Understanding ADD

 Understanding ADD

pages 38 -47 of The Gift of Learning by Ronald D. Davis

 

 

ADD AND DISORIENTATION

The general definition of ADD is almost good enough: developmentally inappropriate inattention and impulsivity with and without hyperactivity. However one component is missing: spontaneous disorientation. Disorientation is a major factor in the life of any person with ADD. It happens easily and often. It is usually driven by emotion. Boredom, curiosity, confusion, and fear are just a few of the emotions that can trigger an ADD disorientation.

In exploring spontaneous disorientation, I have that these triggering emotions can be reduced to two types: avoidance and engagement.

In a boring situation, the person may disorient to avoid the boredom. This would be commonly recognized as daydreaming or simply as not paying attention. The student actually is paying attention, but has shifted it to an imaginary inner world that is more interesting.

On the other hand, we could have an instance where something unexpected is introduced into the environment, like a motion outside the classroom window. Curiosity about such an event can stimulate a disorientation that will allow the person to explore unknown even that triggered in school as inattention or distractibility. Again, there is no lack of attention; it is simply misplaced.

Disorientation caused by engagement can also create the opposite of inattention. The student may become so fixated on a given activity that he is oblivious to everything else in the environment. A person with ADD may disorient into a video game, TV program, or movie to the extent that the building could fall down around him and he wouldn't notice. Many parents of ADD children have told me that they teacher says their child can't sit still and pay attention for five mintues. Yet the parent cannot pry the child away from a video game for hours at a time.

 

 

EXAMINING ADD BEHAVIOR

Our understanding of the direct and indirect (developmental) effects of disorientation can explain all of the symptoms of ADD with or without hyperactivity. From that understanding, we should be able to accurately define the condition as: developmentally inappropriate inattention and impulsivity, with and without hyperactivity, accompanied by spontaneous disorientation.

From this new understanding and definition, it is clear that this problem just be addressed from two fronts, because it was created by two contributing factors--the developmental component where alternate-reality life lessons are embedded into the filtering system, and recurrent episodes of spontaneous disorientation.

From an overview, correcting the problem means reducing or eliminating the undesirable behaviors by which it is recognized. These behaviors are:

 

hyperactivity:

difficulty staying seated and sitting still, and running or climbing on things excessively

 

hypoactivity:

hypoactivity is not separately featured in The Merck Manual, but it can be interpreted as the aspect ADD that occurs without hyperactivity. Kids with this type are often recognized as lethargic, daydreamers, lazy, and couch potatoes.

 

impulsivity:

acting before thinking, difficulty taking turns, problems organizing work, and constant shifting from one activity to another.

 

inattention:

a failure to finish tasks started, easy distractibility, seeming lack of attention, and difficulty concentrating on tasks that require sustained attention.

 

The Merck Manual gives us a description of what ADD is, but not an explanation of why or how it comes about. We can now explore that and determine whether these symptomatic behaviors result from the developmental aspect, or in some cases both. In doing so, we will explore the mechanics (how and why it happens) of ADD.

 

 

 

 

 

Hyperactivity and Hypoactivity

Both hyperactivity and hypoactivity are products of spontaneous disorienation, because every disorientation is accompanied by a shift in the perception of time. Biomechanically, our perception of time is a product of brain chemistry. There have been some studies that suggest that ADD children have elevated levels of dopamine. I believe this is a direct effect of disorientation.

The more dopamine around the synapses of the brain, the faster our "internal clock" will go. In cases where the dopamine production is chemically increased by disorientation, the individual will experience a faster internal clock speed, and vice versa.

Our perception of time is governed by the speed of our internal clock. If the internal clock speeds up, the clock on the wall ill appear to slo down, and vice versa. The faster we go inside, the slower the world around us seems to go. In other words we have a reversal of effect. Therefore, the hyperactive person whose internal clock runs faster experiences more time during an hour than the people around him. To the hyperactive person, the world appears to be going to slow. The reverse is also true: To the hypoactive (lethargic) person, the world appears to be going too fast.

The perception of having more time available than other people does not in itself fully explain hyperactivity. There is another piece to this puzzle. Every disorientation also includes a reversal in the senses of balance and movement. When disorientation occurs, we feel out of balance. If we are sitting still when it happens, we will feel as if we are moving. On the other hand, if we are moving when the disorientation happens, we will feel as if we are sitting still, or moving slower or faster than we really are.

For many of us who experience this effect on a regular basis, we discover a simple remedy: By doing the opposite activity, we can reverse the effect. In other words, if we sense that we are moving when we aren't, we can create the sensation that we are sitting still by moving slightly.

When we do this, we are not consciously aware of the movement, and don't always need to show it. By fidgeting, bouncing a foot up and down, drumming hands, or another nervous activity, we can send a shock wave through our body that results in an overall sensation of sitting still. This remedy usually isn't discovered until a child is nine or ten years old. Before that, the fase sensation of motion acts as a stimulus for body movement, which shows up as the "active" part of hyperactivity. When disoriented, the child is stimulated to be in a state of constant movement.

Many years ago, I had a student who was extremely hyperactive. His mother was at her wit's end with the boy, and I was attempting to explain how it happened. I had told her that her son could actually experience motion sickness if he were forced to be still when he was disoriented. She let me know that she found my explanation far-fetched. However, she agreed to perform an experiment on her son to demonstrate. I fashioned a "boat hat" from newspaper, but deliberately made it too small to fit well. In order to keep the hat on, he had to keep his head perfectly still. I taped a page of text on the wall at his eye level. His job was to keep the hat on while he stood there and read the text. The written text provided the disorientation. After several attempts with the hat falling off, he managed to get about halfway through the text before he vomited into a nearby wastebasket. His mother got the point.

The hyperactive component of ADD is clearly the product of two effects of disorientation: an increase in the speed of the internal clock and reversals in the senses of balance and motion. The hyperactive child has a lot of extra time, so he fills it up with extra activity. Hypoactivity is the opposite side of the same coin where the reverse is true. The child has less time than other people, so he engages in less activity than the average person.

 

Impulsivity

For the most part, impulsivity stems from the developmental side of ADD, but not entirely. The component of acting before thinking is a manifestation of an alternate reality concept of consequence. Difficulty taking turns stems from a lack of the inherent concepts of time, sequence, and order. This has already been defined as developmental. Problems organizing work also stems from a lack of the inherent concepts of sequence and order.

Constant shifting from one activity to another is more a manifestation of spontaneous disorientation. When a child has more available than those around him he will easily become bored by the tempo of the environment. That, added to the stimulation for movement, produces what can appear to be a compulsive jumping from one activity to another. For the child, it feels normal.

 

Inattention

For the most part, inattention is a product of spontaneous disorienation, but not totally. The failure to finish tasks started is an interesting combination of causes and effects. Here, the effect of impulsivity or shifting from one activity to another shos up as the cause of failure to finish tasks. We consider this mostly a manifestation of spontaneous disorienation, but is also caused by the developmental lack of the concepts of consequence, time, sequence, and order. The child may not be able to conceive of finishing anything because in his world that concept simply doesn't exist.

The easy distractibility component is, again, an interesting combination of factors. The child is more environmentally aware and more curious than other people. A child who is often bored may be easily distracted. But even when he isn't bored, something new entering the environment will immediately draw his attention. Even after the ADD is corrected, the person will still remain more aware and curious than others, so to a degree this behavior will continue. Once the child learns to multitask, he will be able to divide his attention between the two points of interest at the same time instead of shifting it back and forth from one to the other. This will relieve the teacher's burden somewhat, but the real situation would be to make what's happening in the classroom the most interesting thing in the environment for the student.

The wider view of distractibility is difficulty concentrating on tasks requiring sustained attention. Here the Merck Manual introduces new criteria--concentration and sustained attention. Concentration is performed by limiting awareness to one small area or endeavor. Sustained attention is simply the act of maintaining interest. As stated earlier, the ADD individual doesn't have difficulty "paying" attention as long as the task or activity is of interest to him. It's not his responsibility to make what the teacher is instructing interesting; that task belongs to the teacher. A widespread environmental awareness will naturally inhibit the ability to concentrate. Whether that is good or bad is a matter of opinion. Personally, I feel it's a great advantage.

Contrary to the myths promoted about ADD, the seeming lack of attention usually comes from the perspective of the teachers and doctors who have mistaken the shifting of attention for lack of attention. If anything, the child already has more attention available than he needs. There is so much of it that he needs to spread it all over the environment.

In fact, there is so much available attention that nearly all ADD children will eventually learn to multitask. They do this by dividing their attention into two or more segments that appear to be simultaneously directed at different areas of interest. They will have to learn it on their own, because it's not a "subject" taught in school.

I think we could redefine "inattention." Instead of calling it a failure to finish tasks started, easy distractibility, seeming lack of attention, and difficulty concentrating on tasks requiring sustained attention, let's simply call it difficulty staying on task. It's a phrase familiar to teachers, and is something we can address.

We have just compared what The Merck Manual says about ADD with a new theory of why and how ADD symptoms come about. All the basic symptoms of ADD are addressed and explained by the new model. So it would make sense that correcting the condition should be possible.

Once you know the true nature of a problem, you can devise a strategy to address each of the individual components, one by one. Once you eliminate all the components, you have effectively eliminated the problem.