Year 8's most wanted.

"Out of clutter find simplicity. From discord find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies oppurtunity." - Albert Einstein -

Imagine living life with a bull's eye nailed in-between your eyes. Imagine discrimination against your every exploit; your every childish act, not laughed off because you’re a pubescent thirteen year old with energy to burn, but reprimanded as an intentional act of dissent. Imagine watching your friends push the limits of society, as children should, but knowing that your every move, whether accidental or calculated, will see you questioned and interrogated. Imagine walking the death defying tightrope of expulsion; day in day out. Such is the life of an ADHD sufferer. Such is the life of my kid brother…

On Friday he served an after school detention, four to five thirty, for a minor offence that would see you or I possibly grace the lunchtime detention room were it witnessed by the sternest of teachers. Today he serves an internal suspension. The felony? So silly and immature that my parents have to think twice before deciding not to tell me, perhaps out of fear that I would marvel at its genius and ask
questions of the school’s punishment system, or maybe they simply thought twice because of all my former wrongdoings clouding their memory. Of course I daren't ask my brother in case a lazy ear catches our talk and he is scolded for boasting about his crimes. Such is the lack of trust that a mere mention from his corner would land him in detention 101 for the umpteenth time.

“Big Brothers is watching you!”

An insider source later told me his crime was a mere prank chain email, ingeniously sent to a hundred or so students using the schools new server system. Worse has been done and documented in scatological scrawl upon the toilet walls.

As he creeps into the room his sheepish smile tells all. Beneath his bravado and branded label "bad boy," he is still an innocent child, still scared, still my baby brother. He doesn’t know what to expect in this interview; whether I'm writing for or against him. He doesn’t trust me; he doesn’t trust anyone. And how can you blame him? He has grown up with teachers being the enemy behind his own lines.

In my experience, school was the place where you could be yourself, shed the coat of youth and play out of your kindergarten skin, away from the prying eyes of your parents; at school you are free. Not my Daniel. His every action is scrutinized, documented and reported back to the mother ship, through habitual calls and emails home. And the irony of it is that the paternal mother ship often couldn’t care less.
Would any self-respecting, full-time employed, parent want to hear whether their thirteen-year-old pushed in front of a queue in the cafeteria? Or fell of his chair in class because he didn’t want to stand up to retrieve a hiding pencil, or even was caught using the C-word - by which I mean “crap”. No. And my parents aren’t exactly your average nine to five workers, and my family isn’t exactly your perfect nuclear family.

Daniel will be stuck in his infant skin until the system in charge of his education accepts their imperfections and acknowledges their need to learn how to  really deal a Daniel.  ADHD is a listed medical disease and often is combined with Oppositional Defiance Disorder. This strain means the brain, in natural state, is defiant. A thirteen year old boy containing this strain and being treated like a special case will flair up day in day out until he is treated like every other teenage boy, with just a slight touch here and there to aid him in his mission to keep on the straight and narrow. He needs excitement and acknowledgement, a passionate teacher will see him enjoy a subject and get involved rather then distract. Perpetually boring him whilst forcing him to keep as the crow flies will only cause him to shoot the crow.

"Teachers make mountains of molehills!"

He swivels around and around on the desk chair, his dizzying spin not interrupting the bubbling fountain spewing from his mind, a most wonderful and exciting source, a resource just needing to be tapped. I stop him and ask him what he is doing. Silence. Then;

"I start messing around, subconsciously. It just sort of happens… I'm sorry, I'll stop"

He really didn’t know what he was doing, I have to tell him, and when he realises his immediate reaction is an apology. This instinct alone screams out to me that there is a problem and he isn’t it. When a child is forced to retreat inside himself and apologize for something which he himself is not aware of, society has questions to answer. Thirty seconds on the spinning recommences and what’s worse, I suddenly realise I'm spinning. His uncontrollable positive energy is infectious.
         
ADHD is often a feature of the brightest, most intelligent brains on earth - Einstein is Dan's favourite. Now, more so than before in our ever changing global society, the ability to multi-task, to subconsciously “pick it up” like Daniel does, to be able to split your mind between the conscious and intuitive, is a tool which needs to be supported. Not exploited. Tame and teach this raw intellect, much like an engine is tooled so all x number of horse-power hits the tarmac. Use that incredible intelligence - which has Mensa drooling- to benefit the child. And when a few sparks from this fearsome, roaring, imagination, ignites the surrounding atmosphere quell the fire calmly. Forest fires only grow through antagonism.

Children suffering with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder are at more of a disadvantage than children, like myself, suffering from ADD. Attention Deficit Disorder is the medical term for a large proportion of young children, to whom concentration does not come easily, and distractions effortlessly. However ADHD has one simple ingredient that differs itself from its medicinal brother; Hyperactivity.
The capital H in ADHD means that these young children growing up are often deemed as the naughty child, the annoying child, the kid that can’t sit still, and as always through history and society any exception to the norm must be isolated and stamped out. What’s worse, there are still those who fear and reject change, those who are prepared to carryout the stamping.

These throw backs to a more ignorant time are the bane of children like Daniel; they are set in their ways and deem a child who talks aloud when not supposed too, even one suffering from a medically proven disease, a pest and one that needs to be dealt with in the archaic manner of non-physical corporal punishment. The predicament is that these outmoded 'educators' are the ones that never die. The old dinosaurs who refuse to retire and see Daniel's everywhere as their own personal targets, at whom their crosshairs must be aimed at.

This ridiculous mindset causes endless trials and tribulations to any child, be them an ADD sufferer or carrying the big H, ultimately leading to underperformance and misery and in many cases severe depression. 

Now I credit the teachers at our school with higher IQs than a mushroom and more moral value than a dinosaur  but even fungus could see that shutting a child of Daniel’s mental capacity and 4potential in a 3-by-6 foot cell for the entirety of a day, with nothing more than a text book to spark his engine, is not the way-

"To challenge and inspire [Daniel] to realize [his] potential, both academic and personal, in a stimulating and caring community, enabling  [him] to become a responsible and engaged citizen of the world."

On the contrary: it is preparation for prison.

ADHD is often associated with children misbehaving and deterring themselves and others from learning. Well, to Daniel, it's the teachers and their teaching which prohibits him from learning,

"" Work feels like a waste of time, there are so many more things worth while that I could be doing…Teachers don’t have the answer for me so I just sit there…"

As he sits there spinning, his mind wanders from this topic to that. I ask no questions; I hear all the answers. I don’t need to speak; his beautiful mind does that for me. My thoughts begins to wonder, (is ADHD contagious?) …

"and they watch me …"

How must it feel like to be year 8's most wanted?

"… waiting for me to screw up."