A Fresh Look at ADHD
“I love your haircut, Joel. It looks like a crown, or like one of those hats which Egyptian priests wore in ancient times.”
The young boy smiled as he passed by me and sat down on his chair. The notes in his file told me he was 12 years old, although he looked much older, on account of being very tall and muscular. He wore a gray hoodie sweater, with a quilted vest on top, dark comfortable pants, and hi-shaft basketball trainers. Indeed, his hair did remind me of an Egyptian priest. The curls were very tiny and grew straight upwards, with the sides and back of his head cut very short.
He was very grounded and graceful in his movements, he moved to the chair something like the way that a lion or a tiger moves, with slow deliberate movements: a little cool, with the bounce to his gait, as if he was walking to music that the rest of us could not hear.
He looked at the ground as he passed me, as though trying to hide his face. I could tell that something was going on within him that he did not want me to see. His body was full of energy, but he was containing it. He reminded me of a young puppy who has been well trained to sit, and heal, and lay down, and fetch; you can tell that the physical body is bubbling with frisky energy, but it has been contained within learned boundaries.
