Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog post!
Today I will be reflecting on my inquiry project!
a. What challenges did you overcome throughout this inquiry project? How did you go about
overcoming these challenges?
I faced a lot of challenges throughout this inquiry project and I have successfully tackled all of the difficulties! Namely, when I was researching the genetic effects of ADHD, I encountered a lot of terms that I didn’t understand, SWAN tests, monozygotic, dizygotic… The lack of proper understanding of those terms drastically affected my proper understanding of the research paper, and I had dedicated myself to investigating the meaning of those terms, understanding that SWAN meant Strengths and Weaknesses of ADHD Symptoms and Normal Behavior, and it uses 18 questions answered by parents and teachers to evaluate the “ADHD-ness” of the child, that monozygotic meant identical twins, dizygotic twins meant fraternal twins… After gathering a proper understanding of the unknown terms, my research speed had reached stellar levels compared to before.
Another time, I was researching the environmental factors that may affect a child in developing ADHD symptoms, but I encountered a bottleneck for ideas, besides the influences of ADHD parents and siblings, what else could cause a child to have ADHD symptoms? Luckily, I had decided to start on the project early and had some time before it was due, since I was getting nowhere, I decided to let my brain rest and come back another time. Fortunately, when I returned to think of this a couple of days later, I was flooded with streams of ideas, diet, household environment, contaminated food or water source… etc. Because I decided to begin early, I finished the research round on time!
b. How did this inquiry change the way you think?
This inquiry project helped me gain a better understanding of ADHD symptoms and patients. As a chaotic household or disorganized parents can cause increased ADHD symptoms in the child, the inquiry project helped me find what I can do to try to prevent my child from having ADHD as well.
Moreover, different diets can also cause increased ADHD symptoms for the child, which helped me realize that I need to better diet myself, and my future child, so that I don’t develop or worsen ADHD symptoms, and my child is less likely to have ADHD. Overall, this inquiry project helped me find things that I can do as a future parent to prevent my child from suffering the same disorder that I do.
c. How did this investigation impact your future decisions?
The inquiry investigation helped me realize the environmental factors’ affects on a child developing ADHD, although there is limited things I can do for myself now, it had helped me find things that I can do better as a future parent, to try to prevent my child from getting ADHD. And habits like being more organized and chaotic are things that I can start doing now to form better habits in the future!
Moreover, it also helped me realize the limited knowledge that we have on the genetic effects of ADHD, it is very encouraging that we still know little to none for the specific genes responsible for ADHD symptoms. It encourages me to study and investigate the specific genes responsible for ADHD, so less people will have to experience the unpleasant experiences of living with ADHD!
d. What impact will this investigation have on others locally and/or globally?
Through my blog post, I hope others locally and globally will find the information helpful for the prevention of the development of ADHD symptoms. Especially locally, I have already begun to talk about environmental factors responsible for ADHD symptoms to my peers and other adults, to spread the message and hopefully prevent the development of some ADHD symptoms in someone’s siblings or child. Globally, I hope people on this website from other countries will see my blog post and spread the message about the environmental impacts of the development of ADHD symptoms, and to inspire more people to research and investigate the genetic effects of ADHD symptoms!
