Every now and then, someone says to me, "You really need to slow down." It always makes me laugh and remember that high energy people are really fundamentally different from regular people.
This year, my wonderful and delightful grandson, William, has been despised by his second grade teacher because he is high energy. Now let me give you an insight into William. Yesterday, I bought his mother a couple of sets of new dishes. The dishes came in two boxes with many little boxes within. William took all the boxes and made a town from them. From one of the big boxes, he made a hotel complete with front desk and a bench for the Lego people he made to play in the hotels, and then a working elevator. He played with those boxes for three hours while his brothers lasted about one hour and two hours. And then, William dutifully put his creation away. William is seven. In school, this child deplores waiting for the next worksheet to arrive on his desk. He was once in trouble for taking his teacher's paperclips and making a necklace out of them. He was called a thief. This child is the first to bounce down the stairs and grip you with a hug and with his beautiful smile, thank you for coming and thank you for all that you do for him. Remember, this child is hated.
William is hated for the same reason I've been hated often in my life. It's the energy level that just never quits. It's a bank of energy that is rarely depleted, and that is a gig most people just can't keep up with.
Several times in my teaching career, a psychologist has graced my school to watch one of our children. Before this show even gets started, the shrink will invariably ask, "Do you think this child is a candidate for medication?" RED LIGHTS and SIRENS always go off in my mind like a tornado warning. "Why?" I coyly respond. They always look me like I am nuts. "If you want to medicate someone, why don't you medicate the complaining parent?" Pause. "Why would you take this child's energy level away?" The only response I have ever gotten is, "Well not everyone has this kind of energy, and it's not always desirable." Good God in heaven. Are people NUTS?
When people can't keep up, there are two responses: hate and emulation. I always say, if you like the business you see, emulate, but don't hate me because I have energy, and please don't hate my grandson because he was lucky enough to get a fuller dosage of life than most.
William Sheldon, a splendid scientist, spent his life working on something called Somatotypes. This work takes different body types and draws personality types to bodies. Most of us are three way splits between the Ectomorph, the Endomorph, and the Mezomorph. And each body type will engage different levels of energy and needs. The Ectomorph is least body driven type, quiet, restful, slow to move and slow to enter the game with a low intake of food; someone who is passive and pensive. The Endomorph is the happy type, often fleshy, round, soft and sweet, gregarious, outgoing and filled with a love of eating and experiencing the whole world through the senses. The last type is the Mezomorph who eats anything and great amounts to keep going - food as fuel - who simply goes for ever, who is strong, has a pain threshold to die for, and whose senses are limitedly appreciated by the desire for what's next.
When you combine the body types to energy levels, you get characters good enough to put into a novel.
As a classic hyperactive Mezomorph, I can't sit. Went to the opera ONCE. Felt as if I was being eaten by fire ants. Music is fine if it doesn't get in my way. Art is fine if it does something or can be used for something like teaching or a lesson in life. Reading during the day? Fire ants again. But when I do read, I can read anything in record time, about 2000 words a minute. Writing? I can turn out a five hundred page novel by getting up at 4:00 a.m. and writing 1.5 hours a day for a year. Did it eight times. So what, big deal.
But what does this mean? It means that energy belongs to some and not to others. It belongs to the hyperactive as a natural God given gift. It graces some people and is illusive in others, and for the hyperactive person, like me, and my grandson, and all my children, it is often an obstacle to others. That kind of energy is deplored in a world of what seems to us like it's going in slow motion.
When William sits in a classroom with the outdoors calling, with the world peppered with possibilities, with interesting people, with sights to see, with people to watch, with the sky bright with a heaven filled, he has to sit for what seems to be forever waiting for another really stupid piece of paper that needs his full attention. And because his interests lie outside that classroom, they, who seem to be lacking, want him "evaluated and tested" and ultimately put on drugs so that they, who seem to be lacking the energy to keep up with him, can relax and not have to put up with a child who's physically demanding and ultimately way ahead of them.
Often in my career, I have heard children who are poorly behaved called hyperactive. Ignorance of the hyperactive is just that - ignorance. Hyperactives are not generally poorly behaved, they are driven to do, to accomplish, to explore, to experience. When the care taking parent is not also possessing a high energy level, there is usually a conflict of bodies. One body wants to sit and be still, while another simply can't and will do absolutely anything not to sit still.
Hyperactivity is a gift. In its directed form you get characters like Davy Crockett, Theodore Roosevelt, Columbus, St. Paul, and many many more people too filled with energy to just passively sit by and watch the world do it. The world is not a hyperactive's entertainment unless they are playing full force. Not every hyperactive will do great things, and not every hyperactive will direct their energy toward great goals, and that's their own fault. But at the least, hyperactivity should not be hated for what it is, especially in a child.
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