Gifted AND Talented

For those of you that don't know, I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. I have had it all of my life and to find out so late in life is rare but not unheard of. As I look back at my childhood under the light of this new knowledge I have started to have so many things that I have done or not done make sense. School was always difficult for me. I had a hard time meeting deadlines and finishing projects. I remember having my parents come in to meet with the kindergarten teacher and she pulled out my bin which was full of half-made projects. It was a bumpy start and I always had teachers point out my obvious under achievement. It wasn't that I was stupid I just had a hard time seeing things through.

One year in elementary school my teacher decided that I was too distracted and was having too much trouble getting my assignments in on time and that I should go to the remedial class for an hour a day for a week to see if that would help me to become a better student. This group was called "gifted and talented." Now I don't know what made anyone think that it was a good idea to take me out of my class and put me in a room with 4 misfits from the other classes in my same grade and then have us talk through our feelings. It wasn't like I was disturbing other children in my daydreams and it was like the teachers were saying, "You are having trouble doing your work so we are going to send you to a class for an hour where you wont have to do any work at all." It is just like suspending someone for ditching too. "You don't want to go to class? Here! Have a whole day off...that'll teach him a lesson." (I was never suspended...just thought it was funny that it was the punishment for ditching too much.) :) So anyways, I hated being in Gifted and Talented, I felt like I was a misfit too because I was there. I wasn't slow. I wasn't bad. In fact, I was a very smart child who just had a neurological disorder that made it hard to do assignments.

I was telling Estee about being in the remedial class called "gifted and talented" and she asked if I was sure that was the remedial class. Apparently she got placed in the "gifted and talented" class at her school. Fortunately for her it was really for the gifted and talented children and instead of sitting around in a room with the misfits talking about why someone punched that kid at lunch and how we felt about being abandoned at birth by our fathers, she actually got to do fun, exciting things with all the smart kids at her school, that is really where I would have excelled and I could never understand why I didn't get to do those types of things...I guess it was because of all of my emotional problems from my poor upbringing. (that was sarcasm my parents were awesome.) Do I sound bitter?...I hated that class!

The funny thing was that my mother was so proud of me for being in gifted and talented for a week and I didn't have the heart to tell her it wasn't really a class for the "gifted" and "talented." Unless stealing lunch money from little kids is considered a talent now.

Finding out that I have ADHD was one of the most, if not the most, life changing things that has ever happened to me. I used to cry out of frustration because of the the unexplainable failure I faced every day. You cannot imagine unless you go through it, the agony of feeling like you will never amount to anything while having the intelligence to understand exactly what that means. I cry now with joy as I begin treatment for this disorder and realize what I can become. I hope that more people will become aware of Attention Deficit Disorder so that many more children wont have to go through what I did. I don't blame anyone, there is no one to blame. My parents and teachers were just trying to do their best with what they knew.