My younger brother has really struggled in life due to being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactive disorder at a young age. He had minimal verbal skills at four-years-old and at the age of five-years-old he was prescribed Ritalin. Once he did learn to talk he stuttered almost every word. Raised by a single parent, we were at times subjected to chaos and poverty. In addition to the chaos that comes with a single parent trying to work two jobs and raise two children, my brother’s medication caused him to be on an emotional and physical roller coaster. One minute he would be zoned out for several hours at a time coloring and without any warning, he was raging through the house. By the time my brother was ten-years-old he had been hit by a car two times; both times causing serious injury, the second time more severe than the other.
He is now an adult and struggles to be a functional member of society. I do not feel he has ever fully recovered from the injuries or the medication. There were times he resorted to street drugs and alcohol to help him work through the emotional and physical stressors he continued to feel as a teenager and an adult. Needless to say, this behavior impacted his life even harder and he is still paying the consequences at the age of forty-seven years old just as he continues to struggle in finding joy in life. Berger states, “It is possible for deep emotional memories from early childhood to interfere with verbal, rational thinking, as when a person might have a feeling of dread in some situation but not know why” (2009, p.229). Unfortunately, my brother did not beat the odds; he continues to stutter in his verbal communication, he struggles to think rationally and his feelings of dread over power him finding happiness.
Berger, K. S. (2009). The developing person through childhood (5th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
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