![]() Lisa found a private school that advertised itself as focusing on the arts, and seemed open to working with Zachary. Box Boy slowed down, wobbly as a top, then BAM, popped the box up high off his head. The school bell rang and the children scattered. I could see the boy was out of control, and I was relieved. I waited for the teacher to jangle the cowbell. My eye was drawn to a kid who had put a box over his head and was careening wildly around the playground, a couple of other boys in tow. One day before we pulled him out, I parked next to the playground, waiting for the school bell to ring. Not only that, but his teacher carried a cowbell on the playground, jangling it loudly at children who failed to swing straight. There was no way he was going to perform well under that kind of pressure. He attended a private Catholic school for kindergarten, but we pulled him out at the end of the year because they insinuated that if he couldn’t read by the time he entered the first grade, he would be held back. Yes, he requires more work than most kids, but I figure that’s the price you pay for having a kid who can’t walk to the car without pretending he’s tip-toeing across a log, trying to keep his feet from being eaten by alligators. I couldn’t see how someone would perceive Zachary as deficient in anything. He has ADHD, doesn’t he?” I would reply, “Nooooo, he’s just a spirited child.” Strangers would come up to me at parks and say, after a few minutes of watching Zachary, “He’s just like my son. He refused to participate in circle time and became so disruptive that the other children couldn’t participate either. He hid in closets and under computer tables. How does a child get kicked out of a school that prides itself on its philosophy to nurture each child, to encourage him to be self-directed, an active explorer? Well, Zachary was a bit too active an explorer, even for them. Clearly, his inability to listen had stretched their limits. Never mind that he was pretending to be an armadillo and that he pooped behind a shed. Lisa and I pulled him out of that school after the counselors got so angry with him for pooping on the playground that they put him in time-out for two hours. Armadillo Boy Goes to SchoolĪt age three, Zachary went to pre-school, where he achieved notoriety for figuring out how to unlock the childproof latch on the gate. The paradox, between his wild and pensive sides, was what kept me from believing my son had ADHD years later. I loved walking with him because he slowed me down, made me notice the squirrels’ teeth marks on the acorns. He’d lie belly-down on the gray sidewalk to get a better look at a line of ants. When he was older, a walk down the block to the playground would take over an hour. He stayed like this for a long time, musing, content. He was lying in his crib, playing with his feet, looking around. Once, during nap time, I stepped outside to water the plants. Then there was that other side to him - a soft, pensive side. In what seemed like split seconds, he climbed the bookshelves, knocked lamps over, poured bleach on the carpet. Once he poured a gallon of olive oil onto the kitchen floor while I was washing dishes not more than three feet away. Inside the house, despite massive childproofing efforts, he got into everything. He wore out shoes in weeks, dragging the toes on the pavement to stop himself. I bought him a toy motorcycle and trotted after him as he zoomed down our street, Fred Flintstone-style, a hundred times a day. ![]() After those first tentative steps, he ran everywhere. My partner, Lisa, and I filmed him, he looked so strange.Īt 10 months, he walked across my grandmother’s kitchen floor. ![]() There was the time he stood up in his high chair and flexed his muscles like an iron man. I knew my son, Zachary, was extraordinary early on. How did I arrive at this door? Kicking and screaming. And now I am one of those parents who gives medication to her child. I don’t even like antibiotics my pediatrician practices homeopathy. I’m one of those people who hate the idea of giving children drugs – for any reason. It all seems to boil down to: ADHD is some sort of bogus malady, and the only thing wrong with these obnoxious children is their parents. Or parents want to give their children an edge and are willing to give them drugs to get higher scores on their spelling tests. These kids are just unruly and their parents so career-oriented that they’d rather see their children pop pills than spend time with them. Recent headlines say it all about the popular view of ADHD: “ Ritalin: A cure for brattiness?” and “Johnny Get Your Pills.”ĪDHD is simply a figment of our national imagination.
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