Project founder insists ADD can be 'fantastic'

Course teaches accommodation, not medication

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As a child, Steven Plog bounced off the walls at school, regularly got Ds on report cards and was sent to the principal's office "twice a week, like clockwork."

Back then, children were labled hyperactive. It wasn't until 1994, when he was 39, that he was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder.

He dismissed the doctor's advice to go on medication the rest of his life and, instead, celebrated the notion. Then he began spreading the word that having ADD was a plus.

His sales job as a headhunter for the stock market left him time to do volunteer work, so he approached the school system where he lived and asked to speak in the classroom to let children with ADD know they were valued and could have fabulous lives. He gave them tips to dealing with the disorder.

His efforts grew until they eventually created a school in Texas for children with ADD. He wrote a book "Excalibur: Solutions for ADD Children" and gives seminars on why ADD is to be applauded. Plog also has a Web site, www.resultsproject.net, which outlines the program he takes into schools which re-labels children as "Quick Smart Kids."

He and his wife, Hayley, are expecting their first child Sept. 21. If their child turns out to have ADD, Plog said he'd celebrate it.

"Robin Williams and Jim Carrey got sent to the principal's office for acting up in class," Plog said. "Now look what they're doing."

Plog will give one of his results project seminars 7-9 p.m. Thursday at Texas Station, in banquet room Dallas C. The seminar is titled Why Children Should Love Their ADD.

Young people ages 8-18 with ADD are encouraged to attend with their parents. Admission is $10 per adult ($15 for a couple) and free to the ADD offspring they bring. Call 313-0614 to register.

"The kids come kicking and screaming," he said. "They're sure I'll be pointing down at them and saying, 'Why can't you be more like your sister?' But in five minutes, I've turned them completely around. They leave not thinking they have a deficiency, they leave with a new label -- they're Quick Smart kids."

He and his wife moved to Las Vegas from Lake Tahoe last November specifically to set up a fundraiser with comedians, which will further his cause. The fundraiser is still in the planning stages so no details were readily available.

Meanwhile, he flies across the country and to Canada, helping people -- mostly teachers -- rethink the ways they deal with ADD kids using his four-step program. He asserts many students who fail in school actually have IQs between 130 and 190.

One of the things he tells teachers is to set up a regular card table in the back of the classroom, using PVC pipes to extend the legs until the working surface is chest height for students. Then, whenever an ADD child just can't sit still, they can move to the table and work on a project without disrupting the rest of the class.

"They'll wiggle from the waist down like they were Elvis but from the waist up, they're Einsteins," Plog said.

Another thing he tells teachers is to have their ADD students drink water, four ounces every hour, on the hour.

He even suggests a chart that gets marked off each time so children don't forget.

"We have a right brain and a left brain and it's divided by this gulf, this creek," he said. "If the creek dries up, the messages can't get across. So you have to drink water all day to keep that pathway hydrated."

Plog believes causes of ADD can be traced to foods -- especially sugar, milk, and anything with aspartame in it -- and/or vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

"The week after Halloween, all the kids are hyperactive at school," he said. "Excuse me, did anyone miss that connection?"

Besides describing his methods, his Web site contains testimonials from parents and children relieved to be in the program. One young boy wrote, "When I was on the medicine I felt like it gave me a headache all day. I felt weird inside. Now I feel much better than I did. I'm happy and I'm glad I'm off the medicine. I like this school because we do a lot of projects, like acting like knights and kings. We get to make a lot of stuff. We get to write things on the board. We get to work on computers a lot and we get to have books read to us."

Plog likes to say it took hundreds of left-brained workers to build the Ford Mustang but only one right-brained person to dream it up and design it.

His Web sites identifies ADD symptoms in John F. Kennedy, Benjamin Franklin, Steven Spielberg, John Lennon, Winston Churchill, Mozart, The Wright Brothers, Pablo Picasso, Robert Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower and more.

His school has bumper stickers that read, "Your honor student is going to be working for my Quick Smart kid."