monkeymiller

I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, but I am an RN and have experiences that give credibility to disorders such as dyslexia, ADD and ADHD. Minimal brain damage seems to be the culprit. For instance, during birth, some babies have a more difficult time of it and are deprived of oxygen briefly, but are apparently normal once the blueness is replaced with a normal color as soon as they are oxygenated sufficiently. Some babies with this kind of fetal distress die soon after birth because the damage is so great. There can be varying degrees of learning difficulty if they survive, as they get to an age where they are noticed as somehow different. The brain has to compensate, and parts intended for one function have to be used for another, etc. These children find it very difficult to inhibit themselves from interrupting for instance because they will forget what they were going to say if they don't get it out right away, or they get frustrated to the point of tears or tantrums because they try so hard and keep making mistakes, anyway. Or they can't follow a chain of reasoning to completion because they got lost in trying to process what came before the final part of it because it took a little more time to think about the subject before they could grasp the first few steps of the subject, for instance. A regular classroom situation can be bewildering to them. If time and patience is provided, along with several methods of sensory imput to assist them in understanding, they can do very well. It seems that, say for instance, if the left side of the brain is damaged, the type of processing best done by that side, has to be taken over by the right side. The verbal skills may be poor, but they might be very good at art, which is predominently a right brain function. There are the emotional components that come with this problem too, such as low self esteem, from the way they are treated, because their behavior seems to be deliberately disruptive to an otherwise smoothly operating classroom. Kids like this are just trying to learn too, but they have to go about it in a different way than kids who have the advantage of a well functioning brain. Constant disciplinarian behavior from the teacher toward them and teasing by kids is very painful emotionally, and embarasing, and they can feel bad or inept and generally inferior, and unworthy of respect. A method like the Montessori schools use can make all the differance in how they perform in a learning situation. They are able to catch up and eventually become well compensated adults. If drugged and treated the way they might be if just considered odd balls and dealt with as if they are just an irritant in a "normal" classroom, they might get fed up and rebel and eventually become uneducated brutes trying to survive as criminals. They don't know what their problem is, they don't know how to fix themselves and how to just learn and be at peace with others. Some may be smart enough otherwise to figure out how to teach themselves and to hide their differences so they won't be detected as different. Its a struggle for them to go it alone that way, but with persistence they may suceed. Now, these kids are detected sooner, and special techniques can be used to help them learn, and they can be treated in a way that maintains their dignity. This is not to say, that some children are misdiagnosed, and that some that are a problem in the classroom are not emotionally disturbed instead, nor that drugs are the answer. Amphetamines actually have a reverse effect on some of these kids, in that it tends to calm them and helps them to stay focused better, Stress and anxiety makes their symptoms worse. The addictiveness may be a way of escaping the unbearable emotional pain that they may have experienced, but it can be related to habituation to the drugs they had to take. I myself was a dyslexic kid. I was one who taught myself and hid my problems and persisted, and coped with the emotional issues. I was smart enough to get around the neurological problems that I had to deal with, and I suceeded in compensating well. I have some abilities that other neurologically "normal" people don't have because I've had to use my right brain and cross train my left brain so to speak, so, I have some advantages. Its still a constant nuisance to have to do what I have to do to compensate. If I hadn't had to teach myself to learn in principles, in order to remember what I needed to remember, I might not have been able to learn about and understand Objectivism, for instance. The fact that "normal" people don't understand neurologically different people, doesn't mean that we are just pretending to exhibit a bogus condition. I do believe that these differences can be seen using Cat scans and/or MRIs using various testing methods that show what areas of the brain are active under specific circumsances and the like. The fact that the affected areas have regenerated after a period of time does not alter the fact that brain functions had to be re-routed in order to function well enough. Minimal brain damaged is rarely ever picked up in infancy, because people just don't do diagnostic testing in an "apparently" normal child. If its profound enough, the symptoms are obvious, and treatment begins early, but that is if there is cerebral palsy or something like that which affects the motor functioning as well, usually. The way an infant functions mentally isn't noticable until they don't do something that they are supposed to be able to do at a certain age. But when so minimal that they just do the stuff a little slower, we just see it as normal variences, until it gets to be a problem to us later, as manifested in behavior. Well, one of my problems is verbosity, so I'll just stop myself soon. I hope this was useful in helping you to understand ADD. Actually, an adult dyslexic often tests out the same as one does if they have ADD. A child's dyslexia can be detected on a written test that can be given to diagnose them, but a well compensated adult dyslexic, having already overcome the difficulties that a child would be having, won't demonstrate that they still have those problems. I didn't know that I was dyslexic untill I was already an adult. It was a special education teacher who revealed to me why I was always having these difficulties, such as right/left confusion. (Believe me, I never took a nursing assignment that had to do with preping and sending a patient to surgury if a proceedure had to b done on a right or left exemity.LOL. I stuck to fields such as psychiatric nursing...LOL much easier for me, less dangerous for a patient.) LOL. So, I hope you have learned something, here. But don't expect me to quote my sources, or provide you with a bibliograpy such as I would have to provide if I were doing a paper on this subject. I spent my life either dealing with it or learning about it for my own benefit, not to educate others about it, so I didn't take notes, LOL. Take it or leave it as it is. If you don't believe me, Its of no consequence to me. If you can be more understanding of the person you have to deal with, then your relationship with that person might improve, and you will feel better about the whole thing. MonkeyMiller