Accommodating or Incorporating?

There is an ongoing debate in a corner of one of the classrooms in which I teach, as to whether ADD and ADHD really exist, or whether they serve as "excuses" for lazy students. The debate is all student led, and today -- humorously -- was juxtaposed with another debate between students debating whether ghosts and other supernatural phenomena exist.

I was summoned into the debate and shared what I know of the medical consensus, and of my own struggles. They seemed surprised, but didn't ask much. A few hours later, I got a call from a good friend who described her brainstorming weekend with two other social media marketers. She said that all three experienced many moments the conventional world labels as "ADD," but that they accomplished a good deal. If we're not overselling our productivity, what else are we claiming with our "multi-tasking" but the non-linear productivity pioneered by "ADD" brains?

Many ADD consultants talk about ADD as non-linear processing. And many educators talk about "meeting the needs" of ADD students, but are educators planning lessons for the WHOLE class based on the non-linear learner? Are we helping these students merely brace for the NON-nonlinear world, or are we training them to harness their nonlinearity to its fullest potential?

Afterthought: Can non-ADD "linear" learners benefit from such an approach?

Attitude

I'm working through Jennifer Koretsky's ADD eWorkshop #3, "ADDjust Your Attitude."
The idea follows #2's call to stop working against the ADD. I'm making a list of 5 things I'm good at doing:
--- Playing with words: rhyme, puns, rhythm.
--- Accents
--- Spreadsheets
--- Big-picture thinking
--- Explaining through analogy

These are the first five things I extracted from my head. Are they the five best things? The five most important to securing a good job? How important is free association to an ADDer's thought process?

Next list of five: things I LIKE to do:
--- Vocal harmonies
--- Drink good red wine
--- Walk and ride through the woods
--- Write
--- Watch movies

Next, five things I've done well in the last 24 hours:
--- Written a poem I didn't particularly want to finish
--- Made useful career-related contacts
--- Saved heat by wearing two pairs of wool socks
--- Managed my temper with my kids
--- Been honest with the Jung/Keirsey temperament sorter

I'm supposed to do this every day. I'm going to run out of things to do well in a 24-hour period. Unless "drink excessive coffee" can be reused.

ADDaptation?

The puns will start to sour, I'm sure. But this article from William Saletan at Slate.com reports on a Northwestern University study that suggests ADHD might be a genetic adaptation suited to pre-agricultural settlement patterns and lifestyles.

I recently watched 10,000 BC, a stupid and wildly improbable historical nonsense. Yet I found myself, as I have at natural history museums, fascinated by pre-Bronze Age technological societies, and the primitiveness we associate with their minds solely because of their tools. While these tribes surely had some divisions of labor based on physical attributes and cerebral skills, it is reasonable to suppose that nomadic tribal life required more broad skill development of an individual than does our increasingly technologically specialized arrangement.

I wonder if this means there is a correlation to the ADD's interest in everything, and desire to master many skills, and why that seems increasingly disfavored in our niche-driven economy.

ADD 2.0?

Yesterday I had the kids home all day, and was failing miserably at multitasking. I did have about 95 minutes during naptime to read, write, and sit quietly, which I did. But by late afternoon I was behind. I'd lost the energy to get ahead of them, to proactively manage their activity. The four year-old said "no" to most of my suggestions, and the 16 month-old was purely driven by whatever I did NOT want taken out.

By the little one's bedtime, I had no patience, no creativity, and no perspective. I lost it trying to teach a basic version of checkers to my daughter, who was utzing me about holding the other pieces (the ones we weren't using). I got irrationally angry when she kept interrupting my lesson with "Daddy, daddy, daddy..." this over here that over there this thought that thought etc. All I needed was a tap on the shoulder, but I was alone, and blew my cool.

After the tears and patchwork, I realized that what had set me off was her natural, 4 year-old lack of focus and constant interruption. One of my new worries: will she have it? And when is too early to observe symptoms?

To "Be" or Not to "Be" ADD

I had a job interview today for a position assisting junior high school students with behavioral or learning disorders. In my view, I'm a terrible interview. I prepared based on a list of questions teacher candidates usually get, yet when asked different questions, I tend (as I hear it) to ramble, stammer, and tangent. Still, I'm personable and intelligent and witty, so it was a nice interview. Moreover, I consider myself more than qualified for the position, so I don't fear the interview was necessarily a make-or-break part of the selection process. When I got home, though, I e-mailed the interviewer with a follow-up piece of information and felt compelled to delete a section I'd written disclosing that I had adult ADD and that sometimes interviews are not my strong suit. My wife asked why I'd want to label myself and warned against "making an excuse." Probably the safe bet, but I wondered if this wasn't likely the most understanding group of educators, and whether acknowledging and stating a fact is truly "making an excuse."

It's part of a new dialogue we're having -- I've tried to be more forthright about dealing with ADD, and she checks whether I'm "making an excuse." What I need to convey is that before I received the diagnosis, not having had the language to describe why I always did things differently, or incompletely, or tardily, that's when I was making excuses: my car, the traffic, the rough draft, etc. If I approach the ADD as a set of facts, and make those with whom I interact aware of them (if they're not already), then I can't possibly make excuses.

Job interviews are tricky things; everyone has a different way of evaluating a candidate, and disclosing something like ADD, as widely as the term is bandied about in the mainstream, could certainly seem like a lame caveat. I avoided mentioning it, but I wonder: if I don't get the position, will that be the excuse?

How openly should one manage their ADD?

ADDiction

Web 2.0 is the shiniest thing in the room, a hive of mirrors. Since the bloginning, I have been exploring my social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, good ol' Google) to find resources on living with Adult ADD. A lot of life coaches out there. The very act of searching and clicking on all the ADD-related options can be a bit dizzying. Several referrals to timers out there. I will buy a timer and limit myself to 10 minutes of resource-seeking per day.

Newareness

At a meeting last night and just before class this morning, I have noticed the ADD as a part of my conscious interactive mind:

This morning, I arrived at school not tardy but later than I wanted to, and had very little time to go over the lesson plans before class began. It turned out that the teacher only needed me for about 15 minutes, and all I had to do was start the movie and take attendance (both of which I usually like to do myself but delegated to students), but I noticed that I could only digest about half of the instructions she was giving me. The combination of the written plans I glanced at while listening, the large stack of papers on the her desk to which she kept referring while she talked, the buzz of the students coming into the room and noting my presence, and the general seat-of-the-pantsness of this particular assignment swirled around my head like cream in coffee, puffing and lilting until finally I reached a tepid equilibrium of half-understanding.

Last night, I met a friend of a friend over beers for a conversation about his field (clinical psych), and although the bar was relatively quiet and mellow, and the conversation fascinating and personal, and the sensitive guitarist singing open mike tunes to a tiny audience, I had to take more than one time-out (literally - I even explained to him that I was making a more conscious effort to understand how ADD was affecting me in social settings) to still and separate various tracks of thought and attention. I wonder how experienced ADD managers do this consciously.

Elements of the swirl: menu offerings, draft options, the guitarist's setlist and "Hey! He just strummed the opening chord to John Mayer's St. Patrick's Day, I should be on Name That Tune!", my friend's friend's life's details, my life details, my friend's life details (he wasn't there, but his details were), another friend who would soon be waiting for my call...

I do know that I would recognize certain elements of the conversation or certain facts that were shared if I heard them again, but I couldn't narrate the course of the meeting without fictionalizing it. I do know that it was a good meeting, and that I will likely have another in the near future.