Hi Julie! I am a Learning Support Coordinator at a private elementary school for girls. I have read your book and many of your articles. This own hit home. I always consider myself an undiagnosed ADHDer. Your description of the reading process of someone with Hyper Attention fit me to a "T." I am one of those people who notice and take in everything all at once. I thought everyone did. Since I was a well-behaved little girl, my ADHD showed up in different ways. I tinkered and crafted and took bits of pieces of what I had seen and put it together in another way. In my role now, I created the Wonder Studio - where my students come for indoor recess to work on crafting projects of their choice. It's very messy and chaotic and they love it. Thank your this article. It made me feel less alone!
OMG - THE WONDER STUDIO!!! I love it!!! I literally had a room in our basement when my kids were small called "The Messy Art Room!" Yay you. I am certain that wonder studio is the highlight for many kids. (Sorry, didn't comment this as a reply so pasting it here so you see!)
I love this and see myself in so many of your descriptions. Early school was okay because there was still some freedom to move around and desks weren’t front facing. The more the system required me to sit still and stare frontwards as I got older, the more I doodled the life out of my notebooks with increasingly complex drawings, sprawling mind maps and bits and pieces of thought (thankfully I was discreet enough to get away with it). I was always taking the lesson in while I did that but in assemblies, where I had no pen and was forced to keep every limb as still as possible, I would come away with absolutely no idea what they had just been talking about and it would feel cognitively stultifying.
At home I could study with a loud TV on, or I would get this urge to find new and slightly bizarre places to do homework. During one memorable phase I set up a desk in my parents’ hallway right against the front door, which my parents thought was so odd, but somehow the fresh environment in the hub of the house, with a different window to stare out where people actually passed by (unlike my room) helped my brain actually start. My quiet bedroom felt stifling during that era, when I needed to be able to take so much into my brain. In fact, a system that wanted me to sit still and keep to the same desk was challenging in ways I could have done without once the exam era started and I never worked like that again, once I had autonomy.
These days I shift around, walk around, stim, go off on tangents, pause what I’m doing (sometimes even my sleep in the the night) to crystallise thoughts into note form, and generally fidget as much as it takes to keep my brain online and fuelled with what it needs. Years of self-employment helped me build a life around that. But I also now realise that the one job in 40 years that really nailed me to a desk broke me. I used to think it was just stress, but I am starting to suspect enforced stillness was a bigger part of the burnout than I understood.
OMG - THE WONDER STUDIO!!! I love it!!! I literally had a room in our basement when my kids were small called "The Messy Art Room!" Yay you. I am certain that wonder studio is the highlight for many kids.
Wow, you were so self-aware at such a young age. I LOVE the visual in my head of your desk in the "hub" of your home! We have to engage those parts of our brain that need engagement in order to allow the other parts to go online. That's the truth. Doodling, pacing, listening to music or the tv in the background - all are strategies 2e people use successfully to focus, that neurotypical people have no context to understand.
Yep! Love your self awareness. I once advocated for a client's child to be able to read in every class (including foreign language)! He was much more able to attend that way.
Hi Julie! I am a Learning Support Coordinator at a private elementary school for girls. I have read your book and many of your articles. This own hit home. I always consider myself an undiagnosed ADHDer. Your description of the reading process of someone with Hyper Attention fit me to a "T." I am one of those people who notice and take in everything all at once. I thought everyone did. Since I was a well-behaved little girl, my ADHD showed up in different ways. I tinkered and crafted and took bits of pieces of what I had seen and put it together in another way. In my role now, I created the Wonder Studio - where my students come for indoor recess to work on crafting projects of their choice. It's very messy and chaotic and they love it. Thank your this article. It made me feel less alone!
OMG - THE WONDER STUDIO!!! I love it!!! I literally had a room in our basement when my kids were small called "The Messy Art Room!" Yay you. I am certain that wonder studio is the highlight for many kids. (Sorry, didn't comment this as a reply so pasting it here so you see!)
I love this and see myself in so many of your descriptions. Early school was okay because there was still some freedom to move around and desks weren’t front facing. The more the system required me to sit still and stare frontwards as I got older, the more I doodled the life out of my notebooks with increasingly complex drawings, sprawling mind maps and bits and pieces of thought (thankfully I was discreet enough to get away with it). I was always taking the lesson in while I did that but in assemblies, where I had no pen and was forced to keep every limb as still as possible, I would come away with absolutely no idea what they had just been talking about and it would feel cognitively stultifying.
At home I could study with a loud TV on, or I would get this urge to find new and slightly bizarre places to do homework. During one memorable phase I set up a desk in my parents’ hallway right against the front door, which my parents thought was so odd, but somehow the fresh environment in the hub of the house, with a different window to stare out where people actually passed by (unlike my room) helped my brain actually start. My quiet bedroom felt stifling during that era, when I needed to be able to take so much into my brain. In fact, a system that wanted me to sit still and keep to the same desk was challenging in ways I could have done without once the exam era started and I never worked like that again, once I had autonomy.
These days I shift around, walk around, stim, go off on tangents, pause what I’m doing (sometimes even my sleep in the the night) to crystallise thoughts into note form, and generally fidget as much as it takes to keep my brain online and fuelled with what it needs. Years of self-employment helped me build a life around that. But I also now realise that the one job in 40 years that really nailed me to a desk broke me. I used to think it was just stress, but I am starting to suspect enforced stillness was a bigger part of the burnout than I understood.
I used to study at Waffle House so there’d be enough noise to let me focus otherwise I’d have too much free bandwidth needing to be occupied.
Not to mention the coffee??? (for me, that's key!)
OMG - THE WONDER STUDIO!!! I love it!!! I literally had a room in our basement when my kids were small called "The Messy Art Room!" Yay you. I am certain that wonder studio is the highlight for many kids.
Wow, you were so self-aware at such a young age. I LOVE the visual in my head of your desk in the "hub" of your home! We have to engage those parts of our brain that need engagement in order to allow the other parts to go online. That's the truth. Doodling, pacing, listening to music or the tv in the background - all are strategies 2e people use successfully to focus, that neurotypical people have no context to understand.
Yep! Love your self awareness. I once advocated for a client's child to be able to read in every class (including foreign language)! He was much more able to attend that way.