Attention Disorder Advice, by One Who K | ADHD Information

i wish more ppl wrote short and simple...
or short and stupid
or sweet and simple
or sweet and stupid
or simple and stupid


now i have lost it
www.nytimes.com
The New York Times

August 26, 2003
Attention Disorder Advice, by One Who Knows
By LAURIE TARKAN

It was not until two days before he was to appear on television in Australia to talk about his book that Benjamin Polis, 19, told his girlfriend that he had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and had, by the way, written an autobiographical account about it. Embarrassed and stigmatized throughout his life, he found it difficult to concede that he was different, even to his closest friends.

But the success of his book, ''Only a Mother Could Love Him,'' has changed a lot. Mr. Polis, who as a child cried daily, begging his mother not to send him to school, is now, at 21, speaking out about A.D.H.D., in an effort to help teenagers who have it understand their impulsive, hyperactive and, at times, uncontrollable behavior, as well as to help parents handle their children better.

The book has sold several thousand copies in the United States and in Australia, where Mr. Polis lives.

Mr. Polis has caught attention with his simply written and self-deprecating descriptions of how out of control he felt as a child, how he could not sit still and listen in the classroom, how he could not control his impulses to fly paper airplanes in class or fight back when taunted and why he repeatedly got into trouble.

Judy R. Haley, a special education teacher in Elizabethton, Tenn., has been recommending the book to parents of children with the disorder.

''I think that it will help so many people who keep asking, 'Why do you do that?' '' Ms. Haley said. ''Parents have told me that his explanations have given them new insight into their children.'' Despite hundreds of books on the disorder, adolescents have written few, if any.

''Teenagers have been neglected for a long time in this field,'' said Chris A. Zeigler Dendy of Cedar Bluff, Ala., an educational and mental health consultant and the author of two books on the disorder.

About 3 to 5 percent of children have A.D.H.D., a broader term for attention deficit disorder, or A.D.D., according to Dr. Russell Barkley, a researcher and professor at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. At least one in four adolescents with A.D.H.D will drift into antisocial behavior, and one in five will have a substance abuse problems as a teenager.

''The education of the teenager about his A.D.H.D. and helping him understand it and why he does the things he does is essential,'' said Ms. Zeigler Dendy, whose third book on A.D.H.D., for teenagers, will be published next month.

She and her son Alex Zeigler, 29, who has the disorder, have written the new book, ''A Bird's Eye View of Life With ADD and ADHD.'' They interviewed 12 teenagers who recounted their experiences and gave advice. ''Teenagers are more likely to listen to each other than to adults,'' she said.

Mr. Polis, whose Web site is www.addhelpguide.com, said he decided to write his book after hearing an expert on ''60 Minutes'' in Australia describing why children with A.D.H.D. behave as they do.

''This guy,'' Mr. Polis said in a telephone interview from Australia, ''was describing the way us kids felt. And I thought, 'This guy doesn't know.' I thought he was wrong.''

He set out to write a book, an especially difficult task for someone who is easily distracted, cannot sit still and has difficulty with sustained mental effort. He said he worked on the book late at night, when ''I was too tired to be hyperactive.''

He used some of the other tactics that had helped him through school.

''The best thing I find,'' he said, ''is to just force myself to keep going without stopping. The hardest thing for A.D.D. people is just starting.''

Writing proved tough in other ways. ''The book was so hard for me to write,'' Mr. Polis said, ''because I had to relive all these things I went through.''

Mr. Polis's disorder was not diagnosed until he was 12, a delay that was not so unusual 9 years ago. Yet, he said, the diagnosis did not seem to improve his treatment in school.

''The teachers,'' he said, ''always thought I was doing this deliberately. They thought they were going to break this kid. They kept punishing me. But I couldn't control my own behavior. I didn't know what I was doing wrong. So how could I fix it?''

Dr. Peter S. Jensen, a child psychiatrist and the director of the Center for the Advancement of Children's Mental Health at Columbia, said that children with the disorder had little insight into their behavior.

''It's not uncommon for teachers to say about an A.D.H.D. kid, 'He's just not behaving,' '' Dr. Jensen said. ''Saying to a kid with A.D.H.D., 'If you want to, you can change your behavior' is like telling a nearsighted kid, 'You can read the blackboard if you want to.' ''

Parents, who Mr. Polis seems to be advising through much of the book, often have difficulty understanding the aggression and rages. Mr. Polis draws an analogy that has resonated with readers who have contacted him, that of feeling like a volcano smoldering during the school day from the failures, reprimands and embarrassments, only to erupt with rage and anger at home.

''It's not that your son hates you and doesn't love you,'' he wrote. ''He does love you, and that's why he does it. He knows that if he explodes like this, you will be there tomorrow and still love him.''

Dr. Barkley said he doubted that many children with the disorder would read the books, for the same reason they do not think that they need medication or treatment. ''Most of the 12- to 15-year-olds that we see, they have a hard time believing they have a disorder,'' he said.

Mr. Polis agrees, and he advises parents not to force the books on their children. ''They already feel different,'' he said. ''By doing that, it makes them feel more different. Get the book. Put it on the coffee table, so kids can pick it up and have a quick read.''

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy Policy
Wow, Brooklea, that was interesting,  got almost 1/2 way through before skipping to the last paragraph.

Brings back classroom horrors though.  You're smart, you should be able to...
You are too smart to..........  If you would just...............

But, real education about ADHD, could keep a lot of teens off the path of distruction.A common place to go, eh?

I will recommend to dd. (Behavior Specialist - ABA degree, Sped teacher - among her many other talents)

I just noticed, I write the way I read.  short & simple