fast_eddie_72 wrote:
Xceler8x wrote:
I have a theory that kids who are diagnosed with ADHD are actually some of the most intelligent and perceptive.
Not an expert on the subject, but have some personal experience...
Here's a story I read that I rather enjoyed -
Once upon a time there was a little boy named Thomas, who had his
own style of doing things. Thomas wanted to know, how things
worked and what was inside things. He liked to take things apart –
but usually didn’t put them back together again. In his room, it looked
like a cyclone had hit. Thomas liked to talk nonstop about the things
he found interesting – which were a lot of things- and he liked to
argue about things, even with grown-ups. When his teacher gave an
assignment, Thomas often forgot it or lost it, but sometimes when he
turned it in it wasn’t what the teacher wanted at all, although Thomas
always said it was much more interesting than what she asked for.
Thomas kept trying things, touching things, and was always on the
move.
Thomas never sat in one place, like his desk, for more than a few
minutes, and he was always wriggling around and looking at
everything but the teacher. His father said that if you could only
harness Thomas up to the engine, he could probably pull a train with
all that energy. At the same time, when Thomas was really involved
in an experiment, like whether raw eggs or hard boiled eggs could
balance better on the edge of the stove, he could block everything
else out, and forget about his chores or schoolwork. His mother had
to remind him again and again to do things, and when he finally did
them they were always done the way his mother expected, or were
left half done.
As Thomas grew older, he seemed to be even more out of step. His
peers were interested in dances, and careers, and music. Thomas
was interested in how things worked and watching the clouds move in
the sky. He didn’t dress like the other teens, or keep his clothes neat,
or hang around with them. He said it was because they had nothing
interesting to say about the life-style of frogs, but it was also because
the others thought he was strange. Not being able to catch
everything that was said because of his hearing loss made it even
harder for him. He didn’t have temper tantrums when he was
stressed-out, the way he did when he was little (he felt guilty about
those now), but he would go off and shut his door to tinker in his
room.
His parents despaired, his grandmother predicted dire things, the
other kids, laughed at him, his teachers thought he was disobedient
and unteachable, probably retarded, and the neighbors shook their
heads.
Thomas even left home for a while and bummed around on the
railroad. Nothing would ever come of that boy, said the neighbors.
They were sympathetic to his parents about having such a difficult
child, but many of them privately thought that if his parents had taken
Thomas out behind the wood shed more often he wouldn’t be such a
problem now.
As Thomas grew into a man, he was able to spend more time
tinkering with his experiments. Not just two or three or a dozen times
trying out an idea, but hundreds, even thousands of times on one
thing. People began to look at him as a real crackpot. He started a
family of his own, but was often so preoccupied with his ideas and
experiments that he would stay up all night trying things out. If he
had gone to a psychiatrist, he probably would have been called
obsessive compulsive, bipolar, or just an irresponsible, unrealistic
dreamer.
What happened to Thomas? Was it a bonding problem with his
parents? Should they have used the wood shed more often?
Enrolled him in dancing classes and music lessons with other teens?
Maybe his teachers should have thrown him out of school earlier
when they thought he was retarded and disruptive, or put him into a
special education classroom.
What’s your opinion? Think about it as you sit in the evening with the
lights on. You know, the ones with light bulbs. The light bulbs that
Thomas Alva Edison invented after thousands and thousands of tries,
along with hundreds and hundreds of other patented inventions.
Sometimes the things that drive parents and teachers crazy like risktaking,
perseverance, or marching to your own music, are the same
qualities that can bring light to the world. Think about it.
