On ADHD

Although I have encountered ADHD many times inprofessional practive my most meaningful insights are from persponal experiences after having married into an ADHD family. My wife muti-tasks successfully much to my amazement. While driving her car she is also putting on chapstick, adjusting the radio, adjusting the air conditioning, reading the navigator, and talking on her cell phone. I, on the other hand, cannot engage in a converation while driving without on the Interstate without missing my exit. But ADHD allows more than multitaking. The perceptual difusion
chacteristic of those with ADHD contrasts with my own OCD need to focus. My son Michael is a wonderful example. When I remarried an ADHD stepson and stepdaughter, both of whom I learned to love dearly, were part of the marriage contract. Michael was in high school at the time. I love watching football with Mike because he, like a quarterback,he can see the whole field at once while I can focus onlu on one opr two players at a time. "Did you see the pattern the tight end ran?" he asks excitedly."No, I was watching he quarterback." Well Mike saw the quarterback as well but, like Mill Madden when he does his chalkboard analysis, Mike saw the entire field. This phenomenon leads me to believe that Michael's ADHD and my OCD are related. One is the opposite of the other. Whatever makes Michael excessively diffuse, renders me overly focussed.

After some rough beginnings Mike and I became good buddies. But it took a while as my OCD and his ADHD did battle. I wrote a poem about this experience. I called it "Entrope."

If entrope was meant to be
Then Michael's the epitome.
But if there's order in the Universe
Then Michael's life is the reverse.

When he does things that he's begun
(for all the training I have done)
He's never learned to do the "un."

His lights stay lit forevermore
He's never learned to lock the door.
His laundry strewn in one big heap
His carpet thirty inches deep.
The snacks he garners there to munch on
Lie gathering mold in Michael's dungeon.

Order, disorder, which is worse?
You'll find no answer in this verse.
If Michael's way is not perverse
There's chaos in the Universe.

But if Michael's way becomes the law
Throw symetry right out the door,
Disorder rules the Universe
So I will need to end this verse
Because it's getting verse and verse

If entrope was meant to be
Then Michael's the epitome.
So take the time to pity me
Crusading against entrope.