Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi, I'm Dr. Stephen Guffanti. I was a medical director of an ADHD clinic and have ADHD myself.
I help moms with active kids or active daydreamers to bring peace and healing to their hectic
family life. Do you have a child who was an escape artist long before it was safe for
him or her to go outside alone? Or how about a child who deliberately irritates his brothers
and sisters, but has no tolerance should they tease back? Does your child simply hate every
second he spends in school? If you know your child has the talent to be extraordinary if
they would just cooperate with their teacher, their boss or even you then I can help. You
see even though I am a medical doctor today, I started out with all those problems and
drove my poor mom nuts. Three months into Kindergarten I was kicked off the school bus.
By the end of my Kindergarten year my mom was told by the principal she was never to
bring me back to that school again. My grammar school was little different by 7th grade the
nuns had had enough and my mom once again listened to a litany of reasons I should be
kicked out of school. A month before I was to graduate high school I was expelled. And
just in case you think medical school was any better in my junior year the Dean of the
College of Medicine brought me in to discuss my expulsion. Many ask, How did you manage
to graduate? I would have to say my parents were key. They were excellent in convincing
the principal that I should stay and while my teachers, principals and I all thought
I shouldn t go to school my parents firmly disagreed. They saw potential that none of
us saw. In fact, I do this talk to help the parents with kids like me. My mom started
worrying about me when I was two and figured out how to open the kitchen door and go outside.
It wasn t that outside was so bad, but when I got tired I fell asleep in the middle of
the road. She locked the door and I pulled the draws out used them as steps to get on
the counter and get the key. She gave up on the door and put a fence around the back yard.
I went under, over and through the fence. Eventually we moved to a house on a dead end
dirt road. I am sure mom mentioned to me that I should stay in the house, but I don t remember
it. In fact, one of the hallmarks of my first 30 years was that I wouldn t listen. As mom
said, Your sister, I would ask her to do something and she would do it. Your brother, I would
ask and if I gave him a good reason for doing it he would do it. You! You I could ask. I
could reason. I could beat you until my arm fell off if you weren t going to do it you
wouldn t do it. The nuns thought that I was just a rebellious child who needed more discipline.
But actually I was extremely angry and I didn t know it. Let me say that it made me very
isolated. Who wants to be friends with an angry man who won t listen? Personally, I
thought if they didn t want me to be angry they shouldn t irritate me. What turned me
around was my wife. We, of course, fought on our honeymoon. When we got home she walked
to the bookshelf and handed me, How to win Friends and Influence People and said, Read
this. I read it. I went to seminars. I went to counseling. I tried everything I could,
to be the husband my wife deserved. It was a long struggle of learning and healing. Last
April my wife and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. Moreover, I don t fight with
my boss which really is the path to unemployment. If you look at the research today you will
see I am ADHD with all its major complications dyslexia, Oppositional Defiance Disorder and
Conduct disorder. Fortunately, I was born before the label became popular and I got
placed on drugs. Why do I say fortunately? Because one of the fundamental problems with
these labels and the drugs that come with them is that they take away the incentive
to change. The drugs do that chemically and the labels do it psychologically. They create
Old World Thinking. I m ODD it s just the way I am. My label justifies my behavior.
The drugs mellow me out and help me get by. Today, we cannot afford to waste our children
s lives just getting by because they won t get by forever. In 2005 Oregon Health and
Science University reviewed over 2200 studies on ADHD and found no clear evidence that the
drugs resolved any of the global problems that ADHD patients have. They reviewed even
more studies in 2009 with the same result. Clearly, the behavior remains, maybe less
of it, but it remains and the patients have lost all incentive to resolve their issues.
s go beyond getting by and look beneath the label. When you do that ODD is an angry child
who doesn t know how to let his anger go. Great let s teach him. Because once he lets
his anger go 90% of his problems are gone. Or I m dyslexic and I can t read. Fine, you
are a bright child and we will find a way to teach you to read. Or I am impulsive and
get into accidents and the Emergency Room visits are expensive. All these issues can
be solved, but it starts when you throw away the label and look at what is going on underneath.
s start by looking at the label of ADHD. Here is the definition of ADHD: A. Inattentive
Type 1. Does your child fail to give attention to details? 2. Is it difficult for your child
to sustain attention? 3. Does your child seem not to listen? 4. Does your child fail to
follow through on instructions? 5. Does your child have difficulty organizing tasks or
activities? 6. Does your child avoid, dislike, or is reluctant to engage in tasks requiring
sustained mental effort? 7. Does your child lose things necessary for tasks or activities?
8. Is your child easily distracted by extraneous stimuli? 9. Is your child forgetful in daily
activities? B. Hyperactive Type 1. Does your child fidget with hands or feet or squirm
in his seat? 2. Does your child leave his seat inappropriately? 3. Does your child run
about or climb excessively? 4. Does your child have difficulty playing or engaging in leisure
activities quietly? 5. Is your child on the go or acts as if driven by a motor 6. Does
your child blurt out answers before the question is completed? 7. Does your child have difficulty
waiting his turn? 8. Does your child talk excessively? 9. Does your child interrupt
or intrude on others? When I first looked at this I asked myself what is wrong with
climbing or getting out of your seat? It is clear that these questions are very subjective
so let s look at the mindset of the people asking the questions. Psychiatrists who make
their living talking prefer that modality of learning. Teachers tend to be visual learners.
From both viewpoints a hands-on learner would appear as a disorder because hands-on learners
move when they learn. Now, let s assume that a non hands-on learner like my mom is answering
these questions. Mom, who never climbed a tree in all the years I knew her, would answer
yes to all the questions in bold plus quietly engaging in leisure activities. Whenever I
was too quiet mom ran to see what I was doing. With 6 yeses in either A or B I would be diagnosed
as ADHD. Is it possible that ADHD is simply a misunderstanding between people with different
learning style preferences? As the classroom teacher is by far the number 1 referrer of
ADHD children, learning style could easily play an important role. Most teachers are
visual learners. Visual learners want everything in their place and a place for everything.
Too much clutter or visual chaos and they can t think. In fact visual learners will
often clean up before they start a project. They expect students to sit still and look
at them to listen. Anatomically, we listen with our ears and are capable of listening
while we walk or bounce or roll around on the floor. Very few visual learners can handle
that much visual chaos and stay focused on their lesson plan. This simple misunderstanding
explains why I was sent to the principal s office so often in Kindergarten. My teacher
wanted me to take a nap on the floor and I wanted to nap rocking in the rocking chair.
The auditory learner expects us to dialogue. Answer questions with more than one word.
Develop our ideas by fleshing out the details. About half of the hands-on learners simply
don t talk that much. All those words just confuse us. Once you understand how learning
style preferences develop you will see why dyslexia and ODD are common complications
and how to overcome them. You will also learn how to get cooperation from your child. And
the good news is you don t have to take 30 years looking for solutions. I will take you
through step by step and leave you with a framework that will help when your child comes
up with something not on the list. The first step is to know that like IQ, which is the
speed that we learn, learning style preference is genetic. It is most likely evenly distributed
in a three dimensional bell shaped curve as illustrated. Those people on the top of the
hill have no learning style preference at all. They are easy to teach because they have
the flexibility to learn in any modality. As you come down the hill your brain specializes
in one learning style over the other. The left are auditory learners. The right are
visual learners and coming straight at you are the hands-on learners or the kinesthetic.
You have met these kids in school. The jocks are hands-on learners. The nerds are visual
learners who do better in Math and Sciences and the auditory learners do better in Language
Arts. They do better in those subjects because those subjects are taught in their learning
style preference. Half of the population on the right side of the line marked K will prefer
visual learning over auditory learning. They will be hands-on first, visual second and
auditory dead last. The strength of people who learn through talking is their relationship
skills. As the brain shifts away from these learning styles the person doesn t develop
these skills. As a result the low auditory will tend to have poor relationships with
self, siblings, friends and parents. This is the source of the ODD label. It is also
the source of the dyslexia. I go into greater depth on my website ADHDorActiveChild.com
or in my books than I have time for right now. But now that you know the source of these
problems the solution is to laser in on the experiences the child needs to develop these
relationship skills and at the same time to motivate him or her to change. Seem complicated
its not. It starts with avoiding the most common mistake assuming that your family members
learn just like you do. If you want to take that first step and find out the truth. Go
to howtolearn.com and take the learning styles inventory test. Have your spouse and your
children take it and send the results to me by blogging under this video on my ADHDorActiveChild.com
site. Let s take this journey together.