ADD & ADHD: What do Dyslexia and ADHD have in common? by Sharon Roberts

What Is Different About A Davis Program?

What do Dyslexia and ADHD have in common? Quite a bit actually. They both can have information-processing challenges, working memory deficits, and motor skills challenges. However, the common root cause is disorientation, which will be familiar to those in the Davis world - a state of mind in which your thinking/perception and your reality, the true facts and conditions in the environment, do not agree.

Everyone disorients but with ADHD, according to Ronald D. Davis in his book, The Gift Of Learning, disorientation is spontaneous. It happens easily and is driven by emotion. Some of these emotions include fear, boredom, curiosity and confusion. This spontaneous disorientation is narrowed down by Davis to two types of emotion, avoidance and engagement.

Whatever the cause of the disorientation, it can affect our attention. This perceptual ability has many positive aspects to it. These include exceptionally creative personalities, good problem-solving skills, lots of energy and ability to hyper focus. On the flip side, being disoriented affects our visionary and auditory processing, balance, coordination and time.

Because these senses are affected, you can observe behaviors such as distractibility, poor organizational skills, chronic lateness, struggles to control emotions, keeping friends and underestimating the time it will take to complete tasks. In other words, it affects executive functioning skills, 'the management system of the brain.’ These skills enable us to set goals, plan and get things done. When people struggle with executive function, it impacts them at home, in school and in life.

Some obvious signs of ADD / ADHD include frequent interruption of others or talking over them, poor self-control, blurting out thoughts without thinking, acting recklessly or spontaneously without regard for consequences and behaving in socially inappropriate ways (such as not being able to sit still during a long meeting). Emotionally individuals with ADD/ADHD can be easily flustered and stressed out, possess short, often explosive tempers, have self-esteem issues, have trouble staying motivated and be hypersensitive to criticism. For a child, it may look like not knowing how to share toys, take turns, play well with others. They may have problems making or keeping friends and find it difficult to focus and stay still.

Both hyper and hypo activity can be involved in attention issues. Both are products of spontaneous disorientation, and every disorientation affects our perception of time. This is why for someone experiencing ADHD, an hour of time can feel as if it is going quickly or slowly. The faster the internal clock goes the slower the outside seems; one hour can seem like two. The senses of balance and motion are reversed when disoriented. Being still seems like moving so a person mimics the feeling and moves which results in a feeling of calmness. If you tell them to be still and stop fidgeting, not only will they not hear you, they might also feel motion sick because they want to move and yet they are attempting to keep still.

There are many arguments over the cause and treatment for ADHD/ADD. Conventional streams see it as a mental health issue that requires medication to increase dopamine levels. Others look for the cause of this lack of focusing, and attribute it to lifestyle factors such as video games, screen time, intolerances to foods such as sugar, colorings, additives, glyphosates. There is evidence that the frequency of screen and video time affects dopamine levels and circadian rhythms. Furthermore, adults are modeling inattention as they multi-task, rushing off to activities, not allowing for time spent time in nature or just being quiet. All likely contribute in some way ... many of these factors affect dopamine levels.

Davis® Attention Mastery provides effective tools to help adults and children age 8 and over to address attention, behavioral, or organizational difficulties. Adults and children gain abilities to recognize and clear up distorted perceptions. That allows them to detect and solve confusions, and then master and internalize concepts that will help them with social interactions and attention issues. These concepts include: self, change, consequence, before, after, cause, effect, time, sequence, and order vs. disorder. We practice using these concepts by applying them to real life situations. This allows one to develop personal insight into the barriers that prevent them from living to their potential.

Young children diagnosed with ADHD often have significant academic and learning barriers, particularly with reading skills and reading comprehension. The Davis tools for attention regulation are part of every Davis program. Since academic difficulties are often at the heart of behavior problems and the inability to sustain focus in a classroom setting, in some cases it is better for children to start with a Davis Dyslexia Correction program. Often, the behavior issues that gave rise to an ADHD diagnosis will dissolve when the child gains the ability to read and understand why much of the confusion that caused the disorientation occurred and how it can be resolved.

Sharon Roberts, Davis Facilitator, Ontario https://dyslexia.ca/