New ADHD Treatment: Discipline and Failure, a Piano Analogy

School is a major challenge for my son.  He's in high school now.  He forgets that he's supposed to see one of his teachers before school, loses papers, forgets to write down assignments, forgets to bring things home, and can't pay attention to one thing for more than 30 seconds unless he finds it interesting, in which case he can't pay attention to anything else.

We hear a lot of "At age x, he should be doing y without help."  "You should let him experience failure and consequences."

Basically, that we should discipline away his disability.  Or ignore it to death.

It's a problem faced by a lot of very smart kids with educational disabilities.  "If he can pay attention to that..." "Well, he remembers this easily enough..."  "How can he not remember he's supposed to do x?  It was clearly stated three times and he acknowledged he heard!"

Guess what.  It's part of the disability.  No amount of discipline or allowing natural consequences is going to help.  It really is necessary to remind a kid repeatedly until he remembers, just as if he was in elementary school.  Because in spite of the ability to recite every nation on the African continent or discuss meteorological concepts in detail, part of his brain IS still in elementary school.  And discipline and consequences will not suddenly take that part of the brain from elementary school to high school.

Here's an analogy.  Take two 15 year olds.  One has never played the piano.  The other has studied for years and reached a level of reasonable proficiency.  You want them both to learn a new Bach piece.

The piano student will barely be able to stumble through it.  You'll send him home to practice.  If he doesn't practice, he'll receive a poor grade.  He'll figure out he needs to practice, and maybe if some additional privileges are tied to learning the Bach piece he'll do it.

The non-piano student won't have a clue.  He doesn't know where middle C is, what a key is, or how to hold his hands.  He might listen to recordings of the piece and try to find the individual notes on the keyboard, but for someone who has never played the piano this is a daunting task.  He'll be quickly overwhelmed.  He'll make excuses in his lessons.  He'll give up practicing because it's way too hard and it isn't doing him any good anyway.  You'll say it's impossible to help him because he's uncooperative and refuses to allow you to help.  At age 15 he should be able to play Bach without having to be shown where middle C is and how to hold his hands and told what time and key signatures are or told the difference between eighth, quarter, half and whole notes.

For kids with certain types of neurological disabilities, school is like being expected to pick up a musical instrument and learn an advanced piece without ever having been taught the basics.  Their brains aren't equipped to learn these things at the same age or with the same ease as their peers.  In our schools if a kid doesn't pick these things up early, we stop teaching him, and say at age x he should be able to do y.  And if he can't, he should be disciplined.  Because you know, anyone can play Bach on the piano if they're old enough.

The Knee-Jerk "What"

This is a conversation that took place between my eldest son, my husband, and myself tonight.

Husband: says something to son

Son: "What?"

Husband: "You don't hear well!"

Me: (to husband) "You do the same thing to me all the time."

Husband: "What?"

The ADHD people in my family appear to have a bit of extra memory cache attached to their ears.  When somebody says something to them, it goes in that cache.  Sometimes all that gets to the central processing unit of their brains is the fact that somebody addressed them.  So the brain tells the mouth to say "What?" and it does.  I call this the Knee-Jerk What.

This is extremely frustrating, especially when I have a cold and don't feel like repeating myself with a sore throat.  But I discovered something.  Most of the time I can get them to access that cache without having to repeat myself.  Sometimes all it takes is a look.  Sometimes a short reminder to play back the cache.  So, many of my conversations with my husband go like this;

Me: "We need to add oranges to the grocery list."

Husband: "What?"

Me: "You heard me." (see, I just saved myself six words)

Husband: knits brows for a minute, then says "Oh, OK.  Let me get the grocery list."

What's really amazing is just how long what I said can stay stuck in that cache, especially when there is an electronic screen of any sort involved.  I have sometimes waited the better part of a minute before waving my hand in front of my husband's face, only to have him blink and make a perfectly appropriate answer to whatever I said what seems like five minutes ago.  Honestly I would have forgotten.

I do need to find something a little more polite than "you heard me".  Maybe "replay"?  Or "cache"?  I really like the idea of getting it down to one word.

I sure would like to hear the neurological explanation for this.