Trying to Leave, on a Jet Plane

Traveling takes us out of our comfort zone and our protective routines. Luckily the ADD mind loves a new challenge.

A trip to the airport can bring out the worst in me. Leaving the structural supports of home throws me into an internal chaos that I can’t separate from anxiety. The day before my trip, I should have been in high gear preparing for this, but I spun my wheels all day, obsessing on finding the right travel outfit that will keep me warm on the way to the airport and cool when I get off the plane in Hawaii. Why don’t I own a twinset? When did I lose a button on my old aloha shirt? The blue sweater or the green? They both look good, so how do I choose?

25 Problems Only People With ADHD Understand

reblogged from Buzzfeed (get it? Buzz feed?)
posted on December 12, 2013 at 6:45pm EST

Kristin ChiricoBuzzFeed Staff

1. When you have to work in any open space that isn’t the quietest, emptiest, most boring library ever.

Paramount / Via giphy.com

You want to get stuff done, you really do, it’s just that EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING AT ONCE AND YOU CAN’T ESCAPE FROM ANY OF IT. Lookin’ at you, open-plan offices.

2. Spending so much time looking around at everything that catches your attention that you start to look paranoid.

Disney / Via imgur.com

No, I’m not worried that someone is out to get me, it’s just that EVERYTHING IS INTERESTING.

The Tension of Attention

Physician Gabor Maté’s explanation of eye contact, attachment, and the origins of ADHD.

One of the best ADD books I read while researching my book on bullying was Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It , by Gabor Maté. If you haven’t seen Maté's YouTube videos, check them out. He has an interesting view of ADD, and here it is, in a nutshell of my own design:

The Learning Curve (feature)

I found a great post today over at ADDitude by a teacher who agrees with me.

At my first reading of my latest book.
Yes, it's about having a superpower!

"I think of my ADHD symptoms almost like super powers! When I let my mind run free with an idea, it’s like switching on the turbo boost. I can think of 100 different creative ways to do or say something in two minutes! Like many ADHDers, I can go into hyperfocus mode, too. The rest of the world fades into the background. A few minutes in a quiet room with some paper, pens, and pencils and I come out with a couple of solutions to any problem I’m facing.

Squeedle!!!

How I discovered my son’s distraction reflex is part of a hunter’s nature. Or a golden retriever’s.

A few summers ago we were on a road trip down south. The highway stretched out before us, cruise-control was on, and my husband and I were three-deep into our game of “top five Bruce Springsteen songs.” Suddenly there was a shout from the back seat, where we thought our tween son had dozed off with his nose in a Foxtrot collection.

Not Behind the Wheel…Yet!

You can’t get into the fast lane if you don’t have a license — and we're still waiting for our ADHD teen to show us he has the drive to get one.

Today my son Enzo turned sixteen. To a kid like him who can’t think of much else than cars, we figured this day would be a big one! Since he was ten, he's always dreamed of the scene from Transformers, where Sam Witwicki’s dad drives him to a used car shop and gives him a budget of double what he'd saved on his own.

Where the Cool Kids Are

Attending our first support group for teens brought a delightful surprise: kids with attention deficit are the fun ones. A look at the lighter side of these creative, self-aware blabbermouths.

Although Enzo’s symptoms were pretty obvious to me, it took a long time to get his diagnosis, and I had no idea what it would mean if we did. All I knew was we needed help. And as soon as the doctors could see what I saw, the doors really did open up into a world of support: classes every Friday on different topics surrounding ADHD:Understanding ADHD, Parenting Skills, Navigating School Support; family therapy; and best of all, a Tuesday group for both parents and teens.

The World's Most Precious Resource

A wonderful thing happened last year. I got a contract to write a book: a payment up front, a year to write it, an editor, a marketing team — the works. I write with my mother, a community psychologist and positive parenting guru — so I hit the ground running when I started my mothering career fifteen years ago.

The Interest-Based Nervous System

"Almost every one of my patients and their families want to drop the term Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder," writes William Dodson, M.D., "because it describes the opposite of what they experience every moment of their lives. It is hard to call something a disorder when it imparts many positives. ADHD is not a damaged or defective nervous system. It is a nervous system that works well using its own set of rules."

"Mana" from Heaven

Okay, this first post is a little gross, apologies.

I had a heated argument with a game hunter on Kauai last weekend about whether or not the ancient Hawaiian kings were honored in death by being roasted or boiled.

In the 1500 years the Hawaiian people lived on the unspoiled islands, there had probably been time to try all practices, I suggested. He said he'd visited and even discovered undisturbed caves where kings had been entombed. It was all about their bones, which they believed to contain their mana.

Mana is power of the essential variety. It's kind of like how Native Americans of all tribes refer to a person's gifts as their personal medicine.  Wikipedia says this about mana: "in anthropological discourse, mana as a generalized concept ... has commonly been interpreted as "the stuff of which magic is formed," as well as the substance of which souls are made."

The substance of which souls are made. The spark of the divine. 

Do you suppose mana might be the Hawaiian word for awesomeness? It's something you can feel in your bones.

What If There Really Were Two Paths?

Just while I'm thinking about how to kick this blog off, someone sends me this:

The world needs you to stop being boring. Right?

Because ADHD.blogspot.com Was Taken...

It's only appropriate that my first post should honor the owners of both ADD.blotspot.com and ADHD.blogspot.com.

ADD.blogspot.com is owned by "Asa Spade" (cool name) and is titled, "IDEAS FOR D&D CAMPAIGNS." It was last updated in April, 2002.

And meet April, who posted for the first and last time in March, 2003 on ADHD.blogspot.com:

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2003

lalalalalalalalala!!! i wonder if i should do the talent show?