A Different Perspective on Hyperactivity by Judy Lyden

Last Saturday I went to the movies with my beautiful daughter, Molly, and her lovely children, Jack, ten, William, seven, and Robby who is three. We saw the movie, "How to Train Your Dragon." I was touched by the movie and charmed by it as well. As my daughter said, "That movie had morals the children can identify with. It had a happy ending, and everyone learned a lot."

I was touched by one fact especially. It was the tenacity to know when you are right, even if it goes up against what the whole world is saying. If you KNOW you are right, you should never cower to the idiots!

Years ago I stumbled on the word hyperactive. I was quick to be interested in this word because it seemed to describe me, my children, and my weltanschauung - or world view. It fit like no other thing. Call me an American, and it fits. Call me a Catholic, and it fits even better, but call me a hyperactive mesomorph and you have me to a tea.

As a child I was butchered by those who knew better and called me names like strange because I could rise at 4:00 a.m. and climb the hills all day, swim the lagoon all day, build a raft and head out to sea, and still find time to clean my room and do my homework and help out at home.

As an adult, I was despised because the package of store bought cookies required for an event that everyone else brought was upstaged by a cake, two different kinds of homemade candy, three new cookie recipes and two stunning pies. I had energy to burn and the interest to make it work.

As an older adult, I gasped at the very idea that hyperactivity is a "dysfunction." I quickly took the Hiccup approach and decided that hyperactivity is an attribute not a disease. Just like Hiccup in the move "How to Train Your Dragon" tried to fight the error of his Viking family's wrong thinking about dragons, I have tried to fight the error of wrong thinking about hyperactive children. See Judy Lyden Hyperactivity on any search engine.

Now let's get serious. Let's look at two children named Stockwell and Brisbane. Stockwell is the captain of the swimming team, the debating team, the golf team, and vice president of his class. He mows all the lawns on his street in the summer. His room is immaculate. He is an honors student, holds down a job after school and paints in his spare time. No genius social worker, counselor or psychologist would ever say that this kid is hyperactive. That's because for Stockwell, it's working.

Now Brisbane, on the other hand, spends most of his time arguing, rolling on the floor, finding messes where there was order, creating chaos for the pleasure of chaos, and doing ridiculous things that cause destruction and disaster. He is labeled hyperactive and is medicated out of his mind because...that's what you do.

Truth is, Stockwell IS hyperactive. How could he possibly get all this done if he didn't have the energy and the drive and the direction to work so hard and produce so much. Hyperactive people manage to accomplish twice what others do in half the time - IF they are directed.

Brisbane, however, is labeled hyperactive for one reason: he is undirected, annoying and seems to be restless. He has not a shred of self discipline, order in his life, or anything close to a sense of the world in any real sense. He is horribly behaved BECAUSE he has no order in his life, no self discipline or any sense of the world. His weltanschauung is turned inward toward himself.

This is the model for hyperactive children that is in error.

Let's dig deeper: the cause for Stockwell's behavior is one single thing: HOMELIFE. He comes from a home managed by an adult or two who have created an ordered world and have directed all of Stockwell's energy into production rather than destruction. In other words, they CARE.

Poor Brisbane. He comes from slackers who whine and snivel about him and everyone else. They can't create order to save their lives, and everything is too much for them including Brisbane. So Brisbane's direction has been neglected in favor of mirroring his parents' chaos. Parents who can't create order will have children who are non directed.

So Brisbane is dragged off to the "fixer" and gets a dose of drugs that dull his senses and allow him to become slack jawed enough hours of the day to get passed the school clocks and return to his home where he can create the predictable and tattle-able havoc again.

For as many years as I can count, I've been a child advocate for children drugged by slackers and error mongers or what I consider the real child abusers. To destroy a child's sense of order and push him into chaos is a hideous abuse. It's slacking at its best.

I once read in a manual for psychologists setting up clinics that "You never let your hyperactive child get away because he or she is your bread and butter." That in itself sounds vaguely criminal.

And back to the movie where all of this began... Hiccup knew he was right. He saw another side to the world and developed a broad and caring weltanschauung that saved the day. Teaching children to learn is only one part of education. The other parts are trust, openness, and the ability to look past what everyone else is screaming, andto think for themselves.