Week 2

Today's discussion about ADHD was very familiar to me.

One of my best friends I've had since junior high, TJ, has struggled with ADHD his whole life. He was diagnosed with it at a young age and took the drug Concerta all through elementary school. He never told me why he stopped taking it, but instead he devised a plan in 7th grade with the school to actually have Mountain Dew throughout the day (one of the administrators kept it in her office for him) because the caffeine helped his attention but didn't have the side effects of a drug.

Through most of high school, he didn't do much to help his ADHD and this was a great disservice to his learning. He was in two of my classes senior year, and it sort of became my job to "monitor" him. The teachers in the school were so tired of telling him to be quiet and do his work for four years that they just stopped saying it and let him do what he wanted. He would interrupt me and everyone around him, he would not sit still in his seat, he would watch movies on his iPod "hidden" behind a reading book. I don't even know how we became such good friends, because every time I tried to have a conversation with him he would start shaking his leg or tapping the table or interrupt me to tell me about something I really didn't care about, or I could just tell that his mind was out in space going 90 miles an hour. I don't know how people could ignore this, but I took it upon myself to help him (or maybe boss him around a bit...). He began calling me Mom, and that became the running joke in our classes. I had to help him outside of class to supplement what he couldn't handle in the classroom.

TJ is such a smart kid and he just wasted years of school, fooling around and lacking patience and attention. He's at Castleton right now and recently said to me that he's doing really well in school this year because he's "finally applying himself". Well he is back using meds again, but only when he needs them (finals week, before an exam or paper, etc). I worry about him out on his own with no one helping him, but I guess that's just the Mom in me - he seems to be doing well now. I think it can be just as difficult to be close to someone with ADHD as it is to be the one with ADHD.