|
SitesADD FocusAdders.orgADHD NewsAdults Seeking
|
|
|
| advertisement |
It was an attention deficit "expert" on Australian TV's Sixty Minutes that pushed Benjamin Polis over the edge.
"It made me really, really mad. This guy didn't have a clue what he was talking about," says Polis, who was diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, in 1989. "I went to the library for a book by a young person about being impulsive, but I couldn't find one. I thought, 'I guess I ought to write one.' "
|
Two months later, Only a Mother Could Love Him was done. His dad fixed the atrocious spelling, and it quickly became a best seller in Australia.
But when the self-proclaimed "crazy Aussie kid" put up a Web site (www.addhelpguide.com), he heard from "mums all around the world begging, 'Help me with my son!' "
At 21, Polis was educated during a time of drastic change in the way schools treated students with ADHD, a learning disability that affects concentration, learning retention and behavior. In two restless decades of change, there was a global debate, lots of research and a cottage industry of self-help books. Now, as young people like Polis reach the end of their schooling, they are adding insight and real faces to the abstract lives that have been studied under that microscope.
"There's a lot of books by clinicians, and a lot from parents with vignettes about how to handle situations," says Erica Krahl, a clinical counselor in Coal City, Ill., who specializes in ADHD. "But Ben's book gives a good idea of what it is like to live with ADHD."
Only a Mother is published in six countries, but thanks to the Internet, copies have been sold in 18. It has been translated into Japanese and Spanish, and it is a best seller in Japan and Brazil. The book has been available in the USA for the past year through learning-disability groups and on Web sites such as Amazon.com. Only a Mother now has a U.S. distributor to address the grassroots demand from the 5 million to 7 million U.S. families struggling with ADHD. With new text that Americanizes unfamiliar Aussie references, the book will be available in bookstores over the next three months.
Without the medical jargon, academic gobbledygook and scientific treaties that dominate the ADHD publishing field, Polis reveals the often overlooked attitude shared by many students with ADHD: "I felt different, stupid, always in trouble and everyone hated me." In the end, he writes, many students like him come to believe what they have been told: "that they are a troublesome burden on the school."
Polis' candid account reveals not only a kid hard to teach, but also a child even more difficult to love. Getting through school and into college, he writes, "took six schools, 5,000 detentions, 300 days of suspension." His days "at university" in Sydney, he says, are a much better fit.
A review and an excerpt in ADDitude magazine, a publication from the Children and Adults of Attention Deficit Disorder, caught the attention of special-education teacher Judy Haley of Elizabethton, Tenn. She now has a waiting list of parents who want to read the handful of copies in her resource library.
"I've read so many books and articles written by professionals, but this book makes it all come together," she says. Among the most revolutionary point for parents, she says: Polis' description of why kids with ADHD often have after-school tantrums, with often explosive and destructive results.
"Why are ADHD children so angry and violent? It is not a symptom of ADHD, but a result of ADHD," Polis writes. Where normal children attend school with few obstacles, he says, the ADHD child faces layer upon layer of barriers every day. For these students, he says, the end of that school day, in the safety of a loving home, signals the time to explode.
Thousands of kids "talk about that emotional outburst after school," says Jonathan Mooney, author of Learning Outside the Lines. And parents are frustrated. "They say, "I do everything for my kid, but they come home and they're angry at me.' It's because parents are doing everything that kids explode," Mooney says. Home "is the only safe place."
Polis' avant-garde coping strategies challenge many of the policies in place for dealing with ADHD in school. For instance, he found taking medication during school hours was not helpful as he tried to overcome distractions from other students. But once he was in high school, medication after school freed him from distractions and allowed him to focus on homework, plus all the schoolwork he had spaced out on during the day.
Though most experts are leery of this approach and are loath to discuss the hornet's-nest issue of student medication, Mooney says it gives a true picture of the unconventional ways in which many struggling students strive for success. "Some kids do it all on a Sunday; some kids blow it all off and then get up at 4 a.m. Parents need to hear that it's not a bad thing."
Mooney, who was 23 and a new graduate of Brown University when he published his experiences as a learning-disabled student, says there has been a "huge shift" in educators after they hear first-hand from young adults who lived the ADHD experience. "They used to see these kids and think, 'ADHD.' Now they look at them and think, 'Jon Mooney.' "
Others may now see Ben Polis.
Click here to purchase "Only A Mother Could Love Him
ADHD Treatment from LillyPresenting an FDA-approved ADHD prescription medication option. Visit our website or ask your doctor if it may be right for your child. Click here to visit our website. |
Source: USA Today
|
Home to HealthyPlace.com Chat
Forums
Communities Healthyplace
Radio
Support
Groups © 2000 HealthyPlace.com, Inc. All rights reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Policy Disclaimer |
