ADHD/environment/genetics

Have you ever noticed that you and your siblings remember the same childhood events differently? Perhaps a Christmas that you got a much wanted toy allows you to remember that specific Christmas as fun. Meanwhile perhaps your sibling didn't get the toy they wanted and spent the day sulking. (Although I never did get my Easy Bake Oven that I always asked Santa for, I did get the hair dressing doll head that almost made up for it.)

What made me think of this, was a section I was recently reading in Gabor Mate's "Scattered" book about ADD. Although the book was published in 1999 and some of the info is quite dated, it's still an interesting read. He explains how some siblings can share the same home environment, it's the "emotional atmosphere during the critical early years of brain development that most profoundly shapes the human personality."

He uses the example of Gary Gilmour, a convicted double murderer who was executed by firing squad in Utah in 1978. Gary's younger brother Mikal was born when Gary was 11, at a time when the family was enjoying a period of relative stability, is quoted as saying "The family I grew up in ws not the family my brothers grew up in. They grew up in a family that was on the road constantly, never in the same place longer than a couple of months at best. They grew up in a family where they watched the father beat the mother regularly, battering her face until it was a mortified blue knot. They grew up in a family where they were slapped and pummelled and belittled for paltry affronts...I grew up in a world so different from that of my brothers, I may as well have grown up under a different surname."

Gabor Mate goes on to explain more variables that will influence a child's brain structures and circuits. Such as birth order, the parents' economical situation may be better around the time of one child's birth than another's, and then of course there is the adoption component.

Adoption means that the child has been separated from their birth mother's body, voice, heartbeat etc. someetimes right at birth. We now are starting to realize how devastating this is to the infant. And for those infants who are then placed with different caregivers until their adoptions, the trauma they experience can be very significant. And if the birth mom is at all stressed, the cortisol that is released directly affects the nervous system of the infant. If our newborns are withdrawing from drugs or have been affected by alcohol in-utero they will typically be extremely sensitive to touch, lights and sounds, while others may be relatively insensitive to their environments.

My point, and I do have one, is that as adopted parents, we shouldn't be the least bit surprised when our adopted children are at a high risk for psychological problems in general, ADD/ADHD in particular.

It was great for me to read some of Gabor's book again and refresh my knowledge of ADHD, especially now that my 9 year old is struggling so much in school with his ADHD, FASD, etc. It's always interesting to me how I can re-read things when my kids are at different ages and stages from when I first read the item, and how much I keep learning by doing this.