Attention Deficit Disaster? Part 2- The Edison Trait

Did you know that by age six Thomas Edison managed to burn down the family barn? During his early years, he suffered illness and hearing loss, but even so he was a talkative child who used to annoy adults with his constant questions. Despite his high I.Q., one teacher called him "addled," which meant "confused or stupid." He attended three different schools between the ages of seven to nine,  and none of his teachers had the patience to deal with his apparent inability to sit still, his lack of focus on the matter at hand, and his talkativeness. After his mother was told he was "unteachable" she decided to home school him. She let him learn freely and even set up experiments in the basement. Her husband thought he was dull but she believed he was special and continued teaching him. Throughout his teens he landed and lost many jobs, but he was inventing the whole time. As a railroad signalman he had to clock in every hour by telegraph. He invented a way to transmit his hourly signal automatically, and was fired when he got caught. The invention, however, eventually led him to develop the first automatic telegraph and the first stock ticker. He was a truly divergent thinker. Edison wasn't just an inventor; he was an entrepreneur, a shrewd businessman and a boss who easily motivated his employees. Additionally, he was a very hard worker. He said his success was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. By the end of his career, Edison had received 1,093 patents and was credited for inventing the electric light bulb, the central power generating station, the phonograph, the flexible celluloid film and movie projector, and alkaline storage battery, and the microphone. 

Thomas Edison also had ADHD and I wonder what would have happened to him if he'd lived today? What if instead of adjusting his education to his learning style, his mother had just popped some pills in his mouth and forced him to conform to what was acceptable? Would he have ever invented the light bulb? Would we have batteries? Really who can say, but it really makes me think that what we call a disorder really isn't.

Yeah, Edison was different but he needed to be. He needed a high level of creative thinking to invent these things that, at the time, were insane concepts. He didn't confine his mind to the norm and that's what made him great. He was allowed to be a raw, natural version of himself.

I'm definitely no Thomas Edison but I can identify with his story. As I've grown up, I've embraced the way my brain works. Yeah, I may never fit into the conventional world, but maybe I'm not meant to. There is a definite link between ADD/ADHD and creativity. People like Robert Frost, Da Vinci, Frank Lloyd Wright, Hemingway, and even Issac Newton all displayed symptoms. Many people with this "disorder" are seen as being dull but really they tend to be creative geniuses because their brains work in ways that others' don't. 

What's my point? My point is that maybe instead of jumping straight to behavior modification and pills, we consider that maybe it's not a real problem. Maybe, just maybe, that person's brain operates differently because it is supposed to. Instead of bending them to fit into the norm we bend our own thinking. 

If you're a parent to a child who is different in any way, you know that can be a challenge, because kids can't mask their symptoms like adults can.

I'll address the parenting stuff on the next piece :)