ADD

“How was school?” I asked Russell when he walked in the back door. It was the same question I asked every day, and his answer was usually the same.

“Awful.”

Darn. I'd hoped that moving to the new junior high which had just opened would make life easier, but it didn't seem to have helped much.

“Did you have a bad day?” I asked, wishing I knew how to help. “Those boys who used to bother you aren't at this school, are they?”

“No,” he answered glumly.

“Are there new people who pick on you?”

“There's always dumb guys who pick on me,” Russell complained. “No one likes me.”

Russell didn't seem to fit in with the boys at school, in our neighborhood, or at scouts and church. They loved football, basketball, and anthing else that kept them from having to sit and listen to a lesson. Most of their activities consisted of playing ball, and Russell didn't think he was good at that. Since he struggled in school, he felt inadequate around his peers, anyway. It was hard for him to feel like he belonged with kids that were better than him at everything. I didn't blame him. I remembered only too well how I felt myself when I was his age. I just didn't know how to help.

One Sunday Moe came home from church with an interesting story. Each month a different member in his Prieshood Quorum was asked to tell about themselves. On this particular Sunday the fellow who's turn it was told about how he had struggled all of his life, in school and in his business, because he couldn't focus on one thing long enough to finish it. He had finally been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, ADD, and had begun taking medicine for the condition, and he swore it had saved his life.

Moe was excited. “He sounds just like Russell,” he said. “I think we should get him tested for ADD.”

I wasn't as enthused, having dealt with ADD students as a teacher. I'd come to the conclusion that it was an overdiagnosed condition, one which frustrated parents loved to use to explain their children's bad behavior. Actually, it seemed to me that most of the kids with behavior problems had parents with behavior problems. In fact, it was a standing joke among elementary teachers that if the parents would take the ADD medication, their kids would start behaving better.

My biggest reservation was that Russell did not display the common behavior problems that kids with ADD had. He was not hyperactive: if anything, he was too mellow and timid and quiet.

“That's exactly what they were talking about in our Priesthood meeting,” Moe told me. “The reason my friend was never diagnosed with ADD was because he wasn't hyperactive. He said when people are hyperactive they call it ADHD, Attention Deficite Hyperactive Disorder, but some people are just ADD, and they often are overlooked.”

Well, that made more sense, so the following day I went to Russell's school to talk with his councelor.

“Could we have Russell tested for ADD?” I asked hopefully.

The councelor was gracious and listened to my story, but he didn't really think much of it. Just the same, he set up the tests for Russell. A week later he had a toltally diferent attitude.

“I am really surprised,” he told me, “but the tests all came back possitive. Russell has ADD.”

It was a relief to finally have a reason to explain Russell's troubles, but it didn't immediately solve the problem.

“There are medications that can help,” the councelor explained, “but you'll need to get a doctor's order for them.”

Well, I made an appointment for Russell to see our family doctor, but in the meantime, Russell wasn't very happy about being labeled with some new disorder. It was hard enough to be different from all the other kids, now it seemed like he was going to stick out even more. I tried to help him see that figuring out what was wrong, and treating it, would help him do better in school and be happier, but he didn't believe me. I didn't blame him. We'd tried a lot of things over the years. Why should this be different?

The other problem, which was worse, was that his dad was totally against us doing anything about ADD. Sheldon's new wife was into holistic medicine, herbs, oils and adjustments, and she did not believe in doctors and drugs. While I agreed that our society turned to popping pills way too often, I also believed that God had given us wisdom and knowledge, and we should use that knowledge to bless our lives when it was appropriate.

Would our family doctor be will to prescribe medication for Russell, I wondered, and would he even know what we were talking about? In the end, the doctor helped both Russell and me understand ADD even better.

“First of all, Russell, you need to understand what ADD is. It's not just a disability or a disease, it's a different way of thinking. In today's world we have adjusted to the way most people live. For example, to do well in business people have to be able to focus on one thing, not letting distractions get in their way. Those who can do that well become the leaders, and the teachers. Someone whose brain doesn't work that way finds it hard to succeed, especially in a school enviornment. On the other hand, back in the olden days people who focused on one thing would not have done well at all. To be a great hunter you needed to be able to see every little movement, to be able to shift and change and see all the things that were going on at the same time. You see? Your brain works differently than other poeple's, but there's nothing wrong with it.”

It was the first time I had thought about ADD like that, and I could tell that it helped make Russell feel better.

“Still,” the doctor told us, “to get along in this world, and especially at school, you have to be able to stay focused on just one thing. There are medications that will help your brain work that way. Sometimes people grow out of ADD, or least they learn tricks to help them, so once you've learned how to focus, you can stop taking the medicine.”

The doctor gave us a prescription, and Russell began taking ADD medication. It was amazing how much it helped. Not that Russell suddenly knew all kinds of stuff, it just made it so he could concentrate and stay on task long enough to learn. Once he could do that his grades began to improve and his frustrations diminished.

Eventually, Russell's dad threw such a fit about him taking drugs that we had to stop his medicine, but he had at least one good, productive year, where he was able to see that he really could learn. He continued to struggle all through high school, but at least he had discovered that he wasn't dumb, or lazy, or any of the other words he had been labeled with. His mind might work differently, but he was not a loser.