Re: Just because I wasn't confused enough… ADD or Gifted?

[Anonymous]

Tim posted this little gem: “I recently found my old report cards and other correspondence and it was thought by the school that my hyperactivity, inattention and other classic ADHD symptoms would disappear were I to be challenged. That never happened.”

I’ve been thinking about that whole “he’s not being challenged” thing for the past few weeks. People said that about me to explain my “C” work in school. We were graded in 6-week periods, and my report cards in some subjects might read ABC-CAD giving me a C+ or B- average for the year, depending on final exam grades. They always blamed the fluctuations on my being easily distracted, Christmas, the weather, or “NOT BEING CHALLENGED.”

The truth was that I was making the A’s doing stuff that came easily to me but not to others. The teacher’s perception was that I was as “challenged” by it as the other kids were, and THAT was the reason I was “APPLYING MYSELF.” I don’t remember ever “applying myself” at anything. I either liked something or I didn’t. I put in about the same effort no matter what.

The only thing that challenges me is boredom. Maybe I did better when the material was more difficult because the teacher knew it was tough and worked a little harder to hold our attention? It all came out of the same textbook, didn’t it?

I could always sense it when a teacher was “phoning it in.”

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