by B. Halevi
In today’s world, almost everyone
has heard of ADHD, but, sadly, most people don’t really understand what it is.
Even in families where ADHD has been professionally diagnosed and they have
read much literature on the topic, parents are often still lacking in their
fundamental understanding of what ADHD is all about and what life is like for
someone with ADHD. I mean, it’s not their fault. If you don’t experience the
world through the ADHD lens, it’s difficult to ever fully grasp the full import
of life with this disorder.
I have ADHD, and I’ll
never forget the impact two videos I found online made on me. (Disclaimer:
freely searching around on unfiltered internet is no longer something I would
do or recommend to others.) These videos made me think, “Aha! That’s it! That’s
how I feel! That’s the message I want to convey to non-ADHDers about my life!”
These videos expressed
the raw and painful personal experience of life with
ADHD. They created a visceral experience – a flavor of what life is like with ADHD. One video shows a teenage girl walking
through the rooms of her house. Wherever she goes, the area at the center of
her gaze is blurred out, similarly to the way they blur faces in videos when
they are trying to hide a person’s identity. With the objects directly in front
of her fuzzy, the only things she is able to see with undiluted clarity are on the
periphery of her vision. And so she is shown walking from room to room and
swinging her gaze around, thus flinging the blurry part across different areas
of the screen. In this fashion the girl tries to engage in tasks within the
area of her focus but is only able to perceive them through
a tremendous “fog.”
This is the brain fog
through which people with ADHD experience the world. Every task they engage in
(including the fun ones, like eating a bowl of ice cream – and definitely the
difficult ones, such as washing the bowl afterwards) comes only with tremendous
strain and extended willpower. Who can get anything done through that strain,
when life feels like one giant cloud of brain fog? Is it any wonder that people
with ADHD often choose to engage with silly, irrelevant distractions, with
whatever is at the periphery of the moment rather than their task that is
covered in fog? It is way easier, way more fun, and the only fully perceived
experience available!
Toward the end of the
above video there was one poignant moment when the girl managed to reach into
the fog and snatch her pill off the kitchen table. Upon her swallowing it, the
fog was “switched off” and everything swung into focus.
*
* *
The second video,
which also left an indelible impression on me, contained many details that have
unfortunately left my memory. I will therefore add to whatever I remember with
what I know about how the experience is for many.
A student comes home
for the weekend – maybe a teenager or maybe a college student – with a report
that is due the following Monday. The student gets up Sunday morning bright-eyed
and ready to work. However, every time he sits down – still excited to work – something
proves to be wrong, something that provides a distraction and renders him
unable to work. The person is shown struggling with the obstacles. First the
room is too hot, then too cold. The pencil is too sharp, then too blunt. Then
he is hungry. The student eats lunch and then decides to work outside in the
backyard. There it is too sunny. The student moves under a tree but finds the
ground too lumpy. He moves again but finds the passing cars too noisy. He moves
again. Finally, everything is perfect, but then – after daydreaming for a few
minutes, he falls asleep. After all, who wouldn’t fall asleep after finding
this perfect location?
All of these problems
are displayed on screen in rapid succession, periodically interspersed with a
shot of the moving hands of a clock counting down the rapidly dwindling amount
of time the student has left. It is close to evening when the student wakes up.
The camera flashes to his paper, where three or four measly sentences are
shown. Until now, he has been experiencing different emotions: first mild
irritation, then puzzlement at his bewildering inability to get anything done,
and finally utter frustration. Now frustration gives way to panic at the
looming deadline.
So what does our
panicked student do? He stalks back inside and undoes all his earlier interventions. He removes the fan and the
bouncy chair, grabs the laptop instead of a pencil and, in a panic, raps out an
entire report of multiple pages in little over an hour. (Hmm – turns out that
somewhere inside he did know what he planned to write.) The video ends with a
shot of the exhausted student asleep at the kitchen table beside the open
laptop, having just made the deadline.
I think the reason
this scene resonated with me so much was that it showed how the experience of
ADHD can be dominated by feelings of physical discomfort – sensations that
demand a reaction and provide an endless impediment to productivity. Some of
the more ridiculous things people with ADHD do often stem from an attempt to
control external stimuli of their physical experience. And to be honest, not
all such interventions turn out harmless. Some people with ADHD engage in all sorts
of extreme and dangerous activities seeking to find their emotional as well as
physical comfort zone.
*
* *
At this point you may
be wondering why I am waxing poetic about a few well-put-together videos? Well,
I am writing to give you a real grasp of what the impairments of ADHD feel
like. And I am definitely leading somewhere. Recently, it has come to my
attention that tremendous misunderstandings abound on the topic of medicating
our children who have ADHD.
People have all sorts
of concerns, most of them somewhat valid: There are side effects. Many feel it
is unnatural for an outside pill to control their
child’s behavior. In particular, some people feel that medication impinges on
their child’s personality, making their child into a different person! And of
course, people worry about the stigma medication may represent.
Well, as someone with ADHD who
lives off of daily pills, someone who is in kollel, loves being in kollel, and
would undoubtedly be unable to remain in kollel without said pills, I strongly disagree
with the approach of those who categorically stand against medicating their
child out of an overabundance of concern – even when medication is well
warranted and recommended by professionals. I feel uniquely qualified to my
opinion, and
I am writing this article as a plea for people to overcome the qualms they have
about ADHD medications.
The main thing we
need to change is the perspective from which we approach the issue. I want to
make one chief point about ADHD medications: The main reason to medicate your
child is not to make your child’s teacher’s job easier; nor is
it to make your life easier as a parent. The main reason is for your
child’s sake.
You see, your child
has aspirations and goals in life that, without medication, he or she will
forever be unable to attain. I’ll explain: The greatest myth about ADHD
medications is that they take away a person’s personality. Parents often report
that their children have become like zombies, that their child’s facial
expressions are flat, and that their emotions have disappeared. They say their
child is not acting true to his personality.
All of this can
happen, and these observations are not in and of themselves inherently
untrue. Even I would agree that the doctor should definitely be
consulted and an attempt should be made to adjust the dose. But let’s say that,
for whatever reason, the dose can’t be adjusted, and the perfect dose cannot be
identified. Should we now rule out this child for medication? The answer is
unequivocally no! And that is because the above description of what is
happening to the child, while technically accurate, does not capture the reality
of what is going on.
*
* *
I believe that
those who reject medication have a fundamentally flawed analysis of the
situation. All the problems people have with the effects of medication are
on the “outside.” But what you need to ask yourself is, what’s going on inside
the person? In their inner life, all people have goals
and aspirations they want achieve, which arise from their core identity and
inner personality. Even children have ambitions. The more sophisticated
children verbalize this in their more candid moments while the less sophisticated
may not be self-aware enough to acknowledge them even to themselves. But this
inner desire to succeed at their goals is definitely there, buried underneath
all their childish behaviors.
Now I ask you, are
children with ADHD ever going to be able to actualize their wishes and dreams
in life without medication? It boils down to whether the description of your
child’s personality as suppressed is even accurate. What is the child’s real
self? The idiosyncratic behaviors your child displays on the outside? Or is the
manifestation of your child’s inner self the one brought out by treatment and
medications? What you consider your child’s “personality” may really be just an
outer shell, a product of overwhelming outside stimuli as shown in the above
videos, and simply one which you have grown used to seeing. The inner self is
the real one, the one that is worth nurturing!
*
* *
Thus, in my view, treatment
is necessary! Of course, your child’s outer display of dysfunctional behaviors
is an aspect related to their personality – another child would manifest
different behaviors – but these behaviors may simply be superficial and
negative aspect caused by negative stimuli. The proper way to look at the
situation is that, under the influence of pills, though inhibited in their
facial expressions more than we would prefer on the outside, inside, your child
is absolutely him or herself and actually more free to grow, in a way that is
true to their inner selves.
I would like to say
clearly that I am by no means encouraging overly strong dosing or irresponsible
medication. Nor am I saying that all children should be medicated or that there
are never concerns that should override all that I’ve said. I am mere trying to
highlight what I believe should be the most important factor in making the
decision – decision making that is dominated by parental concern as well as a
false perception that the pill suppresses your child’s personality. In response,
I want to say that such concerns are unwarranted. Your child’s personality is
intact, and even if their external expression may be a bit subdued from what it
was before, what is important is what’s happening underneath.
I feel it is sad when
this readily available solution is rejected by parents, and even by children
themselves. Why do we have to wait until a child’s life is falling apart to
begin medication? Even children with symptoms of ADHD who are smart enough to
compensate in their early school years would have benefited by starting
treatment earlier. They may be able to pass their tests and maintain a minimum
of decorum at school, but they are still inhibited and unable to fully develop
their personalities as they themselves would wish.
When parents of such a child, who is barely hanging on, are faced with the
choice of medication, they need to ask themselves, how can we turn down this
powerful tool? How is what we are doing instead better? The choice, in my view,
is not to medicate or not to medicate. Rather, my message is to examine the
main criteria used to make the decision. To me, it is clear: Would you choose
to live with the fog or without?
