More Gardening with ADHD

ADHD:  How do I Live with This Stuff?

 Okay, fine, I have ADHD, too, the inattentive type.

In the year since my last post, I've learned more about ADHD through my son's diagnosis and struggles.  He's eleven now.  I love him to pieces.  I'm trying to help him see the benefits of ADHD, but he's currently got  a glass-half-empty kind of attitude.  ADHD and school struggles are really bringing him down.  

Here are the benefits I tell him about.

1.  Powers of super-concentration on things he loves.

2.  A remarkable ability to visualize things in 3D.  

3.  The ability to perceive the world differently, to notice things others overlook, to find solutions to problems that others might not think of.

And here are the responses I get.

1.  I can't concentrate on school, and that's what I have to spend my days doing.

2.  How can I become an architect if I can't memorize the multiplication table?

3.  I am a dummy, and my classmates probably think so, too.

"What?" I cry. "No!  No, sweetie, not at all."

He doesn't believe me.

My poor kid.  My darling boy.  I wish he could see himself the way his father and I do.  Two years ago, when we took him to a learning specialist to discover what was troubling him in school, he was given an IQ test among many other quizzes and puzzles.  The little dude scored really high.  Like, very, very high.  We're not gonna give him the number.  We're not even going to mention such a test to him, though we have tried to say that in addition to the learning differences (we don't say disability), he has a fantastic ability to learn.  His mind is amazing, we tell him.  We say, you have a gift of nature right there in your skull, and you can learn and do amazing things!

A few days ago, in a fit of anger at himself for making mistakes in school, he raged in his room, throwing stuff and yelling awful things about himself.  Then he jumped from the top of his bunk bed onto a fort he'd built from sheets and bookcases.  That fort was like his heart.  He would read there and curl up with the cats when he felt sad.  It was his refuge.  When he wrecked it, I felt deeply concerned.  So did my husband and daughter.  

She's eight.  She has boundless empathy for her brother.  If he's sad, she brings him cats and stuffed animals and strokes his hair.  If he's angry, she's angry, too, at whatever is making him mad.  If he cries, she does, too.

This past weekend, she helped her brother rebuild his fort.  I helped, too.  It's bigger and better than before.