As I age, more and more.
Itâs ADHD Awareness month again. Hereâs a short video which might help show why we are the way we are.
The video is two minutes. If you think this is exhausting, try doing it 24/7.
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Looking forward to whatever info you provide this month.
My youngest has ADHD and I welcome anything that can help me be more understanding of what heâs going through.
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Iâll try to come up with some good stuff for you. To wit:
As a Gen Xer and the youngest of four kids with two working parents (my Dad worked 6 1/2 days a week), I was pretty much left unparented growing up. But my undiagnosed ADHD and above average IQ meant that I was constantly negged by teachers. With no one in my corner, I simply stumbled and faceplanted my way through school while the constant negative feedback invaded my being at a cellular level.
My advice: be patient, be an advocate and get them treatment.
In the meantime, I will re-post this, because it is such a great summary of the struggles of ADHD even with diagnosis and medication.
The pandemic and online school was actually a boon to my kid.
He was able to do lessons and coursework in one go without having to sit through a 50 minute class then go to the next one.
He usually had things wrapped up by noon.
When he went back to in person school he was in a high school that uses an accelerated curriculum (they squeeze 2 semesters into 1). It sounds rough but it worked into his favor. He the skills he learned in the pandemic translated so he gets stuff done and rarely has homework.
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Trying to keep my extremely ADHD fifth grader on Zoom classes was like herding rabid ferrets.
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My unscientific take is that itâs all driven by the interest factor. AFIBDâs kid seems to be getting a reward response from being educated by firehose, while MMâs kid is not getting any of that sweet, sweet dopamine from a dry Zoom class.
The bottom line is that with ADHD it is simply not possible to make yourself do something that your brain does not anticipate getting a reward for doing. Thatâs the thing that I have come to believe that NTs struggle the most to understand (hence the need for patience).
I would sit at my desk in my room, staring at homework for hours - far longer than it would actually take to do it - without being able to even lift a pen to get started. You might as well have been asking me to slap my palm down on scalding hotplate.
âJust get startedâ, or âjust do a bit now and finish the rest laterâ all make sense to NTs, but if your ND brain isnât in the mood then there is simply no way that you are going to even begin whatever it is. We simply cannot choose to knuckle down and take on whatever task it is we are seemingly avoiding.
NTsâ ability to choose the thing they do at any moment is like a superpower to those of us with ADHD.
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This worked for your kid because his parents arenât total muppets.
Timing was no doubt a factor.
He was wrapping up junior high and getting more independent in many endeavors.
Plus the courses allowed him to skip over some portions and just get to the work.
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Excuse me??
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This all seems plausible. The âissueâ I have with my kids and peers that have Adult ADHD is when they demand or expect either accommodations or rewards for their atypical behavior. For example, one of my kids was quite upset when she was passed over for a promotion. When we honestly broke down her work habits, structures and outcomes from her supervisorâs perspective relative to the person that received the promotion, she begrudgingly understood the difference but then immediately pivoted to âwell, they should know this about me and provide accommodationsâ. I asked her if the world should bend towards her or she should bend towards the world and she got angry with me. I actually believe she should bend towards the world but not in the way she thinks. Despite her situation, she wants to remain in a business world where schedules, focus and regulated output are highly favored and my suggestion to her is to find work that is more focused on asymmetric schedules and irregular but high-quality output. Her desires are not well-aligned with her capabilities and sheâll likely remain personally unsatisfied and angry with the NT world around her until those desires and capabilities come into better alignment.
This is a pretty bad take.
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Iâm certainly not implying that you are. Iâm saying that homeschooling/pandemic/online classes only work when the parents are there to support the kids appropriately. If the parents are hands off, like so many were during that time, it rarely resulted in a boon to the kid.
Why?
Before things get too far afield, I should further clarify that my kidâs classes at that time were not zoom classrooms.
They were more like the training videos that many of us do. Watch this, do that.
Zoom classes seem like a different beast.
Especially the Zoom classes in the spring when schools and teachers were completely unprepared to go online.
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I think the issue with âaccommodationsâ is that itâs difficult to envision what they may be, especially as many NTs do not understand the need for them (ADHD still being seen by many as laziness). Iâm sure it was like this when accommodations for those with physical disabilities were being considered, even though things like wheelchair ramps and dedicated parking is now just an accepted part of the landscape.
I would argue that the acceptance of accommodations for the trans community is more advanced than that for ADHDers. This is something I suspect is down to us ADHDers internalizing the stigma put upon mental health by society while trans people have done a much better job of combating societyâs false negative perception. Still, someone who is disabled but NT, or trans and NT, given the necessary accommodations is going to be able to thrive in a world designed by and for NTs.
Man the bad takes are coming in fast and furious.
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Thinking about this, the accommodations for ADHD require the NT community to do much more than (with apologies for the oversimplification) accept building code changes or respect someoneâs pronoun choice and otherwise mind their damn business.
Because our focus cannot be managed by us, let alone external factors, we are to a certain extent unmanageable. Often, too, our circadian rhythm is off by a number of hours, so the rigors of an 8 to 5 workday can mean that an ADHDer is going to exist in a state of perpetual jet lag.
Limited short-term memory means that telling us a bunch of things is only going to guarantee that weâll forget all but a couple of things. If thatâs first thing in the morning for someone whose natural sleep cycle means that itâs 3am for them, is going to exacerbate that.
I guess the first step has to be for the world to accept that ADHD is real. Nothing can move forward until thatâs the case, and we are still a long way away from that being the case.
Trans people are at the stage where the 'terfs are screaming bloody murder about accommodations being made for them. The ADHD community is nowhere near this point.