When my son, Benny, finished kindergarten we got him tested. When the results came back and we were told he had ADHD I started a journey that has frustrated me to astonishing degrees and taught me amazing things about my kids, my family, my marriage and myself. Trying to figure out what was best for him, we experienced years of experts telling us over and over, and I quote verbatim, “Benny is the most severe case of attentional deficit I’ve ever come across in my career.” These were experts with thousands of patients between them. In response, I always asked, “So where’s my blue ribbon?”
Because parenting a child with ADD is very hard. Very, very hard. But there are also huge rewards. When Jonah Lehrer came on Brain Burps About Books to discuss his book, Imagine: How Creativity Works (affiliate link) we talked about how people with ADD don’t have filters, which leads to great creativity. What a bonus!
The most awesome part?
Benny’s brilliantly creative. And today, after a harrowing high school experience filled with tutors and guidance counselors and parents alternately talking, cajoling, screaming, hugging, crying and prodding (not always in that order), Benny is graduating from high school.
Watching that ceremony will be a blue ribbon for our whole family.
This fall he’ll head off to one of the best digital film schools, Ringling College of Art and Design. To get in, he wrote, directed, animated and edited this movie, which the head of the department wrote to me, “Great work! The film was hilarious and particularly well written and executed.”