And the winner is... Adult ADD

He hated me. He hated my laziness, my inability to remember a list of things to do, the way I forgot to pay a bill I’d just looked at the day before. He didn’t see any value in a woman who actually noticed things no one else around him did, who would call him up to tell him to look at the moon, or who somehow just ‘knew’ things with what seemed an almost frightening leap of intuition. Couldn’t stand how I could sit there, silent, listening, and calmly come up with a big-picture problem-solver without so much as putting on my thinking cap.

I was less than useless to him. And so my ex stared at me in disgust one night in Corsica and told me there was nothing wrong with him, and everything was my fault. I offered to go to counseling, but he refused. “Do you realize just how much work that’s going to take, to fix what’s wrong with you? And then, there’s no guarantee you’ll even get fixed,” he said to me, cold and venomous.

And I believed him.

I believed I was broken. I believed, too, all those childhood punishments that labeled me ‘lazy’ and a ‘dreamer’. I kept believing that all I had to do was try harder, and somehow I’d be able to do all those things they wanted me to do, like pay attention and concentrate, put things in order, remember chronological facts, follow the steps. But as I made my way through the first year of Single Motherhood, I began to wonder if that was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but…

It took two and a half years, but I think we finally put a name to the weird, wonderful way my brain works. ADD

I started to read Attention Deficit Disorder in Adults: A different way of thinking by Lynn Weiss, this week. And I started to cry, and couldn’t stop. Not for a whole day. I still get overwhelmed if I think about it. I’m not broken. It’s an extraordinary realization, and to have ADD isn’t to be labeled as handicapped or brain-broke or crazy in any way. At its simplest, ADD is a brain organized around non-linear thinking. In fact, one of the most satisfying passages early in the book is a description of a trial situation the author put three different types of people together in groups: ADD type people, linear thinkers, and bridge people who didn’t present a clear identification with one type of behavior over the other. And you know what? When the linear thinkers were presented with a non-linear problem to solve, their behavior was just like ADD folks presented with a linear task!! They were restless, disorderly, tempermental, and could not complete the task.

Why am I writing all of this tonight? Because I suspect my son has a touch of non-linear thinking in his makeup. The kid who can’t sit still, can’t focus on one task unless it is wildly interesting to him, and then he can’t get enough of it. Perhaps your kid is a wide-eyed dreamer. Perhaps your child isn’t hyperactive, so you don’t know what’s ‘wrong’  with her.

Know, then, that you have choices, if you suspect your child has ADD. You can choose to medicate that child, in hopes he or she will conform to the societal norm and ‘fit in’, without disrupting the class. You can choose to learn coping techniques for you and your child, to harness that wild, joyous energy and acheive the end goals of real learning without disrupting the linear classroom–but you will have to be a staunch advocate for your child’s kinetic learning style. Or, some day, you or your child can decide, to heck with it, and go off to the beat of your own drums and bring light and life into a paper-clip world.

As for me, six months ago I was bemoaning the fact that you just don’t come across many help wanted ads looking for visionaries. Yesterday? I read two that seem to be looking for just that. One of the ads even said it, bold as day: seeking visionary.

That’s my kind of job. I’m going for the big picture, single mothers. Cause you know what?

Ain’t nuthin wrong with me.