6.6.11 Adam News & Info
Jun 7, 2011 10:28:04 GMT -5
Post by lynne on Jun 7, 2011 10:28:04 GMT -5
Q3
I agree with everything you said, and your post is inspiring.
The whole James situation, and the many responses to it, have obviously sparked feelings in many of us, probably due to our various backgrounds and experiences. Although this thread is old, I am reading it this morning, and it brings up things for me as well.
I am the mother of a severely ADHD son, and I am a teacher, and so my reactions to everything said is filtered through those experiences.
My son is very bright, but began having troubles the minute he hit the school system.
However, even before school, it was obvious that he was intensely emotional, impulsive and often inappropriate with his responses. When he was in third grade, I stopped teaching to become a full time teacher at home for my son, who was having all kinds of difficulties daily inside an educational system clearly not designed with him in mind.
From the beginning, I recognized that my son needed to learn to navigate the real world. I did not make excuses for him, but I did need extra patience and understanding from others in his world as I was teaching him so that their reactions didn't make my job even
harder. This was not always easy to obtain because people can be unforgiving and judgmental in their reactions about challenges they do not know.
I still remember the day I really GOT how confusing my son's world was. One day, when
he was in fifth grade, his teacher praised him up and down when I picked him up from school. I was so happy. In order to try to help him identify and keep the good behaviors going, I praised him as well and asked him what he had done differently.
He looked over at me, my tough ten year old son, and after all my praising, his eyes filled up with tears. "I don't know," he said, with such raw, visceral sadness. "I didnt really do anything differently. It was just luck.". It was then that I understood the depths of the
problem. He did not really have the ability to learn by cause and effect in the same way as other children, or at least with the same quickness. He was not cognizant enough to be able to notice the individual behaviors that produced happier outcomes, or by the same token, the individual behaviors that produced negative responses.
I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem and all its ramifications, but I began to understand how specific moments needed to be broken down and strategies for each specific moment addressed. And then how often those strategies needed to be reinforced,
reinforced, reinforced, and that any progress made would not generalize itself to another
similar kind of situation in any kind of typical way.
It was a huge job, and it became mine for 8 years, until my son was old enough, and doing well enough, to become his own advocate, at which time I returned to my teaching career and picked up the life I had left behind previously.
My son is doing well now at 26. He is pretty wonderful, and pretty wonderful to me. You get back what you give away.
But he will always have issues that will affect his interaction in the world. My son is a musician, and fortunately, his career maximizes his personal strengths and minimizes his weaknesses. Musicians can be creatively "absent minded" and emotionally intense much more easily than bankers. And he has learned to hire people to help him with his organizational weaknesses, an accountant who pays his bills on time etc...
To bring this back to James, I do not excuse the fact that he hurt others with his remarks,
but I do understand that it is harder for him to learn what is appropriate than it is for many others, and he may not have anyone teaching him effectively, so while I am uncomfortable with his remarks, and disagree completely with his views, I will just kind of put his remarks on ignore.
Maybe he is in the process of learning. I notice his twitter remarks have been taken down.
I agree with everything you said, and your post is inspiring.
The whole James situation, and the many responses to it, have obviously sparked feelings in many of us, probably due to our various backgrounds and experiences. Although this thread is old, I am reading it this morning, and it brings up things for me as well.
I am the mother of a severely ADHD son, and I am a teacher, and so my reactions to everything said is filtered through those experiences.
My son is very bright, but began having troubles the minute he hit the school system.
However, even before school, it was obvious that he was intensely emotional, impulsive and often inappropriate with his responses. When he was in third grade, I stopped teaching to become a full time teacher at home for my son, who was having all kinds of difficulties daily inside an educational system clearly not designed with him in mind.
From the beginning, I recognized that my son needed to learn to navigate the real world. I did not make excuses for him, but I did need extra patience and understanding from others in his world as I was teaching him so that their reactions didn't make my job even
harder. This was not always easy to obtain because people can be unforgiving and judgmental in their reactions about challenges they do not know.
I still remember the day I really GOT how confusing my son's world was. One day, when
he was in fifth grade, his teacher praised him up and down when I picked him up from school. I was so happy. In order to try to help him identify and keep the good behaviors going, I praised him as well and asked him what he had done differently.
He looked over at me, my tough ten year old son, and after all my praising, his eyes filled up with tears. "I don't know," he said, with such raw, visceral sadness. "I didnt really do anything differently. It was just luck.". It was then that I understood the depths of the
problem. He did not really have the ability to learn by cause and effect in the same way as other children, or at least with the same quickness. He was not cognizant enough to be able to notice the individual behaviors that produced happier outcomes, or by the same token, the individual behaviors that produced negative responses.
I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem and all its ramifications, but I began to understand how specific moments needed to be broken down and strategies for each specific moment addressed. And then how often those strategies needed to be reinforced,
reinforced, reinforced, and that any progress made would not generalize itself to another
similar kind of situation in any kind of typical way.
It was a huge job, and it became mine for 8 years, until my son was old enough, and doing well enough, to become his own advocate, at which time I returned to my teaching career and picked up the life I had left behind previously.
My son is doing well now at 26. He is pretty wonderful, and pretty wonderful to me. You get back what you give away.
But he will always have issues that will affect his interaction in the world. My son is a musician, and fortunately, his career maximizes his personal strengths and minimizes his weaknesses. Musicians can be creatively "absent minded" and emotionally intense much more easily than bankers. And he has learned to hire people to help him with his organizational weaknesses, an accountant who pays his bills on time etc...To bring this back to James, I do not excuse the fact that he hurt others with his remarks,
but I do understand that it is harder for him to learn what is appropriate than it is for many others, and he may not have anyone teaching him effectively, so while I am uncomfortable with his remarks, and disagree completely with his views, I will just kind of put his remarks on ignore.
Maybe he is in the process of learning. I notice his twitter remarks have been taken down.
