Kindle Notes & Highlights
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February 21 - March 4, 2021
The premise of this book is that children who have what we have come to know as ADHD are important and vital gifts to our society and culture, and, in the largest sense, can be an extraordinary gift to the world.
When Edison’s schoolteacher threw him out of school in the third grade for being inattentive, fidgety, and “slow,” his mother, Nancy Edison, the well-educated daughter of a Presbyterian minister, was deeply offended by the schoolmaster’s characterization of her son.
It’s a cliché—but true—that “there is no ADHD in front of a good video game.”
ADHD is associated with higher levels of creativity, according to a study published in 1991 by researchers Geraldine Shaw of Georgetown College and Geoffrey Brown of the University of East Anglia in England. They found “a stable pattern of characteristics associated with ADHD and high intelligence.”
Children with the Edison gene display three primary differences from those who do not have it. They are constantly noticing everything in their environment, something called “scanning” in the forest or jungle, but in the classroom Edison-gene children are called distractible.
Requiring high-stimulation environments, Edison-gene children are easily bored when they’re not given a challenge or something interesting to do. While in hunter days these people may have been the very best and most excited hunters, in classrooms they’re called hyperactive because if what’s happening in class isn’t stimulating enough for them, they create their own stimulation.
People whose dopamine levels are genetically low seek out stimulation in the world. People with genetically high levels of dopamine tend to be more passive and less sensation- or novelty-seeking in their behaviors.
Only a professional job provides enough income to support a middle-class family on one salary. Thus, the pressure is on now to perform academically, and it’s a pressure that’s never before been felt in the Western world. Our children are feeling it, our teachers are feeling it, parents are feeling it, and doctors are feeling it: Do something! Help my child get the best grades possible so he can get into college! If he has a hard time performing in school, there must be some pill that will help him!
Thus we see that reptile-brain dominant people are the ones best adapted to fight and claw and climb their way to the top of the social, political, and economic ladders—after all, that’s what reptiles do best.
When people engage in regular physical activity—particularly walking or jogging—they become emotionally healthier, their minds work better, and their intellectual capacities increase.
optimism and competence in life come from a person achieving mastery in some domain of their lives.
A child who wants to be powerful generally has a parent who also seeks power.
