“Problems With Attention”

“Problems With Attention”

Brian Lynch

I am sure almost everyone knows someone that has a problem with “attention” and is taking medication for it. They might be a child or an adult. They are often given the labels ADD or ADHD.

Fact: there is no conclusion as to whether this is a “disease” that one is born with or we get from living in an environment. Or maybe it is a combination.

Fact: taking certain medications does help some people.

Fact: taking certain medications also can have side effects, especially aggressiveness and anger.

It is also a fact that some teachers and parents mostly want quick answers.

I believe that until we appreciate much more about “attention” and a child’s “interest” we will not get very far.

What happens to you when you are doing something and you get interrupted? You don’t like it. Now much depends on how we have been brought up, how skilled we are at handling that moment of interruption.

It was pointed out a long time ago to me that a very active ten-year-old in a crowded two-bedroom apartment in Chicago might be labeled ADD, but on a farm in Kansas just a rambunctious ten-year-old.

Of course, it is not that simple, it depends too on what is going on in the farmhouse.

I believe “interest” is a “feeling” that is always being transmitted outward and I also believe we have to be dealing, daily, with a large set of punishing feelings that inform us of our environment. They are anger, fear, distress, contempt, shame, and surprise. Now tell me what if a youngster or for that matter an oldster is feeling high levels of all of these? Would these not interrupt their “interest?” Would it not make it hard for them to “pay attention?”

It is said that children can pay attention to intense tasks like video games and T.V. or homework at times. I think this makes much sense because it is at these times they can “escape or avoid” all the negative in their life, all those negative feelings. It is when they are in the “general” environment, the social “feeling” environment, that they “go crazy.”

It is because they do not have the skills to relate or unfortunately the support system around them to relate. To relate, it has to be a two, three, four-way street.

I have more than once refused to simply place a child on medication because the teachers have wanted it, demanded it. Parents should refuse such demands. Doctors have to be only the child’s advocate! Teachers are not doctors. Medication is not there to make the teacher’s job easier. Medication sends the message that the child is sick when in fact we the community might just be the one that is sick.

Now why might medication make things worse and why does it work? Just because it “works” does not prove in any way that there is a “biological” problem, it just means that the chemical is working on the “attention” or “interest” mechanism. Heroin “works” also. I have had people tell me that “honestly” doc I didn’t take my “Adderal” (a medication for ADD) all the time, just when I was “bored” when I needed to get the job done. So it “works” as a stimulant. Of course, this is well known.

Why do drugs cause anger? Well, we believe, simply, that when our “interest” is interrupted we feel, well, bad. What often happens when we feel “bad?” Well, we often get angry. Don’t you? If you intensify the interest, say with medication, the result of the interruption will be just that much worse and so will the anger.

Schools need more money and we all need to pay more attention to our children and each other and others and see how things improve.