Every night, without fail, I sit with my son and oversee, make that assist him with his homework. Typically by the time we sit down to do his homework, he's all over the place and what should take 15 minutes takes closer to an hour.
Tonight, I got him started and walked away for a minute to throw something away. I listened as he began to sing (at the top of his lungs) what appeared to be a System of the Down song but in Spanish. Now my son does not speak Spanish, but he does a mean imitation, accent and all.
I rolled my eyes as I realized that I'd have to return to the table to re-focus him on the task at hand.
As I walked back to the table, I was stopped dead in my tracks. He was singing as loud as he could, in fake Spanish, and completing every math problem on his sheet perfectly and without missing a beat.
And here's what hit home for me once again. ADHD is not attention deficit. It is attention overload. It is the ability to focus on anything and everything at one time. I've read articles about it, most recently in Time http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1887486,00.html?iid=perma_share and it made perfect sense. ADHD kids do better and are more successful when they are able to fidget, tap their pencil, etc... Allowing their brain to do more than just the task at hand actually enables them to focus on what they need to do.
And there he was. Singing in all his glory. And doing his math.
So here's to System of a Down, en Espanol.
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