I just found an essay on ADD in one of our books for class (In Short). Craziness. It’s kinda similar to the one I wrote, but from a very different perspective. This piece was a father writing about his 8 year old son, Kevin. My piece has the son writing about himself (Of course, mine’s fictional… right? :-D). Shay has crafted a wonderful depiction of the conflicts a parent experiences when raising a kid with AD/HD. He illustrates the real impacts that AD/HD has on Kevin’s life, and how he copes. and his imagery is fantastic, but he misses one subtle, but vital point about the ‘mechanics’ of AD/HD (at least as I know it. The thing has no definition so we could just be talking about two different conditions! But the rest of his story fits…) In the second paragraph, he writes about Kevin scaling a Colorado rock face:
We look up and Kevin never looks down. It would break his concentration, interrupt his communion with the rock, I think. To concentrate is everything for Kevin. He can’t do it for extended periods of time unless he is under the influence of Ritalin, a drug that helps him control his hyperactivity inspired impulsiveness. Right now, as he climbs toward the sharp blue Colorado sky, the Ritalin, a central nervous system stimulant, is working on my son’s brain…
None of this is really explicitly wrong (of course, I don’t actually know what it’s like for Kevin, but I assume this is a more general take on AD/HD. What Shay is doing is saying that a.) Kevin has trouble concentrating, generally b.) In order to concentrate for long periods, he needs Ritalin, and then c.) He’s taking Ritalin while rock climbing, which presumably allows him to resist the “hyperactivity inspired impuls[e]” to look down. I take issue with this last bit. I’m pretty sure that Kevin needs no Ritalin to climb those rocks. In fact, I’d be surprised if the parents could get him to look down even if they tried. People with AD/HD seem to have a hard time focusing, generally. But it’s really more a problem of controlling the focus. It’s easy to focus on something that one enjoys, since there is no coercion necessary. The problem arises when you put the kid in a classroom and try to get him to do schoolwork, or whatever. Suddenly he’d rather watch the bird out the window, or whatever else he can find that’s more interesting than the work he’s been tasked with (which isn’t hard, obviously. Especially since AD/HD seems to lend itself to intense curiosity (being interested in everything.
The rest of the piece is spot-on, and pretty cool. He addresses the stigma that comes with being labeled as “ADHD”, the different theories on what AD/HD actually is (and isn’t) and how to treat it. And then he ends with two segments that fit together beautifully; Shay shows himself as a loving father who truly wants his son to be happy in the world. The penultimate section contrasts the times when he hopelessly watches Kevin fall into loneliness and isolation, with those when he swallows his worry that Kevin might fall from the sky, as he flies away, up a rock face or into the tallest tree… The final paragraph is the strongest segment of the essay, and asks some profound questions about the nature of Kevin’s dreams, are they of falling or flight?
VI. TO FALL…
Kevin never has fallen. when he was two, he climbed the highest trees in the park near our Denver home. Fifty-foot-tall pines and spruces. The first time he did this, he looked down at me and yelled, “You worried, Daddy?”
“Yes!” I said, which seemed to please him.
So what if he falls? Randy, Freeman and I watch him climb and it occurs to them because Randy says, “Does this worry you?”
“Yes,” I say, “It worries me.” And it thrills me too. I’ve seen him all alone in the playground because the mothers won’t let their kids near him. I’ve seen him mark time in his room, usually because he’s been restricted in some way because he’s had trouble at home or on the school bus or in the playground.VII. TO FLY…
Do rock climbers dream of falling or of flying? Do hyperactive kids dream of solitude on a granite mountain? Or do they dream of this: dancing and laughing, surrounded by friends, the mountains a distant mirage?