What a school year its been for Marysville. Test scores rising, new schools being built, Dr. Nyland deservedly up for National Superintendent of the Year. And how about those MPHS B-Ballers? But good is never good enough in the pursuit of excellence. In the school biz, we (that means all of us) always have another challenge to meet. Dealing with learning disorders is one of those.
I cringe at what I must have put my teachers through. I say this because Im ADD and bipolar and a bunch of other stuff. How do I know this? I looked up the symptoms and diagnoses on the web where I read that if I have three or more of the characteristics I should hasten to find a therapist. According to the test, I have not three but five ADD symptoms. I made the cut on bi-polar, too.
ADD means Attention-Deficit-Disorder. If ADD kids become overly active or squirmy, we ramp them up to ADHD status, or Attention-Deficit-Hyperactive-Disorder. Gone are the days when children were described as overly-active or easily-distracted or absent-minded. Those were things teachers handled. These newer classifications of ADD and ADHD are clinical definitions, and as such, they have soared out of the purview of ordinary teachers and into the hands of specialists and therapists and pill-pushers.
ADHD behavior can bring classroom education to a standstill. These children require the lions share of teachers time and energy while better-adjusted students are put on hold, waiting for the educational ball to roll again.
I wasnt one of those because a healthy fear of consequences kept kids of my generation from acting out.
But enough about me. Its todays kids Im worried about. Every time I see a Marysville school bus pass it likely has ADD or ADHD students aboard, off on another day of trying to fit into the system. These children have been officially marked as specially challenged and a lot of them know it. Some pull up their socks and overcome it. A few misuse their labels. Im A-D-D so Im not expected to do well, they say.
Balderdash and poppycock. Pop-psychologists have used the excuses of poor toilet training, low socio-economic backgrounds or genetic flaws to relegate hordes to the bottom of pecking orders. For people lacking in ambition, a scholarly-sounding excuse is the perfect prescription for not achieving and resenting the success of those who do.
Most ADD kids have real reasons to be classified as Attention Deficit Disordered, which, like most psychological classifications, is relatively new. Maybe the newness is because kids activities are new. To put this into time-perspective, one must step back to when kids talked with each other when walking to school (no ear-buds), when life moved at a more sedate pace and when pregnant mothers didnt do drugs. Children ran out to play with neighbor-kids after school. No television. No computer games. A great part of every day was spent alone with thoughts and dreams.
A few kids still live like that. Too few. According to the Santa Cruz Sentinel (12-15-06) media usage occupies half of our lives, assailing our brains with electronic input to the exclusion of private thought and that is a big issue here. It has been said that we become what we eat and the same is true of our mental diets. Studies indicate that mental diets relate to ADD. Mental diets stemming from abusive or neglectful parenting and electronic escapism surely contribute to behaviors that impair learning environments in ours and every other school district.
Experts point to four organic sources of ADD behavior: Differences in brain structure and activity, brain chemistry, genetic factors and the effects of drugs, alcohol or other toxins during pregnancy. Not much an unlucky child can do to reverse that stuff so it is the remaining risk-factors that we should focus on.
Studies strongly suggest that young children who watch three or more hours of television per day run a 10% greater risk of ADHD. Lack of a loving home environment and poor diet also figure in the problem. These factors, added to the organic sources, produce interesting behaviors.
Whether ADD-afflicted or not, each of us is a few bubbles out of plumb. Whatever character we have is definable not by how perfect we are, but by our unique combinations of imperfection. Nut-cases, were all a bunch of nut-cases whether we admit it or not. We try to do our best.
Look at it this way: If I grew up with short legs, Id have to take a lot of steps to keep up. Call it compensation. Most of the brightest and most creative students to ever pass through my classrooms were compensators. They were unbalanced. Some delightfully so, some tragically so. Some masked odd behavioral tendencies, others let it all hang out. And thats what differentiates contributing members of society from certifiable nuts. Like me.
I truly believe that my learning-challenged students harbored marvelous sparks of creativity and leadership that often surpassed my Goody Two-Shoes students. While creative ADD and ADHD kids may not be comfortable with their conditions, they sure make you sit up and take notice of them.
If we could become better at dealing with them, channeling their energies, minimizing their acting-out, refraining from marginalizing them, engineering life-affirming successes for them then everything from attendance to WASL scores to social adjustment would soar.
There is no easy fix. Short of enlightened parenting there is no silver bullet. Just dogged persistence by dedicated teachers who fully understand the problem and are doing everything within their ability to bring success to each child. The goal isnt just bringing peace to classrooms. Wed also be igniting the potential of some powerfully creative minds.