The Courage of Children: Boston and Beyond XXX

Sari London Goldberg
Alice Lucey, Teacher
The Park School
Courage is when you do something that challenges you emotionally or
physically. It comes from the head, travels down to your lungs, and grows,
filling them with a deep breath. Then it gently lets go, you face fear, and slap
it in the face. You do something about it. Fear might remain, but it’s gotten
a taste of your courage.
I have always had an urge to learn, and I have always enjoyed school because
of all the action. There is drama, then there is also classwork, new challenges,
new tests. I like schoolwork, and when I am in the right mindset, I like to do
things like math homework. My mind will focus on a problem, trying to make
it more interesting, trying to find the bigger picture, and it feels good to look
at it in different ways. It’s hard for me to just sit down with something boring
because my mind doesn’t like an unstimulating book. I can’t fight the urge
to look at the bright window, taking in the beauty of nature, coming up with
a thousand story plots at the same time, all the while running through my
homework in my head. All this is happening in a millisecond because my brain
can handle all this commotion so quickly. That’s a good thing, right? The
downside is that my brain not only wants but needs to be stimulated this way.
If you have heard of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder you might not
have guessed I had it, because there are so many stereotypes. People with
ADHD this, people with ADHD that. When I first got tested and diagnosed
with ADHD, I had an idea of what it was. The doctor and my mom helped
describe it to me, and things about my ADHD that are specific to me.
Just recently, I started taking medicine that stimulates my brain unconsciously,
so I can focus better. My brain needs to multitask, so when the medicine is
stimulating part of it, the rest of my brain doesn’t need as much stimulation,
and I can focus on my homework a lot better.
This year in science, we had a small unit on mental disorders. On the list,
one of the disorders was ADHD. The day we had to choose our disorders to
study, I sat looking at the link to ADHD. I knew it was a disorder but I never
really thought about it. I clicked on the page about it. As with cold symptoms,
it listed everything about ADHD. I actually teared up a little. Everything was
silent and I could feel my heart beating. The words were blaring out of the
screen, and I hated it. There it was, listed on a list of mental and neurological
disorders. I had a brain disorder.
The Courage of Children: Boston and Beyond
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