Читать книгу New hope for ADHD in children and adults - Helena Bester - Страница 28

On the whole these children (and even adult ADHD sufferers) are unbelievably literal in their thinking. A consequence of this literal mindedness is that they really struggle to make summaries. When next you and your child are floundering about with their school work, make a summary of part of the relevant learning area yourself. You will notice how many abstract thought processes are involved. So help your child with this and if necessary do the summary for them. “But he needs to take responsibility for his own work,” Miss C and Granny may say. But you only have so much energy and time, and other more important issues may need your attention.

By now you have probably also noticed that your child sometimes just doesn’t get a joke. At other times she will surprise everyone with her sense of humour. It would appear that children and adults with ADHD simply do not get jokes of a more abstract nature. Because their minds work so concretely they often interpret things completely literally.

Sometimes I ask children to use a different coloured pencil for some activity or another. Working with a nine-year-old boy, Philip, one day, I told him to choose a red pencil for the next pattern. He rummaged through the ice-cream box filled with colouring pencils, fishing out a very small red one, only about two centimetres long. I said something like: “I see you’ve chosen the longest one.” And Philip replied very earnestly: “That’s not true – look,” and he immediately laid about twenty long red pencils on the table.

Children with ADHD are often humiliated or teased because they take things so literally. With an older brother or sister, he will even be embarrassed in front of friends, with remarks like: “Excuse my brother, he’s a moron.”

Another consequence of this literal mindedness is that they struggle with certain aspects of mathematics – word sums in particular, although they usually have no problems with other sections. Some of the children I see in therapy are in fact brilliant at mathematics. Children with ADHD also tend to struggle with comprehension tests. Although they are able to answer the factual questions correctly, they have a problem with the insight.