He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;

He's a man who won't fit in.

 

The Men That Don’t Fit In

- Robert W. Service

 

 

Chapter 5

BIRTH HISTORY AND EARLY DEVELOPMENT

  

Birth

     

The risk factors associated with prenatal and birth compli­ca­tions found in the backgrounds of some in­dividu­als with ADD-type symptoms—factors unre­lated to the ge­netically transmitted form of ADD—were not part of my early history: poor ma­ter­nal health, low birth weight,[1] long labor, fetal dis­tress, and other pre- and post-delivery problems.  My mother did not smoke, drink alcoholic beverages, abuse drugs or suf­fer from pre-eclampsia during her pregnancy.[2]

Born full-term in 1947, my vaginal delivery oc­curred with­out any attending problems.  I weighed 6 lb. 14.5 oz. at birth—less than the average male birth weight of 7.5 lb., but within the appropri­ate range for my gesta­tional age.  I was 19 3/4 in. long—three-quarters of an inch shorter than the av­erage male baby was at that time.[3]  My 14-inch head cir­cumfer­ence was average.  

I had no significant eating or sleep pattern diffi­culties in early infancy.  I was bottle-fed, suffered only briefly from colic, and slept through the night by two months of age.  My tem­perament was not prob­lem­atic.

 

Physical and Mental Development

 

By one year of age, I surpassed the average height and weight for boys.  At 23 lb. 13 oz., and 30 inches in height, I weighed 2 lb. 13 oz. more and was an inch taller than the av­erage one-year-old male.  Through the age of five, my height reached the 80th percentile for males; my weight attained the 90th percentile. 

My developmental milestones were within normal limits as shown in Table 3:

 

             

 

Table 3

 

I was not a hyperactive child, my motor activity level was average.  Some of the "soft signs" of im­paired neurological functioning that vex persons with ADD—such as difficulty with spatial orientation, lat­erality confusion, clumsiness or ac­cident proneness and poor penmanship (Barkley, 1997a)—were part of my makeup.  As a child, I had diffi­culty distin­guish­ing my right hand from my left hand (lat­erality con­fu­sion) and specifying east from west (spatial orien­tation).  My gross motor skills were only fair.  I lacked the coordination of many of my male peers, especially in sports.  My hand-eye co­ordination and fine motor skills were somewhat poor.  Like others with ADD, I preferred to print rather than write in cur­sive.  My handwriting stead­ily worsened over the years until it has finally become barely compre­hensi­ble.  Now, I write with a computer whenever possible.

 

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