From what I can remember, I have always struggled to cope with my ADHD and as a result it has proven to be a burden in my life. When I first came to my new high school in the tenth grade, I found myself struggling to control my behavior and manage my ADHD, which throughout my life has even given me several close calls with law enforcement. At the time, I wanted to go to the U.S. Military Academy (U.S.M.A.), so I decided to physically condition myself and keep my mind occupied in order to stay out of trouble. To achieve these goals, I decided to run cross country. I joined my school’s cross country team in the summer. At the beginning we performed pre-season workouts. The training was tough, but my proud personality and the very thought of what I had to gain kept me motivated and helped me push through the pain. Every time I felt like giving up or quitting, I would say to myself, “This pain is only temporary; remember that the reward will be permanent, and it will be worth the pain that I endure today.” I was able to push through the …show more content…
Cross Country would leave me tired and low on energy at the end of each day, wearing me out and leaving me in a non-hyperactive state of mind. The season eventually came to an end, but I still continued to run during the off-season, although not as often as I did during the official season. Eventually this lack of constant training took a toll on my conditioning and with the cold weather rolling in, I finally stopped running altogether. As a result, my health worsened; my cholesterol level rose and I suddenly found myself struggling to maintain control of my ADHD again. The spring came, and I found myself running again, hoping to finally make varsity in the fall. I tried to train as hard as I could, but I simply couldn’t make any progress in that short amount of
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Show MoreHe required 100% of my time. Doctors were on a behavioral watch. For your dismay my son flanked preschool! Not for academics but for not following instructions, teachers talked to me about his activity level, he was happy and loving but extremely curious. Many ER trips, he could blind my eyes to get into things and his safety was compromised. I was exhausted, he was adorable, but run with unstoppable motor.. In kindergarten, he got officially diagnosed. That was the Aha moment … a generational trait of ADHD has been passed on 3 generations that we know. My father was hyperactive and very curious and impulsive. My brothers and sister, their own children too nevertheless my father’s extended relatives had the same ADHD traits too. My little princess came along and yes, she got it too! She was diagnosed at age four. As a mom, I was motivated to help my children to learn strategies to manage their ADHD. Counseling, tutoring, learning clinics, social
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, generally known as ADHD can be described as having a nonstop conversation with yourself. Constant racing thoughts, changing from one thing to another, not needing coffee because you already have a buzzed. Instead of walking, you are running. Standing in line for one minute feels like five hours. Always on the go and never looking back because, it would cause you to slow down. Imagine that always happening and not being able to control any of it. Unfortunately, this effects two to eight percent of college students dealing with ADHD and it is the most common learning disability that receives accommodations at higher levels of education (Musso and Grouvier 186). The stigma about ADHD is that it can only affect the individual at school. It actually is incorporated into every aspect of their life, making everything just a little bit harder. Each student enrolled in college with ADHD is taking on a huge responsibility and society needs to recognize the battles endured by these students everyday. One alternative that tends to help for decreasing the symptoms is medication, but that has its flaws like any other treatment option. Typical life characteristics for these students are to have minimal friendships, engage in risky behavior, make impulsive choices, and battle with another psychological disorder. The most common diagnosis paired with ADHD is depression, but more research needs to be done to confirm the correlation. As a society, it is important to keep an open mind and acknowledge that this is a disorder. These individuals cannot control the glitch in their brain, but they can only learn to live with it.
Have you ever had a day when you feel like you were wired backwards? Do you ever feel like you are charged with so much energy that you will go mad if you don’t get it out? Do you find yourself reading a question and then rereading just to soak it in? For someone living with ADHD these are daily struggles. There are thousands of people who must carry this label and new diagnoses every day. Both children and adults are stricken by this disorder. Giving them the label causes greater problems than the disorder itself. Individuals with the label of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder experience increased peer related issues, have a higher documented rate of injuries inflicted, and are known as defiant and disobedient due to the implied symptoms of this disorder.
Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder, otherwise known as ADHD, is the most common psychiatric condition effecting 9.5% of school-aged children in the United States (intuniv, 2013). If the disorder goes untreated, it will cause more long-term side effects and difficulties for the individual as an adult. Adults who have this condition face several adversities in every day life, such as impulsive behavior, low self-esteem and poor work performance. People are not aware of the complications that come with ADHD in adults. Not knowing the symptoms of the disease can cause people to not be sympathetic when they are interacting with someone with disorder.
My father, like many Asian immigrants, left India to pursue his educational goals in America in order to provide a better life for his family. He arrived in the U.S. with fourteen dollars in his coat pocket, a suitcase in his hands, and a will to succeed. For my father, in a place like America where opportunities were plentiful and where hard work actually paid off there was no excuse not to succeed. The practical translation of this belief meant that if his children worked hard in school there was nothing they too could not achieve. As such, in my father's household, not doing well in school was not an option.
ADHD is broken into three subtypes. The first is those who are impulsive and hyperactive. The second type is made up from those who are inattentive only. The third group is those who display all of these symptoms combined. In the United States, 3-5% of children show signs of this disorder. It has also been shown that the disorder is more dominant in boys. Many children with ADHD do not outgrow this disorder and carry it on into their adult lives. Various studies have shown that two-thirds of children with ADHD still have the disorder in their 20’s making it is a problem which affects children and adults alike.
Frank Coppola once said “ I prefer to distinguish ADHD as an attention abundance disorder. Everything is just so interesting...remarkably at the same time” and this is completely true. Having ADHD is rough, especially as a younger kid. A barrier that I faced was trying to get through having ADHD; commitment and determination guided my path and I was able to preserve just like Jackie Robinson.
Joining the High School Cross Country team was a huge risk for me because I am quite shy and didn’t have friends on the team. I was the fastest girl on the team, but very slow in comparison to other schools. I was disappointed, and although I gave it a good effort, I knew that I could try much harder. I didn’t quit that year or the next because I knew that people expected me to keep running and I hate giving up, but there were many times when I wanted to quit. However, I decided that if I was going to keep running, I might as well give it more than just a good effort, I would give it my best effort and see if I could shave five minutes off of my 5k time. I started to work much harder and learned to persevere when it was hard and I wanted to
Physical activity has been linked to lower obesity, longer life, lower risk of heart disease, lower cholesterol, and reduced risk of stroke. More importantly for ADHD patients, exercise and physical activity has been proven to cause the brain to release more dopamine. As stated above, increased dopamine is effective in treating ADHD. Aside from the increase in dopamine production, certain exercises require the whole brain to be focused on multiple issues. These activities include running, biking, and other aerobic movements. (Stewart 1). There are many professional athletes with ADHD. Many of these athletes began their training to help manage the condition, such as olympic athletes Michael Phelps and Justin Gatlin. It is estimated that 10% of athletes have ADHD/ADD, double the amount that the general population has. Sports can turn ADHD from a hindrance to an advantage. Mike Stabeno, author of The AD/HD Affected Athlete, says that “While some activities require intense concentration, that’s not the case with athletics. Everything happens instantaneously. You’re in there for 10 minutes, you’ve got five people trying to take your head off, three referees, four teammates. You need to take everything that’s going on all at once. That’s how people with ADD go through life. So it makes sense that they thrive on the field”. (Dutton 1). Sports also give the bodies of ADHD affected persons a
In 5th grade I was diagnosed with with ADHD and auditory processing. For years I struggled in school. My parents tried everything to fix this problem, from tutors to bribing me to do my homework. In 6th grade it became a lot more difficult, and teachers seemed to have just given up on me. I had to get three tutors, five days a week just to keep up. One day my dad came home from work and started talking about a school he heard about, that school was Shelton. Shelton specializes in teaching kids with learning disabilities how to control there ADHD, while also encourage it. I enrolled in 7th grade. Immediately I was welcomed and teachers were eager to help me. I went from having C's and D's to straight A's because I didnt want to let them down.
In conclusion, having ADHD makes me feel so different. I feel like my body is not my own. My parents would tell me one thing, and not even a minute or two later I would completely forget what they just said or only remember part of it. ADHD has forever been a challenge for me from having trouble focusing, to having a bad memory. I know as long as I keep taking my medicine that has started to help out more than in the past. I will be able to work through any challenges that ADHD throw my
Growing up I always knew that there was always something I had that made me different than to those in my grade. Different in other aspects, such as the way I think and the way I am in school, in terms of attentiveness and learning. It increasingly got difficult as the years went on, this was not just increasing laziness as my family and I had presumed it to be, as even when I had attempted to try and improve my grades in school, with all the extra help and all the studying that I could do it just was not enough. It was something wrong with me, I could not concentrate and keep things in my mind, I had always been very good with memorizing things, I always had an extraordinary memory, and then it happened, a day that changed my life forever,
IF you happen to glance at my application, you can see that I am your average high school student, achieving exemplary grades, participating in clubs, top ten percentile of my class and all of those inspiring attributes/achievements. However, if you scan the inside of my medicine cabinet, you’ll find miscellaneous orange bottles with prescriptions written to me, Erin Michelle Garcia. Adderall, Dexedrine, Ritalin, Concerta. People who see kids with ADHD assume it is a phase of their youth. They assume that these kids are just troubled children, that they’ll grow out of it eventually. For me, ADHD is not just a phase, or a temper tantrum, or hormones, it is a burden that I will live with for the rest of my life.
Living with ADHD is difficult but there are a few things you can do to make your life easier. The first thing you should do if you have ADHD is make a schedule. Make this schedule your daily routine and keep it consistent from when you wake up till you go to bed. Keep the schedule
The summer after sophomore and junior year, I worked at Aim High teaching math, but I feel like I did so much more. I worked one-on-one with a student named Deshawn who has ADHD and has difficulty focusing in class. What I learned through working with him is he wanted someone to care and pay attention to him. I developed a behavior plan for him where he would get prizes and we worked away from the larger class. Deshawn is one of the most intelligent kids I have ever met. Through working with him I know I want to fight for kids who need more attention and are struggling to find that in public education school systems. I remember on one of the last days of program he said to me, "You are like a sister to me because you always help me " and I