[Reprinted with permission of James Lynne]

Differences in perception in children with ADHD
by James Lynne

One need only consider the Indian tale of the seven blind men who go to "see" the elephant to grasp how it affects our ability to understand the world. Because Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, ADHD, is about impaired sensory perception, it is a given that children who suffer from this syndrome "see" the world even more differently from their non-impaired counterparts. The phrase "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" quite accurately summarizes that perception directs the conclusions these children draw about the world around them.

According to Indian legend, seven blind men each went to see an elephant that wandered into their village. Because they could not sense the elephant by sight, visually, each man had to perceive it as best he could. One man touched the elephant's leg and determined it was like a pillar. Another touched the elephant's tail, determining the elephant was like a rope. Still another touched the elephant's side, determining it was like a huge wall. Each of the seven, using limited sensory perception, drew both a correct and an incorrect conclusion regarding the elephant. So it is with children whose learning is impaired by ADHD. They view the world from their unique perspective, through their impaired senses, often drawing conclusions that leave their parents and their teachers scratching their heads in confusion.

All human learning is dependent upon input from our five known senses, sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. These are the processes we use to input data into the brain like a computer keyboard or data disc does a computer. Once information has entered the brain, neural pathways transfer it to informational files within the brain for processing, storage, and eventually retrieval. However, our ability to retrieve information, requires that our neural processes do their jobs efficiently and effectively in processing and in storing it. Children with ADHD also experience neurological disruption in their ability to perceive and store information. It is like having electrical short circuits in the brain. Some of the information is stored. Some is not. Some of the files are damaged in the process because of the neurological short-circuiting. As a result, ADHD children are much like the seven blind men "seeing" the elephant. What they perceive may be partially accurate while simultaneously being incorrect, just as an elephant is very much like a wall, but not like a wall at all.

ADHD is not a "one size fits all disorder" with an exact set of symptoms. Each child experiences it somewhat differently. It is an umbrella term covering multiple types of sensory and neurological processing disorders. One child may have difficulty focusing while another may have difficulty processing what he perceives. One child may have minimal impairment while another may have multiple neurological processing issues. It is unfortunate that often both parents and teachers view children with ADHD as having "choice" in the matter of how they perceive things. As a result, these children are often punished, made to feel ashamed of themselves, adding another layer of perceptual issues for them. They often have difficulty perceiving correction as helpful because it feels like punishment and criticism. As a result an emotional overlay develops, interfering with their ability to properly perceive help. They often become defensive after being corrected for things they do not understand as a result of their skewed perception.

Children with ADHD often suffer from too much sensory input. They do not have the processing ability to screen out distracters. As a result they seem unfocused. They are unfocused because they are being bombarded with sight, sound, touch, smell, and possibly even taste all at once, without functional filters. Their neurological processors do not filter out the unimportant or unnecessary input for the task at hand. As a result, what others view as manageable distraction is like a circus going on in the mind of the ADHD child. When there is a seven-ring circus going on in a child's head, how is he to select which ring to focus upon? These children do not have the appropriate neurological on-and-off switches to block out all the extraneous sensory input that the rest of us merely ignore. What they experience is truly like the children's story, "A Fly Went By." In this story a little boy is attempting to focus on the task at hand, but a fly goes by, distracting him, and his focus goes off after the fly. There are multiple flies in the lives of ADHD children, buzzing around them at all times.

Children with ADHD both perceive and process information differently from their counterparts. Teachers and parents who work with them are often flustered because it seems so clear to them that the elephant is neither a pillar, a rope, nor a wall. Working with the ADHD child requires understanding that it is not his choice to focus or not. It is not his choice to be over stimulated or not. It is a neurological process that impairs his ability to perceive the world accurately. It is easy to recognize that a blind man will not "see" an elephant. That is a visible handicap. Children with "hidden" or invisible handicaps that impair their perception are further frustrated when we demand that they "see" what they cannot. Helping them achieve requires that we recognize first how they perceive, and then that we teach them to perceive more fully with greater focus.
Original article here

comments [1]

Very affected with the cognition you are posting here.

Posted by: on March 01, 2011