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Re: What if it's how other people treat us that's the biggest problem?

Re: What if it's how other people treat us that's the biggest problem?2012-11-08T16:57:42+00:00

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#116935

Tiddler
Member
Post count: 802

Hi Allen

I don’t think there are benefits to ADHD. I think it sucks. BUT I think everyone has things they find hard and things they find easy, regardless of whether they have ADHD or not.

In my environment, now, the fact that my brain goes off on tangents all the time, makes connections between things quickly, leaps from idea to idea is working well for me. But that’s THIS environment. Every other place I’ve been in my life, that kind of thinking has been a problem.

BUT I think the problem is that my way of thinking wasn’t valued or respected, because in school we were expected to learn in a linear way, at work I was expected to work in a linear way and so on. I’m NOT linear. Neither are most people with ADHD. Neither are most people with dyslexia or dyspraxia either. We’re a hell of a lot of people between us. These ‘defective’ people. What if we’re NOT defective?

What if schools no longer expected students to learn in a linear way? What if they valued questions and let kids bounce and move around when they were learning? What if they let kids learn what they wanted to learn when they wanted to learn it (in an unschooling approach similar to John Holt advocates?) What if the SYSTEM was different?

What if I had learnt in that kind of environment? I know what would have happened. I’d have SOARED. Because:

I wouldn’t have been told I was a nuisance.

I wouldn’t have been told I was stupid.

I wouldn’t have been told off for doing things that were just part of how I learned.

I would have learnt faster.

I would have been happy.

So was the problem me or the fact that I spent my llife trying to be a ‘me’ that didn’t fit?

Because I’m learning like that now. And I don’t need the ritalin any more.

I still screw up. ADHD does that. But other people screw up too. They just don’t have society telling them THEY are screw ups. There’s a difference – I make mistakes. I am not a mistake.

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