ADHD

I loved, loved, loved watching Michael Phelps take the gold again last night. In part becasue he's an amazing athlete, but mostly because I can only imagine what it must have been like going through childhood labeled as an "ADHD kid." Having done youth ministry for 15 years, I've seen enough kids with ADHD go through their early years. Often times, they would drive my leaders nuts. Shoot, sometimes they would even drive me nuts. However, they always did and will hold a special place in my heart. Partly because the world seems to want to write them off. I suppose that's my heart for the underdog.

Over the last couple of week, I've helped in on Children's Church and have seen some of those ADHD kids bouncing off the walls (and when your services are 2 hours long, they bounce a lot). I was reminded of a kid years and years ago with Sheila in Kingdom Kids. I so wish I could remember his name. What I do remember is that half the time this kid's head would be where his tail end should be in the theatre seats. Then one day, Sheila had him sit next to my nephew and help him run sound (which at that time meant he pushed play at the appropriate times on the cassette player). After that, we never had one single problem with him ... ever. It got to the point where my nephew didn't even need to be there, the 3rd grade kid just ran it himself. I guess the lesson with Michael Phelps and this kid was just keep looking for the niche. It's there, you just have to discover it.