Jazz Hands

and A.D.D.  :)

I made this: I am painting the frame tonight, but it’s the shiny innards of the shadow box I like best  so I am posting it before it’s all the way finished.

I have a rad post about my trip with Alice to Baltimore all formed in my head and I will be putting it to good use in the morning, but tonight I am taking a small diversion.

Today I began reading “Driven to Distraction” for like the fifth time in as many weeks. This time I made it through a few pages and then I finally clicked in and was able to devour several chapters. I have never questioned that I had ADD as a kid, one part reads

“They are the subject of numerous parent teacher conferences. Time and time again an exasperated teacher meets a frustrated parent in a meeting that later explodes all over the child who isn’t there. He feels shock waves after. “Do you know what your teacher said? Do you know how embarrassed your mother and I were?” or from the teacher “I understand you have no greater control of yourself at home than you do in school. We must work on this, mustn’t we?”  Month after month, year after year these tapes of negativity play over and over again until they become the voice the child knows best.”

Now I was lucky that I was in the first generation of children that began to be properly diagnosed and was given more opportunities to try medication, learn coping skills, and receive some understanding form all the caretakers in my life. Moving on into the next chapters of the book that address being an adult with ADD I am acutely aware of how some of the tape that plays over and over in my head is not anyone’s voice but my own. “You’re stupid, you forget everything, you could be smart but you’re too disorganized to use any of it” and as a mother “you can not teach Russell to overcome this when you are so disabled by it”

That all sounds so dreary, I don’t mean it too. I am cheery, right now even writing this. One of the great things this book emphasizes is in this paragraph that Jon said could be me

“As is the case with so many with ADD. They are very likable although they get into the most difficult patches. They can be exasperating to an extreme… …but they can also be unusually empathetic, intuitive, and compassionate, as if in that tangled brain circuitry there is a special capacity to see into people and situations.”

When I am reading this sometimes I cannot decide if I want to read this as an adult with ADD or as the mother of one. That is my boy! That is me. There is a section of this book that talks about impulse control and ‘rage reactions.’ It refers to an inability to inhibit impulses and how that relates to our emotions. For me it’s not rage, it’s sadness that wells over in an extreme way. But I see the rages in Russell and the overflowing joy or grief!

With Jon his manifests itself in a way that can seem egocentric to an extreme because he becomes bored so easily that what may seem like disinterest is really a brain that is clicking through the scene too fast to slow down and be present. He’s lucky because I like that about him (when I don’t want to choke him for it).

I believe adult ADD depends so much on how you were received as a child and that is why it is so much harder to pin down a treatment plan for an adult than for a child who is obviously struggling. You have your Ty Pennington's of the world who still fit in with most the checklist that a 5th grader would fit, but Jon and I could not be more different suffering from the same thing.

That’s all. I have been picking through a lot of books lately as I find minutes here or there, but something about this book tonight set my heart at ease. I am glad books like this exist. I am glad my wild boy has me for a mother because as distracted as I can be, no one is as qualified to be his mom as I am :) goodnight