Reading articles in Time saying
“….kids with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD..........hit peak ……….. an average of three years later than other kids” gave me some hope that I might actually not have to grapple with my monster in my later adult years. NIH scientists comparing brain scans of
children 6 to 16, the ADHD and non-ADHD, found that “particularly those (parts)
involved in thinking, attention and planning matured an average of three years
later than healthy (sic) brains, but otherwise followed normal patterns of
development.” Following this logic, the ADHD brain should normalize as one grows
old. Some ADHD children do outgrow it.
However, doing a reality check
with myself……no such luck!!!! It’s almost as if the older I get, the more addled
this part of my brain gets. Ah yes! There was no trace of this in my school
years. Outwardly no one would ever say I had any of these problems. I used to be
very absent minded. If I was reading, people could walk into the room say
something to me, even pick up the chair I was sitting on and move it to a
different location and I could quite happily still continue reading, sometimes
even unaware. Happily in those days “absent mindedness” was quite an acceptable
trait. People were willing to forgive minor forgetfulness. It even had shades of
a professorial quality.
It’s when I first started running a household on my own that trying to bring the kitchen back to order or keep stuff from accumulating on my desk turned out to be such a problem. It’s only in the last year or so that I even heard of the term ADD and ADHD. So for me there was no period of denial. Awareness and the education that came along with it actually empowered me. It helped me understand why things were always so difficult for me. It helped me become a little more patient with myself. I thought Ok so I’m not good for nothing! I’m not lazy and disorganized and messy. It’s just my ADD. My ADD is a monster I live and grapple with everyday. But it’s not me. It does not define me. I can be patient with myself and learn behaviors to help me cope. I can join focus groups and hear experts in the field like Dr. Ari Tuckman and Sari Solden who can teach us strategies for coping. They can give us hope and energy to combat our everyday battles.