ADD People Are Super Readers

I've been working through a book called, Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World: Unlocking the Potential of Your ADD Child by Jeffrey Freed. It mentions many things that I can identify in Chee Chee, and allows me to understand my son even better than before. However, what I did not expect is that it is also helping me understand my husband.

You see, the author states, from experience, that ADD people are highly gifted in certain areas, and they simply do not function like the average person. One such area is in reading. Now, I have always thought that people with ADD (and dyslexia) tend to be slow readers who struggle with every little word. However, according to Freed, that's the irony of it all. ADD and dyslexic people, who struggle when reading out loud, and who trip over small words from one line to the next, can actually be excellent high-speed readers. Once you throw the nitty-gritty out the window and focus on the big picture, then that's when ADD people can shine. Freed mentions that some of the teens he's coached can easily read a book that's several hundred pages long within a couple of hours--with comprehension. I wouldn't have believed these claims if I had not witnessed it in my husband, who's a prolific, published author, and has ADD and dyslexia, which were never diagnosed when he was young.

Sam does not enjoy reading out loud to our kids. When he reads, he gets tired and sleepy after only fifteen minutes. Over the years, that duty of reading to our boys at bed time gradually shifted entirely onto my lap. However, this man who seems to struggle with reading out loud for even fifteen minutes can gobble up fifteen textbook-sized tomes for his research within a week, while on vacation (and still go on outings, watch soccer, and generally relax and sleep a lot). When we visited with a friend in Colorado over the summer, he read half a dozen of her books, all in a couple of days amidst conversations, outings, World Cup, and meals.

I used to think he simply browsed these books for the sections he needed rather than read them from cover to cover. After reading the Right-Brained book, I am beginning to believe that ADD people have super-human speed-reading abilities. This would explain how Sam can publish half a dozen books in one year (with all the research required) and still teach full-time and be a dad.

It seems that ADD and dyslexia in general wreak havoc in children in primary and secondary schools, because in those years learning is all about building simple aptitudes like reading clearly, spelling accurately, and multiplying numbers precisely. However, as one progresses beyond these simple tasks to higher-level mental activities, such as research, analysis, synthesis, and creating new ideas, then ADD people really do thrive. Of course, by then, they will have been told hundreds of times by dozens of people how "disabled" they are, and how unsuccessful they'll be. What a shame!