DaVinci Method and LENS – Part Two of the Unwrapping the Gift of ADD series

April 23, 2008 by Leave a Comment

The guests of the second session (Tuesday, April 22, 2008) in the Unwrapping the Gift of ADD Series were Garret LoPorto and Rebecca Shafir.

Garret LoPorto, a successful entrepreneur with ADHD, is the author of The Da Vinci Method – Break Out & Express Your Fire, published in 2005, by (I believe) his own company, Media for Your Mind, Inc.

LoPorto shared that despite great social life in school he had a low self-esteem as a student and dropped out of college. When he started his own business, he realized the traits of ADHD which caused trouble for him in college were helping him be successful in his business.

He says on his web site that “virtually all self-made millionaires, billionaires, leaders and captains of industry have the same personality type” – they “like thrill, excitement and risk, are a highly creative problem solvers, impulsive in nature, ambitious and industrious, have tons of energy for things they are interested in, and love to be the hero in an emergency.”

Apparently on the Myers Briggs Personality Tests people like that are categorized as N (Intuition) types who intuitively “pay more attention to the patterns and possibilities that they see in the information they receive”) and P (Perceiving) types who “use their perceiving function […] in their outer life” and prefer “a more flexible and adaptable lifestyle”).

LoPorto calls this combination the Da Vinci personality and as examples lists among others: Richard Branson (owner of the Virgin Empire), Bill Clinton, Ben Cohen (co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s), George Lucas (Creator of Star Wars), and others.

LoPorto’s book, The Da Vinci Method – Break Out & Express Your Fire, gives tips on how to master this “fiery” personality. Now he has a new product – a “Psychoactive Soundâ„¢ CD Audio Set” that “brings together technologies from brain research with innovative recording and sound-processing techniques” and is “designed to trigger your brain to produce brainwave patterns that match exactly the state you want to experience.” The set includes CDs for “Alert Focus, Inspired Tranquility, Deep Meditation & Prayer, ‘Better than Coffee,’ and Deep HGH Recovery.”

Rebecca Shafir is the director of the Low Energy Neurofeedback System (LENS) program at the Hallowell Center. The LENS program is “a safe and non-invasive procedure that monitors and analyzes EEG (brain activity) using brain wave monitors on the scalp. The LENS system uses that information as feedback for sending signals back to the brain to normalize brain activity for those whose brain waves are disrupted. Conditions that improve with LENS feedback training include bipolar, depression, anxiety, OCD, fibromyalgia and Asperger’s. […] The LENS method accomplishes improved functioning in about one third the time compared with traditional neurofeedback approaches, with the same durability of treatment effects.”

During the show Rebecca said that while the traditional neurofeedback methods requires on average 40 to 60 or more visits, with the LENS method the patients see improvement with an average of 15 sessions.

Dr. Hallowell pointed out that while both methods anecdotally have great results, it can’t be said that they are “scientifically proven” yet, because there have not yet been any double-blind studies done to prove their effectiveness.

The difference between both methods is that you can listen to the “Da Vinci Brainwaves” when and where you feel like it – you choose the CD and the time; but you have to monitor your reaction yourself – LoPorto cautioned to listen to only one rotation at a time.

With the LENS method you have to make an appointment and travel to the clinic, making it more inconvenient than the Da Vinci Brainwaves, but a trained technician monitors your brainwaves and can adjust the “feedback” as not to overdo the amount of stimulation.

Filed Under: ADHD, Therapy and Treatment, Unwrapping the Gift of ADD series

The Gift of ADD – Part One of the Unwrapping the Gift of ADD series

April 21, 2008 by Leave a Comment

One of the most recognizable people in the ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder ) circles, Dr. Ned Hallowell, author of, among others, Driven To Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood; Delivered from Distraction: Getting the Most out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder; and The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness: Five Steps to Help Kids Create and Sustain Lifelong Joy, and founder of the Hallowell Center is on a campaign for people to recognize and accept that ADHD is not a disability and hindrance but a gift that one has to unwrap.

Today (April 21, 2008) was the first of a series of eight one-hour lectures that he and Dr. Kenny Handelman organized to be aired on the Internet through their web site, www.unwrappingthegiftofadd.com.

I think initially they wanted to limit the access to just under 500 people, but there was so much interest in the series, that somehow they were able to increase it to over 3,700. I think it’s still possible to sign up for the following lectures – three that will be aired this week, and four next week

After registering, through the web site you can also download a 16-page report authored by both doctors titled “Find the Genius in ADD.”

What Dr. Hallowell and Dr. Handelman are saying is that looking at ADHD as a disability and pathology is wrong and leads to a “downward spiral” of thinking that “this ‘disorder’ is going to ruin [...] lives.” What they propose instead is thinking of ADHD as a gift.

During the first lecture Dr. Hallowell was saying that distractibility is basically a higher form of curiosity.

He’s got that right! My six-year-old has calmed down somewhat since the time he dismantled the faucet at his daycare when he was two, but he still begs me to allow him do experiments with vinegar and soda, and likes to mix various ingredients to see what happens and how they react. So far it’s been relatively harmless, but he says he really would like to turn his bedroom into a chemistry lab. He also likes learning about electricity but I told him to never ever try the experiment I did once when I was his age of checking what will happen when you put a paper clip into the outlet. (I was lucky, when I saw the sparks I let go off the clip fast enough not to get hurt and only blew the fuses for the whole place, but my parents, who had guests over that evening, weren’t too happy with me.)

As far as impulsivity goes – Dr. Hallowell linked impulsivity with creativity which, as he says, depends, and in fact thrives on spontaneity and lack of inhibition.

It’s all very positive and hope inspiring. I think I should read “Find the Genius in ADD” at the beginning of each day to remember its message when my son makes a mess in the kitchen while getting too enthusiastic with vinegar and soda or carves with a nail a big heart and “I love you” on another piece of furniture (like he did on my antique dresser).

By the way, a guest speaker during the first lecture was Blake Taylor, an 18-year-old who was diagnosed with ADHD at five, who recently published a quickly-gaining fame book ADHD & Me: What I Learned from Lighting Fires at the Dinner Table, published by the New Harbinger Publications. He said that because his mother treated his ADHD as a gift from the beginning and motivated him, it made a difference in how he viewed his ADHD. Now, he’s a student at UC, Berkeley.

Filed Under: ADHD, Unwrapping the Gift of ADD series

Beyond the Wall, by Stephen Shore

April 21, 2008 by Leave a Comment

I already mentioned Beyond the Wall: Personal Experiences with Autism and Asperger Syndrome, by Stephen Shore, published by the Autism Asperger Publishing Company (AAPC), in the post “Understanding Autism (for Dummies, by Stephen Shore)” but I’d like to add a few words about it.

It’s an autobiography and while someone might think that writing an autobiography is an exercise in vanity, what makes this autobiography so interesting is reading about growing up and life in general from a point of view of a person with autism.

Overall, Beyond the Wall, game me a lot of “Oh, that’s why..” moments. Stephen Shore remembers (and writes about) events that happened when he was very young and pretty much non-verbal. He explains how he could not explain to his parents that the reason he hated haircuts was because he could feel each single hair being pulled and that it hurt. He also recalled how trips to a grocery store used to cause sensory overload because of the overpowering mixture of smells in the produce section and the flickering of lights overhead. After reading that I finally understood my son’s behavior whenever we go shopping – the sensory overload may be just too overwhelming for him and that’s why he goes “wild”.

The parts about living with autism as an adult are quite fascinating too and point out how some things that most people overlook might be overwhelming to people with sensory differences – such as (but not only) the ticking of the clock at night, the singing birds in the morning, or the smell of people on public transportation. (Personally, the ticking of the clock at night used to drive me nuts so much I got a digital clock which doesn’t bother me, as long as I turn the clock so that the green numbers “shine” in another direction and not in my eyes.)

Check it out, I hope you’ll find this book interesting and learn something new as well.

Filed Under: "Insider's" view, Autism, Book Reviews

Autism 101: A basic definition

April 17, 2008 by 1 Comment

What is autism? The Autism Society of America, “the nation’s leading grassroots autism organization,” founded in 1965, says on their introductory web page that “Autism is a complex developmental disability that […] affects a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others. Autism is defined by a certain set of behaviors and is a ‘spectrum disorder’ that affects individuals differently and to varying degrees.”

The term “spectrum disorder” is very important here, because the severity of the disability varies from person to person.

Stephen Shore, mentioned in my post “Understanding Autism (for Dummies, by Stephen Shore),” posted on his web site the “autism spectrum wedge” – a diagram of the autism spectrum severity created by Dr. Dan Rosenn, MD. (scroll down the page to the second graph to see it)

On the left are individuals whose autism is severe and debilitating – they are not only non-verbal, they may be unable to show to the “outside” world what they think, how they feel, or what they want or don’t want. It may look like they are completely unaware of what’s happening around them, they seem to be in their own world. (In reality, we now know they are aware of their surroundings, but that’s a topic for another post)

Stephen Shore places himself as a non-verbal four-year-old in the middle of the wedge – true, he was non-verbal, but despite not being able to talk, he was able to interact with his mother. The different shapes in the wedge are supposed to represent a variation in autistic characteristics – there is more variety among individuals with moderate autism in how they behave and which functions are impaired.

On the right side of the wedge are people with the so called “HFA – highly functioning autism” or “AS – the Asperger Syndrome.” At this point on the spectrum, the variation among people is the largest and each person’s autism might manifest itself in a completely different manner.

So what do they all have in common?

You can go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention section “Autism Information Center” to see the full definition for each disorder.

But in short, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), fourth edition, published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1994, 299.00 – Autistic Disorder—is characterized by:

1) qualitative impairment in social interaction

2) qualitative impairments in communication, and

3) restricted, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interest, and activities.

The DSM makes a distinction between 299.00 and Asperger’s Disorder, which shares the code 299.80 with Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (Including Atypical Autism). But only the requirement for “qualitative impairments in communication” is missing from the definition for 299.80.

The common part is the “impairment in social interaction” and the “restricted, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interest, and activities.”

By the way, the definition for the Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (Including Atypical Autism), or PDD-NOS for short, does not have a specific list of criteria. It just states:

“This category should be used when there is a severe and pervasive impairment in the development of reciprocal social interaction or verbal and nonverbal communication skills, or when stereotyped behavior, interests, and activities are present, but the criteria are not met for a specific Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Schizophrenia, Schizotypal Personality Disorder, or Avoidant Personality Disorder. For example, this category includes atypical autism – presentations that do not meet the criteria for Autistic Disorder because of late age of onset, atypical symptomatology, or subthreshold symptomatology, or all of these.”

The most important word in this definition is “or.” To get a diagnosis of PDD-NOS not all three areas (social, communication, and behavior) from the autism diagnosis have to be impaired; it could be just one. So a child could get a diagnosis of PDD-NOS even if he or she was not exhibiting “restricted, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interest, and activities”— the requirement for both the Autistic Disorder and the Asperger’s Disorder diagnosis.

That’s why one of the specialists that saw our son made a diagnosis of PDD-NOS, because his “peer relationships” were not “appropriate to developmental level,” his “ability to initiate or sustain a conversation with others” was also impaired, and he was exhibiting “lack of varied, spontaneous make-believe play or social imitative play appropriate to developmental level.”

Filed Under: Asperger Syndrome, Autism, PDD-NOS

Understanding Autism (for Dummies, by Stephen Shore)

April 10, 2008 by Leave a Comment

The title of this post is taken from the title of a book about autism – Understanding Autism For Dummies, by Stephen M. Shore, Ed.D., and Linda G. Rastelli, MA, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. in September 2006.

Our regional Special Education Parent Advisory Council (SEPAC) recently had the pleasure of meeting Stephen Shore and listen to him talk when he agreed to participate in a workshop on autism we organized for the Autism Awareness Month.

Stephen Shore, currently in his forties, was diagnosed with autism when he was a child and was non-verbal until he was four. His parents were advised to institutionalize him, but didn’t do it. Instead, his mother “worked” with him until he was ready to be admitted to school. That was the sixties, before “Early Intervention” and any other mandated support for disabled children existed. Now Stephen Shore has a doctoral degree in education, is a very-well recognized speaker on autism, and in addition to Understanding Autism For Dummies, is the author of Beyond the Wall: Personal Experiences with Autism and Asperger Syndrome (Second Edition), and editor of Ask and Tell: Self-Advocacy and Disclosure for People on the Autism Spectrum.

If you ever get a chance to see Stephen Shore talk, go. You won’t regret it – he’s a very engaging speaker. You can get a feeling of what he’s like from the clips he posted to his web site, in the “In the News” section.

What I liked about Understanding Autism For Dummies is that although it starts with the basics, it is not just any old introductory book to autism. I actually bought the book for myself, for future reference, after reading a copy I got from the library. Even the introductory section, titled “Understanding Autism” has a wealth of information – it covers the current diagnosis, talks about the spectrum, the present understanding of the causes, and brief discussion of available interventions, all in a plain, simple to understand language.

On the publisher’s web site you can see part of the first chapter and the complete table of contents in pdf.

In closing, I just want to quote here briefly the beginning of the section titled “Living with Autism as an Adult.”

“Adults with autism often get less attention than children with autism. We believe this needs to change, […], and we’re not the only ones. Adults with autism and Asperger’s need help choosing careers, navigating the complexities of higher education, and understanding social relationships.”

Filed Under: Autism, Book Reviews

IQ: A Smart History of A Failed Idea, by Stephen Murdoch

April 1, 2008 by 1 Comment

I have just finished reading IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea, by Stephen Murdoch, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. in June 2007.

I first heard of this book on July 3, 2007 when I was listening to the interview with the author (New Book Raises Questions About IQ Test) on the National Public Radio’s program “Talk of the Nation.”

When I exchanged e-mails after the show with one of the callers I know, who primarily deals with gifted children and who earns her living in part by administering various tests, she said she wished she could have said more because the author was “spewing so much misinformation it was amazing.” That made want to read the book myself.

Overall, the book does not say much about the gifted part of the population and how the IQ tests affect them, except for a couple of places.

Chapter 1 titled “The Problem with Testing” describes a well-off, highly educated family from Washington, DC who were terrified that their 3-year-old son scored very poorly on an IQ test because that meant he would not get into one of the elite private schools in DC his daddy went to. The child got some speech therapy and occupational therapy while in preschool and went to a public kindergarten. He was tested again at five, at six, and at seven. While he scored in the 34th percentile when he was five, by the time he was seven he scored in the 98th percentile and was finally accepted at the school his father went to. Murdoch doesn’t say whether the child was “prepped” for the test by the overanxious parents. He probably was and that might explain the score difference. The author does make a strong point that although the most often used IQ tests claim to measure “intelligence,” they really measure learned information and can definitely be prepped for.

Chapter 10 talks about the eleven-plus tests in the United Kingdom and how this one test, supposedly again measuring “intelligence,” but according to the author heavily relying on educational knowledge gained in the elementary school, determined to what school a child would be sent at eleven years of age. So a child who went to a crappy elementary school that did not teach to the test and who had no private tutoring was highly unlikely to score well on the eleven-plus.

Other than that, Murdoch mostly writes about how the IQ tests were misused to mistreat people with low IQ scores, those on the left side of the bell curve. He describes how in the 1920s the U.S. began forced sterilization of the “feeble minded” which apparently continued until 1970s, and how the Nazi Germany carried the idea of not allowing the “feeble minded” to procreate into euthanasia, or basically murder. It’s truly terrifying.

I’m not a psychologist or a professional test administrator, so I cannot say if, and how much, misinformation there is in this book, but overall, I found it quite interesting and informative. And it did make me wonder about this whole IQ test business and whether it really measures anything meaningful adequately (which seems to be the main thesis of the book). Murdoch does make a good point that someone’s IQ score and a difference of a point off the scale can have too much weight in some situations—whether a murderer is executed or spends life in prison, whether a person with low IQ qualifies for a subsidy from the government, or whether a child gets into the gifted program or not. He also makes a good point that someone with high IQ scores will not necessarily have a great and successful career and happy life.

This brief description of the book is of course just a (very small) nutshell and does not really do justice to the book. Go read it for yourself. It really is interesting. Here’s the table of contents.

By the way, in the chapter titled “Alternatives to IQ” Murdoch writes about Howard Gardner’s idea of multiple intelligences, proposed in Frames Of Mind: The Theory Of Multiple Intelligences, published in 1983; Emotional Intelligence, written by Daniel Goleman, and published in 1995, and Robert Sternberg’s Successful Intelligence published in 1997. So, my list of “books to read” has just expanded.

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Gifted and Talented, Intelligence, Testing

Gifted and Talented (GT or GAT) 101: A (Basic) Definition

November 5, 2007 by Leave a Comment

When people say someone is “talented” or “gifted” they usually mean that person has exceptional and highly developed abilities in arts or sport, music, singing, dancing, drawing or painting, running, jumping, pitching, and so on. The word “talented” in everyday language is rarely connected with someone’s intellectual abilities.

In the world of education, though, the definition of “gifted and talented (GT or GAT)” is connected to the Intelligence Quotient (IQ).

The average IQ as measured by standardized tests is around 100. Majority of people (statistically, 68.27% of the population) would score somewhere between 85 and 115, or again, “statistically” within one standard deviation from the mean. And most people (95% of the population) would score between 70 and 130 — within two standard deviations from the mean.

Those who are visual and who like graphs can see that on the IQ bell curve:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IQ_curve.svg

I also like the standard deviation graph, showing the percentages corresponding with the scores.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Standard_deviation_diagram.svg

Those scoring more than two standard deviations from the mean, below 70 or above 130, are highly unusual—people in each group make up only about 2.5% of the population.

Mensa, a society “for bright people” grants membership only to those who score above the 98 percentile on standardized tests of intelligence. Statistically, from among a hundred of one’s acquaintances, only two would qualify to be Mensa members.

It’s lonely at the end of the bell curve.

Filed Under: Gifted and Talented, Intelligence

Personal Introduction

September 20, 2007 by Leave a Comment

My son is twice exceptional — he is both academically gifted and special needs, or the other way around, depending on how you look at it.

There are times when I’m amazed at his intellectual abilities. Even since he was little, he could always figure out very fast how toys are operated and what he has to do to make it move. When he was two he could do quite complicated puzzles, the type for preschoolers. His daycare teachers were borrowing games from the preschool class especially for him. I also noticed he had an amazing memory and could remember events and places for a long time afterward.

Now, at nearly six, he can read fluently, is pretty good at math, knows all the planets in the solar system, etc, etc. Some of his favorite TV shows are the typical stuff that smart, geeky kids like: the PBS shows Cyberchase, Fetch!, Super Why, and Curious George; the Discovery Kids shows Popular Mechanics for Kids and Crash! Bang! Splat!, and Magic School Bus. But he also watches such shows as How It’s Made shown on the Science Channel and Brainiac shown on G4.

The popular belief out there about gifted kids is that these kids’ parents are pushy and “train” the kids to be gifted.

I admit, we have always tried to read a lot to him (if he’d sit and listen). And we have been trying our best to answer the never ending stream of questions he’s been asking over the years, starting from “What does this word say?” to, most recently, “Why are the red blood cells red?” and “What is infinity divided by two?”.

Our son also attended a Montessori preschool for two years and they have wonderful educational materials that, in my opinion, help kids learn how to read, write, and do math much faster than the conventional methods teachers use. I believe that academically he progressed at that Montessori school much faster than he would have at a regular preschool (but he also progressed faster than his peers in his Montessori class).

And yes, if we made him watch the Cartoon Network instead of letting him watch the Discovery Science Channel, he would not know more about the solar system and the universe than I do.

But giftedness, or as some call it “raw intelligence,” is not something that can be “trained” or”taught.” I suppose if we kept our son locked up in a dark cellar he would not know as much as he knows, but I have a feeling he would figure out his way out of there anyway.

When he was two and started daycare, his teachers wrote in a monthly report that he likes exploring the room and that in his explorations he has dismantled the faucet above the kids’ sink. They had not known that the faucet could be taken apart because no other child before had tried to do it.

That ties into our son being special needs.

As much as I love him and admire his gifts, there are times when I’m absolutely sure a diagnosis of ADHD is just a matter of time. He’s always on the go, touching everything, pushing all the buttons he sees, opening all the drawers and doors, or at least trying to do that, no matter where we are, at home, in the doctor’s office, at the grocery store, or anywhere we are. He can’t eat a meal sitting down, he has to stand and fidgets all the time. When he sits down, he still fidgets, and sometimes he falls down and appears truly surprised he fell down. On the other hand, when we send him to the bathroom to brush his teeth, and go in after ten minutes to check on him, more likely than not he is has gotten distracted and is just playing with water, and of course has completely forgotten why he went there in the first place.

There are also times when I’m afraid he will end up heavily medicated or worse, institutionalized. Because even though for the most part he’s a sweet and loving kid, there are times when he licks the back of the seat in front of him, his hands, or the window and does not understand why I am so opposed to him doing it. There are times when he goes in his pants because he is too absorbed in doing something and is “too busy” to go to the bathroom. He also does not seem to understand why he should not do that. And there are times when he just spins or seems to be in his own world, ignoring or not hearing what we are trying to tell him.

And then, not very often, but every now and then, especially after a long weekend full of him being wild and unresponsive, the medication route looks very enticing.

If only I knew what is the right thing to do…

There are days when I am completely exhausted from dealing with him and originally I wrote here that there are times when I wished he were institutionalized or medicated, but I’ve decided to change that. The truth is, even on those days, after he goes to bed and I have had a chance to sit and think and calm down, all I really want is to know how to help him have a happy life.

By the way, our son does not have a clear cut diagnosis. He’s been evaluated by three different specialists, each from a very renowned clinic or center, specializing in child development and various mental, neurological, and developmental disorders. And each of them told us a different thing and recommended a different course of action to help him.

When was three, we were told by an MD, MPH specializing in developmental and behavioral pediatrics from the Developmental Medicine Center at the Children’s Hospital in Boston that he has a Developmental Coordination Disorder. That was also when the tests confirmed he’s gifted.

When he was five, an MD specializing in Autism spectrum disorders, attentional difficulties, learning disabilities and school problems at the Learning and Developmental Disabilities Evaluation and Rehabilitations Services (LADDERS) center said that he has PDD-NOS.

Shortly after that, we were told by a PhD in psychology specializing in Autism and Developmental Disabilities at the Center for Child and Adolescent Development that he’s “just a plain old bright fun kid.”

Both my husband and I are very committed to helping him. We always attend the IEP meetings together. I’ve also been reading a lot of books, scouring the Internet for information. But, as my husband says, it’s hard to help him, if we don’t know what it is we’re dealing with and what the best course of action would be. This blog is intended to be my record of what we’ve tried, what we’ve learned, and any progress (or lack thereof). I can already see it will also be therapeutic for me to write about our son. And if anyone happens to find any useful information here, that would be an added benefit.

Filed Under: ADHD, Autism, Gifted and Talented, Intelligence, PDD-NOS, Personal Information, Special Education
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