The Forums › Forums › Tools, Techniques & Treatments › Other › No s**t, Sherlock! › Re: No s**t, Sherlock!
Anonymous
I have mixed emotions about studies. Part of me is inclined to consider that a study of prison inmates may produce skewed results. It could also be considered a sample that has “self selected” by virtue of the fact it is made up only of people who chose to commit crimes.
Another part of me is brutally aware that a disproportionately high percentage of people in prison are:
people of color, or
grew up in poverty, or
had one or more absent parents, or
had negative experiences in public school (including poor academic performance) or
meet the diagnostic criteria for ADD or ADHD.
The bottom line with studies is that people are going to ignore what they want to ignore, and they’re going to promote what they want to promote.
I don’t have ADD or ADHD; I just live with someone whom I strongly suspect has ADD. After I saw the show on PBS last spring, I asked if he had ever thought he might have ADD. He wouldn’t talk about it and almost acted like I’d insulted him. Problems in our relationship recently brought up the topic again. This time, when I told him some of the things about him that cause me to think he probably has ADD, focusing mostly on the strengths, he said “why are those things bad?” I was really shocked, because he knows those things are part of why I’m attracted to him and I had never used the word “bad” in the discussion. I had, however, used the expression “ADD.”
That made me think about how one of the things going against ADD/ADHD might be nomenclature. That last “D” stands for “disorder” rather than “difference.” Sometimes those differences are intrusive and put one at a disadvantage, and that’s the part of ADD/ADHD that gets a lot of attention because it’s the part that causes people problems. Other times, those differences are a tremendous asset, and that’s the part of ADD/ADHD which is rarely acknowledged.
Another thing has to do with society’s need to label a small subset of people as “normal” and pigeonhole everyone else as “disordered.” In many ways, the “problem” isn’t the ADD or the ADHD. The problem is society’s need to pretend like people with ADD or ADHD aren’t “normal.”
I also think that once people hear a labeling term, such as a diagnosis or classification, they think (and therefore act as if) they know everything there is to know about any person who meets those parameters. For example, if you wear contact lenses and they know someone who wears contacts because he or she has astigmatism, then they’re certain you wear contact lenses because you have astigmatism. Just because some people who have ADD are impulsive or have short attention spans about some things doesn’t mean that all people who have ADD are impulsive and have short attention spans about everything.
My SO can be focused to the point of obsession on something, so much that I pray for a “squirrel” or “shiny thing” to come along and get him off of whatever he’s on about. Other times, he’ll say something so seemingly unrelated to anything else, I don’t know which left field that comment came from.
And, as my ADD coworker would tell me, “your two minutes are up.”
MissMuffins
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