These are the same teachers who bring
the parents of any unruly child in for a conference and put pressure
on them to put their children on stimulant medications. It is
also true that many classrooms have more children than the teacher
can possibly handle, and that some of these children are frighteningly
violent and exhibit an antipathy to learning. However, other teachers
sincerely wish to create more relaxed learning environments in
which imagination and creativity are fostered. They, too, often
find a growing number of restless, disruptive children who find
it next to impossible to concentrate.
Try telling the parent of a child
with full-blown ADD, who has tried every possible learning style
including home schooling, that the diagnosis is all in the mind
of the child's teacher and that her child just needs a less structured
learning environment. That parent may look at you in disbelief,
insist that her child live with you for a week, and then see what
you think.
Gifted or Hyperactive?
One group of children that may be
included in the diagnostic category of ADD but which has very
specific needs is precocious children with ADD-like symptoms.
If you had an IQ of 150 and a photographic mind, how would you
feel about being in a regular fourth-grade classroom? You would
probably be bored to tears unless your teacher created special
activities and outlets for your unusual intellectual capabilities.
You might tap your pencil on your desk, design paper skyscrapers,
or invent a magical world of dinosaurs. Then when the teacher
called on you . and Hobbes.. . cops! Sounds a lot like Calvin
James Webb and Diane Latimer address
this dilemma: "In the classroom, a gifted child's perceived
inability to stay on task might be related to boredom, curriculum,
mismatched learning style, or other environmental factors. Gifted
children may spend from onefourth to one-half of their regular
classroom time waiting for others to catch up-even more if they
are in a heterogeneously grouped class."8 They point out
that because a gifted child may demonstrate ADD-like behaviors
in some settings and not others, one classroom teacher may diagnose
her with ADD while the other teachers do not. The authors recommend
individual evaluation followed by appropriate curricular and instructional
changes to account for advanced knowledge, diverse learning styles,
and various types of intelligence. Such individual evaluation
is exactly what homeopathy has to offer.
Like Parent, Like
Child
We have seen many children who are
the spitting image of their parents. They may share one or both
parents' behavioral and learning styles. We often hear that the
mother or father also had difficulty with reading or concentration,
but was never diagnosed as having ADD and somehow made it through
school. We have seen little boys with the same explosive tempers
and total lack of patience as their type A fathers. We have also
seen many a child whose restlessness and inability to concentrate
ran through all of the siblings in the family. You will see
this phenomenon reflected in some
of our case histories later in the book.