corporal punishment at the hands of a mother superior at a catholic school. I did not know what I had done to deserve it. I suspect now it was my lack of blind faith in what I was being told. My gifts may have made the nuns think I was possessed.
Shortly after that incident we were placed in public school where I was tested and diagnosed. At fourteen my family moved to a new town, with a supposedly better school system. I was auditioned for a program for gifted students. I was the only one in the test group to not get into the program. ADHD had me perform the audition my own way.
I nearly flunked out of high school. I was bullied. Some of the bullying was done by teachers. They favored the "popular" kids and looked down at geeky nerds like me. I was unmotivated to try. I believe the administrators of the school system were ADHD deniers. My needs were dismissed. My complaints about the algebra teacher who looked the other way when I was bullied in his class were ignored.
I got a degree in engineering twenty years after barely graduating from high school. Part of that was doing high school over at community college where the social dynamic was not as negative.
Of course it must remain a matter of personal choice, except perhaps for younger children, as to whether one wants to partake or participate in whatever therapies or measures are available for modifying one’s ADHD.
Are you familiar with the work of William J. Walsh, PhD.? Among his work is the book “Nutrient Power: Heal Your Biochemistry and Heal Your Brain” whose chapter 8 is titled “Behavoiral Disorders and ADHD”. He founded the Walsh Research Institute through which he teaches the Walsh Protocols to physicians.
I am on my seventieth trip around the sun. I was denied stimulant treatment after I was diagnosed at ten in 1965. I have little academic background in learning disabilities, but a lifetime of experience. I ruminate on all of the 'could have beens.' Lately the couldabeen is having been medicated. I have very compelling reasons to believe I would have had far more success in life had I been. My mother tried the medication and rejected it because she did not like the way it made Her feel.
My next substack post will be about my On the Job Training with dyslexia, which I do not suffer from.
Thom deserves my thanks for helping me see that ADHD is not disorder, but another way of being in the world. At this point in time, people with the gift of ADHD often don't fit in places created for the majority and need to find their own way.
In what may be true ADHD fashion it took me a week to get to this. My own journey started before being tested at the age of ten and diagnosed with an IQ of 140. ADHD was part of that diagnosis. At the age of eight I was dealt corporal punishment at the hands of a mother superior at a catholic school. I did not know what I had done to deserve it. I suspect now it was my lack of blind faith in what I was being told. My gifts may have made the nuns think I was possessed.
Shortly after that incident we were placed in public school where I was tested and diagnosed. At fourteen my family moved to a new town, with a supposedly better school system. I was auditioned for a program for gifted students. I was the only one in the test group to not get into the program. ADHD had me perform the audition my own way.
I nearly flunked out of high school. I was bullied. Some of the bullying was done by teachers. They favored the "popular" kids and looked down at geeky nerds like me. I was unmotivated to try. I believe the administrators of the school system were ADHD deniers. My needs were dismissed. My complaints about the algebra teacher who looked the other way when I was bullied in his class were ignored.
I got a degree in engineering twenty years after barely graduating from high school. Part of that was doing high school over at community college where the social dynamic was not as negative.
Tom,
Of course it must remain a matter of personal choice, except perhaps for younger children, as to whether one wants to partake or participate in whatever therapies or measures are available for modifying one’s ADHD.
Are you familiar with the work of William J. Walsh, PhD.? Among his work is the book “Nutrient Power: Heal Your Biochemistry and Heal Your Brain” whose chapter 8 is titled “Behavoiral Disorders and ADHD”. He founded the Walsh Research Institute through which he teaches the Walsh Protocols to physicians.
There is a website at walshinstitute.org.
I am on my seventieth trip around the sun. I was denied stimulant treatment after I was diagnosed at ten in 1965. I have little academic background in learning disabilities, but a lifetime of experience. I ruminate on all of the 'could have beens.' Lately the couldabeen is having been medicated. I have very compelling reasons to believe I would have had far more success in life had I been. My mother tried the medication and rejected it because she did not like the way it made Her feel.
My next substack post will be about my On the Job Training with dyslexia, which I do not suffer from.