When I was about six years old, my parents gave me a present for my birthday. The present?
MR. MACHINE. For those of you who don't remember that particular toy, Mr. Machine was a plastic, see through, walking robot with gears and bells and levers and springs and mechanical stuff. You would wind up this toy, flip a switch, and it would walk, move its arms, and jaw, and a bell would go off.
So what were you supposed to DO with Mr. Machine??? Well A set of tools were included in the box; plastic wrenches and screwdrivers. The idea was that you could take Mr. Machine completely apart " and then " put him back together. I m sure that any well adjusted child of six years old (as long as he or she had an advanced degree in mechanical engineering) would have hours of fun, taking him apart and easily reassembling him to complete functionality.
Truth be told, I didn t want to take him apart. I was very happy that he worked, just the way he did. But, after much prompting from my loving family, I took the damn thing apart. And... That s how he stayed FOR MONTHS!!! I m not sure if it was because of the sheer volume of little plastic gears and pieces, or because I couldn t follow directions, or what But I turned him into a useless box of pieces and parts that sat in the corner and pissed me off.
What does this have to do with ADD/ADHD??? Well There are a LOT of aspects of ADD that are shown here: Perfectionism, Procrastination, and All or Nothing Thinking; just to name a few. Many ADDers get stuck or stopped when a project doesn t go well. They will procrastinate because they are really on sensory overload and there are too many things to deal with. They suffer from seeing the world as BLACK/WHITE (in this case " I m great with tools vs. I m a failure ).
To this day, Mr. Machine ruined my life in the following ways:
1) I really hate to start a project unless I KNOW that I can do the whole thing without any problems
2) I shy away from anything mechanical
3) Anything that I have to assemble just makes me mad
4) I get overwhelmed when there are too many pieces and parts to something
In future posts, I ll talk more about the actual traits of ADD. For now, if you see one of those antique MR. MACHINE toys, just give it a kick for me, OK?
As always, I wish you the very best that life has to offer.
Jerry |
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