Case 2
Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)
vs
ADHD/Gifted/LD

Problem Areas
*achievement well below potential
*reactive, emotional
*disorganized (problems mapping complex ideas into simple, formulaic ways of writing)
*discouraged, feelings of not being able to meet school expectations, "the really depressing thing is thinking youšre right, you give it to the teacher and itšs wrong, wrong, wrong"
*impatience with drill, practice, rote memorizing
*failure to hand in assignments on time
*long time periods considering multiple possibilities and weighing the virtues of competing possibilities; slow response rate
*sound intuitions unrefined into precise answers and procedures, negatively affecting math especially

sample summary
However many years, the oscillating, moving up and down, the peak of a new genre, at the peak of a new genre of violence in the media, therešs an escalation of violent crimes, then a process in which society deals with this. Scientists do their studies. Activists make a big deal of it and then they tone it down (here X offers the censorship of Beevis and Butthead as an example). It dies down until the next peak.

Areas of Strength

Many "Problems" are also Strengths
*rich,fluid rushes of complcated ideas that are difficult to simplify into a clear, linear, "organized" argument
*insistence on doing justice to the full and precise quality of thoughts
*excellent untimed responses to open ended questions; difficulty constraining ideas to conform with multiple choice options
*strengths common both to what is identified as ADHD and what is identified as intellectual giftedness: urgency to explore, invent, discover; novelty seeking, intolerance of/impatience with repetition and narrow focus. These characteristics sit within a biochemistry of dopamine seeking that maintains the urge to seek, explore, and to learn in a broad, global, non-focal way.

Medication Effects - dexedrine, wellbutrin
*frontal inhibition and thus a more dominant role for focal, vigilant, sustained information pick-up
*suppression of more natural tendency to think globally and expansively
*tension, stuck in a middle zone between focal, narrow tight controls and more natural, expressive, innovative fluidity
Diagnosis
ADHD/Gifted/LD with emphasis on the strengths in these areas

Instruction
*negotiate assignments with teachers to allow for more creative and expansive self expression while covering the content.
*use innovative forms of expression to communicate complex ideas rather than try to conform to prescriptions for writing
*Although some conceptual organization is needed, it ought to emerge out of the richness and fullness of his thought and the material itself and not out of the expedience of procedural formulas
*extended time for testing
* answer the multiple choice question without reference to the choices, i.e., write in self-generated short answers.
*Teach the connection between math algorithms/procedures and the intuitions/insights that give them meaning.
*Review effects of medication on thinking and learning; reconsider the goal of focal attention at the expense of more personalized and fluid thinking.