I visited a support group for the parents of hyper kids a long time ago. My son, at times anxious and impulsive, was, I’d been told, only “situationally hyperactive,” which wasn’t much help. But listening to those other parents was eye-opening. Their kids seemed truly uncontrollable. And the parents were miserable.
I still have the notes I made when I was trying various diets and structured reward plans (stickers on a chart, with prizes). Therefore a lot of what I read in Hyper: A Personal History of ADHDby Timothy Denevi, was very familiar to me, from the “other side.”
Denevi, who received his MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa, has been awarded various fellowships, and is the Nonfiction Visiting Writer in the MFA program at George Mason University. He’s also a worthy documenter of his own early years. He uses what he remembers to share the inner world of a kid who doesn’t fit in because he’s too loud, interrupts too much, and whose impulsiveness got him into a lot of fights.
What’s unusual about Denevi’s book is that he skillfully intersperses the history of how society and the medical and therapeutic professions have dealt with those like him. Call it hit and miss, call it misguided or ignorant, or call it a greedy plot by psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies to drug American kids: the result is that each and every family has to work hard to find appropriate help for their hyper and/or inattentive kids.
Denevi’s parents, who argued about him a lot (as my ex and I did over our son), tried everything from Ritalin to Adderall, anti-depressants to long-term therapy.
But Denevi doesn’t come to hard and fast conclusions after surveying the literature and history. In fact, in the final chapter (before the Epilogue where he catches us up with his life and shares what mostly works for him, he writes:
If more than a hundred years have been spent researching ADHD—conducting clinical trials, honing methodology, and evaluating certain approaches against others—why is it still so difficult to diagnose and treat the disorder in a way that addresses individual circumstances?
If someone in your family may have ADHD, older books and theories may be of less use to you. Instead, Denevi’s book would be a fine place to start investigating your options.
Copyright (c) 2014 by Susan K. Perry, author of Kylie’s Heel