The Elusive Side of ADD

I think that learning is one of the most important things you can do, and I don’t think it should stop with graduation. Life long learning will keep your brain active and make you a more interesting senior citizen.

When it comes to learning, people with Attention Deficit Disorder may struggle with the process. There are a lot of reasons for that:

Being easily distracted and unable to focus means the information may not get through to begin with
People with ADD tend to be poor auditory learners, which is the way most teachers teach
Many people with ADD have poor executive functioning, which controls how information is processed and stored
ADD has an elusive side that can put you two steps behind where you were yesterday

That last point probably didn’t make much sense. Here’s what I mean: a person who doesn’t have ADHD can learn something on Monday and recall it on Tuesday (or any other day of the week).

A person with Attention Deficit Disorder can learn something on Monday, not remember it at all on Tuesday, and yet have a basic grasp of it later in the week. This is tied into the executive functioning process.

A person without ADHD learns about saltwater sea life and stores in it a “file cabinet” in their brain under science or sea life. That way, it’s easy to find when you need it.

A person with ADD, however, learns about saltwater sea life and one (or both) of two things might happen.

Saltwater sea life reminds them of their trip to Florida when they were 12 and their grandpa took them deep sea fishing. Maybe they even caught some of the sea life they’re learning about. But in this case, the information might get stored under vacations, childhood memories, or grandpa. Not so easy to find when you’re looking for information about saltwater sea life.

The other thing that could happen is that the executive functioning messes up the connections. It could take longer than usual to store the information in long term storage, or it may file it in a completely random spot, like math. Now you have a problem retrieving what you’ve learned on a reliable basis.

If you add in the pressures of taking a test and trying to retrieve this information, it becomes easier to see why thngs they knew the night before have suddenly disappeared.

If this elusive side of ADD affects your child, it probably always will to some extent. Repetition is the best way to deal with it; giving the brain more and more chances to store the information properly.

You might also teach them to be alert to connections they make in their mind when they are learning something. There’s nothing wrong with storing saltwater sea life under grandpa as long as you know that’s where it is.

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How the ADD Brain Processes

Recently I wrote about how I am learning some new and old things again, and how it surprised me that going over the same material a second time yielded new insights.

Although I haven’t studied any additional material in the last day or so, I am continuing to put together ideas, see relationships I didn’t see before, and just gaining even more insights.

I think that most people assume that you sit in class, listen to the teacher, and leave the class having learned something new.

Not everyone’s brain works that way. In fact, most ADD brains probably do not.

There are differences in the way each person absorbs and embraces new information.

Some people need to sit back and just listen without trying to take notes. Others need time to absorb what they’ve learned, and will be more comfortable with the new information once their brain has had some time to process it. Just like me - a day or so later, I’m still learning despite having studied anything new.

Still others need to see relationships between things. If they can relate the concept of what they’ve learned to something in their life or something that they already know, they find it easier to grasp.

I suspect that your ADD child may be a combination of a few of these styles. Let your brain process that for a while and see what it comes up with.

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Transitions and ADD

Have you ever really thought about what your child’ school day is like? About all the information he has to absorb every day, to understand and remember? It’s more than most of us have to handle each day, and probably more than we had to deal with when we were in school.

One of the characteristics of Attention Deficit Disorder is difficulty making transitions. Transitions are very hard for someone with ADD. Moving from one thing to another - at the speed most people would like us to - can be hard.

Now I know that our minds are constantly transitioning from one thing to another, so it seems odd that to do so when someone else asks us to should be difficult. Still it is.

If you wonder if your ADD child has trouble making transitions, all you have to do is look at their sleep habits. Do they have trouble settling down and going to sleep at night? Do they have trouble waking up the next day? Think about when they were toddlers. Were they more resistant than most to changing from one activity to another? Leaving the playground to go home?

ADD often shows up or begins causing real trouble when a child is in 4th - 6th grade. At that age, kids have moved into the “upper el” and most teachers are adding more subjects to their day and making the move from one to the other more distinct. It’s a way to help prepare them for middle school and changing classrooms throughout the day.

For a kid with ADD, studying math for 50 minutes, then abruptly changing to history or language arts can be a bit of a shock. They need time to make the move from one subject to another - more than a few seconds.

There’s nothing we can do about changing classes and abrupt transitions.

What you can do is this: educate your child on what’s happening. To understand that they will need an extra bit of time to catch up with the new subject will go a long way in helping them adjust.

Then give them a little visualization to work on. Have them picture closing the math part of their brain (or their math book, if that’s easier) and then opening up the next subject’s part of the brain. If they work at doing this, eventually they’ll get pretty good.

Give it a try and see.

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