Authored by Amy Denney via The Epoch Times(emphasis ours),
Isaac’s energy level, enthusiasm, and talkativeness were too much—at least for a traditional classroom.
He had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD);one psychologist explained that he had a high IQ but low maturity.
It wasn’t until Heather Rodden began homeschooling him in fifth grade that she realized what years of frustrated teachers couldn’t put their fingers on—what looked like a liability in one setting can flourish in another.
Like Rodden, other parents,researchers, and professionals are moving away from treating ADHD purely as a disorder that 1 in 10 kids have.
The word “deficit” in ADHD, they argue, obscures strengths—such as creativity, hyperfocus, and cognitive flexibility—that often accompany the condition.
“‘Different wiring’ isn’t automatically bad,” Dr. Daniel G. Amen, a psychiatrist and founder of Amen Clinics, brain-body clinics that use imaging instead of checklists for mental health issues, told The Epoch Times in an email. “Sometimes it’s simply diversity in how people think and create. ADHD isn’t a character flaw—it’s a brain pattern.”
At the heart of the matter is finding where and how people with ADHD will thrive.
One frustration for people with ADHD is that it’s rarely lack of knowledge that holds them back. It is that their brains don’t consistently concentrate.
Focus requires a coordinated effort between the brain’s frontal control system, which helps you stay organized and resist distractions, the basal ganglia, which regulates motivation by using the reward chemical dopamine, and the cerebellum, which coordinates timing and attention. In ADHD brains, that coordination is inconsistent—not absent—but unreliable under demand.
Source: ZeroHedge News
