Enough To Make You MADD

While in college, every Saturday, I volunteered for a program working with special needs kids that could also double as a one-credit class, though I was just there for the kids, not the credit. We would get thirty minutes of “class,” teaching us stuff about working with special needs kids. Then, the kids would arrive, and we were each paired up with one child for two hours of play and lessons.

One day, while I waited for the class to start up, I was speaking with one of the other volunteers about my first experiences volunteering with special needs kids.

Me: “Since I was new to it all, they paired me up with the easiest child they had to watch, a kid with ADHD who wasn’t even all that hyperactive. But I’m ADD myself, so I couldn’t help but feel they had a ‘blind leading the blind’ situation going on, you know?”

Volunteer: “Wait, you’re ADD?”

Me: “Yeah, technically ADHD/inattentive variant, but it’s easier to just say ADD.”

Volunteer: “Wow. I wouldn’t have guessed you were ADD. You don’t seem desperate to get attention at all!”

Me: “Umm, I really don’t think you understand what ADHD is.”

I explained what ADHD was to him, but his comments made it clear that he honestly thought that the hyperactivity of ADHD was nothing more than attention-seeking from someone clinically diagnosed as so desperate for attention that they needed to act out to get it.  

I was sorely tempted to suggest he may want to consider repeating the class we were in next year, since he could use some more remedial training in special needs.