Distractibility and all that

Ah, holidays! I’ve been looking forward to this two-week break for a while now but now that it’s actually here I’m struggling to get anything constructive done. I have a talk to prepare on “Managing ADHD in the classroom” for when we get back and it’s taking away the fun of my free time (that is, the time that’s not taken up with child-minding). What’s particularly un-fun about this talk is that it’s my first chance to address the whole staff in a detailed way, and it’s also scheduled for my birthday.

In order to prepare I’ve been reading up on the topic, surfing the net and watching YouTube videos. There is so much material out there on the subject that I would need several solid weeks in order to prepare properly. The main book on the subject seems to be Driven to Distraction by Ned Hallowell. Hallowell is a well-known child and adolescent psychiatrist in the U.S. and he suffers from ADHD and dyslexia himself. He starts off by describing the epiphany he had during his psychiatry training when he heard about ADHD and realised with one of those “Aha!” moments that it fitted him perfectly. I’m a little sceptical of those religious-conversion type experiences because I know from experience that they obscure as much as they reveal.

ADHD, in Hallowell’ book, becomes both a biological imperative and an identity. Emotions are secondary to biology, as are relationships. As I read further and further, I started feeling more and more uneasy. For millions of people (children and adults) apparently, they were being misunderstood and misdiagnosed and then along came the diagnosis of ADHD, and more importantly, the magic drug to treat it, methylphenidate, and their lives were turned around.

Anyway, I’ve found it helpful to read it with a critical eye. I’m not a great fan of the diagnosis. I can see how it can be very helpful, life-changing even, to parents and teachers who struggle to contain the distractibility, impulsivity and high activity which characterise children with this condition. But I’m also quite resistant to fashionable diagnoses. Ned Hallowell is careful to point out that ADHD is not a catch-all diagnosis and shouldn’t be over-diagnosed. But then he does exactly that. He sees ADHD everywhere — in narcissistic men, in couples, in alcoholics and people addicted to risky behaviour, in people with Borderline symptoms, in people suffering from depression and anxiety, and especially in children with behavioural problems. And a lot of this is actually pretty convincing. I started thinking that maybe ADHD is the answer after all.

But then I returned to my healthy scepticism and I’m also reassured in this position by the scepticism of people like Ken Robinson, the education consultant with those inspiring TED talks. Robinson points to a map of the east coast of the United States and shows how the prescription rate for Ritalin increases dramatically as you move eastwards towards Washington D.C. He calls ADHD a ‘fictitious epidemic” and likens it to the fad to take out children’s tonsils a few decades ago. He says that Ritalin anaesthetises children and turns them into zombies. Our job as educators, he says, should be to wake kids up and get them to focus on their emotions. All very well, I hear the teachers say, but it’s not waking these kids up that’s the problem. It’s getting them to calm down and focus.

I’ve heard Robinson describe a case where the mother takes her daughter to the doctor complaining that the girl won’t sit still and that she doesn’t focus. The doctor leaves the daughter in the waiting room with the radio playing and then takes the mom into his consulting room and listens to her story. After a few minutes they take a look to see what the daughter is doing. Sure enough, she’s moving around the room to the music and the doctor says to the mom, “Your daughter doesn’t have ADHD, she’s a dancer.” It’s a good story, especially for those teachers in the Arts who have to struggle to see their subjects taken as seriously as Mathematics and Science. But it’s precisely the subjects such as Maths which are the problem for these kids. They can’t focus well without a lot of help, and the teachers and parents just don’t have the time to sit with them individually and guide them every step of the way.

I’m also interested to see that Hallowell says very little about the miracle drug itself. I’d be interested in reading more about Ritalin, but a balanced account. These debates get very polarised.

Enough about ADHD. I thought I’d post a pic of our little one taking delight in her lego. (Taken at Betty’s Bay a couple of months ago.)

She is a real joy, that is when she isn’t giving us near heart-attacks at 4.30 in the morning by setting off the apnea alarm by rolling to the corner of her cot. L and I were both pretty fast asleep when we heard the loud beeping noises of the alarm and L made it to Leah’s bedroom in about two seconds with me close behind. As soon as I heard that Baby F was breathing I slowed down. That adrenaline surge is horrible. I understand the need for it but it pretty much ruined our morning. Well, the first part of it anyway.

L’s car is being fixed so all three of us made the trip to the hospital where L works and then it was off to the granny for tea and porridge and a walk with the dog.

Me: “That’s the whole point of the walk, in order for her to fall asleep.”

Granny: “No, we go for a walk for some fresh air and to see the birds and flowers.”

Me: “Well, we go for a walk so that she can fall asleep. Which is why we need bunny.”

And then to Leah, “silly old granny. I don’t know why she has to be so difficult”.

Granny had to laugh at that. But of course we did it her way.

Losing the Plot

The plan was to write a review of The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. But the reality is that I’m struggling to finish the work that I have here let alone set more work for myself in tackling a review. Why did I want to review it? The simple answer is that I found it one of the more interesting books I’ve read this year. I haven’t read many books this year but this one made me wish I was part of a bookclub again so we could discuss it at length.

I loved this book and it also frustrated me. And I’m also very interested in how books reflect their authors. So please excuse the ‘wild analysis’ type of discussion below.

The Marriage Plot concerns three university students at Brown University in the early 1980s. Madeleine Hanna, Leonard Bankhead and Mitchell Grammaticus. Madeleine’s the all-American literary one, Leonard’s the brilliant-but-damaged one and Mitchell’s the religious-and-slightly-odd one. What drives the plot for much of the novel is the question of who Madeleine will choose. Will it be the brilliant-but-damaged Leonard or the more-stable-but-also-weird-in-his-own-way Mitchell? And behind that question seems to be a broader feminist awareness that women should not be defined by their choice of partner. There’s an interesting diversion into the ‘marriage plot’ of Victorian-era literature and also a reflection that however much we might try to be aware of the socially constructed nature of love and romance, people are very much still preoccupied with their most intimate relationships.

I’m not sure that this is the best way of putting it, but one question that I had was “Why is Madeleine such a sap?” Why does she allow herself to be so consumed by the relationship with Leonard? There were other questions that I had and one was around the extent to which Eugenides was influenced by David Foster Wallace (DFW) in his depiction of Leonard Bankhead. Readers who are convinced that Leonard is really DFW point to the brilliance, the bandana, the chewing tobacco and the Bipolar Mood Disorder. Eugenides does say that Leonard is not DFW and there is the glaring difference that Leonard is a Biology major and not a literary major. But some readers are not convinced. DFW was a major contemporary of Eugenides. DFW taught creative writing at Pomona College in California while Eugenides teaches creative writing at Princeton. Both of them are leading US writers of their generation.

There’s also the question of how closely Eugenides resembles his other leading man, Mitchell Grammaticus. Both of them are half-Greek, both are very interested in religion, and both (apparently) had awkward times as university students. Eugenides also says that Mitchell’s Indian trip was based very closely on Eugenides’ own trip to India around the same time. The danger here is that as readers we can assume that Mitchell = Eugenides. And what Eugenides is at pains to point out is that he resembles all three of his characters. He is able to draw on different aspects of himself to flesh out Madeleine, Mitchell and Leonard.

But just staying with the Mitchell = Eugenides and Leonard = DFW ideas for the moment, what does this say about the relationship between the two writers? Mitchell feels intense jealousy towards Leonard while Leonard is barely aware of Mitchell’s existence. As for Eugenides and DFW, both are very successful but I gather that DFW is considered the more brilliant of the two. Brilliant but damaged obviously since he ended up taking his life. If Madeleine represents the all-American reader then she is far more enamored with DFW than with Eugenides, at least for a while. I know that this is a very ‘wild analysis’ type of literary interpretation. But then we always bring our own ideas to the text anyway so maybe this says more about my own rivalry issues than it does about Jeff Eugenides!

**

At this stage in my life perhaps I should be more concerned with the “Married with Child” plot. Certainly there are times when all three of us seem to lose the plot. Baby F (or Toddler F as she now is) lost the sleeping plot last night and we had a taste of what it is like for many other parents whose children won’t go to sleep at the regular time. She was up early this morning (4.30am apparently) and I was pretty oblivious, sleeping through. She’s crawling and walking now (walking with support that is) so it’s a very busy time. And she also seems to want to stand up a lot of the time (for baths, meals etc.) She babbles away, commenting on the light (wight) and the flowers (wowers) and her toys. Dis! Dat! Not dat! Mudda. Nana. Buddha.

I get to escape to a boys school conference this weekend so L will be coping on her own once again. I hope the plot stays calm and uneventful while I’m away.