Published: November 18, 2007 12:22 am            

VASICEK: Attention deficit and the news

When I was a lad in the early and middle 1960s, school was not easy for me. I did fine in kindergarten and first grade, but I hit a brick wall in second grade. I was wonderful at reading aloud: I could sound out my words, did not read in a vocal pattern, and had a great vocabulary. The only problem was that I could not remember anything I read. I had little retention.

My first and only “D” on a report card brought my parents’ attention. My mom met with my teacher, and, together, they worked on a remediation plan. My mom got hold of some old readers, and every night I would read a story to her. She would ask me questions as I went along: “What color was the elephant? What was the name of the little boy’s sister?” If I didn’t remember, she made me go back to the story and reread it to retrieve the information. It was not very long before I was back on the straight and narrow when it came to reading.

Many children today have struggles like mine, but they are not blessed with parents who care and will work with them. Let me share a contrasting example.

One of my classmates had trouble succeeding in school and never overcame the problem. I felt sad for the boy: His parents were divorced, and he lived with his dad (who was an alcoholic). He was a horribly insecure child; the other kids made fun of him, adding insult to injury. He probably had the best brains in the class, but he would dilly dally and rarely got his work done. The teachers liked him, but they would reason with him in exasperated tones: “You can understand the material, you are smart, yet you won’t do your work!”

The surge in labeling children as victims of “attention deficit syndrome” is viewed by some as a phantom problem. But veteran teachers will testify that today’s kids ARE different from those of past decades; many more seem unable to focus.

So what gives? Is attention deficit syndrome a figment of our imagination, a genetic issue, or is it the fallout from environmental factors? A Nov. 12 AP article seems to eliminate the phantom theory:

“Crucial parts of brains of children with attention deficit disorder develop more slowly than other youngsters’ brains, a phenomenon that earlier brain-imaging research missed,” a new study says.

“Developing more slowly in ADHD youngsters — the lag can be as much as three years — are brain regions that suppress inappropriate actions and thoughts, focus attention, remember things from moment to moment, work for reward and control movement. That was the finding of researchers, led by Dr. Philip Shaw of the National Institute of Mental Health, who reported the most detailed study yet on this problem in Monday’s online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

Despite the fascinating correlation between brain differences and ADHD, the question remains, “What causes a child’s brain to follow this attention deficit syndrome pattern?”

In the past, most scientists would have argued that brain structure was primarily genetic, but Dr. Richard Restak, in his book, “The New Brain,” presents a different perspective. Restak documents that our behavior and environment affects our physical brain patterns. In other words, not only does our brain influence our behavior, our behavior influences our brain!

This recent study confirms that attention deficit syndrome is a real (not imagined) phenomenon. But it leaves us with at least four choices. Choice one is that ADHD is genetically determined apart from environment and upbringing; we cannot cause it or prevent it. The second choice is that ADHD is a result of social and environmental factors like home life, video game addiction, television/videos, over-stimulation, and insufficient sleep times. The third choice (which is my view) is that ADHD is sometimes a result of one or sometimes both of the above. The fourth choice is, “something I have not considered or thought of.”

Ed Vasicek is pastor of Highland Park Church and a weekly contributor to the Kokomo Tribune.

        

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