I was sitting in a group of people when my friend asked me out of the blue if somebody had contacted me. No? Who? He told me that he forwarded my number to somebody whose son is 10 years old and has ADHD and now she is on a mission to raise awareness about ADHD in schools. “You should join up! I forgot to tell you.” Oh that would be amazing!
Everyone else in the room was confused .. ADwhat? What does it stand for?
So my friend chimed in and said .. she got diagnosed with ADHD … yes, thanks, buddy!
Oh really? That’s interesting! So, what are you doing differently? What is this ADHD?
So I explained a few things that I’m doing differently than others .. other than the hyperactivity everyone seems to be well aquainted with. But nobody knew the internal hyperactivity and they got interested. Some recognized themselves in it …
Suddenly one after another chimed into the conversation with things they had heard about how bikes in the classroom had helped children with ADHD, others said that ADHD is overdiagnosed, kids just need to run more, well .. the usual conversations one has when this topic comes up.
The stupid kid that wasn’t stupid at all
Then one person told me .. you know, what you are saying is right. ADHD kids have a certain reputation, that they are complicated and stupid. But they are not stupid, just they believe they are.
He told us the story of a boy that happened a few days ago during a scouts meeting.
He is one of the people who leads the group and he said there is one boy who just literally can not stand still, to a degree that he sometimes hits others by accident and other things so the other kids do not particularly like to be in a group with him and we have to keep him apart at times.
For one activity they split the kids into groups and nobody wanted to be with him. So we had to attribute a group to him. The kids were not happy. They thought he was stupid and he would make them lose, because it was a quiz about different topics and how could that kid possibly be useful for that?
What happened though was that their group won. Why? Because of exactly this boy.
He would just answer one question after another .. and always correctly. To a point where the group wasnt even discussing anymore and just asked him for the answer.
And every single time it was correct.
So how come that he believes that he is stupid and yet he has such a vast knowledge?
I can tell you why.. because our way of learning is not what is asked for in school. So people think we are idiots because we don’t abide by the rules of classical learning. We “don’t get it”, have bad marks , we don’t understand or we understand slowly or we are bored or whatever else. But we are not … we are different and we learn differently,
that’s all.
The Squirrel effect – yes, we actually have a name for it
We are curious by nature and we get distracted easily .. which actually contributes to a wide knowledge in different fields.
Let me give you an example .. we all know this one, do we? ADHDers know better than others …
We look for something on google, let’s say we want to learn something about the natural ways of dealing with ADHD. We type it into google and normal people click on a link and read it.
Me however, will probably see something else popping up somewhere on the screen, let’s say a picture of a squirrel (because the squirrel is our community animal because when it nibbles on a nut it suddenly gets distracted and lifts its head and looks around … anyhow) … who cares about a squirrel picture?
I care! I suddenly wonder if squirrels only eat nuts all day long because whenever I see a picture, they are jumping around or eating nuts, so let’s google the eating habits of suqirrels and did you know that squirrels eat their body weight in nuts in a week? Again, who cares? I care! So now, instead of reading on the original topic I wanted to read about, I end up becoming an expert on squirrels!
And after half an hour or 2, I may remember what I came here for in the first place, but now i’m tired and I don’t feel like reading anymore … later … tomorrow .. someday …
Or maybe I don’t remember what I was looking for in the first place because while I was researching squirrel’s eating habits I may have come across another interesting fact that caught my attention and I spend another half an hour on a totally not related different topic … therefore … we have a broad knowledge , kinda unwanted. Sometimes wanted, because we want to know everything. We want to know how the world works.
That distraction, by the way, does not happen though, if we are hyperfocused. Then you can run around us, banging on a tambourine and singing and dancing and I would not see you!
This is why you can call your child’s name with an amplifier and they will not hear you when they are playing their video games … It’s not on purpose and we are not ignoring you. We just literally can not hear you!
Or at times .. we don’t want to hear you and we do ignore you, because we don’t want to lose our train of thoughts … and we can have looong trains of thoughts! And then we may get angry at you for disturbing our sacred mission of research!
But this kind of learning and distraction is not really something that schools find attractive, you see? So … that in turn gives us a certain reputation, because we zoom out when things are boring or don’t make sense to us or are not presented in an interesting way.
Multiple Intelligences
There is a lot of discussion going on about intelligence and ADHD. Shall we have a look? I think we shall!
I know that the first thing that comes to your mind when I talk about intelligence is the IQ .. we think somebody is smart because they have a high IQ.
Yet there is an issue with this type of intelligence … it is not the only one.
Howard Gardner came up with the theory of multiple intelligences and it’s quite an interesting one.
Before I introduce you to the theory, let me share with you that the IQ as we know it has been a complicated thing with ADHDers. Already in itself how IQ is tested is not something the scientists all agree on in general, but that apart, for ADHD the way the IQ is measured may cause an issue because the distractibility may falsify the answers given and therefore falsify the results.
But whenever distracting factors have been removed from studies they have found that people with ADHD have a normal IQ like everyone else. So .. we are not any smarter nor any more stupid than others. Because there is a theory out there that ADHDers are often gifted. It has nothing to do with ADHD. You can have gifted ADHDers just like you can have the other side.
But here comes the interesting part. So according to Gardner there are 9 types of intelligences:
Now, why is that important you will ask? Because scientists have found that strongest types of intelligence in ADHDers are these three: naturalist, spacial and bodily-kinesthetic.
All of which are usually NOT or very rarely considered in schools when teaching! Do you see the problem here? We are teaching kids with the wrong means. It’s like you are teaching history but doing so in Chinese. Now that is fantastic if you do indeed speak Chinese, but if you are me, the only word you know is konichiwa, you won’t get very far.
And since I have ADHD, I quickly googled if konichiwa is actually really chinese or maybe japanese .. turns out japanese so (and did you know that apparently there are 18 ways to say hello in Japanese ?? Hello, Squirrel!)
Anyhow, apparently my chinese is zero and you want to teach me history in Chinese. I won’t get it, my friend, no matter how well you are explaining the whole event and whatever pretty pictures you show me .. I will guess here and there but that’s about what I’m going to do and understand.
The cone
Are you familiar with this …
WE REMEMBER
10% of what we read
20% of what we hear
30% of what we see
50% of what we see and hear
70% of what we discuss with others
80% of what we personally experience
95% or what we teach others – Edgar Dale
Let’s talk about learning styles real quick. We are all familiar with those I believe .. visual, auditory, kinesthetic …
A few years ago I learned from a speed reading trainer that people have it all wrong with these learning styles. They tell you if you are a visual learner you should learn with visual aids and focus on that. But that’s not entirely true.
Yes, you use your strong point to learn but at the same time you can not neglect the other styles. In contrary, the goal is to make them stronger as well.
Because the more styles you can combine, the more neurons will fire in your brain the right way. So that in the end .. the more learning styles you can combine, the higher the retention rate is of what you will remember!!
And so here it goes full circle … in our schools we focus on a couple of intelligence styles, but not all … neurotypical or neurodiverse doesn’t matter in this case. Every child has their own combination in those types of intelligences.
If I take myself as an example .. I’m not a common ADHD intelligence phenomenon even though I have ADHD. I score high on intellectual and social and emotional intelligence, which is not very common among ADHDers I was told. Some of those are usually our weaker areas – I was told. Just like NT children can have a strong spacial intelligence or something else.
Like I said before you can have all colours and combinations really. I do absolutely agree though that those 3 intelligence types (naturalistic, spacial and kinesthetic) are absolutely my strongest points! Without a second of a doubt. And something inside of me would like to argue that this goes for every child on this planet somehow.
Because I said it before and I will always repeat it .. what is good for an ADHD brain is good for any brain!
So the goal is to use as many intelligence styles as possible while we are teaching a topic so we can reach every child at its max! And yet, we are not doing that! We focus on just a few convenient ones from the past and we wait and cross our fingers that all the kids in the class got it and will get good grades.
In the next post I will talk a little more about those three intelligence types and how they could posisbly be integrated in one’s life and classroom.
Inside an ADHD mind 
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