The approach to ADHD that we have described can be applied to adults as well, from teenagers to adults of any age. Adults can be in a better position to help themselves because they can assess their strengths and weaknesses more easily than children can. Just as parents and therapists profile a child's strengths and weaknesses - basic motor functioning, sensory processing, levels of thinking, visual-spatial thinking, auditory processing, and sequencing - so can adults monitor these areas for themselves. For example, a forty-two year old can take stock of himself and say, "I've always been inattentive and fidget a lot. I don't follow through on my projects as well as I would like to, and I'm always getting distracted. I never figured out why, but maybe I have ADHD."
Adults who find that this may be their problem often consider whether they should ask for medication. One man who consulted me said that when he was a child his parents tried Ritalin with him, but he became irritable and was reluctant to try it again. He had been told there are other medications available now, but he was reluctant to try them because he tended to be very sensitive to medications and their side effects. This almost middle-aged individual wanted to know if there was a program that would heap him learn to focus and pay attention without medication. He was able to follow the guidelines that we have been talking about and take stock of his own abilities. He was then able to institute his own program, similar to the one recommended for children with attention problems. IEP For ADHD
One difference between adults and children in applying our program is the need to make the activities interesting for the adult. Whether you are doing a balance activity - standing on one leg and throwing and catching a ball, doing an activity for motor coordination in which you are trying to use the left and right parts of the body together, or doing a sequencing activity in which you have to follow five or six complex steps in a row - try to make it interesting, taking into account your age, your abilities, and what your general interests are. For example, an adult who loves dancing might want to use dance for some of the activities. An adult who loves sports might use different kinds of sports practice and explore what sport will help with balance, what sport will sharpen visual skills, and so forth.
A Young Adult with ADHD
A very interesting case for which I consulted might bring this adult experience alive. A young woman I'll call Susanna who was twenty-eight years old came to see me. I had helped her younger brother with "ADHD" years earlier before I had formalized the program that I've been describing. She was impressed with how well her brother was doing. Susanna felt she might also have ADHD because, as she described it, "I'm very distracted by almost anything that goes on - it keeps me from focusing, and now it is beginning to interfere with work."
She had managed to finish college and had a job on Capitol Hill working in a senator's office. Susanna was a very creative person and a good writer, but was being criticized increasingly for not following through, not finishing tasks, or going from one thing to another. In discussing her problem with friends, she was told that she may have ADHD and ought to consider taking medication. Like the man I mentioned earlier, she became very concerned because her brother had reacted poorly to medication.
One time, Susanna confessed to me that she took one of his pills to see what it would do, and she felt kind of irritable and hyper and understood why he didn't react to it well. She wanted to know if a program could be developed for her similar to the one that worked for her younger brother. She needed to learn to stay on task and follow through. Susanna knew what her strengths were; her analytical abilities and writing skills were excellent. As part of her role in the senator's office she wrote speeches and helped articulate policy positions on domestic and international issues.
What could we do for Susanna? As we reviewed her functioning, she identified a number of areas where she felt strong. It was evident that Susanna was gifted verbally and had a large vocabulary. She shared some poems and short stories she had written. Interestingly, both her poems and her short stories had a scattered quality to them - they went off in all directions. Although she said that was all part of the creative intent, I think she was also justifying a natural tendency to be distracted and unfocused.
Susanna also revealed that she has always been "clumsy." She had had a hard time learning how to ride a bicycle and didn't ride a two-wheeler until she was ten years old because balance was always hard for her. Learning sports was very difficult for her, as was learning to dance. She also didn't like high places, didn't like roller coasters or similar rides, tended to get overloaded easily at parties and noisy environments, and was easily distracted by any sort of sound. Susanna could be working and hear a whisper from across the room and would stop what she was doing and eavesdrop a little bit to see what was being talked about. A bright light coming through the window would easily distract her. At a light touch on her shoulder, she would startle. Susanna was dearly hypersensitive to all kinds of sensations. IEP For ADHD
Susanna had had a hard time with math and difficulty understanding how things operated in space. For example, when asked to describe her house from different angles she found it hard to do. I gave her a little task with blocks, constructing a design that was the mirror image of one that she was shown. This stymied her. When she read something and I asked her if she could picture the things she read, that was a very hard thing for her to do, as were a number of other visual-spatial tasks.
At the same time, Susanna was a creative and logical thinker and adept at the higher levels of thinking, like "comparative thinking" (comparing two government policies, for example) and gray-area thinking (able to tell you how much better one was than the other), and was clearly able to be reflective about her own weaknesses and strengths. However, when it came to applying these same levels of thinking to the things she saw, Susanna wasn't able to do complex visual-spatial thinking. For example, when she looked at different designs and was asked to describe how they were similar or different and explain why, Susanna just gave up. She said her thoughts just ran all over the place. So she became fragmented and couldn't be logical. Susanna couldn't connect her verbal abilities with making sense out of the world that she saw. To find out more, you can check out IEP For ADHD.
