adhd

My repeated failure at academic tasks, particularly reading, sparked raw terror in me. In elementary school, we had regular reading circles. Six or eight kids would sit around in a circle taking turns reading. I would sit there in a cold sweat as my turn came closer and closer. It was my teacher's version of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum." The reading blade kept coming closer and closer.

To try to save face, I would count the number of children before my turn to read and try to calculate which paragraph I would be expected to read. Then I would go over and over this paragraph trying to work out every word. I would try to memorize it because I knew that ...

I was so anxious that there was no way I could actually read it in front of the other kids and teacher.

Despite and because of my high anxiety efforts, I usually botched even the simplest reading task. I became even more humiliated, embarrassed, angry, depressed, and degraded. I could think of few things in life worse than reading.

What was more sinister than Poe was that the reading blade did not kill you. You would have to face the reading blade the same way tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day for what seemed the rest of your life.

Several times a week a remedial reading teacher would take me and some of the other "dummies" out of the classroom for an hour or so, to practice our reading.

I was always aware of being in the "sparrow" reading group because everyone knew that it was for the dumb kids. (In spite of adult efforts, kids quickly pick up on the real facts.) And yet, I cannot remember any different procedures being used by this teacher than had been used by my regular classroom teacher.

Though her efforts were valiant and well intended, they were just another dose of the same old toxic solution that I eventually learned was the source of my problems. I made little progress. (Now many parents hire tutoring companies to do this.)

How could I? To me, reading was associated with school, reading groups, reading out loud, peer ridicule, and poor self-image.

The harder the teacher tried, the more upset I became, the worse I did, the dumber I got. I saw this as just another opportunity to face the terror of the reading blade. I began to fight passively the very process of what felt like stuffing things down my throat. I did not learn to read until I was in the seventh grade.

Eventually, I did learn to read, not because of more sophisticated efforts by my teachers, but because I developed a driving need to know, literally. I was interested in hot rods.

I wanted to know about the most technical aspects of cam timing, fuel injection, and suspension systems.

Since no one in my world, including my car mechanic father, had an in-depth knowledge about these things, the only way to learn about them was to read.

At first, the reading was difficult. I picked through articles word by word, read captions on pictures, and guessed a lot. Despite the difficulty, I was powerfully motivated to decode this information system that held the key to what I wanted to know.

Within two weeks, I was reading well. And reading was no longer the terrifying school subject that made me feel incompetent. In fact, it was part of a world that had nothing to

do with school. It was something I did alone at home for hours, pouring over hot rod books and magazines. Alone at home, reading was easy and fun. Alone at home, it became my bridge from one world to another, simply through my urgent need to know about hot rods.

The formerly dumb kid now had the keys to unlock the rest of the school tasks. Those were the days of Evelyn Woods teaching JFK speed reading, and I became adept at speed-reading. By the end of high school, I had become the fastest reader in the school. This did not mean that all academic hurdles had been solved with one fell swoop, but a giant step had been made. I was easily getting A's and B's, but I still felt like the dumb kid.

I was still struggling when I got to college. I had to take dumbell english twice to pass it.  If I had had caer life would have been much easier for me.