The ADD Mythology (Part 1)
Notes to the Reader:
- This blog post was written by Betsy Davenport.
- Betsy detests the term “ADDer,” but she couldn’t come up with anything else. As Editor-in-Chief and blog owner, I’ve decided to use the term “ADDer.”
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Myth No. 1: ADD Does Not Exist
These little rumors keep cropping up, have you heard them? “ADD is a made-up disorder.” “Everyone loses her keys.” “ADD is just an excuse for bad parenting.” “If you could do it yesterday, you can do it today.” “It’s just laziness; you need to try harder.” “If you’d just take more responsibility for your own belongings, assignments and work …”
The best thinkers, speakers, writers and clinicians, supported by the best researchers, are finally making significant inroads into these awful, archaic, moralistic, shaming remarks. We know more now; we can forgive the people who could not have known; and, filled with the confidence of the emerging truths, we can ignore with greater ease those who continue to campaign against things about which they do not trouble themselves to learn.
Those of us old enough to have children and grandchildren know the dreadful pain caused by those shaming, demoralizing, mischaracterizations. And a person suffering under the strain of swimming upstream every day, all day, and sometimes half the night, risks as a result the loss of an accurate concept of the self as basically good and decent and of good will. There is not enough therapy, or time, in the world to heal those wounds. Like the drip-drip-drip of water torture — was that real? or made up? — described in books of long ago, the slow erosion of the spirit can only end badly; and the world itself loses, as well, the contributions of, and the pleasures of being with, regular people whose brains function in a Quirky way.
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