So, I totally get what you're saying. Kudos on your girls' successes! The one with the Ph.D. is L? the one lost in the mountains for several days?
Both graduated at the top of their high school class and college with dual majors and both also have graduate degrees. The one taking Adderall who struggled so much as a child is now a trauma surgeon in Portland, Maine. Along with that she has undergrad degrees in both Zoology and Biology with a minor in Latin.
The other is an OT who is currently designing a brand new OT program for a Manchester, NH hospital and working on her Ph.D. She has degrees in Psychology, Biochemistry, and O.T.
Being ADHD is often found in the "gifted" population. Many major science and medical breakthroughs were discovered by those who are/were not only brilliant, but ADHD. I can only wonder how much those people could have done if they'd had Ritalin or Adderall to slow their brains down enough to properly file and refind their information?
For some reason, that isn't as common in the ADD crowd. Without the hyperactive part, the ADD attention span is too difficult to rein in because it constantly stops on everything that distracts it and therefore fails to even file the information it receives. Meds help it file information it otherwise wouldn't retain, but it isn't as quick thinking as the ADHD brain.
WITH the hyperactive part of it, the brain races along too fast, scattering everything it learns into a pile on "the floor" of the brain. However, with meds, it is able to slow down enough to retrieve those "files" and use them going forward.
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