ADHD and the Edison Gene

Thom Hartmann is a progressive nationally and internationally syndicated talkshow host and an award-winning New York Times bestselling author of 24 books, including Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception and The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, which inspired Leonardo DiCaprio’s film The 11th Hour. A former psychotherapist and founder of the Hunter School, a residential and day school for children with ADHD, he lives in Washington, D.C.

Foreword by Lucy Jo Palladino, Ph.D.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: A New View for Our Children

Genetics and Differences

1993: The Hunter Gene

Distractibility

Impulsivity

Risk-Taking

Where Have All the Hunters Gone?

Indigenous Hunters Today

The Agricultural Revolution

Our Society’s Hunters

The Edison Gene

The Crisis-Survival Gene

Hunters Before the Holocene

Adapted to Adversity and Change

Part 1
The Past

1 The World of the Edison-Gene Child

The Ancient World

The Salt Pump

The Great Ice Age

Heated by the Great Conveyor Belt

2 The Dawn of Civilization

What Made Us Human?

The Bacteria That Took Over the World

The Human Bottleneck

Before the Bottleneck

3 Three Ways Humans Were Killed Off by Weather

Warming by the Sun

Vulcan’s Hammer

Survivors: AIDS

Chimps and the Black Plague

Creativity Saves the Day

ADHD and Creativity

The Beads: Clue to the First Edisons

Part 2
The Present

4 Anatomy of a Diagnosis

How Edison-Gene Children Are Different

Are They Disordered?

Anthropology Meets Psychology • From Hunters to Inventors

5 The Mystery of Novelty-Seeking Behavior

The “Novelty Gene”

The Novelty Gene and ADHD

6 Genes Move Around and Turn On and Off

The Genetics of Behavior

Turning on Genes

Codominant Genes

Turning on Edison Characteristics

7 Other Genes and Influences

Neurotransmitters and Personality Characteristics

The Reasons for Genetic Variations

Culture and Genes

8 Scientists Find the “Adaptive” Edison Gene

But Some Say It’s a Disease

Is It a Disorder?

Novelty Seeking

9 The ADHD Gene and the Dawn of Human Civilization

The Time Machine

The News Hits the Streets

The Edison

Gene and Democracy

10 Brain Development and the Edison-Gene Child

Sense of Self

A Process that Mirrors Evolution

The Reptilian Brain

The Limbic Brain

The “New” Brain

The Unique Prefrontal Brain

The Brain Develops After Birth, Too

The First Pruning of the Brain

The Impact of Stress

The Brain in the Birth Period

The Brain in the Toddler Period

The Brain in the Early Childhood Period

The Brain in the Teenage Period

The Brain in the Early Adult Years

Adult Memory of the Stages of Brain Development

Intuition versus Information

The Loss of Intuition

The Tragedy of Lost Potential

Invasion of the Lizard People?

Are We Stuck in a Loop?

Triggering Events

Raising Fully Human Children

Schools May Be the Key

School as Torture

Condemnation

School as Work

Comorbidities

Applying Comorbidities to Edison-Gene Children

Breaking the Loop

Offering a New Story

11 The Edison Gene, Drugs, Exercise, and Nutrition

Nutritional Deficiencies Are Rampant

Environmental Toxins

Nutriceuticals

Yerba Maté: Nature’s Ritalin

Drugs for Edison-Gene Children

Medications Bite Back

Burning Out Brain Cells?

Do Drugs Help Over the Long Term?

The Loss of Play

EEG Neurofeedback

Exercise: The Optimal “Treatment”?

12 Providing Discipline and Structure for the Edison-Gene Child

Nurturing the Hunters

Reward/Punishment versus Inclusion/Interdependence

Separating Person from Behavior

Break the Pattern with a Positive Message

Watch for Islands of Success

The Importance of Mastery

Turn Off the Television

13 Alfred Adler’s Principles for Raising Children

Promote Mutual Respect

Encourage

Foster Security

Avoid reward and Punishment

Use Natural and Logical Consequences

Act Instead of Talk in Conflict Situations

Use Withdrawal as a Counteraction

Withdraw from the Provocation, Not from the Child

Don’t Interfere in Children’s Fights

Fighting Requires Cooperation

Take Time to Teach Essential Skills and Habits

Never Do for a Child What He Can Do for Himself

Don’t Overprotect

Avoid Being Overly Responsible

Distinguish between Positive and Negative Attention

Understand the Child’s Goal

A Habit Is Maintained if It Achieves Its Purpose

Minimize Mistakes

Try a Family Council and Have Fun Together

The Edison-Gene Family

14 Educating the Edison-Gene Child

Learned Helplessness

Reframing Identity = Success in Learning

Government Studies Pronounce on Medication

They Ignored the Environment

The Study Proved Ritalin Doesn’t Improve Learning

But It Makes the Teachers Happy

Lighting a Fire for Learning

Education and Testing Corporations

How Modern Education

Came About

German Schools Come to America

American Education and the Catholic Problem

Backlash Against the Authoritarian Model of Public Education

Maria Montessori

Rudolf Steiner

Free and Alternative Schools

Homeschooling and Internet Schooling

But What About Socialization?

Why Homeschooling Works for Edison-Gene Children

The Edison Gene through the College Years

Find a Mentor or a Coach

15 Edison-Gene Girls and Women

Be a Good Girl

Cinderella in a Hostile World

Cultural Barriers

Cultural Programming and Expectations

Healing the Wounds

Spirituality and the Edison-Gene Child

Edison-Gene Mystics

The Hunter’s Reality

The World of the Hunter’s Dreams

Dreaming with the Natives

Learning to Know

Understanding the Real World

Wild People and Tame People

The Loss of True Wisdom

When Access to Personal Spirituality Is Lost

Part 3
The Future

17 How Edison-Gene Children May Change the World

Glimmers of How Culture Works

What Causes Culture?

The Biology of Culture

Primal Human Cultures

Cultural and Genetic Selection

18 Is Human Evolution Finally Over?

As Good As It Gets

We’re Going Downhill

It’s the Fault of Those People with ADHD!

Are We Standing Still? Distant Bottleneck Events

19 One Generation to Save the World

Climate Flip-Flops to the Next Ice Age

A Global-Warming Bottleneck

Afterword: Yesterday’s Child by Janie Bowman

Notes

Index