AD(H)D Subject and Deviance
Kim’s grades dropped and she failed all her classes in three years of high school. She had a tough time in school—she felt as if she was a “defective student.” At the time, she noted that people would tell her that “it looks like you are making an effort to fail” and she felt as if she could not get out of that role—that “she was the one who failed classes” giving credence to subject positions created by the normative discourse around performance.
But, in her senior year, her math teacher “spoke to her in a way that made sense” to her and she realized that she could be good at math and at school overall, if she “did things differently.” She started doodling when listening to lectures and doing something with her hands helped her focus on what was being said. Kim is now a math instructor and speaks of being in a position to teach other kids with learning disabilities. She speaks of students who are sometime two grade levels behind and through tutoring with her can move two grade levels up. Looking back, she feels a need for diversity in the teacher body and small class sizes can go a long way in helping those who learn “differently.”
I interpreted Kim’s use of the term ‘differently’ as an acknowledgement of neurodiversity, and frustration at being measured against a cultural norm. A slightly more sinister take is one that blurs the lines between difference and deviance. Malacrida addresses the various lens that govern how we see difference and its relation to deviance as well as “psychiatrization” (18). Citing Roy Porter, author of A Social History of Madness: Stories of the Insane, Malacrida notes that a lot of the psychiatric practice that we know of today has developed not because of the actual conditions but because of “new ways of thinking about difference,” which are increasingly intolerant in western society, leading to an increased dependence on psychiatry and medication as well as pathologization of an ever widening range of behaviors (18). Conrad and Schneider respond similarly, “new deviance designations do not emerge by themselves but are products of collective enterprise and claim making activities,” given that many childhood behaviors that are now considered abnormal were not reckoned so in the 17th century (146, 147). They offer an astute analysis of deviance, defining it as “universal,” but without ”universal forms of deviance,” in that, deviance is “relative” (5,6). Secondly, they assert that “deviance is a social definition” in that it is a “socially attributed condition” and the label ‘deviant’ is an ascribed status through the societal tools of rule-making and enforcement (6,7). Kim offers a sharp rebuttal of any notions of deviance associated with AD(H)D, “ definition of AD(H)D doesn’t matter,” she says, “ what matters is that some people struggle with focus and keeping still.” While Kim, who has AD(H)D and has found a way to navigate the system, parents have a far more difficult time removing themselves from the normative discourse.
Claudia Malacrida, whose research drew on interview data with mothers and offered a perspective on difficulties of raising a child who is different, nuances the “viscous porosity” between “normal” and “natural” in children and how those terms are mobilized within the professional community, depending on who initiated the interactions (Tuana):
When initiating mothers went to professionals, they were told that behavior that was troubling was within the range of ‘normal’ busyness for the age of the child or ‘normal masculine behavior for boys. However, when professionals did the initiating, the litany of milestones and markers that constitute ‘normal’ development in early childhood and came to operate as evidence of an exceptionally broad range of pathological characteristics (138).
