Sims Brain

Speaking issues, let me touch on the topic of ADD for a moment, before I feel the need to quickly move on to something else.

I've always subscribed to the SIMS theory of humanity. And I say that by virtue of having never actually played The Sims, so if I'm wrong about the details here try to ignore that aspect of it. My understanding is that when you make a person in the Sims, you have 100 points or percent worth of stuff to bestow upon your creation. You can choose to give them superior intelligence, nicer looks, better personality, and maybe some other stuff. But it all has to add up to 100. No person gets more than 100 points of attributes.

In the real world, of course there are some people who get 105 or 110, (or 95 or 90, but we won't talk about them), but for the most part, most of us have more of some things and less of others. You rarely will meet someone with looks, brains, and sparkling personality.

OK, trying to get back on track here. I think that many of the people I deal with in and around the school suffer from ADDOD, of Attention Deficit Disorder Obsession Disorder. What I mean by that is that a certain person may have been diagnosed with ADD and therefore needs some sort of accommodation to get their schoolwork done.

Because I always follow the rules, I always do that for students. But for the most part I think it's hooey. I daresay that most of us could find a competent psychologist who can truthfully diagnose us with some level of ADD, because none of us have perfect attention. Shoot, I wouldn't even want that. I have enough trouble acting human- the last thing I need is a greater ability to shut out the world and focus on something singular. Focus is a human construct that is not necessarily genetically programmed into us. It's to the human consciousness what newspapers are to the distribution of information. It's a phase. It may be a phase that never completely goes away, but it's not an inherent condition that has always and will always be with us.

Yes, of course you need to focus well enough to complete tasks, but what do you mean by enough and what do you mean by complete? I'm not a big fan of putting labels on people or assigning them to groups to be treated in a certain way. All of us have some level of ADD and all of us learn how to cope. The best thing we can do for our kids is to teach them to do this based on our experience and empathy. Medication can help sometimes too, but unless you want to be on meds the rest of your life, you'll need to learn to do without.

Now back to whatever I was doing before.