ADD, Learning Disabilities Found in Parents as Well as Their Children
Cary Sandberg scored very high on standardized tests and was eighth in his high school class, so he knew he wasn’t stupid. But mysteries about his mind still plagued him into adulthood: An inability to connect with friends. A string of unfulfilling jobs. A nagging forgetfulness.
Then last summer Sandberg and his wife were having their 5-year-old son tested for learning disabilities and ADD--attention deficit disorder. Something about the questions struck a chord.
“All of a sudden I could see it. All these problems I had been having were exactly the kinds of things they were looking for,” said Sandberg, 44.
That day was the start of an intense journey. After a battery of tests and visits to doctors, Sandberg was diagnosed as having ADD. He now takes the hyperactivity drug Ritalin and works with a behavioral psychologist on reorganizing the way he thinks about everything from his career to his memory.
“My days of locking my keys in the car are probably over,” he says.
ADD and Ritalin are terms most commonly associated with kids and school difficulties. But a growing number of adults are being diagnosed as well. Experts say interest is booming because of research and publicity generated by the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.
Groups such as the National Center for Learning Disabilities are putting out data on adults for the first time. The Journal of Learning Disabilities, a prominent periodical, did a special issue on adults last summer--its first.
And since the mid-1990s, the federal government has been tacking on a message to states along with education and welfare funding: make adults with learning disabilities a priority.
“Folks realized that these weren’t children’s problems, that they persisted into adulthood,” said Dr. Sally Scott, assistant director of the Learning Disabilities Center at the University of Georgia.
Federal employment hot lines report more inquiries about learning and attention problems. Private and government attorneys say more lawsuits are being filed by workers claiming discrimination because of a learning or attention deficit problem and adult students needing special concessions in exams and lectures.
The trend worries those who say attention deficit is over-diagnosed--a quick medical fix that dulls an exuberant if unfocused mind--and that learning disorders reflect lesser intelligence, not disabilities.
“Some of the things that pass for learning disabilities used to be called stupidity,” said former Boston University president John Silber, who drew national attention in 1997 when he fought a lawsuit filed by learning-disabled students who alleged that the school was discriminating by requiring them to study foreign languages. A judge let the requirement stand but fined BU $1.2 million.
Dr. Lawrence Diller, a behavioral pediatrician in Walnut Creek, Calif., believes that only about one-tenth of those diagnosed as having ADD are seriously impaired and unable to function without Ritalin. The rest, he says, are merely “temperamentally diverse,” and the question is whether society can handle that diversity.
“If the only way you can make it is by taking a performance enhancer, I question the values of that society,” he said.
Ritalin is prescribed to millions of Americans--mostly children--for ADD. The drug is believed to calm people by boosting levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, but its effects are poorly understood. There is no diagnostic test for ADD and no gold standard for treatment.
The reason children today are handled so differently is Public Law 94-142, a 1975 federal statute that overhauled the school system. It required that students be evaluated for learning and attention-deficit disabilities and that everyone get an equal education--whatever accommodations that takes.
Actually, advocates for the disabled say, adults often discover their own learning disabilities through their children--as Sandberg did. And Glenn Young.
Young was 30 and hawking beer at the Seattle Kingdome when he and his wife took 4-year-old Sasha for private school admissions tests. At the time, Young was struggling to keep a secret: He could barely read or write.
“I said, ‘That’s the part of tests I always do poorly on,’ and ‘Oh, and that part too,’ and the woman administering the test said, ‘It sounds like you have a learning disorder.’ And then all the deep dark secrets I’d hidden from everyone, she knew instantaneously,” he said.
Young was diagnosed as having dyslexia and dysgraphia, brain dysfunctions that impair reading and writing. He worked for the next three years with a tutor, relearning to read and write, then went on to college and a graduate degree in public administration. He quit vending in 1995 and is now a disability and literacy specialist with the U.S. Department of Education in Washington.
“The people in my peer group had college degrees and were doctors and lawyers and were moving up the chain, and there I was, still vending,” said Young, now 48. “All along I thought I was stupid.”
Another whose life was radically changed is Peter Homans, a 47-year-old investment manager from Belmont, Mass. All his life Homans experienced random periods when he couldn’t concentrate--on exams in graduate school, on family issues, on jobs. He saw every word as he spoke, as if it were being typed on a typewriter. He couldn’t distinguish one voice from another.
Diagnosed as having ADD six years ago, he began taking Ritalin. He explains the before-and-after difference:
“It’s like someone who is ADD without treatment is going along on one of those old pump railroad things, they’re pumping as hard as they can, and their hair is flying, their pants are falling off, their shirt is flapping in the wind,” he said. “With treatment, they’re going faster but everything’s tucked in.”
www.chadd.org is the Web site of the Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder or CH.A.D.D., the nation’s largest ADD self-help group. www.ncld.org is the site of the National Center for Learning Disabilities.
