One great challenge for our educators...

... attending to the ADHD child or those with less than acute auditory cognitive skills in the classroom. I believe we must challenge ourselves as educators to treat this condition as evidence of a strength; and correctly classify the visual field not as a distraction but a place of discovery... Let's further challenge ourselves to accept it as an opportunity to apply greater and swifter visual stimuli for him/her so as not to lose this likely very capable child. The ADHD child may in fact be a pool of strength yet tapped, and the undeservedly disempowered "below norm" which now demands of us a new approach to learning. Our culture as a whole is not going to slow down, either. Therefore it may behoove us to find quicker pathways to comprehension for the majority of our "average" students, and not just access for those with "syndromes" and "Learning Disabilities." I suggest this pathway is through applied visual thinking and interdisciplinary academic study...

the word "disgusting"...

It's a word I don't particularly favor - in fact I frown upon the use of it. It suggests to me an absolutist attitude, if not an over the top browbeating of the world at large. I don't get offended that easily, or should I say grossed out and offended at the same time. For sure, I've never been truly "disgusted" by a child - I mean profoundly and morally enough to make me sick to my stomach!... it's the adults, that would evoke in me that kind of offensiveness. But even so, that would be like - a child rapist or something I think... but I don't know any.

So, how is it that this word even gets used by supposedly ordinary people - who haven't experienced any really profoundly revoltingly evil events? I think it's that some of us are a little more intolerant than others. And the word 'disgusting' is definitely too heavy handed a response to anything an average eight year old might do? Okay, maybe in your head you might think, eeooo, when the little one eats a booger, or picks her toenails. But to exclaim out loud "that's disgusting" with a severely disparaging tone, that's unnecessary to me. Kids just do that kind of stuff... a lot! But what 'disgusts' me is when a child's spirit is besieged with emotional bullying for inconsequential infractions like procrastination or even stubbornness. My daughters can really "gross me out" - but I would never let them mistake my wincing for evidence of a lack of fundamental approval.