Kim, my nephew, was diagnosed about a decade ago as having Attention Deficit Hypersenstivity Disorder, ADHD for short. A disorder that baffles doctors as its cause is never known, but its symptoms: hyper active spiels, violent tantrums and, at times, surprising hints of unusual talent or intelligence, are unmistakable.
Even before Kim could go to school, he has shown the uncanny ability to spin fascinating stories from his imagination - in straight, perfect English, though no one in the household used that language in normal conversations. On request, he would weave tales of colorful characters involved in complex situations, certainly not the kind of basic plots that kids his age normally come up with. His stories reflected his brilliant mind.
But this talent slowly gave way to another fascination of the imagination as he started schooling.
When my sister-in-law's mother died, Kim's attention turned to the macabre. He would only learn his lessons if the teacher, or the adult supervising him, used images or characters that involved death. He learned his math by adding and subtracting kabaongs and caros.
At the final mass for my father, his grandfather, who also passed away; he volunteered to the mic to say farewell to his Lolo Doroy, which brought tears to the eyes of everyone as he, after speaking a few lines, let his repressed feelings burst like a dam with an unabashed wail of haunting grief. After this painful event, he accepted death as a fact of life. In fact, his vivid stories, which by then had come far in between, told of all kinds of passing away. While most abhorred even the thought of death, it made perfect sense to him that everyone's going to die someday.
When my brother was assigned to work in Laoag, he had to relocate his family with him, transporting Kim away from the distractions of Quezon City to a more quiet environment where everything, including the language, was new. It was there that Kim showed his talent for painting.
This channeled his energy and imagination to the visual arts, which suited him well because he had fallen in love with motor vehicles, particularly the jeep -- the more colorful it is, the more excited he became. A pen and paper allowed him to draw all kinds of jeeps, imagining that he was riding in one, with the roar of the engine playing music to his ears, and the wind in his face distorting his wide smile.
After a few years, my brother had to be reassigned to another place which made him decide to settle his family in my mother's hometown in Pangasinan where he planned to start a small piggery business while he stayed away at his new assignment. Amagbagan, Pozzorubio is the picture of rural life with wide open rice fields sliced by rivers and irrigation dikes, and where most people are inside their homes when dusk settled.
As "the" man of the house, Kim was called on to shoulder more responsibilities, especially manual work where he has shown willingness, even a hint of enjoyment doing them, which was good because a rural home with a backyard piggery required a lot of it. As the eldest in the brood, he was also counted on to take care of his younger siblings, particularly the youngest, the only girl. But when it came to household chores, expect Kim to murmur his protest as he does what was asked of him.
While Kim was not lagging in school, he was also not outstanding. And teachers noticed that he had the tendency to talk without being called or move about the classroom without being asked. He listened to his teachers and absorbed what he could till his attention veered away. This is specially evident when it came to long and quarterly exams where he returned his test papers with only the first pages containing answers, the rest untouched, without a trace of ink.
Kim seems to understand that his future does not involve staying in a comfortable office, working his way up the corporate ladder. In fact, his fascination with the jeep has convinced him that he will be a professional driver someday, not only driving his own jeep, but running an entire fleet. My mother, his lola, disapproves of this as she wants her favorite apo to finish college and become a professional just like his father and uncles.
But he is determined and has even jumpstarted his career by starting from the bottom -- as a konduktor for a jeepney driver that he befriended. This, my brother unexpectedly discovered as he, after getting off the bus that took him from Manila to Manaoag, boarded a jeep going to Pozzorubio. He was seated on the driver's passenger side when, from the back, he heard a familiar voice, "pasahe lang po!" He watched his son with a mixture of pride and concern as he did not need to work like that to earn extra money.
Kim is now fourteen, handsome and charming in his own right. He still works as a konduktor from time to time and is learning to drive their family car in and out of the garage. His personality is a range of contradictions. While he beams when he smiles, he has a scowl on his face most of the time. He is polite and says po and opo but still has a short fuse when he thinks something is not right, which is often.
But in my brother's absence, he is the man of the house. No matter how late he sleeps or how tired he was the previous day, he always wakes up at 4:30 in the morning, prepares his coffee, and cooks rice for the family's breakfast as he listens to AM radio. When his two younger brothers wake up, they already have hot water prepared for their bath.
Focus is the hardest thing to teach kids with ADHD, but I have never seen any teenager, ADHD or not, with such focus and sense of purpose as my nephew Kim. People say that young children with ADHD are special kids. I agree. And in a few years, Kim is going to be a special man.
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