Inattentive ADD Time Perception & Living in the Moment

Inattentive ADD Time Perception & Living in the Moment

Most psychiatrist agree that people with Inattentive ADD and ADHD have problems with time management, with planning for the future and with the ability to persevere threw boredom to reach a goal.
Most things taught in school are not applicable to the lives of children.

One of the reasons that I did poorly in K-12 school is that much of what the teachers were trying to teach me was not applicable or relevant to anything that I was trying to do in my life. I could add and subtract and multiply and I could read well enough and, as far as I was concerned, these were the only skills that I needed to get through my day.

The time perception problems that people with Inattentive ADD suffer from makes us over focused on the present. This is not a bad thing. How many times have you heard that true joy comes from living in the moment, from enjoying the now instead of always looking back or looking forward? Those of us with Inattentive ADD and ADHD are really good at living in the moment.

Unfortunately schools today are mostly not about now. Kids go to school and spend the majority of their time learning information that they will likely never use or care about. Teachers will tell you that memorizing the state capitals will build memory skills and so it is a worthwhile exercise. I know a lot of kids who would prefer to memorize song lyrics, the names of running backs, the names of the American Girl dolls or the names of the fastest race cars but you rarely have teachers give kids those options.

Schools need to spend more time working on the now of school. Teachers should ask themselves at the end of the school day this. What did I teach in my class today that my kids could use today? Teachers should look at current events and ask themselves, if I were a kid, what would be interesting about this? Teachers should find teachable material that applies to the lives of children.

People with Inattentive ADD have a brain biology that makes waiting until tomorrow for rewards impossible or difficult. Grade School, with its usual method of teaching for tomorrow, can be torture for people with Inattentive ADD who live in the here and now. I like living in the here an now. I like that part of my Inattentive ADD. The way that I see it, its schools that have a problem, schools should be teaching for this moment not for tomorrow. Kids with Inattentive ADD and ADHD have their priorities straight, as far as I can tell, but then again, I'm probably biased.