In many traditions questions can best be answered by stories, and this is no exception. I’d like to tell you a story about Dr Rohn, another gifted underachiever, who is much too modest to write this about himself.
When I first met Dr Rohn in 1980, he had already had 7 years of experience as a psychologist in the office of the brilliant pediatrician Dr. William Crook. He was working primarily with kids who would now be diagnosed as ADHD, but some were just unmotivated and underachieving. They were not doing what they needed to do to succeed in school and in life.
Dr Rohn learned about Dr Crook’s pioneering work with food allergies (he later wrote the groundbreaking book The Yeast Connection). But after the allergies were taken care of, the kids and the families still needed help. So he devoted himself to finding out what they needed, including using what he called “psychological vitamins” which was basically noticing the positive in the child and in the family and bringing the positive to the forefront. Dr Rohn worked with whoever came through the door, intuitively finding the child’s strengths and finding some part of himself that could identify with and work with the child.
Dr Rohn’s work took him in many different directions including working with boys at the Eckerd Youth Development Center in Okeechobee. This was basically a prison for kids, the end of the line in the juvenile system. I was afraid to go into the place, and I don’t think that I ever did. These were kids who failed at school and in society. It didn’t stop Dr Rohn from connecting with the boys, identifying their strengths and developing programs that helped them
When he was in Okeechobee he started going for his Doctorate in Educational Leadership from FAU. After he got it and we moved to Boca Raton, Dr Rohn started working as a Family Counselor at 7 schools in Coral Springs. There he saw how many kids were not getting what they needed in schools, and were becoming frustrated, rebellious and depressed. Many could be diagnosed as ADHD, but many were bright underachievers. Dr Rohn started looking for strategies that could help these kids.
They say that we are never given a problem without being given the solution. When Dr Rohn was in Coral Springs, he learned about Play Attention, a computer program that worked to help kids learn to pay attention by given them real time feedback. He left his day job and started Thinking Pays, Inc., using Play Attention and other computer programs to help kids learn to pay attention. He focused on ADHD kids, because that’s what the software was designed for.
But we didn’t just get these kinds of kids. We got adults with age-related cognitive decline, mild dementia and brain injuries. And we got lots of bright underachievers. That’s what stimulated Dr Rohn to start Sparks of Genius, where he could really focus on the strengths. We use Spark of Genius with all of our students, but it was really inspired by those bright underachievers who needed something to motivate them.
At a time of self-reflection, Dr Rohn said, “When I was a kid I was so bored with school. I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I used to beg my teachers to give me special projects, something that would interest me. I love what I do now, because so many of the kids that I work with remind me of myself. I had trouble fitting into the school system, and so do they. They need someone to remind them of their gifts, their sparks of genius.”
By Ninah Kessler, LCSW
Life Coach
