It’s real


Walsh is an idiot saying idiotic things to get attention

Check out Donald Hoffman.  He spent his academic career I think at Cal Irvine studying brains and neural networks as related to detection of color and motion.  He tried for years to make the brain/mind/sensory experience, and never could.  No one has ever been able to.  We've been beating our heads against the wall of materialist science and haven't made any headway into this dilemma.

I think it is real, but it is fixed by correcting the behavior, not by taking drugs that change your way of thinking.

So you unequivocally are stating that you understand the relationship between mind and brain/body based on MRI results?  If so you and your source are due a Nobel Prize.  Do tell.

Edit lol you said "which part of your brain does what."

Thanks for sharing, I appreciate it. Yes he does take things very personally and is emotional. He is an extremely sweet kid with a huge heart.

Yes, I raised two. One of them has two more. It is real and never goes away. If not taught good coping habits, they will come up with their own. If taught phonics and cursive they can be very effective learners with above average vocabularies. They will be able to read out loud and you can't tell. Otherwise their reading skills will be a crapshoot and choppy. For about 70%, math is their best skill. They seem to thrive best with homeschooling or one on one instruction. Once they get the basic phonic sounds and blend decoding down they really take off. If you aren't a stickler of task completion and focus they can drive you up a wall. I had one tracher break down in tears and quit. She had two in her class and they were driving her nuts. One of them was he son. lol The next tracher had the patience of Job and both students thrived with her. The class size was 6-8 students so she could really be on top of them.

exactky how i am...be careful with girls hurting him, my wife really hurt me and after 3 years i still cant help but be hurt
he will also "generally"  be very forgiving and really care how others feel about him ( thats the hardest thing for me, the inability to give 0 F's about that )

ADHD is real, I have it. I don't consider it a disorder; my mind is simply wired differently. Find something that intrigues me, I can't learn enough about the subject and will retain 90% of what I read for decades (I'm early 30's), but if it doesn't interest me, not a chance I will even bother. I do find I think differently than my peers. I think in terms of: Problem/Solution/Ways solution can be a problem/modified solution/ways it can be a problem/final solution. It can be annoying, but it happens so fast it doesn't bother me anymore. In my career it has been good for me as chaos is where I thrive and CANNOT stand slow talkers, thinkers or drivers. However, there are times when my mind is moving faster than my words can come out and they come out mumbled or jumbled because I am thinking 5 different things simultaneously. That leads to some frustration when I just want to get the words out or I have a conversation about something that has no relevance to what is at hand.

I am on Adderall but find the big benefits in exercise and diet. If I take my meds, go to the gym 4 times a week and eat consistently clean (chicken, rice, fish, turkey, spinach, sweet potatoes etc.) and avoid processed sugars then I am basically superhuman on any subject that interests me. I rebuilt the transfer case in my Tacoma last year without a manual, just watched 2 videos and read a few articles and it just happened. I taught myself how to vinyl wrap too.

It is 1000% over diagnosed and get used as a catch all for anybody with a non-run of the mill anxiety/input/output outlook. I always tried to manage it myself and since being on the meds (5mg daily), it has been great. My mind doesn't jump tracks and bounce around, my executive functioning is organized, my laundry is done, I am not forgetful all the time. I am better parent, friend, boyfriend, employee and boss due to having a solid train of thought and not several running together, at once, all day long and for me, the tradeoff is worth it. Long term I do worry about the lasting side effects, but I have lost several friends this year and have come to realize that I don't know my time to go is, so I will enjoy the time I have now. I do believe that is hereditary and my mother had it looking back at the evidence now but was never formally diagnosed. My doctor is amazing and actually took time to do questionnaires, tests, had me fill out food logs, etc. The piss test every 90 days is kind of a PITA, but it gives us a chance to review each 90 days.

Side note, I can drink an espresso at 8:30pm and be asleep by 9pm with zero problems, caffeine just doesn't bother me.

This is a fascinating response.

You are looking at my kids' mental health and behavior from the perspective of what makes your job as their teacher easier.

Obviously drugging then makes your job easier.

Temperament would be like i have one son that is super compliant and chill. My other son is quick to anger and not at all compliant, but has t to do things his own way.

So to me it seems like there might be people that can more easily focus than others or are calmer than others, especially as kids. That doesn't mean they have a clinical condition that needs to be treated.

This is literally me... I learned everything the hard way and once my mind was made up, you were not getting through to me because come hell or high water it was getting done. Absolutely resourceful and able to seemingly pull things out of thin air when needed. I have helped friends get a new set of tires at midnight, driven my truck on 3 wheels because the UCA broke on a trail, used a water bottle full of gas to get home when the tank on my bike rotted through an hour away from home, etc etc.

kinda makes you feel good that you can do stuff. My dad had it, man was a tool and dies maker in defense and aerospace  ( picatinny arsenal)  the stuff he could make was unbelievable ( this was way before cnc)  all freehand on a table or lathe.   I got a luger and he looked at it and said...i can make that, looked it over and said it would take him 3 weeks, like 120 individual cuts. then he showed me . it still bogles my mind to think about thats, Find an engineer with adhd and he can do anything...i am convinced  that it is truly a gift from god if you can manage it  

I worked with Dyslexic kids for 25 years. In my experience, it is overdiagnosed. It is very common for very young boys to reverse some letters and numbers. Most outgrow it quickly.  Dyslexic kids do not outgrow it.Teaching printing first just creates a lot of unnecessary frustration. Teaching cursive first prevents most of that. With patience, they will teach themselves to print.

In rural madagascar, my 6 year old son is in a school where they have 3 grades in one classroom (maybe 20 kids total) and the one teacher takes turns giving instruction and attention to one "grade" at a time and then gives them something to work on while she teaches the other "grade".

His teacher complains that he is never focused and distracts the other kids and is always up and moving around the room and playing and chatting with kids and never finishes his assignments. They said he's a bad student and negative influence on the classroom.

My wife and i discussed ADHD and i expressed my belief that he's just a smart kid and it's a hard place for him to focus.

We are very disciplinary at home and he gets away with nothing. No phone. No tablet except on road trips or flights. Limited screen time. Chores, playing outside, karate, swimming lessons, etc.

Then he went to Morocco for 9 months and attended the local elementary school where they have multiple teachers for a class and interactive lessons and challenging lesson plans for the age group... And the teachers were amazed at how focused and studious and smart our son is. They said he's the most advanced in the class and helps other kids.

He's 6, has lived in multiple countries, speaks English, French, and Arabic like a native, and has an impressive social and emotional aptitude.

In Morocco, where the teachers are heavily involved, they have a challenging curriculum, and they value individuality, and they have a good kid to teacher ratio to maximize the attention and interaction the teachers can have with each student - the same kid with the same hyperactivity and temperament is viewed as a good student. In Madagascar, it's the opposite.

Is the kid the problem?

In the US, teachers would be calling for him to be medicated.

Is it because he has a medical condition?

Or is it because the teachers don't have the time, resources, or patience to handle kids that get bored with what they are teaching to the lowest common denominator?

double post on my end.

That is badass!

IF you can manage it, it is a gift! Otherwise, it is a double edge sword because once that dopamine hits you crave it all the time and will buy things to "fix them" and then resell them for no profit or have 5 project cars torn about with the knowledge of where EACH AND EVERY bolt goes. I have finally gotten mine mostly managed and it truly has been a game changer for me. My biggest thing was impulse control. If I shot a new gun and liked it, gotta have it, saw wheels I liked, gotta have them, tires made a funny sound on the trail, time for new ones, light burned out, time to go LED in the entire house, car needs an oil change, time to rotate tires, change diff/TC fluid and inspect tires, brakes, hoses, belts, etc. The fear of stuff not being "complete" was overwhelming at times.

I'm pretty sure it is real.

I taught physics and chemistry for 18 years and saw a lot of kids with various problems.  ADHD seemed like a real thing.
A big problem with schooling is that some are good at it and some are just not.  Good at school or not, is different from smart or not.  

Those who are not very good at being conventional students may be good at other things.  Or, they might not be good at anything.

A kid who is not good at being a student, but is forced to be in school, is sort of a triangular peg being hammered into a round hole.  That's not good for the kid, not good for the other students around him and not good for the school and the teachers who have that kid.   It's a parents nightmare but the kid is living a nightmare too.

Who wants to be forced to play a high stakes game that he can't possibly win?  Forced to play K through 12, or even on through college or university.  

I've used he, but this applies to a lot of shes too.

Some things are very difficult for those whose own mind interrupts them with lots of distractors.   On the other hand, civilization needs a percentage of people who just have to know what's over the next hill.  

High stakes testing and teaching to it, cause extremely important other things to not be taught at all.  That tragically limits the knowledge base of the population.  This is especially bad for ADHD people, or all who are different.  

Again you response makes zero sense and proves that all you are doing is trolling.

You are comparing apples to oranges, you would understand that if you had ANY knowledge of the I am trying to discuss.

A few things to ponder for ya… look at his educational background.  Also,  A PhD isn’t the same as an MD.  However if you look at his body of work you’re going to see “Hoffman studies consciousness, visual perception and evolutionary psychology using mathematical models and psychophysical experiments”. The only similarity to his focus and what I’m talking about is the both might have the word neurons in it.


It’s pretty obvious you have a belief your set on it.  Everything else is just arguing your moronic points.

I offered up a resource and all you want to do is question it.

If you want answers to your questions read the book I mentioned, or don’t I couldn’t care less.

But for your own good you should know, debating things you have no real knowledge about to seem smart,  makes ya look dumb.  You would understand that if you were 1/2 as smart as your trying to seem.

Good luck with that!

It's not just the inability to focus that is the main symptom with adhd. It's also the lack of impulse control.

Only around 3% of the population has adhd but surprisely around 25% of prison inmates have it.

Oh My  I can hear you mouth breath as you type from here.

You should go back and read what I actually said and maybe you will understand how silly your response is.  But I doubt you have the intelligence to think through it

Cool man you win your genius!


I’m out!

In the past century or two, the world has changed must faster than our biology can adapt. It doesn't seem good to try to fix that pharmaceutically but I've also seen people with ADHD whose lives were changed wildly for the better when they started doing something about it.

 

You may lack discipline and wish to excuse it away with some non-existent disorder.  Maybe your parents failed you by not providing enough discipline.  Maybe you didn't get enough exercise.

Or, maybe you experienced symptoms caused by something actually real and not some made up condition.  Examples would be something like a seizure disorder (I've seen that one before but the child's doctor wanted to prescribe seizure medication AND adhd medication, despite symptoms disappearing after seizures were properly treated with medication), anxiety, fatigue, hunger, and so on.  

I remember I went to a professional conference and one of the speakers was an ADD/ADHD pill-pushing propagandists.   He said, "You know, it may seem counterintuitive and make no sense at all, but it seems martial arts like karate have a beneficial effect with children with ADHD."

Wow, you don't say!

Bingo.  Lack of impulse control and emotional dysregulation.

I've got it, one of my daughters has a severe case of it, and her twin sister has a mild case of it.  They're both 8.

My daughter with the severe case has basically zero impulse control.  None.  If she isn't on her meds (or if they've worn off), and an idea pops into her head, she's doing it.  There's nothing saying "Hey maybe this isn't a good idea...".  When she's on her meds, she's an entirely different person.  The difference is *astounding*.  She's a really smart kid and I love her to death, but her lack of impulse control, and her issues with emotional dysregulation, genuinely worries me for her future.  I have 3 daughters and I'd say that at least 70% of my parenting effort goes towards the daughter with severe ADHD.  Then maybe 20% towards her twin with the mild case of ADHD, and 10% to their older sister, who is 10.  It's that much of a difference.  In fact, it has been obvious to me that she was likely ADHD since the time since was a young toddler.  As someone with ADHD I was pretty attuned to the symptoms and she had them early.  My wife at the time (now ex-wife) didn't believe me until our daughter's kindergarten teacher mentioned possibly getting her tested for it.  Yeah, lots of young kids don't have much impulse control, but hers is just...on another level entirely.

A lot of these "ADHD doesn't exist!" comments are clearly from people who have never met someone with a bad case of of it.  They're basically saying "I've never seen it, so it doesn't exist!"

It doesn't make sense to say that spending too much time with your face buried in your phone will give you a condition that's not real and so you need to spend more time outside to keep from getting something that doesn't exist.

No, you're right.  Renee Decartes, he was a dumbass.

I was diagnosed with it, got something "against" it and it felt like a placebo to me so I refused to take it and I have lived with it just fine.

You should add some meat to that kid's diet.  There are universities like UT Austin who will allow remote enrollment for kids that age.  He could knock out the Calculus 1-3 + Differential Equations before HS graduation, and transfer into a degree program.  If you work with the school they may excuse him from the normal math.  Its a huge advantage later if he is pursuing a STEM path.  One of my sons did this.  

Another son was less interested in this sort of thing, but still at risk in the classroom setting.  He spent 1/2 day in HS in the Autotech program, which is where they normally put 2 digit IQs destined to change oil for life.  He did very well in this mode, and the academic side improved as well.  The instructors were no BS men used to dealing with boys.  The first day they told them being on-time, a belt and clean tucked in shirt was mandatory, with no exception.  My son got his ASME master tech certs before finishing HS, and is a wizard with anything with oil and gears.  He enlisted in a very technical MOS and used his GI bill after to finish college.  Both did STEM degrees in 3 years and took good paying jobs after.

I don't believe in the concept of ADHD as it is used as a catch all by low energy, over estrogenated school administrators who are looking for a convenient parking spot for a boy for 8 hours a day.  It probably covers Dyslexia, Asperger, mild Autism, gifted kids in very barren settings, and a small percentage of kids who have actual metabolism issues needing treatment.

If you learn the schools IEP policies you can use that as a shield to protect your kid from abuses of the system.  Like on multiple occasions they tried to send home an inch thick folder of school work and tell us the kid needs to do this over a winter/spring break. (There's a kid with a spark of spirit left that needs to be crushed, right?)   That when the IEP shield comes slamming into the face.  We would schedule a meeting with the teacher and ask why they aren't doing their job in the classroom and why they want to dump this on the parents.  When school breaks came my kids desperately needed a break. I added breaks as I saw fit.  "Hey kid want to skip school and go on a hike?"  Funny thing they never skipped a day on their own.

ADHD
ADD
Fibromyalgia

All fake.  All lies.

I periodically post the following proposed criteria for adult ADHD.  These are from Driven to Distraction, first published in 1994.  

I was having a conversation with a licensed psychologist and I jokingly stated that my friends tell me I have ADHD.  He paused for a second, cleared his throat and then said "....um Corwin, you really might have ADHD".  I denied the possibility and stated that I'm just lazy (which I had heard my entire life....so I believed it).  He responded that many people with ADHD think they are just lazy, without realizing it's ADHD.  He then recommended Driven to Distraction, which I immediately purchased and read.  The proposed symptom list for adults with ADHD was one of the biggest "HOLY SHIT!!" moments of my life (the other being discovering personality theory and where I fit on that spectrum). That conversation happened in 1997 and today, in 2023, I still struggle with all 20 areas listed below.  Some significantly more than others, but it's all still there and it's still a daily struggle to deal with it.

The problem with mental health diagnoses is that many or even most of the symptoms apply to almost everyone, to some degree, which is the catch.  To be diagnosable, the symptoms criteria not only have to be met, but they have to reach a certain level of severity and there has to be a significant negative impact on the person's life. This leads lay people to read a list of symptoms and state "everyone has that", when it's not that simple.

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My wife believes it's real. I was diagnosed with ADHD at 50. She says she can tell when I'm on it and when I'm off. I can't tell much of a difference, surely don't feel like "I have to get it on" when I take my meds. Maybe less irritable and more willing to get stuff done, but not like a fiend or anything.
I take 30 mg of whatever it is called when I take it.

Very cool!  For or against?

its stood up well in my opinion. i learned alot from it, luckily i had the audio tapes ( again i have said i have never read a complete book in my life, although i have rad a good bit of these )
It helped me understand a few things about why i react the way i do, how to focus. the one thing i failed to mention in my other posts is Hyper focus, this is why ADHD is a gift. I  have the ability to hyper focus my entire brain on one task....almost a manic ability. its how i did all my college papers and to an extent my hobbies. i find i get lost in that and disregard everything else sometimes   ( lol its not helpful to your marriage)

Real but over diagnosed as said by others.

Declared fake by GD experts with 2 youtube videos worth of research I'm sure.

I was diagnosed with it as a kid in the early '80s.

But looking back on it as an adult with kids I'm pretty sure it was just an excuse for my working mom to somehow blame me for her disinterest in actually parenting and dealing with kid things that distracted her from her true love: teaching.

"If you medicate him, then he won't bother me for attention when I'm grading." basically.

It's amazing how well kids managed to do 40-years ago without the drugs.

It is. I have it and struggled with it my whole life. I took meds on my 20-30s, but don't anymore. The meds help a lot. It is real, but highly over diagnosed because of shitty parents that want an easy way out. My son had it severely. We tried everything before going to meds for him. I feel horrible, but his performance at school is drastically different with and without meds. We don't give him meds on the weekends or non-school days.

The meds help support the neuropathway when combined with behavior.

What was the question again?

Thanks for this. He is in his freshman year so we are not to familiar with all the opportunities and IEP. Will definitely check into all this. His chief complaint about HS is that he is bored and there is zero challenge.

I was diagnosed with it in the third grade in 1993.  They immediately ejected me from my normal class of 20 ish kids down to a “special needs” class of 7 or so.  Put me on Ritalin and gave me an IEP.  

None of that crap helped.  I learned what I was interested in and if I wasn’t interested in it I didn’t give a fiddler’s fuck.  I did horrible in school.  

Once I got into adulthood, it got a lot better.  I think it was mostly a maturity thing.  I still have a “I learn what I want and fuck the rest” mentality thing to an extent but it works for me.  

I had a career in fire/rescue and I can say for certainty 99% of those people have ADD/ADHD to an extent and I’d go so far to say it’s almost a necessity to have it in that line of work.

I started to reply to thirst bread last night but got distracted and forgot. What was the question again?

I was diagnosed with ADHD and riddilin “helped.”

I took it for a couple weeks and then said screw this.  My take is that it’s not my job to cater to what other people think I should be.  If you don’t like how I complete tasks, then we don’t have to be friends.  I do things and live how I want.

My wife says all the time we could never own a business together or she could never supervise someone like me.  I get stuff done and have no problem handling deadlines, but I move between projects frequently.

I hate the term normal.  Like anyone is “normal.”  Normal people are boring asf.

Psychiatrists are medical doctors and board certified.  They can prescribe drugs.

as someone who was diagnosed with ADD (before they added the H) in the late 80's, before anybody even really knew anything about it - I would say it is real and also over-diagnosed these days.

It's real, my best friend of about 40 years had/has it. Witnessing and dealing with the real thing for so many years and then watching kids now get diagnosed drives me nuts.

He pretty much grew out of it, he hated the riddelin(sp) and self medicated with pot and that actually worked. He would get stoned and seem normal.

Without it I would have to yell his name repeatedly while standing next to him to get his attention... then all of a sudden he would yell back, "What?!"

It's real, a lot of lazy parents will drug their kids for being kids. A lot of docs will drug your kids.  My coworker son was two and doc wanted to drug him.....

I have it and it's a fight constantly.    Like with everything else some e choose to exploit or take advantage.  Many adults not diagnosed. Did not realize I had it till recently.