Reese Schiffman – ADHD

Hello, my name is Reese Schiffman. I’m in the visual -Hey, look, a butterfly! Oh, sorry… visual academy. Today I am presenting a persuasive argument about why kids who have ADHD should be given – Did you not see that butterfly? When I was a little kid I saw this episode of Go Diego Go, there was this blue butterfly, I think it was a species from Africa. It was a talking butterfly and liked to eat mangos. I like Mangos. I also read the book The Mango Shaped Space. It’s about this girl who literally saw words, sounds and numbers as different colors floating by. For example she saw the number 6 as blue. Kind of like when we did that flame test in Mr. Kwan’s chemistry class, each element had its own color and pattern. That reminds me I HAVE to turn my lab assignment next period.

That . . . was a little preview of how the mind of a kid with ADHD jumps from idea to idea completely straying away from the original topic. But that’s not the only thing kids with ADHD go through on a daily basis. Imagine this:

Imagine being so distracted that when someone tells you something important, that information does not register. You are labelled as STUPID.

Imagine that you have so much energy inside you it’s impossible to be still in your own skin. You have to be fidgeting or constantly moving in some way. You are labelled as having NO SELF CONTROL.

Imagine having so many ideas that you start working on one and can’t wait to start another and so on and so on so nothing gets finished or turned in on time. You are labelled LAZY.

Imagine that you are walking in the shoes of a kid with ADHD.

ADHD – the acronym for attention deficit hyperactive disorder— is an incurable (but treatable) disorder in the brain where one’s inattention and impulses/hyperactivity interferes with their ability to complete tasks,grow and develop.

My persuasive argument is about why kids with ADHD should be given medication to treat their disorder.

I can understand why a parent would not voluntarily give their kid take a narcotic drug like Adderall or Ritalin, especially since these drugs have potential side effects including dry mouth, loss of appetite, lack of sleep and more dangerous (but less often) effects such as an increase in heart-rate and blood pressure, and even potentially worsening ADHD symptoms. Additionally many parents have the perception that giving their kid medication to treat their ADHD is a harsh and negative way of forcing kids to conform to society. Parents also may think that by medicating their child, it would stifle their child’s uniqueness and creativity. They see the medication like how we see school uniforms: something that stops us from expressing who we are.

There are other ways to help with ADHD, such as behavior modification and finding specialized schools but what happens when those don’t work? How do you think those parents would react when they finally try medication and see that it works immediately? They might feel foolish for wasting time and spending a lot of money on broken ideas.
But I don’t blame them. Maybe they have or maybe they have not walked in the shoes of someone with ADHD but me, I walk in those shoes everyday.

I have been on medication for my ADHD since middle school, and for me the benefits outweigh the side effects. My side effect experience is that I am rarely hungry so my parents have to remind me to eat, and I have to use chapstick on a daily basis.
But, my medication helps keep me stay focused enough that I’m able to act how teachers would expect me to: sit in class and pay attention to what is being taught. It also allows me to control my impulses, whereas without my pill, I tend to make bad decisions and procrastinate a lot.

Having impulse control and the ability to fit in is crucial especially during unsupervised activities such as being away at camp or driving. It’s been shown that teens who do not take medication for their ADHD are 50% more likely to cause car accidents and 15% more likely to self medicate using illegal drugs and alcohol.

According to Dr. Derek Ott, UCLA professor and child psychologist specializing in ADHD, medication is a very effective and immediate treatment to the symptoms of that disorder. Alone, the ADHD brain does not think of the possible outcomes if a certain task is done or not; therefore causing multiple tasks to pile up on each other, making it too overwhelming to do even one. With the medication, though, it would take on the effect of connecting the brain to the outcomes of the tasks, resulting in the completion of fill in the blank . . . as long as you stay with the prescribed dose and don’t skip days.

In the late 1970s, Dr. Rachel Klein, a professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine, conducted a study with a group of colleagues on students with ADHD. They followed up with them for 33 years, taking notes on how they reacted to the medication. And do you know what the results were? They showed no negative effects, in both medical health and other functions. None.

The number one goal of parents with a kid with ADHD should be improving their self-esteem while allowing a child to gain independence in a safe supportive way.

Basically, with an ADHD kid, instead of the familiar term “think before you act,” the term to them is more “act before you think.”

There are so many myths and misconceptions about ADHD because there is no blood test or scan to diagnose that a person has ADHD. Doctors and parents have to work together to figure out how best to help the child succeed in school and in life. I am lucky because I live in a time where taking medication is pretty common and it also helps so much that I go to a school where I can express myself creatively. And most of all, I have parents that support me and everything that goes along with my ADHD 100%.