I'm pretty heavily ADD. I was wondering the other day why all my years as a LDS did not have me as deluded as the friends I have who converted at the same time and yet are still fully deluded.

I thought about all the church meetings and BYU devotionals I attended and then remembered how so much of the indoctrination did not sink in because I was zoned out with my ADD. After about five minutes of anyone talking to me my mind wanders in a million directions and I haven't a clue what was just said to me. It has played havoc with my career and schooling but somehow I get by. I think this may be why I never fully connected with all the LDS doctrine. I never fully heard it all nor incorporated it into my thinking and mental philosophy. Also, the way Mormon talks are delivered is like administering chloroform. I've never been able to stay awake in General Conference. I think most of the indoctrination just never made its way into my brain. Yay for ADD!

Add (see what I did?) silly people to those whom attempts to indoctrinate do not work. I don't consciously tell myself, "okay, think of something funny to say!" It's a process I can't control, and like you, when push really came to shove, it was easy to not be mormon.

I have ADD also and have a hard time listening to people talk, I can't follow the conversation and can hardly have a conversation myself because my words get all jumbled up (not writing/typing, I can backspace and rewrite)...to bad you can't do that with speech!!

I also have a hard time at work paying attention and doing 1 thing at a time, I have multiple projects going at once, and I find myself getting flustered or even sometimes angry with customers if there order is complicated because I can't understand what they want.

I also don't like to read for the same reasons.

Curious what kind of work you guys do having ADD.

Seriously, reading Sci/Fi and loving and promoting loud laughter is what made it easy for me to enjoy my mission (I did it my way, not their way) and to get out of walking the mormon path when it no longer suited me.

The end result was the same: I had no 'solid foundation' on which to build; that 'solid foundation' poured by the construction work of indoctrination. I had my reason for not paying attention, you guys had yours.

Have read that with ADD the truly important pertinent interesting is locked and mastered pretty easily -- while the boring, peripheral, unimportant, silly detritus of life gets flushed.

True?

If so, what a Good Deal!! :-D sign me up!

When my sons were in school, they did well in subjects that interested them. Most subjects did not. No amount of either encouragement/reward or punishment could change the barely-scraping-by grades.

My best friend was a teacher, and she told me to get my boys tested for ADD. My older son had pretty much floundered his way through high school, but my younger son responded very well to Dexedrine. His first two years of high school were appalling, but his last two years, when he was able to focus, were great. His self-esteem just soared.

Which led me to wonder if I had ADD. Nobody knew about it back then, of course, but the classic pattern fit: I excelled at things that interested me (which nearly everything did) but bombed dismally at math and science.

my mother did everything she could to make my life miserable about math grades: grounding, no phone privileges, no week ends or movie time with my best friend, no class trips - nothing until my math grades came up. They never did, because no amount of self discipline could force me to pay attention to something that I truly did not care about. Nor punishment. You can't force yourself to pay attention to something that TRULY does not interest you when you have ADD. My only saving grace was that virtually everything ELSE fascinated me.

I graduated in the top 10 per cent of my class, but only because of two required math classes, and straight As in everything else.

The dear old retired admiral who taught my final geometry class told my mother at a conference in May of my sophomore year that he was going to allow me to pass, despite not have a clue about even the basic concepts, because I quite clearly got As in everything else, and why hold me back?

I went on to major in Spanish and minor in German, and loved every minute. I didn't have to sit through so much as ten minutes of math in college. It was a joy.

Precisely same thing happened with Albert Einstein - who was judged by educators a total loss.

Post industrial-age educational system is intent on producing widgets of precisely identical dimensions.
No telling how many geniuses were crushed in its endeavor to do so.



(Not downing educators who are individually heroic - but stuck nonetheless in the same system as are we.)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2018 01:35AM by zenjamin.

Most educators nowadays feel that Einstein may well have had a learning disability. Learning disabled people can be highly intelligent. But their brains are wired differently from the norm when it comes to learning. Einstein, IMO, just had to figure out another way to get the job of reading done, which he was obviously able to do in time.

There is a lot educators didn't know in the old days. Same for physicians, scientists, etc. Knowledge is constantly advancing. Now educators are rather adept at flagging potential ADD, ADHD, learning disabilities, psychological issues, possible developmental delays, possible autism, etc. Plus there are a whole battery of professionals to assist with testing when necessary.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2018 08:59AM by summer.

This makes sense for me. I graduated high school top of my class and was Cum Laude from college. I had to really work to concentrate and luckily one of my teachers gave me extra time to finish tests in physics because he knew I struggled in timed tests. I made an A in his class but would have done poorly without the extra time. Everyone else in the class finished easily in the time alloted.

It's pointless meetings at work that bore me stiff. Most of the important information is on the handouts and stated in the first five minutes.

Every year we have the same stupid two day annual office retreat where we come up with the same ideas that never get implemented. So the next year we slog through the same process, suggest the same "great" ideas but we never are allowed to follow through. The boss either won't plan the budget for the new ideas or just drops the ball so nothing gets done. It's why I'm job hunting constantly.

I don’t know what field you’re in, but I do know some people are not cut out to work a “job”. The reasons are what you are relating. Self employed works well for those people. Think about it. Actually, I’m sure you have....just think about it again.

Hey everyone!!!...ADD is acronym for Attention Deficit Disorder, as I’m sure you all know. The new, pc acronym is ADS... Attention Deficit Syndrome. We don’t want to unfairly burden you with the stigma of having a disorder when it’s just a syndrome. Not to worry...I have both and I get by quite well. I didn’t listen to Sunday School either.

I just don't listen to anyone, just because.

I just finish doing my tax return, it took me 3 days, and after that ordeal, I am pretty certain that I have ADD too !!!!

Your headline is hilarious

FYI, physicians can treat ADD and ADHD in adults as well as kids, if necessary.

DH has ADD and it took him 10 years before he caught up with me and was was ready to give up Mormonism. There are other factors here that made the difference. He also has dyslexia and it was a long time before he actually read enough Mormon history--NMKMH--before he figured it out.

He wasn't diagnosed until middle age, but my son, who also had ADD, figured out the church was bunk when he was a teenager.

I really don't think ADD has anything to do with it.