Tuesday, October 8, 2019

ADHD reality




living life at a different speed

I remember a Star Trek episode
where the crew of the Enterprise 
had to deal with a humanoid life-form
who lived life faster than they,
an hour to us maybe a second for them,

this episode comes to me
as I empathically leap into my students’ worlds, 
we come up with an acronym, ADHD,
and that seems to help us get the challenges faced
by a student who is hyper-aware,
who lives her/his/their life
with different governors within:
beware the predator who attempts to sneak up on them!

they live their life   
doing the best they can 
to please parent, teacher, self,
yet they’re living on a tightrope
with pulls of attractive stimuli to every side,   

I can attempt to insert myself and my ideas of how to move forward,     
but I can then often get a perplexed “What?” in response,

I believe in each child and their drive to do well,
I am challenged by my own drive to do well,
and my feeling out of sync with the student,
as they seek to figure how to succeed in a game
whose rules only vaguely appear to them,

I feel like Captain Kirk in that Star Trek episode,
knowing there’s a different reality out there

and aching to understand it.  

by Henry H. Walker
October 5, ‘19

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