The MVC Literary Journal

When I was six years old, I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. I didn’t know much about the disorder and I was too young to understand. As I got older I started to realize that I was different from my classmates and I started to understand what Attention Deficit Disorder was. I had to learn to live in a world where people with Attention Deficit Disorder are misunderstood. I was viewed as a child who was stupid. I was called lazy and disrespectful by my teachers and my classmates, and I, started to believe them.

Attention Deficit Disorder, also known as ADD, affects 9 percent of the world population. ADD is a syndrome, usually characterized by a constant pattern of impulsiveness, short attention span, and often hyperactivity. It often interferes with academic, occupational, and social performance. There are many different cases of ADD and each have their own symptoms. Most people who have ADD don’t find out they have the disorder until they reach adulthood.

There are many different types and styles of ADD. People with Classic ADD are inattentive, distractible, disorganized, hyperactive, restless and impulsive. People who have Inattentive ADD are absent-minded and disorganized. If you have Over-focused ADD, you have trouble shifting attention, are frequently stuck in loops of negative thoughts, obsessive, excessively worry, inflexible, oppositional and argumentative. Another type of ADD is Temporal Lobe ADD; people with this type of ADD are inattentive, irritable, aggressive, and have dark thoughts. Their mood is unstable and they are impulsive. They may break rules, fight, and can be defiant and very disobedient. Two other types of ADD are Limbic System ADD and Ring of Fire ADD. People with Limbic System ADD are inattentive and have chronic low-grade depression. They are negative, have low energy and have feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness. Last but not least, those with Ring of Fire ADD are inattentive, extremely distractible, angry and irritable. They are overly sensitive to the environment, hyperverbal, extremely oppositional, and sometimes have cyclic moodiness.

There are a lot of myths going around about people with ADD. One myth that is very commonly told about children with ADD is that students with ADD can’t learn in a regular classroom. The fact is when teachers make appropriate adjustments, more than half the children with ADD do well in mainstream. Most of the others require some tutoring in a certain area that they struggle with. Active learning and activities that allow you to move around help the child with ADD to pay attention. For me the more organized and predictable the classroom was, the better I learned. I had a very hard time trying to mainstream but now it is getting easier because I have learned tactics, like how to organize my time and things, and communication with teachers so they are aware and able to help. Another common misconception is that all people with ADD have learning disabilities. The learning disabilities mainly affect the way the child process information. Even though 10 to 33 percent of children with ADD have learning disabilities, the disorder mostly affects the person’s behavior causing

inattentiveness and impulsivity, because the child with ADD doesn’t behave in the same way as other children, they are viewed as unmotivated and lazy.

My dad, who is 46 now, found out that he had ADD at age 43; when I was diagnosed with the disorder, he thought maybe he had it too. He got tested and

sure enough he had Attention Deficit Disorder. The thing that he struggled with the most was comprehension. For example, after reading half of a book he often had to start all over again because he didn’t understand what was going on. Even though he found it hard to concentrate he had the will power to finish things he started. When he was in school the teachers would tell his mom that he was a good kid and very smart but he has trouble listening. He as a lot of energy and he doesn’t know how to control it. He is fidgeting in class and can’t concentrate on his work. How he compensated was he tried to be funny in class, so the kids were laughing with him and not at him. He had lots of energy to do things he loved, like sports. He found that if he loved something, he excelled by becoming the very best at it. He was state champion in his weight class for wrestling in high school. When he found out that he had ADD he got on medicine right away. He tried different medicines and he found that Ritalin worked the best for him. He said “before he got his medicine he was in a cloud and it was very foggy. When he tried Ritalin, the cloud and the fog in him lifted, metaphorically.” He takes his medication everyday because he doesn’t want the fog to come back. He said if he had a choice to have ADD or not he would choose to have ADD because he has energy to do things he loves. He is very smart, and he can excel in anything he puts his mind to. When they find the right medication, people can have a great advantage and can figure things out that people without Attention Deficit Disorder can’t.

For me, I am still in the process of learning about who I am and how to use my ADD to achieve my goals. I am not sure what I would choose if I could go back to the beginning and decide to have ADD or not because I haven’t discovered how my ADD makes me unique. When I discover who I am and how my ADD make me unique I will ask myself, If you could go back to the beginning and choose to have ADD or not what would you choose? When that day comes, I hope that my answer will be that I would choose to have ADD because I would have found that it has given me something special to offer those whose lives I have been a part of. I hope that someone can learn from my experience, like I learned from my father‘s, that people with ADD are not bad people, but they simply learn and do things differently. I hope that people who struggle with Attention Deficit Disorder would answer the same way. I hope that they realize, as well others without the disorder, that ADD is not a bad thing, but a life changing experience.

Won Recognition in the UCSC Essay Contest

Labels: 2007: Belles Lettres