"The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn." 
Alvin Toffler

ADD...or Is It?

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, more than 10% of students aged 15-24 dropped out of the 10th-12th grades in the year 2000. Another report estimates 700,000 young people each year leave schools before they graduate, many of whom are diagnosed A.D.D. Some are considered "under achievers, lazy, slow, oppositional," etc. It is difficult to measure the indirect effects of learning difficulties as manifested by poor self-perception, lowered self-concept, or reduced motivation. Athol Packer, Ph.D., former Professor of Education, University of Florida, estimates that 20% of our students are diagnosed LD and another 30% have learning difficulties.

When a student doesn't learn, act or behave as expected, there can be many reasons, though the student often gets the designation of Attention Deficit Disorder (with or without hyperactivity.) The intention is positive: get some help for this child. Sadly, I believe, the help too often given is prescription medication when other, safer interventions may be successful. Perhaps, there is a problem OTHER than a "deficit" of attention.

During my eighteen years of coaching struggling learners of all ages I have discovered a most useful question: "What's really going on?" with each individual student I see in my office. This question refers to internal thinking processes and external influences. During my life as a person who has been categorized as ADD, I have developed and discovered myriad ways of managing the symptoms AND the causes of many learning difficulties. I'd like to share the basis of some learning difficulties that may not be ADD at all, but the behaviors mimic some of the symptoms. The solutions are too numerous to list in this article, however, there ARE solutions...and not only medication.

Underlying our "cognitive processing" (how we think) is a dynamic interaction between our STATE (emotions, health, nutrition) and our STRATEGIES (thinking processes, retention, recall, etc.) Strategy refers to steps in our thinking or remembering sequences that can be simple (as for spelling) or complex (as in some decision-making.) As research into the brain has confirmed, different parts of our brains are used for thinking and for our feelings. These brain parts need to work in concert for clear, efficient thinking, retention and recall.

Using the skill of spelling as an example of a simple strategy, let's look at how the emotions can interfere OR support our memory. Colin, a ten year old boy, was entering a spelling bee contest. He had studied the best way he knew how and thought he knew all the words. His mother had even checked him by listening to him practice. However, early in the spelling bee Colin was knocked out on a word he had studied. What happened? Had he not studied HARD enough, as we often say about students? Had he not been paying attention? Was he not motivated? None of the above.

Since Colin was a student whom I knew, I can assure you he tried hard, but as you may have experienced, trying hard and harder is not always the answer. The problem was the dynamic between his state (anxious to win) and his strategy (his steps to remembering and learning). Colin's strategy was to say his spelling words over and over, having looked at them on flash cards. Many students use this strategy. It can work fine, sometimes.

The extra pressure of the spelling bee increased his feeling level (fear, anxiety, or excitement), which interfered or with his strategy of saying the words to himself. Although we can learn and remember even when these emotions occur, AT THAT TIME, Colin could not. In some way, the emotional part of his brain "took over" and the "remembering" part of his brain was not accessible to him. The feelings prevented his tuning into his auditory channel clearly. The same thing can happen to students who report "anxiety" on tests. Perhaps it is the dread of failure, the anxiety of telling their folks, or of looking dumb. Many things can throw our emotions into a state that is un-resourceful for thinking, learning and memory.

A student can learn to manage his/her emotions as well as how to think more effectively even under the stress of tests, in interviews or other situations that may be challenging. Emotions can assist in long term memory in some ways and enjoying learning, passion for a subject or curiosity are examples of positive use of emotions in learning. Students may not know they have a choice in how they feel. They may not know how to study in a way that can help them compensate "under pressure." For some students, just the pressure of answering in class creates a situation in which they appear not to have been "paying attention" (and perhaps they weren't.) Perhaps the student was thinking about the previous question and how, "if I was more confident I could have raised my hand" and feeling sad or anxious. That kind of thing happened to me.

The point I am making is that if your student is not performing in a manner you and/or the school (or him or herself) expect, SOMETHING is going on. It may not be ADD or ADHD, that can be over diagnosed, in my opinion. One good way to know what IS going on is to ask. Ask the right questions from a point of curiosity. The books are full of geniuses who "didn't live up to their potential" in the traditional school settings. There was something else going on inside their brains! Churchill was almost expelled! ("He is a constant trouble to everybody and is always in some scrape or other. He cannot be trusted to behave himself anywhere." 9 years old, www.winstonchurchill.org)

So I suggest: Don't jump to conclusions about why your child may not be "performing" in school and label him or her with ADD. In addition to what has been discussed in this article, the problem could be food allergies, environmental allergies, scotopic sensitivity, other vision problems, parasites, auditory processing problems, high idea productivity or just "doesn't know how" to learn effectively. These (and many others) are learning problems that do have answers and those answers are not necessarily mind altering drugs.