Random Thoughts and Pithy Platitudes about ADD
- It’s only a disorder if it’s messing up your life.
- If it’s not messing up your life, then it is not a disorder.
- Do not allow a label to control your life.
- Labels are useful for identifying groups of people. They are useless when discussing an individual person.
- I’ve seen Normal. I’m not impressed.
- “Normal” is what the average person can accomplish with little or no effort. Why be normal?
- Your diagnosis is not an excuse. Don’t use it as one.
- Maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.
- Teachers are not doctors. Do not accept medical advise based on their need for control.
- Teachers are not parents. Do not put them in the position of having to behave as such.
- Medications are tools. Like all tools, they should only be used when called for and used without criticism when they are needed.
- To deny that something exists simply because we do not understand it would be to deny the existence of God, love, and the flight of bumblebees.
- Rather than using the IEP to lower the requirements for grading, we should use the IEP to create a curriculum that meets the needs of the student.
- Doing something because you love it is totally different than doing the same thing because you never explored any other options.
- Look to the future but don’t trip over what is right in front of you.
- Most incompetent people do not realize that they are incompetent.
- No teacher can teach higher than their own level of thinking.
- Teaching concrete thinking to naturally abstract thinkers is like forcing a bird to walk simply because the trainer does not know how to fly.
- Any teacher can ask “What happened?”
- A good teacher will ask “How did it happen?”
- The great (and all too rare) teachers will ask “Why did it happen, and what does it mean?”
- Rather than teaching students WHAT to think, we should be teaching students HOW thinking is accomplished and WHY it is important.
- The regurgitation of useless information does not constitute learning, although it does make for a good career as a game show contestant.
- Parents who do not show love and validation of their child are creating an emotional amputee.
- Emotionally healthy people do not shoot up schools.
- Beliefs are not facts. Do not confuse the two.
- Let your beliefs be known.
- People who won’t speak up are in danger of being silenced forever.
- Honor the beliefs of others.
- It’s only a disorder if it’s messing up your life.