1. Can you really control your ADHD through diet? ADHD and Diet: Parsing the Recent Research
2. Where is  home? A drowning nomad…
3. Is everyone becoming crazy? The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?
4. Hmmm…they don’t mention “brilliance” or “sexiness” in this list: Adult ADHD: 15 Signs You May Have It
5. So, if ADHD is such a wonderful thing…Where Are All the ADHD Success Stories?
6. Pay attention to these tricks for paying attention, if you can sit still long enough: Adult ADHD: 10 Tricks for Paying Attention
7. It’s not what you think…or is it? Mind Control & the Internet
8. A little more for the conspiracy theorists: Flacking for Big Pharma
9. Finally, something for those OTHER conspiracy theorists: The Professors, The Press, The Think Tanks—And Their Problems

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I thank Lenore Skenazy’s recent Tweet that led me to the post Free-Range ADHD child and, from there, to the other blogs. Thank you, JoAnn, for your blog list.

A Free-Range child? It has nothing to do with feeding your children free-range chickens. (However, see my note below about free-range chickens.) The idea started from a seemingly innocuous act that Skenazy described in a column she had written for The New York Sun. She notes on her blog:

When I wrote a column for The New York Sun on “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Take The Subway Alone,” I figured I’d get a few e-mails pro and con.

Two days later I was on the Today Show, MSNBC, FoxNews and all manner of talk radio with a new title under my smiling face: “America’s Worst Mom?”

It took only a bit of research for her to realize that our fretting over our children, worrying that they will be abducted by strangers at any moment, is really a case of media hysteria. Lenore notes that the number of child abductions by strangers was 115 in 2006. So millions of children need to be shackled to their homes because 115 children are abducted? (With those odds, your child is more likely to be hit by a flying toilet.) “Children, like chickens,” Skenazy writes, “deserve a life outside the cage. The overprotected life is stunting and stifling, not to mention boring for all concerned.”

Lenore’s blog: Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children.

Jeff’s Fact Check:

This same number – 115 – appears on the Missing and Exploited Children website. There were 74 million children in 2006. So about 0.000001% of our children are abducted by strangers. However, about 200,000 children are abducted by family members. It seems that we’ve been worrying about the wrong event. We should be keeping an eye on our relatives.

My Research on Free-Range Chickens:

NOTE: The following is based on my extensive research on the subject of Free-Range Chickens and has nothing to do with the concept of free-range kids or the blog of the same name.

Unbeknownst to many of my dedicated readers, I’m considered to be well known within the field of chickenology. As a chickenologist I’ve tried to understand the complexities of chicken in both its physical and spiritual manifestations. Examples of my research on the physical nature of chickens are here, here, here and here. What follows are my professional musings on the spiritual nature of the free-range chicken.

A free-range chicken is a chicken that is allowed to explore its “chicken-ness.” The concept of “free-range chicken” developed out of the chicken liberation movement though it has been difficult to precisely determine a date when this movement came into existence. Despite the seemingly long pedigree of the free-range chicken movement, it has not produced any philosophical works about the unexamined chicken life, the fragility of chicken life itself or how the reality of free-range-ness contrasts with the more common, unfree-range chicken existence.¹  Further, there has been no evidence of a Friedan or Steinem who has been instrumental in this liberation movement, nor has there been evidence of a chicken counter-revolution led by a Schlafly-influenced anti-free-range chicken proponent. Some have speculated that the lack of philosophical works or, at the minimum, a free-range Descartes — “I cluck, therefore I am” — is a consequence, not of their inability for metaphysical inquiry, but a consequence of their crude technology. As far as we can tell, chickens have no writing instruments other than their claws, and have nothing to write on, except the very ground they walk on. It is possible that, over time, we may discover a chicken semiotics which may help us to extract meaning out of their chicken scratches and, in so doing, discover the hitherto unknown Descartes, Friedan or, more likely, Thoreau of the chicken world.

1. One commentator has pointed out that the term “unfree-range” is a bit of Orwellian newspeak that has the effect of erasing our mental images of chickens in chicken coops. Further, it numbs us to the reality of the unfree chicken life where the population density within the coop makes the chickens depressed. Freudian chickenologists (psychologists specializing in the field of chicken psychology) refer to this feeling as “being cooped up.”

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Zoë Kessler has a few posts that will make you stop, think and probably laugh. As a double agent she provides an inside look at attempting to be non-ADHD in an environment screaming out for ADHD…sort of. Perhaps being a double agent is another ADHD subtype missing from the DSM. It didn’t seem to make the list of new ADHD subtypes. The recently married Katy Rollins might be able to suggest yet another ADHD subtype, like Constant Self Blame.

When you are tired of blaming yourself and you want to rein in your ADHD, you are then ready for some of Dr. Parker’s medical advice. He’s really been pushing the envelope in terms of diagnosis and treatment of ADHD. To get a better understanding of what he is doing, you’ll want to check out my illustrated (yes, illustrated!) review of his book and then watch some of his videos. You’ll then be more than ready to tackle his book. Of course, you should visit Doc Parker’s website. If you need help remembering what you read in Doc Parker’s book, I highly recommend that you take a nap or, if you prefer, have sex. In fact, do both! Recent research shows that it will improve your memory.

Carpe diem!

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Scientific Animations

A company called XVIVO makes the most astounding animations for companies and organizations such as Johnson & Johnson; Amgen; Harvard and Yale Universities; Shire and PBS. I’ll warn you now. Once you watch one animation you’ll be hooked and you’ll want to watch as many as possible.

Here are two of my favorites.

Click on the image to see: Inner Life of a Cell

Click on the image to see: Life Cycle of the H1N1 Virus

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• On Gina Pera’s blog, guest blogger Lew Mills has accomplished the Solomonic task of finding “the Gift in the Curse.” I won’t say anymore. You should read the post.
• I’m not sure if 18Channels realizes it, but she is providing a fascinating stream of consciousness that captures the evolving A.D.D.er during the early stages of deep self discovery. You should check her blog on a regular basis.
• On a completely different topic, Mike Doyle offers a fascinating view of life as a Mac user and his impending switch to the world of the PC and Windows. For those of you who think that the grass on the Mac side of the digital divide is greener (and I’m one of those people), you should first read Mike’s post before spending any of your dollars on a new computer. I believe that Mike’s experience and discoveries (Google apps, for example) portends the potential post-Mac/post-Windows world that may be awaiting us all.

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See: http://www.additudemag.com/adhdblogs/1/5950.html

“Students with ADHD have a hard time completing and turning in assignments on time. Learn how to help attention deficit children turn in their school work by setting up organization systems at school and home.”

See: http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/5951.html

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(Source: Manichaeism)

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A.D.D.ers are the embodiment of the struggle of light versus dark. Every moment these opposing forces fight for control of the A.D.D.er. Fought within the boundaries of their mind (and body), A.D.D.ers are locked in a lonely internal battle.¹ Therapy, drugs and self-help books are the weapons of war but they are not powerful enough for light to definitively triumph over dark. Some battles are won. Some are lost. And the war rages on with no end in sight. 

Many A.D.D. soldiers chronicle their victories and defeats in blogs like the ones listed below². This externalization through narrative releases internal tensions, though only for a moment.³ By externalizing the internal they reveal that which occurs within the circumscribed boundaries of their war.⁴  Externalization makes visible the invisible "internal" battles fought by A.D.D.ers. By rendering the invisible visible, externalization allows other A.D.D.ers to see that they are all engaged in the same fight. Of course there are differences, but all A.D.D.ers battle with issues of time, memory, emotion and sex.⁵ By reading how others have fought their own battles, A.D.D.ers are able to learn from those other A.D.D.ers and, therefore, they are better equipped for their own ongoing battles.⁶ 

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• Chicago Carless: The off-road journey of an ongoing Chicagoan
• lifedoodling:Restarting Life With AD/HD – The Good, The Bad, and Life Inbetween
• Alternative Dimensional Design
• Treadmill to Nowhere
• Whatever

1. There is, of course, a certain amount of spillover, the outward manifestation of that inner battle. However, A.D.D.ers remain the ultimate existentialists. "Each of us is trapped within our own mind, unable to feel anything but our own feelings and experiences." Source: Ethics of Absolute Freedom
2. Most blogs written by A.D.D.ers seem to be a record of their victories and defeats.
3. Interestingly, physical activity, for many A.D.D.ers, is also an effective means of releasing tension. I sometimes think of physical activity (I currently jog three times each week) as a way to release mental toxins.
4. The act of writing is really the act of externalizing the internal through the use of symbols that constitute sounds which, when put together in a particular way, constitute words with a grouping of words (sometimes even a single word) conveying to the outside an internal idea (all ideas are, in a sense, internal…no?) Exposition, expounding is really placing something outside. "Ex" meaning "out of" and "position" coming from ponere (Latin) meaning "to place."
5. I'm sure this list of issues could go on ad infinitum.
6. Scientia potentia est: knowledge is power.

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