today's NY Times has an Op-Ed piece on Ritalin. Versions of these drugs had been given to World War II radar operators to help them stay awake and focus on boring, repetitive tasks. And when we reviewed the literature on attention-deficit drugs again in 1990 we found that all children, whether they had attention problems or not, responded to stimulant drugs the same way.
Well, Alcohol is a depressant. So why is one of the stereotypes of a person under the influence of Alcohol is more talkative and sparkly at a party? Dancing on the table? Lamp shade on head?
Turns out that Alcohol depresses the part of the brain that usually is at work inhibiting us from dancing on tables and saying what we shouldn't say. Who knew? Brain is complicated, not 'What you see is what you get.'
So a stimulant activates the part of the brain that directs attention. That part of the brain helps gifted kids with ADHD-I directly by speeding up the normal parts of their brain to match their gifted parts, and indirectly by helping kids with ADHD guide their attention towards topics that the children really want to pay attention to, but aren't inherently rewarding.
Is it morally right to keep any child in a classroom that is markedly below their level to learn? No. It's just as bad to do it to academically advanced kids as it is to do to kids who get misplaced into special ed classrooms when they have normal intelligence. But that doesn't mean that no gifted child as ADHD or ADHD-I.
Is my science perfect? No. But it's better than, 'Oh, a stimulant must stimulate hand and foot movement' in the paragraph above. Brains are tricky. HG and PG kids are so far from the norm that it's really really hard for families to make these decisions.
((shrugs))
Grinity
