Harnessing the creative energy behind the diagnosis

Wall Street Journal columnist Sue Shellenbarger offers encouragement to parents of kids with ADHD, introducing us to some adults who were labeled as children and went on to build satisfying, productive lives for themselves.

Among those she lists: Ty Pennington, the host on “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition;” JetBlue founder David Neeleman and Kinko’s founder Paul Orfalea (above), who also has dyslexia. All had challenging childhoods, run-ins with school authorities, and teachers who didn’t believe they could succeed at much of anything. Neeleman said he thought he was “stupid.” Their stories are more relevant now than ever, with an estimated 8 percent of school-age children carrying the ADHD label.

The common thread in each case was the help of supportive parents who valued their children’s individuality, emphasized their strengths and didn’t give up. (Medication also gets a brief mention, as do behavior modification techniques.) Paul Orfalea praises a saying his mother used: “Look at your five fingers. All five are different for a reason. School wants to make you all the same.”

It’s worth noting that the strategies suggested here for helping a child with ADHD are markedly similar to those needed to help any child, disability or not.

If only Shellenbarger had edited out her references to ADHD “sufferers,” especially in light of the positive messages offered by parents. The phrase “people with ADHD” would have felt so much better.

Readers, now it’s your turn. Any tips of your own to share?

Founder of furniture firm has dyslexia

From Fortune Small Business on CNN, a piece by Terri Bowersock. Her Arizona-based company, Terri’s Consign & Design Furnishings, is the largest U.S. resale furniture retailer, with 16 stores and $36 million in annual sales.

Bowersock says she is upfront about her dyslexia and runs her business on her own terms. She does presentations by drawing illustrations in crayon and pencil, and communicates with employees verbally rather than by email.

I also carry a tape recorder with me always. Writing notes takes me too long, so often I’ll just have people speak into the recorder, or I’ll speak into it myself so that I can check my “notes” later. Recorders are also built into my phone.

… People ask if I attribute my success to overcoming dyslexia. I tell them that I haven’t, and never will, overcome dyslexia. Yes, I run a national company, but I’m still using a Franklin Talking Dictionary to try to spell fifth-grade vocabulary words.

At least I’ve shown my grade school teachers that it’s not that I wasn’t trying hard enough.

From the Grand Rapids Press:

Henry Winkler, better known as “The Fonz,” inspired fans in Grand Rapids with his stories about growing up with dyslexia. His appearance was part of an effort to raise scholarship money for Aquinas College.

Winkler told the audience that his Jewish immigrant parents called him names and came down hard on him for his difficulties in reading and math.

But, years later, after Winkler rose to fame with his portrayal of Arthur Fonzarelli on the hit show “Happy Days,” he redeemed that boy’s suffering through writing children’s books — 14 so far — about Hank Zipzer, a 10-year-old dyslexic.

“There is greatness in you,” Winkler told a boy with dyslexia in the crowd. “There is greatness in all of us.”

From the Associated Press in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling that Atlanta Public Schools must pay up to $152,000 to send a student long misdiagnosed as mentally disabled to a private school.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the school system must pay for Jarron Draper, now 21, to attend a school specializing in developmental disabilities for up to four years.

Draper was misdiagnosed with mental retardation by the school system in 1998, according to court records. His family fought for five years to have him retested. In 2003, an independent analysis showed he actually has dyslexia, a learning disability, but Draper’s attorneys say the school system was slow to remove him from the restrictive class for mentally disabled students even after the new diagnosis.

From the [UK] Times:

British exam regulators report a 43 percent increase in the number of students who were given extra time or extra help to complete standardized tests, sparking allegations of affluent parents exploiting the system to benefit their children.

A number of experts agreed yesterday that the rules were open to abuse. Tom Burkard, a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and director of the Promethean Trust, a charity for dyslexic children, said that many middle-class parents were exploiting the system to gain an unfair advantage for their children.

“Schools are under great pressure not to give students extra time in exams. When they do, it’s usually the result of pressure from middle-class parents,” he said.

From Bloomberg News, Reuters:

Billionaire James LeVoy Sorenson, who overcame poverty and dyslexia to develop medical equipment such as the computerized heart monitor and disposable surgical mask, has died of cancer.

Sorenson was the richest man in Utah, the largest private landowner in the state as well as the richest Mormon, his spokesman said. He founded several companies, including Sorenson Research, which was acquired by Abbott Laboratories in 1980.

The chairman of Sorenson Development Inc had a net worth of $US 4.5 billion, according to a Forbes list published last year.

See earlier post on the high correlation between entrepreneurship and dyslexia.

From the Dallas Morning News:

When David Zeig was 6, religious school teachers said his Asperger’s syndrome would prevent him from being able to make his bar mitzvah. Years of tutoring enabled him to reach his goal. Now his family has started a fund to help train religious school teachers to help children with autism, ADHD, dyslexia and other neurological disorders. They’ve raised $17,000 so far.

“I see many parents with a child who has recently got the diagnosis of autism who don’t see Hebrew school as an option for their kids,” says [David's father Louis] Zweig, 43. “It became brutally apparent to me that it was necessary to train our teachers about a host of neurological disorders, and most religious schools don’t have the budget to do that.”