Article No. 3


WHAT DO YOU MEAN, ADD, ADHD?

It seems to go with being a boy – being accused of being ADD, or even of being ADHD. Hardly a boy I know has not had this label thrown at him at some point in his life.

Well, maybe that is a bit of an overstatement, but do you get my drift? In terms of style, boys seem to have a need to be overt, noisy, physical and loud – as if hearing the echoes resounding off their environment confirms their very existence. It has even been suggested that this is how males determine and confirm their presence, their identity – the more noisy they are the more real they are. Or is it perhaps the other way around – that the more insecure they are, the more need they have to express their presence through such overt means as noise, or at least loud visual image.

Boys stomp and crash – where girls giggle and talk. Girls preen themselves in the mirror – for hours on end - while boys roar through the town, (peripheral vision glimpsing flashes of reflection in plate glass frontage), on their Harleys. Women ‘multitask’, using their exclusive endowment of eight separate cranial language-sites, like a linguistic octopus, to the confusion and oft-time chagrin of their male counterparts. And our sons get labeled ADD or hyperactive.

“Attention Deficit Disorder” (ADD), is a monica often bandied around with very little close examination or understanding of what is really going on – but that is par for the course in the whole arena of ‘dyslexia’. The words themselves would suggest that the culprit has some lack of ability, or even some lack of willingness, to engage with learning activities at an intellectual level. The label is commonly accompanied by the descriptor ‘highly distractible’, but with a slight tonal hint of accusation, suggesting an element of anger or intolerance by the speaker – invariably the parent or class-teacher of the accused.

ADHD or “Attention Deficit Disorder, with Hyperactivity” becomes a double-barreled tag, additionally endowing the individual with a physical style that might match that of a cornered possum – leaping from door-handle to curtain-rail in perpetuated frenzy, or at least at levels that prevent any associate or family member any predictable peace.

Such labels, it would seem, are invented, and imposed by people who have themselves never participated in or been subject to the particular affliction at a personal level, and therefore label what they see – as opposed to what they know. From the inside the story is different.

How many senses do we have? Our various senses all operate individually and so at any one moment we may be subject to signals through our eyes, our ears, our skin, our nose, and our tongue - all signals being received simulataneously. Our eyes, ears and skin may in actual fact, each be bombarded by literally thousands of signals at any one moment. Could we ever begin to measure how many visual signals our eyes are subject to every instant? And the same goes for the ears and the skin – all this meaning that the human sensory system is receiving saturation input much of the time.

Fortunately, to protect us from burn-out, a compensatory shield is deployed where our major computer scans, sorts and prioritises the items in this sensory flood, ascribing preference and priority to a very small proportion of the available input, allowing us to select and focus, to effectively pay attention to what we regard as most important at that moment. Thank God for such an effective neurological system - what would life be like without that screening ability!

Good question – and if you want a good answer, just ask the ADD kid - because this is what daily life is like for him.

For reasons beyond our current knowledge the children we label as ADD have a significant deficit in terms of this protective screening device, and their ‘attentional energies’ are perpetually hammered by an enormous array of input that they are unable to block, sort or selectively prioritise. Every sound, whether natural or man-made demands identification and attention, whilst at that same moment every movement within their direct or peripheral vision vies for visual contact. Just watch their eyes and get a glimpse of what they are taking in.

But equally every available smell, natural, industrial or human, will be stacking up for olfactory analysis, as will the tactile interference of air movement past the hairs of his leg, the rumble through his seat of the truck beyond the wall, and the elusive itch somewhere on his scalp. Addressing those that he can, trying to ignore those that he can’t, and fighting off the intrusions of the many more becomes a seriously exhausting continuous routine for the ADD child.

ADD? Not at all. There is no attention DEFICIT here. There is rather a very clear, and equally extreme attention OVERLOAD situation that dominates his very existence. In many ways we would be better to label this child AOD, and this different understanding immediately puts question to the real value of the intentionally stimulating environment we often promote and value in our classrooms.

Impact on the Child;
The child with AOD experiences three real sets of difficulty – the first, and most obvious is a consequential difficulty in application, with a down-stream impact on learning being quite predictable. The other two are more insidious, and in themselves are perhaps even more personally crippling.

The second is the attitude of the adults in his life. The parents and teachers of this child may not realize that he is subject to an overload of input that he cannot cope with nor control, and of which they have no knowledge. With good intention they cajole him for not paying attention, for not concentrating (his energies) on the task in hand, and for being distractible. So often he is admonished and penalized for something he is completely unable to control.

The third is that he himself has no notion that he is different in this regard, and that the bombardment he experiences is not the norm. He experiences life as he knows it, and like everybody else, assumes that this is normal. It does not appear to him to be an abnormal bombardment – it is just as it has always been – it just is.

The upshot of these is that as well as having a consequential learning difficulty, he is blamed for being uncooperative by the people important to him, and he himself, in his naivety, accepts the label, the blame, and the responsibility. Anxiety, anger, a low self-concept, and eventually depression are the predictable outcomes.

And ADHD?
Hyperactivity means very high levels of activity – as opposed to ‘hypo-activity’ which means just the opposite.

The hyperactive child is more than just an intensively active child. This child moves at an unbelievable rate, is generally erratically spontaneous, and moves constantly and intrusively into and through everything. He recognizes few barriers and no sensitivities – nothing is out-of-bounds as far as his inquisitiveness is concerned. He will commonly have an explosive start to the day – eclipsing the local rooster – and will move like a turbo-charged maniac until dropping in his tracks sometime prior to midnight.

Although many are labeled ‘hyperactive’, few really fit the bill – and for this we should be grateful.

More often we have children who although excessively active, do not warrant the title, ‘hyperactive’ and certainly do not warrant medication. They do however deserve assistance, and investigation of the possible dynamics that may be causing a life-style that is as uncomfortable for them as it is for those sharing their life-space.

Many children who fall under the descriptor ‘dyslexic’ present as having heightened sensitivity to a multitude of environmental factors, which can individually, or as a group create a stressed neuro/muscular system. Identification and monitoring of these environmental factors can bring huge relief to all concerned. Typically chemicals, minerals and electrical current are the main culprits.

The sustained physical function of the human body is a product of an harmonious interaction of two major physiological systems – one being chemical, and the other electrical – together being major factors in our neurological functioning. Each individual person has slightly differing needs in both respects, and any maladjustment has the capacity to impact on the way the individual will operate.

As with motor vehicles, some people are highly tuned, and hence highly vulnerable to variation within their system, and others are so low-tuned that nothing seems to impact on their performance at all. Too much or too little of anything ranging from trace-elements, through vitamins, minerals, proteins, sugars, to foreign chemicals (as in preservatives, flavouring chemicals etc), to foreign electrical impulses, can push a child well beyond their own ability to cope.

Chemicals and Minerals
Foreign chemicals and minerals can enter our diet in a number of ways;
- they can be entirely natural and be present in our natural foods (salicylates in apples, feijoas etc for example).
- they can be natural but be presented in unnatural ways (dried fruits having a changed sugar form, or squeezed juices having sugar concentrates out of balance from that of the raw fruit).
- they can be natural, but not naturally in our food chain (aluminium powder in our town drinking water, or lead in tin packaging).

They can equally be present as part of our food preparation process, (chemicals used to ripen bananas), or be remnant from cleaning processes (chlorine in cleaners), or be present as additives to preserve, colour, flavour and ‘stabilise’ our food. (Your local naturopath or nutritionist could tell you much more than this.)

As part of their heightened sensitivity, many ADHD (perhaps that should now be AOHD) children will present as having food allergies, or at least food intolerances, with dairy and wheat products (gluten) being the two most common.

We frequent our supermarkets and buy our foods in good faith, with a predominating attitude that “they wouldn’t give it to us if it wasn’t good for us”. Few people stop to consider the poisons they regularly put into their own body – or actively provide for their children – under the guise of ‘food’. Few consumers realize that the sulphides and sulphates that are a common ingredient in our canned and bottled fizz, act like a brick on the body’s accelerator, and bolt-cutters through the brake cable – producing what is arguably the first significant, chemically induced, mind-altering experience in the young child’s life.

Electrical.
And then there is the electrical side of our mechanism – the entire nervous system.

That our modern life-style involves a multitude of electrical and electronic gadgetry is readily recognized – but what of the impact of electrical radiation?

Consider the battery in your wrist watch, and the radiation from your cell-phone, your kitchen micro-wave, TV and computer, or the alarum/radio beside the bed. What of the ever-present current from your electric blanket (even though it is turned off), your home meter-board, and the sub-station or transformer on the street. What about stray radiation from the local cell-phone tower and microwave relay station? All of these may be draining your own energy, and wrecking havoc with the delicate internal balance of your child, making it impossible for him to regulate his activity or his behaviour.

In this case, is it at all appropriate for you to berate your child, or to punish him in an attempt to change his behaviour? – to punish him for something that may be well beyond his control?

And medication? Is it legitimate to add yet another chemical ingredient to the environmental cocktail of poisons your child is experiencing, in the form of a ‘medication’ to calm and regulate him, and do you include these in the ‘must be good for us’ category?

As author, psychologist, ‘hyperactive’ child/become highly energetic adult, this 60 year old psychologist of 30+ years experience in working with such children, urges a responsible examination of the possible dynamics of each individual child by those primarily charged with their safe-keeping – you, the parents.

Take charge of the child’s environment, so he can take charge of his own behaviour.

Laughton King Psychologist www.natalieart.com/ontour.htm July 2008
laughton.king@win.co.nz ph; 0274.171.804