ADHD and Me: What I Learned from Lighting Fires at the Dinner Table - Softcover

Taylor, Blake E. S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1572245220 ISBN 13: 9781572245228

Publisher: New Harbinger Publications, 2008

Synopsis

Blake Taylor's mother first suspected he had ADHD when he, at only three years of age, tried to push his infant sister in her carrier off the kitchen table. As time went by, Blake developed a reputation for being hyperactive and impulsive. He launched rockets (accidentally) into neighbor's swimming pools and set off alarms in museums. Blake was diagnosed formally with ADHD when he was five years old. In ADHD and Me, he tells about the next twelve years as he learns to live with both the good and bad sides of life with ADHD.

Blake's memoir offers, for the first time, a young person's account of what it's like to live and grow up with this common condition. Join Blake as he foils bullies, confronts unfair teachers, struggles with distraction and disorganization on exams, and goes sailing out-of-bounds and ends up with a boatload of spiders. It will be an inspiration and companion to the thousands of others like him who must find a way to thrive with a different perspective than many of us. The book features an introduction by psychologist Lara Honos-Webb, author of The Gift of ADHD, and a leading advocate for kids with ADHD.

About this title

About the Authors

Blake E. S. Taylor, a first-year medical student at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, is the youngest person to write about living with ADHD. At seventeen years of age, he wrote his memoir ADHD and Me. Taylor is a a national advocate for young people with the condition.

Taylor has appeared on CNN.com's Young People Who Rock, National Public Radio, and San Francisco's ABC7 News, FOX Mornings at 2, CBS 5 Bay Area People, KCBS NewsRadio with Rebecca Corral. He has been featured by the Associated Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, and in a cover story in ADDitude magazine. His book, currently in its fourth printing, has been translated into Chinese, Korean, Dutch, and Polish.

Read Blake's blog at teenDailyStrength.com.

Lara Honos-Webb, PhD, is a worldwide attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) expert, and offers ADHD coaching. She is a clinical psychologist, and author of The Gift of ADHD, The Gift of ADHD Activity Book, The Gift of Adult ADD, The ADHD Workbook for Teens, and Listening to Depression. She has also published more than twenty-five scholarly articles. Learn more about her work at www.addisagift.com.

Reviews

A college freshman this fall, Taylor was five when he was diagnosed with ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He's been medicated all these years, but even when he remembered to take his pills, that's only been a small part of his learning to cope with ADHD. Taylor's still more impulsive, more hyperactive and more open to distractions than others. He can also be more energetic and more passionate than anyone else. He has learned to see his neurological differences as a mixed blessing—yes, he's obsessive, but channeled toward a good cause, that can translate to hyperfocused. He veers off the subject, but that can spur creativity, thinking outside the box. Taylor relates the stories of his ADHD mishaps in no special order—how he set fire to the dining room in ninth grade, how he was bullied in sixth grade, how he was victimized by his first-grade teacher—as if to emphasize that a variety of problems can always happen. After describing each incident, he follows up with a cause and effect discussion of what he learned from what went wrong, followed by a solutions section, a few brief tips for other kids to try. Taylor speaks to fellow teens and their families with an authority few experts can muster. (Feb.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1572245220
• ISBN 13: 9781572245228
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192