In Which ADHD is Not a Fake Disorder Made Up by Teachers Who Want Students to Sit Quietly

So what am I doing NOT writing about dyslexia today given that I announced yesterday that this is dyslexia awareness month? Because..... drum roll please.... October is ALSO ADHD awareness month. That means I'll be posting about both of Squirrelboy's invisible disabilities a lot this month. Since dyslexia and ADHD are frequently comorbid (that is, they often occur together) I guess it's appropriate that they share an awareness month. I can't say for sure that this was intentional, however, since I already knew October is Down Syndrome awareness month and just learned on Facebook today that it's also Dwarfism awareness month. Maybe it's "things with a 'd'" awareness month. Who knows?

I don't have a list of ADHD myths to bust for you today. I want to focus on just one myth that makes me really angry. I have heard so many people say that ADHD is just teachers wanting to pin a diagnosis on a typical, active kid and medicate them so that they'll sit down and be quiet. There are many problems with this, and I'll take them one by one in the following paragraphs.

First of all, this hypothesis illustrates a complete misunderstanding of the way stimulants prescribed for ADHD actually work. For some biochemical reason I don't understand, stimulants have an effect on the ADHD brain that's basically the opposite of the effect they have on a the typical brain. The ADHD brain is constantly working and spinning and thinking of a million and one things. That's why people with ADHD have trouble focusing. It's not really that they can't focus. It's that their brains are trying to focus on too many things simultaneously. What stimulants can do for a person with ADHD is slow down the brain enough to allow the person to choose what to focus on. This is counterintuitive. The typical brain is affected the opposite way by stimulants. If you've ever had a little too much coffee or other caffeinated beverage, you know that your brain can feel like it's buzzing and you're so hyped up it's hard to focus. If ADHD were actually a conspiracy by the education establishment to get typical kids to sit down and shut up, prescribing stimulants to the kids they wanted to control would just be a disaster waiting to happen.

As I and many people with ADHD and their parents can testify, ADHD isn't something that can lead to struggles in school alone. Squirrelboy is among a decent number of children with ADHD who normally only takes his medication on school days. However, his ADHD shows up on other days as well. As exhibit A, I give you Squirrelboy packing his trunk for Boy Scout camp every summer. There's a defined list of everything he has to pack. It all has to fit into a particular style of trunk that everyone is required to use. Despite these two well defined parameters, it still takes him most of a day to pack his trunk. He gets distracted. He forgets where he put a piece of camping gear or a piece of clothing. He panics. He melts down and is sent to his room to calm down. He calms down and finds the thing he was looking for, sometimes with help. Then the cycle repeats itself. This past summer I had him take his medicine the day he packed his trunk. It wasn't perfect, but it was a million times better.

As you may remember if you read my first post, Squirrelboy struggled all the way through elementary school, yet his teachers refused to believe us when we said we thought he had ADHD. If ADHD were a conspiracy of the educational establishment, wouldn't they have been totally on board with our suggestion that our kid might have ADHD? Wouldn't they have been eager to push us to get him an official diagnosis and medication? Instead, he didn't get a diagnosis until he was sitting at a table with just me and still couldn't focus.

Am I saying that the diagnosis of ADHD is never abused and that kids are never put on medication because teachers or other professionals in their lives are tired of dealing with them? Of course not. Unfortunately, kids whose behaviors actually stem from early childhood trauma are frequently diagnosed with ADHD and put on medication. A startlingly high percentage of kids in the foster care system are prescribed stimulants for ADHD. This is a tragedy and needs to be addressed. I'm certain there are also other cases of the ADHD diagnosis being abused. However, abuse of a diagnosis does not invalidate the existence of the condition. ADHD is a real thing. It comes with a lot of disadvantages, but it has a surprising upside as well. I'll explore both a bit this month.

In Which I Bust Some Dyslexia Myths

It's October 1st, which, among other things, means it's the first day of Dyslexia Awareness Month. For that reason, I'll be posting quite a bit about dyslexia this month. I'll start by busting some myths about dyslexia.

Myth 1: Dyslexia is not very common

You wouldn't believe (or maybe you would) the number of teachers I know who are sure they've never had a student with dyslexia. The fact is, dyslexia affects approximately 1 in every 20 people. That's 5% of the population. That means that, in the average classroom, there is likely to be at least one student with dyslexia. You probably know someone with dyslexia, even if you don't know Squirrelboy or Mr. Engineer. You just may not know it, especially if the dyslexic you know is an adult.


Myth 2: Dyslexia is primarily about seeing things backwards

Have you heard this joke? What keeps dyslexic agnostics up at night? They're pondering the possibility of the existence of the dog. The point being, of course, that dyslexics see words backwards; therefore God becomes dog. The bad taste of this joke aside, this is not actually true. Dyslexia is a language processing disorder. The dyslexic brain has a difficult time understanding the relationship between sounds and symbols. Dyslexics do on occasion read words backwards and mix up common, similarly spelled, words like of and for, but that's simply because their brain isn't correctly processing the relationship between the symbols on the page and the sounds they stand for, not because they're actually seeing the words backwards.

Myth 3: Dyslexia cannot be diagnosed until the 3rd grade

Kids can, in fact, show signs of dyslexia starting at a very young age. Young children with dyslexia may talk later, frequently mix up the pronunciation of common words, have difficulty with rhyming, and be slow in retrieving the right word when speaking. They may also have a difficult time distinguishing between right and left. The truth is, the earlier a child is diagnosed, the earlier intervention can start, and the better the chances are that the child will experience success in school.

Myth 4: School Reading Specialists are the best people to intervene if your child has dyslexia

Sadly, this is not usually true. You'll run across the occasional reading specialist who is well educated in dyslexia intervention and uses an appropriate program, but this is very rare. In fact, the average reading intervention teacher knows little to nothing about dyslexia. This is not the fault of the teachers themselves. Reading teachers, on the whole, are passionate about helping children learn to read well. The problem is, they usually don't have the correct training to give students with dyslexia the type of help they actually need. I know one family that has left intervention for their dyslexic child entirely up to the school system. He began to receive reading intervention services in 2nd grade. Now, in 11th grade, he is still reading 4 years below grade level. In contrast, Squirrelboy was reading on grade level after 2 1/2 years of outside tutoring. He continued to build his skills for another 1 1/2 years and scored at a proficient level on the state reading testing starting in 3rd grade.

Myth 5: Only a professional can help your dyslexic child

If you suspect that your child has dyslexia, you should absolutely pursue evaluation by a professional. If dyslexia is diagnosed, the best way for a child to learn to read well is tutoring with a program that uses the Orton-Gillingham  (OG) method. This is a slow, deliberate, repetitive method of teaching phonics and training a person's brain to connect sounds and symbols. Many people, myself included, choose to pay for a tutor who has received training in this method. However, there are programs that are designed to be used by parents or other not previously trained people with a connection to the dyslexic. The training in use of these programs is included with the program and lessons are strictly scripted so that it's very difficult to mess them up. One such program is Barton Reading and Spelling. This is the program that was used with Squirrelboy and I can testify that it is excellent. However, if you find a tutor that uses a different OG program or you have access to a different one that you feel capable of implementing, that is perfectly acceptable. The programs differ in details but not in substance.

Myth 6: Your dyslexic child can never be successful unless he/she learns to read competently

Of course, the goal is that early identification and intervention will allow children with dyslexia to pursue all of their goals in life with no accommodations needed. However, this is not always possible. Sometimes dyslexia is found so late in a child's educational career that accommodations such as readers and scribes for schoolwork are necessary, at least for a time. Other times a person's dyslexia is so profound even years of concentrated intervention will not allow this person to read above an elementary level. In this case, accommodations can and should be made and this person can still pursue any dream they want to. My favorite example is the cousin of a former boss of mine who, despite his profound dyslexia, serves as both an Orthodox priest and as a professor of theology at a university in Romania. He can barely read, but, thanks to accommodations throughout his schooling and now in his work, he has been able to have a fruitful academic career.

Myth 7: Dyslexia can be fixed with special glasses or colored filters to put over paper

As I detailed in myth 2, dyslexia is not a vision problem. No amount of special glasses or colored filters is going to help a person's brain to understand the connection between sounds and symbols. That said, it is absolutely a good idea to have your child evaluated by a developmental optometrist if you suspect dyslexia. Sometimes a vision processing disorder can be mistaken for dyslexia, especially if people believe myth #2. Other times, a person may have both a language processing disorder (dyslexia) AND a vision processing disorder. There are glasses and colored filters that can help people with vision processing disorders and, if your child is diagnosed with such a disorder, it's valuable to use all the tools at your disposal.

Myth 8: Dyslexia can be cured by brain training

There is no cure for dyslexia. I would argue that dyslexia does not need a cure. If I made up the names for things I would classify it as a language processing difference, not a disorder. The fact is that, in a literate society, a brain that has difficulty processing the connection between sounds and symbols is at a disadvantage. However, many people with dyslexic brains excel in some other area. Common areas of giftedness for dyslexics include spatial reasoning (there are a lot dyslexic engineers in the world), creativity (there are a lot of dyslexics in the arts), and verbal communication (there are a lot of dyslexics in Hollywood). If your child is diagnosed with dyslexia, you will inevitably run across services that tell you that their computer program with rewire your dyslexic child's brain. Or maybe they'll offer you a set of exercises to do to "integrate primitive reflexes." Many of these things are valuable and can help in a small way, but, ultimately, a dyslexic will only learn to read well with a targeted OG based phonics program.

Myth 9: Dyslexics are stupid

This is not so much a myth as a dangerous way of thinking that unidentified or poorly taught dyslexics can fall into. Dyslexics are not stupid. With the proper intervention and/or accommodations, dyslexics can achieve just as much as their neurotypical peers.  In fact, many dyslexics are extremely gifted. However, their difficultly with reading and writing can mask their giftedness. Some students have a mild form of dyslexia that has been nicknamed "stealth dyslexia." A kid with stealth dyslexia probably performs on an average or maybe even slightly above average level. They likely have problems with spelling, but read competently. However, what's actually happening is that their giftedness is masking their learning difference. If given the proper intervention and/or accommodations, these students will soar far above many of their peers.

Myth 10: Dyslexia is equally common among girls and boys

I actually thought this was true until today. The research has gone back and forth. Initially it was thought that dyslexia was more common in boys. Later researchers concluded that it was simply that more boys were diagnosed because boys were more likely to act out due to frustration, whereas girls might remain quiet and try to hide their disability (promote gender stereotypes much?). The most recent studies show that dyslexia is, in fact, more common in boys than in girls. However, that doesn't mean that your daughter's reading difficulties aren't due to dyslexia. All it means is that, if there are 20 people in a room and one of them is dyslexic, that person is more likely to be male than female.

I hope I've succeeded in opening your eyes a bit to the complicated world of dyslexia.