As a practical matter, I seem to be unable to separate education from ADD since they are linked much as are the opposite sides of the same coin. Were it not for compulsory schools, I suspect that we would never have heard of ADD.

If my conclusions are anywhere near correct, the youths labeled ADD learn in an entirely different way and the schools are simply not equipped to deliver the enriched, conceptual based (as opposed to memory based), fast moving, individually tailored (relevant) curriculum that they deserve.

Some of my high school students have been able to accommodate to their peer group standards and through a process of pure fabrication, manage to look and act like them. Usually through considerable and continuing effort, they manage to get along pretty well in school and with life in general. It is not very difficult to recognize their ADD characteristics when they are submerged in a creative environment and are discovering the joy that is their birth right.

Some other youths I have worked with are either unable or unwilling to make that accommodation and are embattled with their school, their peers, and often with their care-givers. It is among this group that I have seen youth that, having been hardened by the continuous harangue that tries to change them into something that they could never be (and often they don't want to be), develop survival strategies of fighting back in order to maintain some shred of (internal) self respect. Some of this group eventually give up ever trying to please anyone and choose what most would call an anti-social attitude. At the extreme end of this behavior they adopt sex, violence, purposeful disobedience and mind altering drugs as their way of life.

Of utmost importance is that the care-givers realize that the ADD personality is pre-biased toward excitement. The craving for excitement is woven into the fabric of their being and if it is not able to find expression in creative pursuits, it will seek to find excitement in those elements of society that are continuously portrayed as exciting and/or glamorous on television, in the news, and depicted in history. This includes wars and fighting in general, daredevil activities, breaking the rules (any kind of rules from physical or man made laws to simple rules of etiquette and social customs). The kids that end up like this find themselves trapped by dependent drug habits on one hand and a society that is hell bent to either "rehabilitate them to their PEER GROUP standards" or "incarcerate" them on the other hand.

By the end of high school some of these embattled youths are so damaged, and have burned so many of their bridges that there is little hope that they will ever realize even a fraction of their original potential.

The seeds of this behavior were planted years before, usually about the time that they started school. If those early battles had been avoided and the outstanding qualities of these youths recognized and nourished, I believe that the outcome would have been very, very different.

The list below enumerates some of the factors that care-givers must consider when they find themselves confronted with one of my wonderful kids.

Good ADD advice is fairly easy to come by; the problem is that each youth is so very different that finding the advice that fits is definitely an art form and is wildly dependent on both the care-giver and the youth. I am not an expert, most of my information has come by living through my own ADD youth plus being a student of human nature for the last forty years while running my own business and working with extraordinarily talented youth that often fit the ADD profile.

General advice:

1. As Father Flannigan of Boy's Town said "We work with youth one kid at a time". This is the only way to work with these super neat kids. Classroom teaching is the exact opposite of their optimum mode for learning. This should in no way imply that they should be suffocated by too much attention. These youths (unless they have already been damaged by the system) are fully capable of long term, self-directed learning with only minimal contact with a mentor or guide. Many times I have come to realize that the biggest problem in these kids lives are their well meaning care-givers trying to get these kids to meet some peer group standard that the kids couldn't care less about.

These youths don't learn like most adults did; they learn in sudden bursts of intense interest, interspersed with pondering time, that look like wasted time to most adults. They will work intensely on a subject for maybe an hour, a day, a week or even more only to completely drop their study at some arbitrary point when their curiosity has been satiated. This point usually comes just before the adult in their life is ready to see them give the subject up. The adult's trying to keep them going is the source for much misunderstanding and friction. If the adult is patient, and attempts to understand curiosity driven education, they will eventually be rewarded as the youth, at some future time, and as dictated by their internal "need to know", will spiral back into the subject and make another huge leap in understanding.

These youths are building their perception of the world in a far superior and more usable way than the conventional classroom could ever bring about. As this learning process has taken place along lines of interest it will be difficult to measure this youth's knowledge against the public school's yardstick of what the establishment thinks kids should know. The scary part for the care-givers is that it will be years before real comparisons can be made in how well these youths are really prepared for life. However, having seen the energy put into self directed learning by many of our teenagers, I have much more confidence in our labeled youth than I have in many of the schools that I have seen. History is full of important people who essentially educated themselves and rose to the top of their field.

2. Never try to make a kid labeled ADD be like his/her peer group average. It is like trying to teach a pig to whistle. You will wear yourself out and really irritate the pig. These youths have their "way of being" that is exceptional in their own right. Discover their wonderful features and go with the flow. The time when they start walking, talking, reading, etc., or even the foods they like probably won't correspond to their peer group standard. I believe that this should be zero cause for concern. When they feel the time has come, (if they have not been harassed), they will suddenly start doing these things in a big way.

Their strengths and weaknesses will be different from the typical peer group member. They even think and behave differently. Some of them will have trouble with such seemingly simple things as spelling, telephone numbers, dates, telling time and other non-logic-related facts. Rote memorization may prove to be difficult if not impossible. On the other hand, their conceptual abilities of knowing intuitively how things work and the interrelatedness of seemingly disparate concepts will far more than compensate for any lack of rote memory. They share these differences with people like Einstein, Edison, Henry Ford and many other such uniquely different people the world has known. I cannot imagine another group of people that I would like more to be identified with.

3. Expect and embrace the creativity and excitement in all of the many and varied forms that these venturesome youths will bring to your doorstep. These wonderful attributes will turn into a kind of social poison if major assaults are made at trying to suppress them. Suppression will inevitably lead to all manor of less desirable behavior.

4. These youths have a love for relevancy in their lives far more than do their peers. They crave real experiences, love using real tools and real equipment, want to go to real places and enjoy knowing real people. Reading about things (secondhand learning) is a very poor substitute for the actual hands-on experience.

5. Throw away the TV sets, computer games and other recreations that require long term sitting in a chair. They all have their good points, but the overall impact on latent creativity and excess energy is so negative that they should be purged from the lives of ADD people.

6. Instead of plastic toys with limited themes, give ADD kids real tools and supplies so that they can build their own toys. Even the venerable Erector Set, with its follow-the-pictures guide to building things, is almost too structured. As there is no limitation to their creativity, they should have access to junk automobiles, musical instruments, two by four lumber, art supplies, tall trees, wires, transistors, motors, chemicals and crafts type projects. Our kids have loved corrugated cardboard boxes and have built and decorated all manner of real and imaginary items from them (we use hacksaw blades clamped between broom handle halves for knives). None of these activities should be forced on them. If you think lessons are desirable, offer them but never make them mandatory.

I have yet to have a youth (boy or girl) that did not eventually fall in love with taking things apart (old lawnmower engines, radios, tape recorders, hair dryers, etc.). Unfortunately many parents consider this to be destructive behavior. We have come to believe that it is a very necessary phase that "our kids" go through, much like puppies chewing on things. After about three years of taking things apart, something usually matures and they start putting things together again. In our throw away society, it is not difficult to get neighbors to send all of their broken things to your son or daughter. Let your kid keep the pieces from their taking apart activities. We have found that their junk box is the source for thousands of "dreams of the possible" that will eventually reach fruition in the forthcoming adult.

Work hard at locating adults that will volunteer to be mentors for these pursuits. ADD kids relate well to most adults that treat them like they are real people and are willing to help them learn as opposed to teaching and/or preaching at them.

7. Because of their unique approach to life, many ADD-labeled youths are forced to lead a life apart from their peer group. If you are the care-giver, I encourage you to seek out many other labeled kids and bring the youths together in your enriched environment. At first they will likely judge each other by their peer group standards and find their new friend lacking; but if encouraged, they will soon discover their similar likes and dislikes. Some of our teenagers, for the first time in their lives, discovered that there were other teenagers that would rather do science than hang out with the gang at the parking lot. It was a wonderful experience for these lonesome youths. Words of warning!! Use extreme caution in locating and choosing youths that are not already so badly damaged that they will bring more pain and bad vibes into your life than sunshine and pleasure.

7. Expect them to get plenty of bumps, scratches and burns. Keep lots of band-aids, antibiotics and ice on hand. These small accidents are absolutely vital to their discovering their world and when experienced at an early age, inoculates them with the best possible protection against serious injuries at a later time. When left to their own devices, ADD kids explore the boundaries of their existence and quite naturally suffer the consequences. This is their marvelous way of learning and should be supported by their care-givers even though it scares-you-to- pieces. It is usually when you tell them NOT to do something that they over extend themselves and get hurt. If you carefully and unobtrusively watch, you will discover that they have an innate understanding of their own limitations and are, even when doing potentially dangerous things, staying just this side of getting hurt.

8. Do the best that you can to encourage their curiosity. Curiosity is possibly the most important asset that these remarkable youths have. Diminishing it in any way would be on the same level of importance as causing a more typical youth to lose their sight. Curiosity is the source of their thirst for knowledge which will ultimately fuel their terrific creativity and imagination. I have seen teenagers with their curiosity beaten to smithereens who were not only totally bored with life, but had no idea of what their world was all about. They had collected only a tiny fraction of the knowledge that the youths with healthy curiosities had accumulated by the same age.

9. ADD kids need responsibility and consequences more than most kids. They have a need for being needed and will rise to the occasion if a need presents itself. Nowadays, most kids serve no real purpose in these United States. Such mundane chores as carrying out the trash (though important and something they should do) lends little, if any, feelings of worthwhileness. These kids need to apprentice at a lawnmower or bicycle repair shop, TV shop, etc. (anything but routine factory work which is one area for which they are usually totally unsuited), but the U.S. government has made that impossible until they are at least sixteen. (Such work should not be considered as career training for it is only one of many, many phases that they will go through on their way to entrepreneurship. If the past holds any view of the future, many of these youths will fail miserably in their first umpteenth jobs. I was told that Edison held and lost over twenty jobs before he was twenty-one years old, but he learned quite a lot from each experience and each job helped to mold the adult.) You might see if your youth would consider a not-for-profit repair service for kids toys in the neighborhood. Because of their terrific powers of observation and logical reasoning, some of our kids seem to be endlessly sucked into fixing bicycles, wagons, scooters, lawnmowers etc. for people that they don't even like. It is important to recognize that our kids are driven by curiosity and not profit. Once they have solved the problem, someone else may have to finish the project while they move on to the next problem to be solved. Getting them in business with a typical peer youth who is willing to provide the follow through will be educational for both of them. The only problem remaining is "how do we get them to think that this is all their idea".

10. There is a vast difference between filth and a mess. There is a vast difference between a mess and stacks of things all over the place. Filth should never be tolerated, but most kids who are labeled, have a strong propensity toward leaving things in stacks. These youths have a powerful visual memory of exactly where things are if they are left precisely where they put them. Hard though it may be for the care-giver to understand, this is their inherent strategy for organizing. Most of our labeled kids are strongly project-oriented and attach zero importance to putting things up before the project is over (a day, a week, a month, or when some care-giver declares it is over). It is extremely important that they have a place that can remain exactly as they left it until their project is through. It must be protected from both siblings and well meaning adults who don't understand the extreme importance of their very private citadel of learning.

If any of the above makes sense to you then your problems are ninety percent solved. If the above sounds ludicrous and unreasonable, there may exists a wide gulf between you and your off-spring. If this is the case then please seek out some authority on ADD, who has ADD, feels ADD, and lives in an ADD world. These people are few and far between but they can counsel you in a way, and with an insight, that no ADD outsider (even though a professional in the field) could ever furnish.

It is my sad observations that most ADD practitioners are dedicated to correcting some defect that they believe is inherent in the ADD youth. They are out to socialize them through the use of drugs, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy or any of a number of other techniques designed to "bring them into line".

Like any form of brain washing, these powerful techniques, when applied over a period of time, will bring about some remarkable changes in their patients which, to the non-ADD world, make these youths seem more normal and socially acceptable.

This treatment may be necessary for the youths that have been subjected to years of embattlement and who have been driven into an anti-society stance, but for the millions of youths who are just entering the battle for their way of life, I hope that you will stand up for their differences and encourage their remarkable abilities. My kids are special. In the past, their type have single handedly changed the world we live in. This being the case, our current crop of curious youths may very well be our most valuable national treasure.