My Story of ADD and What I Want to Do about it

I attend a school called Brightworks that is focused around project based learning. At this school we have a system where every year we have three topics that we explore. We are currently in the human arc. At the moment I am conducting a project that consists of: authoring a bill, proposing the bill to congress people, and as a stretch goal’ getting it considered for congressional review. My bill would attempt to counteract the disadvantages that children with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) face in the classroom.

In elementary school I felt like I was the smartest in my class but I was often one of the less successful kids in my grade. I was always chastised for getting distracted, and for several years I wouldn’t write my own homework; I would have my mom write in the answers as I told them to her. In early 4th grade my teacher had a sit-down with my parents and said “I can’t help your son.”

After transitioning to Brightworks, my parents were able to coordinate strategies with the teachers to help me get better at doing homework and generally staying on task. This somewhat worked but I still often had trouble staying focused. Within Brightworks there were many people who were diagnosed with ADD and I noticed many similarities in the problems that we were overcoming. After I had noticed multiple glaring similarities between us, I asked around to see if the people that I was noticing similarities with and had ADD to see if they thought I had ADD as well. The answer that I got was a resounding yes. So within the next few months I had proposed that I get checked for ADD. Mom then scheduled an appointment, then diagnosis. With that diagnosis I was able to drastically improve my life both academically and socially via creating strategies to combat the effects of ADD. These strategies were vastly more effective than previous strategies because after my diagnosis we had a clear understanding of the problem soas to combat it more effectively.

It was a huge fuss dealing with ADD. I had to find a new school, develope scores of strategies only later to be scrapped because they didn’t help me in all the ways that I needed, and spend an exorbitant amount of money on brain scans to even begin to understand ways to adapt. The funding that my bill proposes would coach teachers on how to address ADD within the classroom and it would allow low income to do rudimentary ADD tests. These would allow both teachers and parents to have a better understanding on how to better support the child academically.

To see if you have ADD click here

To contribute (non monetarily) to my cause click here