Thanks to my friends in the CHADD (Children and Adults with ADD) organization, I often point parents in the P2P training program to a nifty illustration. CHADD refers to this as the Iceberg because the point must be stressed: just as an iceberg has much mass beneath the surface, there is more to ADHD than what you will observe on the surface.
On one of our first dates with Husband, we attended a concert given by his piano teacher, a professor at Friends University, where we met. After the concert, she came to the lobby to greet attendees. Husband got caught up in the moment of excitement and pride and rushed to give her a huge hug and kiss on the cheek. “This is squirrely,” I thought as I stepped back in embarrassment. Years later, when she had become a personal friend, I asked if she remembered the incident. “Oh, yes,” she replied, “but I just figured that was part of who he was.”
Part of him was the inability to express emotion appropriately.
The same evening, the same date, he invited me up to the museum at Friends University for which he had the key. He was the museum assistant, and before you think he wanted to get me alone in the dark, forget it.
He was again caught up in emotion over our date and over Joyce’s concert, so he needed to boast a bit.
We climbed to the third or fourth story. Looking over at the city lights, Husband lit a cigarette and bragged about hanging out the same windows when he cleaned them. He even opened one of the tall, massive window panes, so we could smell the crisp winter air. At some point, he threw the cigarette butt with a flourish and watched it spiral to the ground.
He quickly grabbed my hand. “Oh, shit, I don’t think it was extinguished.” He literally pulled me down the stairs to search for it. We found it on the lawn below the windows quite extinguished from its free flight through the air.
Joyce was correct. Beneath the surface was a 20 year old functioning adolescent whose frontal lobe probably lit up like a Christmas Tree each time he made a decision. That was who he was.
Be assured we now know much about problems with Executive Functioning. Currently, many professionals, especially Barkley who is considered the number one expert on the topic, believe that ADHD is the Executive Function Disorder.
Briefly, Executive Function has to do with activity in the frontal lobe of the brain. Remember ADHD is considered a neurobiological disorder in which integrated operations are weak.
The brain frontal lobe is responsible for shifting the continuous process related to attention, and Dr. Thomas Brown points to at least six functions that are impaired in the person with ADHD and which profoundly impact daily (and here I suggest moment-by-moment) living.
According to Dr. Brown, we describe these function problems: Activation, or organizing, prioritizing, and getting to work; Focus, or sustaining and shifting attention; Effort, or regulation of effort and speed; Emotion, or managing frustration and the other emotions that go along with it; Memory, both working and long-term recall; and Action, or self-control and self-regulation.
It would have been most helpful to know about this in our early days of marriage. We might have avoided problems managing the finances, and getting chores and upkeep completed around the house. Our communication skills might have evolved in a different, more pleasant manner, and I certainly would have sought professional help much sooner.
This information would have helped me understand Husband’s actions the day he exploded in anger at our dog, hitting it in the head with a plastic bucket, then immediately scooping it up as he cuddled it, rocked back and forth and cried loudly. The dog survived, but I think it was as confused as I was at the seeming contradictions in behavior.
· Brown, T.E. (2008). Executive functions: Describing six executive aspects of a complex syndrome. Attention Magazine.
No comments:
Post a Comment