Creativity and ADHD:
Personal Impressions from a Research Project
Cheryl A. Downey, Ph.D., Emily Griffith Center Therapist
As a Ph.D. candidate working on my dissertation, I found myself with the opportunity to closely observe children working on various problem-solving tasks. The tasks required that a child find ways to use various objects as tools to reach some goal (e.g. pound down a peg). As I served as a volunteer outside the research sessions, I also had the opportunity to observe my research participants eating lunch, doing school tasks, and playing on the playground. As a result, I got to know the children that I worked with fairly well, and was able to identify that some of them clearly showed the symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a pattern of behavior that consists of a cluster of characteristic ways of interacting with others and the environment. Children with ADHD may seem inattentive, overactive, and /or impulsive. Possible symptoms include: frequent failure to attend to detail, a notably short attention span; often not seeming to listen; frequent difficulties in following through on instructions or failing to finish tasks; frequent difficulties in organizing things; possible avoidance of tasks that require sustained attention; frequently losing things; distractibility; forgetfulness in daily activities; fidgeting or squirming more than peers; difficulty sitting in one place; excessive activity such as running around, difficulty playing quietly, and / or often seeming to be "on the go"; excessive talking; blurting out answers before questions have been completed; difficulty waiting for a turn; and frequent interruptions. Children with this pattern of behavior are often first recognized by teachers, as the above behaviors are more disruptive in educational settings than at home. Children with ADHD frequently have social difficulties as their peers become annoyed with their impulsivity, and intrusiveness. As a result, parents of an ADHD child frequently hear bad news about their child’s abilities and behaviors.
My personal observations suggest however that their may be a "good news" side to ADHD. The children who participated in my research project who also showed symptoms of ADHD frequently came up with the most creative solutions to solve the problems put before them. From personal observations of the process that they went through, it seemed that their distractibility would result in their picking up some object that caught their eye before they had even finished using the first object they had chosen. They would then find themselves with an object in each hand, and would then spontaneously put the two together and use them in combination. Their less distractible and less impulsive peers would never find themselves in this situation, having carefully put down the first object they had picked up before moving on to another. Where the ADHD participants ran into difficulty was in sticking with the novel combinations long enough to complete the task. They would frequently move on to some other combination, or simply report that they were finished with the task.
My advice to parents of ADHD children is to recognize that your child may have great creative potential, assuming that he or she can be encouraged to develop the persistence needed to fully test his or her creations. As ADHD children frequently develop self esteem issues due to their school and social difficulties, make an effort to recognize and acknowledge your child's creative approach, and help others in your child's life to do the same. Who knows, you just may have the next Benjamin Franklin on your hands.
Thank you for your interest. For more information contact the Emily Griffith Center at 303-237-6865 or send an e-mail to info@griffithcenters.org.