B. Other Health Impairments: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

For a student with ADHD's perspective and a success story watch this young woman's Ted Talk. She has also created many inspiring and informative YouTube videos under the name "How to ADHD." Click on the title to open in YouTube to access closed captioning.

Matthew Kutz, a 13-year-old student  said that, "Being ADHD means you see things other people miss. When you see a peach you see a piece of fruit, while I see the color, the texture, and the field where it grew. Being ADD, when I read a book about marine life, my mind allows me to travel with the fish and imagine life beneath the sea—or I can read a book about astronomy and dance among the stars."

Some strengths gifted learners with ADHD might have include:

Strengths

• Advanced vocabulary
• Strong sense of humor
• Highly creative
• High energy
• Wide interests
• Background knowledge
• Intense curiosity
• Strong memory for things that interest them
• Idea peopl

• Can hyperfocus when interested

Gifted children, with and without ADHD, have the ability to immerse themselves in the task and work for long hours (hyperfocus) without much external reinforcement.  The difference, however, is that the gifted student with ADHD must be highly motivated, or the task must be intrinsically rewarding or they will not persist (Loveck, 2004, Kaufman, et. al., 2000).  This ability to hyperfocus, the falling into “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996) is what makes creative work so satisfying to so many gifted children, whatever their other problems.

Challenges

To experience some of the challenges your student might be experiencing watch this 3:48 second ADD/ADHD Simulator video. There are subtitles because everything is written. The sound is traffic noises.

Some of the challenges faced by students with ADHD can be:

• More active and restless than other children
• Poorly sustained attention -- distracts others or self
  
• Finds it hard to change tasks, settle down 
• Struggles to finish work -- often shift from one uncompleted activity to another
• Impulsivity and poor delay of gratification -- alienates peers
• Lacks organizational skills
• Impaired adherence to commands to regulate or inhibit behavior in social contexts
  
• Often talk excessively
  
• Tendency to procrastinate and are forgetful
• Difficulty with written expression
• Has low self-esteem

• Diminished persistence on tasks not having immediate consequences

This image is from an article from a mom with 5 children with ADHD...her daughter said that having ADHD was like sitting in a room with a thousand TVs and her mind jumps from screen to screen not knowing what to watch.

ADHD is like:

Having no filter - A neurotypical person has a gatekeeper that controls input...sorts it, determines what is important...For the child with ADHD there is NO filter - EVERYTHING is important, nothing is sorted...One of our students said it was like all of his apps are opening and he can’t close any of them.  NEED to separate and breakdown things to focus on one thing at a time.

Always Being overstimulated - ADHD kid is constantly bombarded with stimuli.  NEED to get away from the stimulus, go to a quiet room...use fidgets

Experiencing many episodes of "I Forgot" - problems assessing, retrieving and using memory is one of their biggest frustrations. Kids with ADHD blurt out, why do you think that? If they don’t tell you right then and there, they will forget what they want to say as their mind has moved on.  Need Checklists, sticky notes, parking lot, email, and text reminders.

Having too many thoughts to think - the mention of one word or thought opens up a million more.  Need to journal, keep the writing brief to help them just remember as there are too many thoughts to put down

Challenges in Executive Functioning

ADHD is a disorder that involves the executive functions of the brain. As was covered in the Part 1 course, the executive functions of the brain are a system that organizes, plans, modulates, and integrates both everyday and original work (Lovecky, 2004).  Executive functions are like the conductor of an orchestra, enabling each separate instrument to play well and coordinating all the instruments together (Brown, 2000).  Executive functioning is much more than simply cleaning out one’s locker or using color-coded folders. It’s about one’s ability to accomplish goals (Gladstein, 2013).  They are the mental processes that help us to organize, plan, prioritize, focus attention, and handle multiple tasks successfully. They enable us to self-regulate. These are common everyday challenges for a child with ADHD. However, according to Understood.org although “many kids who have ADHD do struggle with executive functioning…it’s also possible for a kid to have executive function issues without having ADHD, or having ADHD without executive functioning issues.”

Misdiagnosis

Some gifted children and some highly creative children without ADHD may mistakenly be thought to have the condition.  There are several overlapping characteristics between the populations as shown in the table below. 

A comprehensive evaluation must be done before determining whether or not has an ADD/ADHD disability.  Common behaviors of gifted children can be misinterpreted as symptoms of attention problems, e.g., intensity, perfectionism, impatience, oppositionality, hyperactivity,(Neihart, 2003).  Gifted students who receive little academic challenge may also demonstrate behaviors that imitate ADHD, but when engaged with intellectual peers in appropriate-level work, the symptoms are not present.  On-the-other-hand, some gifted students with ADHD can concentrate for long periods of time on activities “that are continuously reinforcing and automatic, such as video or computer games or reading for pleasure” which means that their ADHD is often overlooked (Kaufman, Kalbfleish, & Castellanos, 2000, p. 24).  As you can see, we need to be cautious before assuming a gifted or highly creative child has ADHD.

Based on research by Cramond (Baum and Owens' To Be Gifted and Learning Disabled, 1994, p. 62), it is recommended that an evaluator:

• Be open minded to the possibility that characteristics of ADHD have overlap with characteristics of creativity and giftedness
• Identify under what conditions the key behaviors are intensified or reduced
• Have an understanding of gifted characteristics (including creativity) as well as ADHD
• Conduct in-depth interviews with the student, parent and educators who know the student well
• Utilize ADHD rating scales as well as creativity checklists

Optional Resource:

As you know, we emphasis looking for strengths. For another person with ADHD talking about his experience, watch the first 9:40 seconds of this 13:36 minute video.  It offers a good insight into a possibly-gifted student with ADHD: