Heredity vs. Nature or Guilt by Association

By Jody Worsham

All rights reserved for organic-sugar-free-tasty- non-existent food

It is a conditioned response. The teacher asks for a conference and you automatically go into accuser mode. What have they done now? What did they NOT tell me? Have I already signed the adoption papers? Just wait till I get them home.

The conference begins and you try to focus on what the teacher is saying, something about lack of attention, inability to stay focused on a subject. Your mind is racing toward what you can take away from them when you get home i-pod, TV, DVD…oh, what did she just say? A quiet place to study? Oh, sure, sure.

On the way home I rehashed the old heredity vs. environment arguments that have existed since man first adopted children. Is lack of focus an inherited trait or one that is conditioned in children? If it is inherited, you are off the hook. It's not your fault. If it is environment, then blame it on the pine tree pollen. But what if it is neither of those? What if it is a result of association? Association with other attention deficit family members and if so, which family member? Surely not me!

I quickly shifted my mental gears into reverse and thought about my day yesterday.

We've lived in our house thirty-two years and it isn't finished yet. There's still paneling "temporarily" tacked to the wall in the breakfast room. The baseboards for the living room have been stored in the barn now for six years. Shingles for the new roof are stacked on the patio waiting for the second half of the roofing project to be completed. This isn't a major concern since the shingles are warrantied for twenty years and there's still eight years left. The vacuum cleaner is in the middle of the hall where I stopped vacuuming four days ago.

My plan yesterday was to NOT read e-mails so I did a load of laundry, but first I had to move the wet laundry to the dryer and since I needed a full load, pick up the clothes in the other rooms. On the way to doing that I remembered to wake the kids up again for school. While I was in their bedrooms waking them up, I might as well change the bed linens since I was doing laundry and needed a full load.

By then it was time to take the kids to school. On the way to the car, the bug man called and said he was coming to spray the house. I turned the school bus job over to hubby so I could sweep the floors before the arrival of the Bug Man. If I'm going to sweep, I may as well mop.

I rested the mop on the desk with the computer and thought about the fourth grade math I couldn't do last night; so just one quick e-mail to my friend who had written a book about ADDH. Then I saw an e-mail from Tracy-no-e and thought I might have to butt her rebuttal about names on Facebook, but she was just talking about Blogher 11 which I didn't know there was a Blogher 9 or a 10, so I had to check that out.

Then the school called to tell me to pick up the near-to-throwing-up five-year-old old which I did. I got him home and I was on the way out the door to buy 7-up when I spotted the mop leaning against the desk with the computer. I started to move the mop when I decided to take a quick peek to see if my ADHD author had responded since I was also going to try and buy ADDH inhibiting foods. That's when I saw e-mails from Rose, Wanda, Sharon, Gilda, and the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I had to respond; it might be life changing.

The mop is still leaning against computer desk, the laundry never made it to the laundry room, the dryer never got turned on, the five-year- old miraculously recovered, the bug men sprayed and left, and I don't know where I was going with this.

Can you say SQUIRREL?