Bird in a Cage

We have become accustomed to parenting and educating in certain ways and convinced that certain ways to learn and discipline are superior. Having become comfortable and predictable, these beliefs make it difficult for us to change, even when we recognize these approaches are less than optimal.

A white rat experiment run by Dr. Miron Borysenko, Ph.D., demonstrates the dynamic that creates learned helplessness. In the experiment two rats were exposed to random electrical shocks, while a third, control rat received no shocks. Rat 1 was able to turn a wheel that switched off the shocks to both himself and rat 2. Although both Rat 1 and 2 received the same amount of stress for the same amount of time, Rat 2 (who received the inescapable shock because he could not control the wheel) got a bleeding ulcer. Rat 1 (with escapable shock because he did have control of the wheel) was even healthier than Rat 3 who received no shock. When the rats were put into a maze with a reward of water as the ultimate destination, Rat 1 was able to find the water first. He had learned to cope. Rat 2 took the longest because he had learned helplessness and extrapolated the first experience to the running of the maze. Similar studies and related experiments performed with human subjects demonstrate that stress alone is not harmful as long as the individual has some sense of control over the environment. In fact, challenge with a positive sense of control, increases self-esteem and creativity.

These experimental conclusions can be applied to the ADD child both in terms of drug therapy and being raised in incompatible learning environments that are incompatible with her learning style. When the child feels she has no control over her behavior and that she is dependent on a pill she can experience greater levels of stress as a result. Likewise, if the learning environment is inconsistent with her brain and sensory organ preferences additional stress is added to the equation creating greater helplessness and imposing larger blocks to learning. The child sees her predicament as inescapable and out of her control, leading to loss of self-esteem and motivation and added pressure put to her already fragile immune systems. Negative feelings of frustration, anger, blame, resentment, and hopelessness add to behavioral difficulties, quite understandable given the circumstances.

Further, as educators, we often feel powerless to make the necessary changes because we feel separated from the larger system of the school district. The task appears too daunting, thus we avoid it. Yet when we sense we are not in control, we too lose our ability to institute change and to be as effective as we can be.

Our true purpose in parenting and teaching is to serve others and assist humanity. If we lose our connection to that value we quickly burn out. We must work from a position of enlightened self-interest by reflecting on what each challenge is telling us. What we are not seeing and what is not working?

The challenge of ADD is uncomfortable because it causes us to stretch our comfort zones. When such a challenge is taken up in earnest, these children force us to be more of what we can be, tacitly asking us to abandon the more comfortable status quo. In order to grow professionally and humanly to serve at a higher level, we must empower ourselves through well thought out change. We must let our children know we trust and believe in them.

In the end, teaching and parenting needs to come from a place of enlightened self-interest and realigning ourselves with our values. If we honor and respect these children’s talents and brilliance, their innate altruism will in turn serve all of society. If we continue to deny, repress, and ignore them, and what they have to teach us, we will nullify their gifts and kill their spirit and they in turn will return the inferior treatment in kind and perhaps magnified, as has so dramatically and sadly been outpictured with the increase in child violence and mental disorders. This bold new approach is a clarion call to eliminate labeling, thereby improving the learning process for–as well as the behavior of–all children.

Back to the article