Teen's Memoir Is A Guidebook For Living With ADHD
Yes, he set fire to the dinner table with contact lens solution. Yes, he stayed in on the weekends because he had no friends. Yes, he had to clean the urinals as punishment for acting out in class.
But Blake Taylor is done being punished and is ready to proudly say to the world, "Yes, I have ADHD."
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4.7 million Americans 18 or under have attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder. Now 18, Taylor is the youngest person to write a memoir about living with it.
He says his book, "ADHD & Me: What I Learned from Lighting Fires at the Dinner Table," is the guidebook he never had, a way to deal with the daily struggles from someone who has actually been there and not just studied the disorder.
Taylor also credits his "very supportive" mother and psychiatrists with helping him research the disorder. Video Watch the CNN.com Live interview with Taylor »
Taylor is now a freshman molecular biology major at the University of California, Berkeley, where his book is used in the curriculum. Professors tout it because it's the first time academia and the general public can see the once-taboo disorder being tackled with candor, since diagnosis only really started to spike in the 1990s.
Through anecdotes about taking tests and dealing with tics, Taylor aims to tackle the often-stigmatized side effects of the disorder. If left untreated, he says, they only worsen when someone gets older. "You wouldn't want to set fire to a table ever, but especially not when you're 30, right?"
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08-04-2008, 05:43 PM
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