this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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Somehow like when school gave me book reading assignments. It was such a pain, I can read while actually paying zero attention to it. I'm a master.
I don't know if this is an ADHD thing or just not liking being told what to do (perhaps some of Column A, little of Column B), but god did I hate reading when I was made to in school. I'll spend hours reading Wikipedia articles on some niche shit. I've spent plenty of time reading books I liked on my own time. But meeting my Accelerated Reader points goals was always a slog, and I've grown to really resent the system.
Demand avoidance is a very common symptom of ADHD. If someone tells me I need to do something it instantly becomes very difficult to accomplish, no matter how much I myself want it done as well.
It's such a pain in the ass. Back in the day, after years of not being able to get me to help with the cleaning, my mom finally gave up and said "if you would like to help me clean the apartment I'd really appreciate it...". Guess who started cleaning right away. Removing the demand made all the difference. Stupid brain.
I don't know how it was in your school, but I feel you on the A.R program. My school had maybe 20 books qualifed for A.R in the library.
It was an absolute slog of the same uninteresting books year after year, and every time they wanted to ask how to make it better, they shrugged off "Get more varied options". We could see the fucking list in the program we went to take the tests in. There were fucking hundreds.
Not everything can be framed in a way to make it easier on everyone, but it's so much easier to teach people when you can frame it in a way they'll enjoy.
My school is in a nicer town tucked away in the armpit of Southwest Oklahoma. The library was actually quite well stocked and had lots of books in the system. We even had two copies of all the Harry Potter books. Side note: One year, I heard the movies were pretty faithful to the source material so I watched a few of them and did really well one year because of it. We had a copy of Tolstoy's War and Peace, which was worth a whopping 118 points and I'm sure was never touched. I'm sure it's still in there. There were a whole two shelves stacked full of Louis L'Amour, and I had a western kick in the 10th grade so that was convenient. I liked Bendigo Shafter and Comstock Lode. The Walking Drum is also a good book.
My suggestion would be that instead of tying AR points to kids' grades, create a rewards system to incentivize reading. I can't speed read, and the pressure of being on a time crunch for something that negatively impacts my grade if I can't finish on time was always disheartening and took away from any joy I could have derived from books. Most of the kids in my class could finish one or two books in a school week. My wife will tear through one in a day or two. A similar book is a 10-14 day minimum investment for me. I've learned to accept that about myself in adulthood, but man, it really made me feel terrible in school because English, language, writing, spelling, and related subjects were always some of my favorites. Always being behind my peers because of my reading soured the experience for a long time.
Same, I can't read more than a couple of pages of a textbook. But I'll listen to spoken information very intently for hours on end (with an occasional break). Is that common with ADHD?