Reading & Writing for the ADHD Mind
“She listens to books on tape at two times speed,” my husband tells people. “Sounds like so much chatter to me.”
I'm 66 years old. I was diagnosed as having ADHD D 8015 years ago. I met with a therapist? A person that I found online who could prescribe medications for those people with an assortment of mental health issues.
The evaluation was very simple. I think she asked me maybe 10 questions or it may have been an online questionnaire that she had loaded on an iPad.
Questions like:
Do you have trouble focusing?
Do you often jump from one task to another?
Do you for easily?
My answers were obviously. Although there are many instances where I can focus for long periods of time on a given task. But I suppose that is the H of ADHD attention deficit hyper something disorder.
As a college professor, I believe my diagnosis helps me to sympathize and empathize with many of my students who have also been labeled as having ADHD. I often give them strategies that I have discovered myself as useful for being more productive and getting work done. After all, college has many due dates and deadlines. If a student is unable to adhere to these often published dates, no matter their level of intelligence or talent, they risk failing.
But just today, I realized something that might have been obvious, but definitely alluded my reflections and any observations from coaches and teachers I've had the past.
From a very early age I have struggled with reading.
In middle school, my slow rate of speed ended up with me placed in a special reading class designed to help me read faster. I remember sitting in the second floor classroom of the Littleton middle school as projected sentences appeared on a screen at the front of the room. I don't know who was responsible for forwarding the filmstrip, but I do remember my frustration when even after weeks of these remedial classes, my reading speed remained at a presumably low level for my age pain to grades in school.
Interesting thing, I'm a very early age, was the fact that my reading comprehension and various test designed to assess that ability, always provided me with high scores. My peers may have been able to rush through a paragraph in these evaluations, but then when they had to answer questions about the content, they failed to be able to remember important details.
After a while, I was released from these reading classes and happily never had to submit to these self-defeating instructions again.
Coupled with this low reading rate, I also despised having to read out loud in class. We all know there are some people who Excel at this activity. I shuddered at the prospect of having to participate particularly when the activity was doled out in a typical let's go around the room and take turns format.
Conversely when a teacher simply asked for volunteers, my hand never went up. But, I rarely in fact never raised my hand in school after a bad experience with an untrained substitute teacher. But that's a story for another day.
When my son was born, being of preemie born five weeks ahead of his due date, doctors recommended that he would develop and thrive more speedily with the sound of a human voice particularly his mother's voice having been the sound, albeit muffled, that he had heard in uterus.
As a new mom spending days home with no one else to talk to except my newborn son, I decided that I would read books out loud to him especially when he was nursing. You probably automatically think of me reading picture books or other books that might be age-appropriate, but I would argue that a newborn doesn't care whether the cat in the hat wreaks havoc in a house or making way for those eight little ducklings. I decided, I would read books out loud that I wanted to read. It was the perfect instance of killing those two birds with one stone.
My sister had given me a copy of ceremonial time, a book written about one square mile in our little hometown of Littleton Massachusetts. It the author, John Hansen Mitchell, still lives in town and continues to write interesting books on our region and its colorful history.
So I set about reading this novel life's history to my son. Like many things, the newness of this activity felt awkward. I was once again reminded of my this life for oral reading. Nonetheless, my interest in being a nurturing new mom precluded any feelings of self-consciousness, doubt, or outright refusal of the task.
I quickly realized, one of the reasons why I tended to have such a whole thing delivery when reading any passage in class, was my own mother's stilted reading anytime she had to verbalize a text. I have no idea if her manner had anything to do with her own reading level, but I do know she often times spent hours reading various storable romances, a genre that she adored.
As I read the opening pages of ceremonial time, I could hear her monotone on rhythmic voice.
The only way to improve a skill is through repetition.
Armed with this knowledge, I persevered. I spent hours sitting on the couch in our living room holding my young son and reading the pages of that book and then others. Within a week, my hesitancy had all but disappeared. My reading would not be considered dramatic by any means, I never attempted different voices for different characters-but I learned how to read out loud a skill that has served me very well in the college classroom.
I harbor no sense of apprehension when I have to, or choose to, read a short story out loud to my class. That being said, I would never force a student to read out loud relying on volunteers when the activity presents itself.
My son is now 37 years old. I am a professor of English. And up until six months ago if you asked me what books I had recently read, my answer would be I hate to read.
But this is what I have discovered as a 66-year-old with ADHD. People like us thrive on stimulation. Thrive might not be strong enough to describe a constant hunger for challenges of all sorts. This desire and thirst often manifests in procrastination. How does one make any task more interesting? By raising the stakes. If you have to submit a report by July 15, then the best way to make writing the report more interesting is to put it off until July 14.
Anyone who has ever received that dopamine hit of turning something in a minute before the deadline understands this common root of procrastination.
Cast-dabbled with listening to books audiobooks on a platform such as audible. I had a subscription at one time and I know it was fun to be able to drive for example while reading a book, but the costs involved limited the number of books that I chose to afford.
Recently however, I have discovered that my local library offers thousands of audiobooks that are free to the borrower. I am happy to say that through the Libby app I can borrow up to five audiobooks at a time but they are not mine to keep and sometimes the book returns itself to the library before I finished it. Another drawback of Libby is the limited number of copies that they make available. If a book was on audible, it was mine purchase. But sometimes on Libby I have to wait four to six weeks even more for their one or two copies to be available.
I don't mind. In this waiting often forces me to choose another title instead. My horizons expand with each book that I listen to.
Last year I wrote about creating a vision board. On that vision board I included an image of a stack of 25 books. I put the desire out to the universe to read 25 books in the coming year. I am happy to report that as of today I have read 29 different titles. I'll include my list at the end of this email.
So I can listen to books while driving or more recently while painting and yet the normal speed often allows my mind to wander. The normal rate of a human talking apparently is just too slow for my stimulus seeking brain.
That these various audiobook apps make it easy to increase the speed. And I have found that two times the normal rate feels just right. Things happen fast enough, descriptions are covered quickly, dialogue goes back and forth between characters at lightning speed.
I I have recently discovered that I can use the same two times speed when watching informative and educational YouTube. I wrote about the 5 AM club and my newfound habit of starting my day with 20 minutes on the treadmill while learning. I usually double down and speed up the playback.
I'm not saying that my inclination to consume information that includes the narratives of books makes me any smarter than anyone else. I simply have come to realize that maybe my elementary school diagnosis as being medial reader stem from getting bored.
I'm sure if you have my readers also have a similar diagnosis and if you have not discovered that you and speed up audiobooks and videos you might want to give it a try. I do recommend that you this with a nonverbal activity because that seems to be the best way sharpen focus.
Leading with the Heart
Unreasonable Hospitality, Gadara
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Chambers
Record of a Spaceborn Few, Chambers
A Closed and Common Orbit, Chambers
How to Be Perfect
Be Useful, Schwarzenegger
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
The Book of Help
The Everyday Hero Manifesto, Sharma
Novelist as Vocation
Worthy, Smith
The Self-Talk Workout
Four Thousand Weeks
Around the World in Eight Days
The Last Lecture
Gone So Long, Dubus
Such Kindness, Dubus
The 5 a.m club, Sharma
Dodger, Pratchett
House in the Cerulean Sea
The Golden Spoon
Tinkers- Pulitzer
The Galaxy and the Ground Within
The Belles
A swim in a pond in the rain, Saunders
The Great Gatsby
Under The Whispering Door
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Bel Canto, Patchett