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I knew there was something bothering her. My daughter is usually a happy 12-year-old but as she approached my car she had a look on her face that was more serious than I had ever seen.
"Daddy, I think there's something wrong with me."
I said what any good father would say: "Honey, are you sure this isn’t something that you should be discussing with Mom?"
"No, Dad," she said with that frustrated teenaged girl tone that she had developed over the last few months "It’s not a girl thing. It’s about my Bat Mitzvah! I am weird -- all the other kids complain about their lessons, but I like them. Is there something wrong with me?"
After explaining that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her, I began to realize how far she had come, and how profoundly proud I am of her. You see, there is something in my daughter’s brain chemistry that makes her a little different and causes her to be distractible, unorganized and impulsive. It also gives her a high IQ, a wonderful creative mind, and a sense of compassion that goes way beyond kids of her age.
She needs to work extra hard at tasks just to get started, but her intelligence, resourcefulness and work ethic enables her to surpass most of the kids her age. Most nights she has to work on her studies till 9 or 10 pm and because of her hard work and intelligence, she has been on Honor Role or High Honor Role every semester since her entrance into Junior High School. Not bad for a kid with ADHD.
ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) is not rare. It effects between 7 and 8% of all kids, yet it has been my experience that most adults are insensitive to the people who are affected by the problem.
ADHD does not mean that a child cannot pay attention; it means that sometimes they pay attention to the wrong thing.
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard ADHD or "Hyper" used as a derogatory term to describe any child with behavior problems. Some insensitive adults even describe themselves as ADHD on a day when they are not performing at their usual levels. Those comments are as hurtful as they are untrue. Most of the ADHD kids that I have met are sensitive, smart and no more rambunctious than other children.
ADHD does not mean that a child cannot pay attention; it means that sometimes they pay attention to the wrong thing. The disorder is actually a gift. It allows their senses to be more in tune with the world around them; they are open to sensory stimulation.
With ADHD you are much more likely to "stop and smell the roses." Of course it is also harder for a person with ADHD to stay focused and return to the task at hand (like cleaning his/her room). Yet in times of crisis they are able to hyper-focus, concentrate on the task at hand better than anyone. My wife says my daughter has "eagle eyes" because she can find the needle in the haystack.
From the first day of kindergarten, school has been an every day struggle in our home because most teachers and administrators can only deal with kids who conform to their vision of a student. It is easy to develop a program to help a child that can’t read or add. But we have found that school systems are unprepared to help a very bright child with needs. The school administrators I have dealt with see my child as doing well enough; they don’t necessarily see the purpose of her education as enabling her to achieve her potential.
We always thought it important to share my daughter’s needs with the teachers and administrators, but often they just don’t get it. I can’t tell you how many times I have been frustrated at seeing a report card that commented that my daughter was distractible or exhibited a lack of organization. As Bart Simpson would say "DUH!" Those same teachers wouldn’t say to a parent of a child that need a wheelchair, "You need to get your child to run faster."
Raising a child with special needs requires you to constantly fight for your child.
Raising a child with special needs requires you to constantly fight for your child. This has been a full time job for my wife. She has questioned, begged and pushed to make sure that my daughter is given the opportunity to reach her full potential.
Because we ask questions and do not take no for an answer when it comes to our child’s needs, we are known in the school district as the parents from hell. We always wonder about the other parents, the ones who don’t know that they can't take everyone at their word, who don’t know how to ask questions or realize that they need to fight for their kids.
It's not that school administrators are bad people. The fact is that schools are like any other business -- their job is to get by using as few resources as possible. To cover things up, administrators want teachers to paint a beautiful picture, tell parents that everything is going smoothly so they don’t ask for more.
Untenured teachers have been fired for being honest with my wife and I about the services my child needs. Tenured staff have been transferred or disciplined for letting us know more about our child. In a conference, an administrator once tried to answer a question for an occupational therapist. I reminded her that the therapist was the expert in the area, and maybe we should hear his answer. The therapist answered honestly and was removed from the district the next school year. We went through three occupational therapists in three years that way.
Having needs that no one understands can be even more frustrating for my daughter. Once she came home from school complaining that the teacher sat her next to a child who was throwing paper clips. "Mom," she said, "the teacher put me, someone with an attention problem, right next to the most distractible kid in the class. What was she thinking?"
Often she will come home relating to us that a teacher doesn’t understand her issues. Part of growing up is to learn to advocate for ourselves and my child is beginning to learn this. Often, though, a teacher who doesn’t fully comprehend her issues stumps her. This is compounded by her desire to be respectful for authority. We are working very hard at trying to teach her that it is okay to respectfully advocate for her needs.
ADHD can lead to social problems. We all give out body language and other physical signals to the people we interact with. As you may expect, people with ADHD don’t always recognize the signals. For example, because they are caring and impulsive they are more likely to invade personal space or commit some other social miscues at an older age than other children. Friends can be hard to make, but when people give her a chance they find her to be a fun and fiercely loyal companion.
God willing, in six months my daughter will be having her Bat Mitzvah. She is already making comments and asking questions about her Torah portion that make me scramble for the nearest Chumash so I can catch up with her insights.
I see her disorder as a gift from God.
With the advent of her Bat Mitzvah, she will begin to be responsible for herself and will be looked at as an adult in the Jewish community. In actuality, she is just beginning to make that long transition from adolescence to adulthood. Like any parents, my wife and I spend lots of nights worrying about both our kids, hoping that we are doing the right thing, enabling her to reach adulthood, not only achieving her potential as a person but to be a healthy human being with a good heart and the right values.
As she reaches her Bat Mitzvah and begins that transition, despite all the sleepless nights, I see her disorder as a gift from God. She has learned that nothing comes without working very hard, that it is important to speak up for yourself (respectfully) and that you don’t take good friends for granted.
But most importantly she is becoming someone for whom values are more important than popularity, and someone who can appreciate the things around her better than anyone I know. I am already very proud, and very thankful. Now if I can just get her to clean her room.
(64) Brandon , June 7, 2009
ADD abilities and disabilities.
i am 20 years old, diagnozed with temprol lobe ADD at the age of 8. i was always in the top in my class through elementary school up to high school. my problem arised when i noticed i acted,talked and thought differnetly then all the rest of the kids. i had a hard time fitting in and was subjected harshly to bullying. nonetheless, i had very caring parents that have helped me throgh my journey of life. i have always thought of my 'disability' as a gift, i am a memeber of MENSA, and have a great compassion for everything. ( tend to get easily distracted from the task at hand) your story has really related to my everyday living, so from the bottom of my heart i thank-you!! cheers
(63) Nathan , May 22, 2009
Fashionable
It is fashionable today to write that ADHD is a "gift," that it is a positive thing, etc. If it such a gift, why does it cause so much pain and distress, and why are there so few resources in the Jewish community to understand and hone it?
(62) shell , March 3, 2009
A brilliant gift
I am a mother with ADHD to a son with ADHD and can honestly agree that ADHD has the capasity to be a great and unrivaled gift, however this does not just happen and living with a child with ADHD can be verry trying (i now have the experiance from both ends) my ADHD nearly had me expeled several times, from every thing from nusery school to high school, my behaviour was challenging, especialy before the age of 15 and i was on ritilan from the age of four and still flunking school, BUT i would not change any of this, not one thing yes my ADHD gave me challenges that took a lot of very hard work to overcome, but i overcame them and am still doing so today, my ADHD has given me the ability to see things that others dont, to intimatly understand things others may not comprehent, tohave a quick and imaginatuive mind that is always trying to break the limits of ordenary thinking. my IQ when last measured was 152, i was the ultimate student from hell, i did not like school and school did not like me. BUT at the age of 15 i started my own buisness, started flying small aircraft, bought a motobike, took myself of ritilin and at 17 actualy made it through school. right now i am a single mother while studying social care in AIT, i have my second buisness in the pipeline, and have several therories that i hope to prove through my thesis to revolutanise the manegment of ADHD in ireland. i have a great life, am flying through my degree, have an amazing group of friends that love me despite and indeed because of my ADHD. i cant wait to face the next challenges that will face me and look forward to helping my amazing son to face his in the same way that my mother helped me, i will instil in him the belief that yes things will be hard but that the ADHD that makes it hard also gives him the capasity for greatness, i will tell him that it is a gift which he must learn to utalise and i will most importantly be there to pick up the peises when the world that we live in, so distrustfull of differences tries to force him in to submition, to conformity, to be like others, yes he will be called stupid, uncoperational, difficult and disruptive (i know i was, and so are most with ADHD) but i will do what my mother did for me, i will fight tooth and nail for my son and i will stand by him, i will instill in him belief of himslef and his abilities and will not let anyone break him.
(61) Michael , March 12, 2008
Help for my 15 old in yeshiva
Hello,
Baruch Hashem, my son is finally doing well socially and academically in school. He now gets extra help with study skills, note taking and reminders about work and test. But that is only in the English subjects.
Is there any advise how he can tackle Gemerah, Chumash and Navi. He is already excused from Hebrew since learning a language is very difficult for a kid with ADHD. But what about other subjects where he is using a foreign language?
Any advise?
(60) Peter , January 21, 2008
Gift
Hello im Peter 20 and i have ADHD. First at age before 3 my mother notest that i was wery good speaking and getting people to do what i wanted.At this time my father Leo told me to clean my room...Well 3 hours later when my mother Suvi comes home she finds my father crying on a room. Now she asks him that what has happened and my father tels her that Peter said that you had said that when the new father comes to this house Peter wouldnt have to clean his room no more. By the time i was 3 years old but i had already learnt to see how people acted and what they thought.I allso had broblems whit my hot temperature, had over loaded hearing, seeing, smelling and touching that some times i couldnt control. At the age of 10 i started getting severe migrens so bad that i could open my eyes because of the pain, also hearing and touching was feeling awful. Those lasted about 5 years and then they stopped. At school i got trouble because i couldnt control my hypefocus yet. so some times i "waked up" from my deep thoughts at class and the teacher would be yelling me and all others laughing at me.I could imagine pictures like they were before my eyes, becuse i have photoraphic memory and was wery good at drawing so i even winned few competitions. i have always been very open minded to things so i got the honored smiling boy statuette wich is a tradition in finland. High-school i was very impulsive and always doing my own projects and had problems whit teachers, some liked me the most because i was superior in studies that you need the "large picture" combrehending in fackt i mostly think as some kind of "pictures". ADHD makes the child act weird at that age because the brains fontal cortex isnt maturing as fast as with normal youth The delay in ADHD was most prominent in regions at the front of the brain's outer mantle cortex to control thinking, attention and planning. So basicaly you have super teen anxiety combined to The fact that motor cortex emerged as the only area that matured faster than normal in the youth with ADHD.In contrast to the latematuring frontal cortex areas that direct it.That may explain those problems we with ADHD usually have in our teen years. But hey when its over you can see what a bright world awaits you and your creation in there. I was doing for 3 differend exams at the same time but that was too much for me at the age of 17 and i quit them all for while and went to army I have never used any medication for ADHD because it isnt a disease it can be seed as a form of neurodiversity. tammy your child is the gift but he also is the ADHD its a part of him it is how he thinks acts and sees the world. if u chance that your child isnt the same personality anymore. Those unfortunate things that he has gone trougth because he has ADHD is because his brain is trying to start hadle his gifts.Like the more complicated is the computer program the harder is to learn how to use it and the drugs theyr using now to make it work is like pouring an acid to the hard-drive. Also went to finnish border guard guerilla army training to learn discipline and to have some new chalences i was trained commando,long range reconnaissance,conduct road side ambushes, gathering intelligence and pursuit and destroy special forces units technicues. but now that has also past and im a free man to do what ever i whant....... just dont know what to do yet??? At least i have to see what this planet is all a bout? but hey! you may never now, where you may go with the flow. Phease and unity for all.