ADHD: A Path to Success
Chapter 1 of
first 6 Chapters
ADHD is Adaptive, Not Defective
(continued)
With Chris, I asked him to think about people who made him mad. This included his teacher, some of his fellow students at school, some boys at day care who would not let him play, and his big brother. Chris liked doing this. He said it made him "think about things."
At the end of session one, which included an initial evaluation and beginning treatment using CAER, Chris' mother was given a five-minute cassette tape and instruction sheet to take to the teacher.
During sessions two and three using CAER, this same tape was played. Once again, Chris was asked to think about people who made him angry. He reported that this tape made him mad. He also said that after he had listened to the tape a few times, it did not make him angry.
By the end of the third session, Chris did not seem to have any emotional response to the tape. The powerful feelings that were at the root of Chris' behavioral problems were extinguished by CAER.
I also saw Chris' mother for one session. This was to alleviate her own guilt about putting firm limits on her son. Abused and rejected in her own childhood, she was overreacting in her determination to avoid the same patterns with Chris.
Although she had an excellent command of behavior management concepts, she could not effectively put them into practice because doing so made her feel terrible. In fact, whenever she tried to be firm with Chris, his complaining made her feel like the "Wicked Witch of the West."
After one session using CAER to re-experience her own unsettling emotions, Chris' mother was able to do an excellent job of systematically rewarding and punishing Chris. That's because such actions no longer tapped into her own emotional history.
With the help of CAER, ADHD can be overcome.
ADHD Demographics
ADHD is a major problem occurring in as many as 3.5 million children in the United States, or three to seven percent of the nation's children, according to various estimates. No one really knows the exact number. The male-to-female ratio is about two to one.
Its common characteristics are:
1) Fidgeting with the hands or feet
2) Difficulty remaining seated
3) Difficulty awaiting taking turns in games
4) Difficulty following through on instructions
5) Shifting from one uncompleted task to another
6) Difficulty playing quietly
7) Interrupting conversations and intruding into other children's games
8) Appearing to not be listening to what is being said
9) Doing things that are dangerous without thinking about the consequences
Currently ADHD is thought of as a neurological disorder that affects motivational systems. Accepted treatment consists of behavior therapy and/or stimulant drugs.
These treatments are usually helpful, but the child's behavior seldom becomes normal. When either of these treatments is withdrawn, behavior most often regresses.
That's because the treatments only manage and do not cure the pathology (Barkley, 1990).
Myths of ADHD
Traditional thoughts about ADHD impose a number of damaging myths onto children like Ryan. These myths have led to many ineffective approaches for treating ADHD.
Let's compare traditional views of ADHD with my view of children like Ryan.
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Traditional View My View
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When people describe a specific ADHD child, I'm often left with an image of the kid with a clock mainspring spiraling out of his head and gears raining down. If all of his gears and springs were in right, if his broken parts were fixed, he would work and do what we want.
ADHD children are not clocks with a broken mainspring and gears falling out.
In fact, we do treat the child as if he were a broken mechanical device like a watch. But we use professional words such as "disorder."
We do this because a medical diagnosis denoting disorder, brokenness, or deviancy makes ADHD more socially acceptable. As neat and circumscribed as this approach seems, it does not capture the diffuse, culturally enmeshed nature of the problem.
In truth, the ADHD child does not have a "disorder." He is not broken.
He has just learned adaptive strategies that we do not like. He resorts to ADHD behavior, not because his gears and springs are not meshing, but because it works, and it works well. The gears of an ADHD child mesh with perfect precision, expertly propelling him away from his discomforts.
We, as parents and teachers, just happen to find his strategy in conflict with our own agendas. Simply put, we think if you are not like me or do not do what I want, you are deviant or disordered. Thus, I am order; you, disorder. This is incorrect thinking.
The ADHD child is a highly trained and skilled adapter to a painful situation. The mechanisms that he uses are exactly the ones the rest of us use on a daily basis. However, within the closed, repetitive conditioning situation of schools, these adaptive strategies are exaggerated and ultimately backfire.
* Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect identity.
