The genes of Sherlock Holmes

Okay– yeah. Since the last blogpost led with a current photo of her, I thought I’d try for an old one on this post, so we could all go “Awwww…” at how much she’s grown. Mind blowing, isn’t it? Dickens said it best… “The years performed their terrible dance…” Fortunately Squish has a number of dances to go before she’s grown, but she really is amazingly big right now, isn’t she?

Mate and I went to a ‘class’ last night on ADD/ADHD. One of the things that the guy said was that ADD was genetic, and that usually when he was treating children with ADD/ADHD, he would look out at an audience and see PARENTS with ADD/ADHD. I pulled out my knitting, started doing character profiles of the people I saw around the room, checked to see if Mate was paying attention, flirted with the new baby the row in front of me, wondered what the woman behind me was knitting when she changed projects and then I wondered what she was crocheting instead, and wondered who on earth this guy could be talking about.

Later, I semi-facetiously asked Mate if he figured out who he thought gave Zoomboy the ADD gene, and he said, (also semi-facetiously) “Yeah. Your father.”

And I said, “What about my mom’s side of the family? They’re all brilliant and they all hated school!”

Well, basically, you know which side of the family can remember what they’re doing when they go from one room in the house to the other, don’t you?

Yeah. His. Poor guy–I’m sure he must have imagined, at some point in our lives together, that he’d signed on for ‘normal’.

Anyway, the little seminar was interesting–I thought it highly amusing when the nice p-sychiatrist pointed out that the deal with ADD/ADHD is that neurology hinders the ‘Executive functions’ of the brain. I’m like, “Great–even my brain chemistry hates authority. That’s refreshing to know!” He said that about 1/3 of all kids with an attention deficit would be simply ADD– attention deficit, no hyperactivity. Mate thought this could be Zoomboy, but I don’t now–Zoomboy doesn’t run until he drops, but he IS sort of a little twitch. I’m sure we’ll see, right?

Most folks with this disorder have both, but a small percentage are just hyperactive. “This,” said the nice shrink, “is the REALLY dangerous kid. This kid is really bright, has horrible impulse control, and he pays attention to EVERYTHING!”

Mate turned to me and said, “Oh God–that kid would be Sherlock Holmes!” I thought that was an absolutely perfect observation– Conan-Doyle would be proud, seriously! (I mean, Mr. Holmes DID try to self-medicate, right?)

About the only thing I DIDN’T agree with was the idea that back in the cave man days, the ADD/ADHD people would have been the hunters, while everyone else would have been the gatherers. “You’ve seen our kid on the soccer field!” I complained to Mate. “If that ball was some sort of animal he was supposed to hunt, he would have been dinner!”

“Well, yeah,” Mate pointed out, trying to be reasonable, “but that’s because he was never squatting in the dirt, watching daddy hunt!”

Well, yeah. But Daddy would have been a gatherer, and mommy would have been put to death as some sort of witch, so, basically, even though ADD/ADHD kids are 5-7% of the population our little Zoomboy would still have been the precious little anomaly that he is.

No matter how you slice it, though, the one thing we walked away from the evening with was, “Well, thank God for medication!” That and, for me anyway, “Thank God for knitting!” which apparently works just as well, right? I suppose we’ll find out–if there’s one thing we’ve learned from eighteen years bringing T to adulthood (or close– the ‘grown-up fairy’ did not jus wave her wand and Shazzaam! Big T into productive adulthood, declaring our jobs completely over, and our lives without him complete. For one thing, he’s gonna be living here until he’s thirty!) it’s that this sort of thing doesn’t really end. You just teach your kid how to cope productively with it until it’s his problem–and solution–and not yours.

So, enough of that.

Mate showed me this next thing last night. I wish I could get all righteous and give a dedication for this one–you know, send it out to everyone who has ever cut me off in traffic or sabotaged my life or kicked me in my shins or something–but I can’t. This is not sent out as a curse, if anyone out there is reading that into it, but as a blessing, because it is by far one of the frickin’ funniest things I’ve seen. Ever. I mean that.

Goddess love William Shatner–man, if we could all laugh at ourselves like this, the world would be a MUCH happier place:

And on that note, I’ll leave you all to send that out to your friends–I hope you thought it was as funny as I did!