You must log in or # to comment.
I was tested by someone who came to my school when I was about eight years old because my parents were concerned. They diagnosed me as being lazy.
30+ years later and my kid is going through the same thing. The workers at the nursery are decent though, and suspect neurodiversity. A couple of appointments later and my kid gets an autism and ADHD diagnosis. My wife and I speak to them because my symptoms are so similar, and they said that from the conversations we had about my kid, they assumed that I had already been diagnosed.
I’m now 45 and still on a waiting list for an official diagnosis 😫
Knowing is half the battle.
I was one of those “gifted children that was too lazy” and my mother was one of those “nothing can be wrong with my child or it reflects poorly on me!” and I got diagnosed with full blown ADHD at 29.
Therapy and drugs are great. And I’m glad you were aware enough to get your child tested. Early is for their best.
My parents had a book titled “how to parent a removed child”. I guess they were trying?
Can I laugh? Dammit too late I’m sorry LMAO.
I bet that was a “fun” read. Yikes LOL
I was laughing pretty hard when I found it as an adult, I can tell you.
Exact same story down to every detail. Both parents teachers, but no clue. The weirdest conclusions and theories about me. Like: Far below average intelligence, but with a talent for languages and mathematics (is that even a thing?), which got me through school with effortless Cs. Most of the time I (and probably others) thought I was just a general shithead.
I realised what it was 4 years ago and told a psychiatrist, who did not disagree, but was like: woa, hold your horses. Got a referral to a full neurological & psychiatric check-up from my GP, who wrote on the referral that he suspects ADD without hyperactivity, 1 1/2 years ago. Couldn’t use it, because they are overrun by more urgent cases.
Started paying out of pocked to a private clinic 6 months ago and got the official, written diagnosis 1 month ago (exactly what my GP already suspected). Since then, lots of delays to get treatment. No appointments, then appointment available, but latest bloodwork and ECG expired etc. Had one appointment last week cancelled 2 hours before start.
Honestly, with a medical system so overrun, a GP should just be authorised to do the diagnostic if supported by purely computer evaluated multiple choice test. The standardized tests appear to be the foundation anyway, and the many hours of additional psychiatric evaluation are just something that the medical system can’t support.
And yes, now my child. He is a true math genius who could do 2 or 3 classes above his own, but he hates books (only since school, not before!) and his reading & writing is just a hateful, effortless B. In two languages equally well, though. I suspect something is up there, but don’t want to project. I never had problems understanding math, but was certainly not ahead of the class. Loved books though, perfect spelling.
Let’s hope things work out for us and our children!
Yeah, it’s incredibly frustrating. GPs can diagnose and prescribe for things like anxiety and depression. But the main treatment for ADHD is a “fun” drug that people would like to abuse as much as opioids and we saw how GPs abused prescriptions for that.
So now no one can be trusted, so the test isn’t good enough because what if they’re gaming the system to get drugs?? Psychiatrists are overbooked because we never have enough of them, and we’re heaping all these extra checks just to make sure it’s not someone trying to abuse the meds. And people who have a diagnosis that means they already aren’t good at these kinds of things have to make sure to get a script and bring it to the pharmacy on the exact right day every single month.
I’m not even sure what the solution is. I wish we just a way more holistic treatment of drug abuse and mental health treatment in general so that we aren’t having to make everyone jump through hoops to get the things they need to function.
ADD subtype PI, for primary inattentive. If methylphenidate and atomoxetine don’t work for you make sure you try lysdexamfetamine.
Thanks, noted! Currently helping myself with Modafinil with pretty good results, but too many side effects. Doc seems to be very fixated on Methylphenidate, so we’ll see if they are even open to trying something else. In standardised tests, I maxed out the ADD scale, but missed criteria for hyperactivity by a little, if I understood correctly. Same with childhood ADD; they said they can’t tell for sure when it started after so much time has passed.
Zero hyperactivity here. Just leg jerking and pacing back and forth during calls/meetings. Modafinil kinda sorta works but Elvanse/Vyvanse is a whole different league.
Methylphenidate just gave me brain fog. Atomoxetine worked great for 6 months but then just stopped. I stopped taking Vyvanse a long while ago due to side effects.
Be sure to test your kid, these things seem to be very hereditary.
I’ve heard it is almost common practice now to test the parents for ADD if a kid has it.
That would be great, but the waiting lists in the UK are currently several years long 🙁
Mine was “why can’t you be as hard-working as (whichever kid got the highest score)?”. Unless that kid was me, then it was suddenly irrelevant. Did fucking wonders to my work ethic.
“Why can’t I have a better parent to teach me?”
Sometimes teachers would use me as an example of a hard worker… when I was busy on yesterday’s homework or really caught up in a library book. Like, you sure about that chief?
“You kneel at my throne, unaware it was built of lies.”
Mine used to scream at me for being lazy all the time, and now she wonders why I don’t talk to her about anything 🤷♂️
Mine used the koosh ball slingshot
Coworker told me they were suspected of having adhd as a child and were tested. Doctors wanted to medicate to treat the adhd, but their mother said no, she didn’t want her kid zonked out on meds. She was self medicating with alcohol on the daily, turns out.
I have parents that love me to bits, but their strategy to get me to do my homework was… adversarial? It felt like they were checking my performance, just like the teachers were. It didn’t feel like they were on my side, even though I’m sure they were.
Getting told off even gently felt like an unbearable punishment for some reason. I read something recently about adhd folks being more sensitive to negative interactions?
And that’s how I became a pathological liar and master of masking!
Getting told off even gently felt like an unbearable punishment for some reason. I read something recently about adhd folks being more sensitive to negative interactions?
Check out Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. It’s a common side effect of ADHD.
that’s the one. As a kid I never understood why punishments even exist. People being mad at me was already unbearable torture
Problem is that the approach “MUST do NOW, until it is DONE!” doesn’t work for many of us. I developed methods for myself, which I try to apply to my own child now, like: “When you get home from school, lay out everything you need to work, then relax. At time X, do 15 minutes on a timer, as far as you get.”
He still moans and groans about it, and it’s hard for me to tell if my “soft push” feels to him like the “hard push” I got. It’s all relative, and nobody else can tell.
A lot of parents don’t know better. This is what they grew up with.
You just need to apply yourself
Oh my God, are you every teacher I had since the 4th grade?
Exactly. I started just doing it. Especially when it’s hard!
The sad part is sometimes, it is your own voice calling you lazy while knowing full that you are depressed. Sometimes, it is more difficult to convince yourself that you need help more than convincing others
The Harsh Internal Critic has been the bane of my life. Every hobby or achievement has been hounded by that little voice. And as you say, when I think I need to get help, the voice tells me :No. Don’t do that, just sit there watching YouTube for another hour."
There are meditations which center around your inner voices and also the one which critics you. Helps you identifying these and realising when they come up to be not as influenced as before
Lazy is just a label we apply to people to shame them into doing what we want them to.
most engineers are lazy and that’s often a good thing
Old article, but it talks about harnessing that a little
Mine was “are you doing drugs?”
No I was just socially ostracized and receiving physical punishment at home on a daily basis and that made me angry at the world.
I’m sorry this happened to you and hope you are in a better place now. I know how it feels.
Thanks, I am in a much better place indeed. The psychological scars take awful long to heal, though. But now I have my own family and managed to break the violence cycle with my kids, who are wonderful people that I admire and respect. Never once raised my hand to them.
That is so nice to read. I wish you and your family all the best and be proud of your self.
Thank you! And same to you.
The thing that killed me was “Why don’t you just open a book and study” when I was stressed about school - in retrospect it’s because that’s absolutely antithetical to my learning style… I always struggled with the book heavy classes because I learn through practice and the lectures and books just woosh me unless I’m activating the information shortly after learning it (I’ve retained a lot of uni chemistry because we had a daily lab after the lecture).
Just got yelled at by a co-worker at a new job and called lazy because after only a month my invoices aren’t descriptive enough…I told them i have add but i think that like most people the don’t understand it. Just gonna keep doing my best and work on highlighting my good attributes : )
When a former employer sent me on business trips, the bean counters would complain that my descriptions for the purpose of meals on my expenses were not descriptive enough, as if the purpose of eating was not obvious. I ended up writing something like “nourishment to remain alive while traveling for XYZ project” out of frustration after that. That did the trick and shut them up. I suppose it was hard to argue that description, because if they disputed it, they’d basically be admitting they were sending me away because they wanted me to die.
That’s a fault of them telling you you’re doing it wrong, not telling you how they want it done. I wonder what they actually wanted
It really is bad when people expect you to intuit what they want from you
The trick is to either get an example from them of what they think is a descriptive invoice, or to break down your invoice filling procedure into a step by step workflow or checklist.
Someone isn’t necessarily being an asshole, that person has their own struggles, goals and priorities. Managing a condition and someone else’s expectations or their own condition is the hardest part of working together. This is where soft skills help, too
I was diagnosed with ADD around 199* I was prescribed Ritalin and eventually switched to concerta. None of the adults involved in that process checked in with me at all. I remember being scream-accused of not taking my medicine when I was in fact taking the meds. Funny how in a sea of lost memories, that one persisted.
Plot twist for me:
The mother is also ADD.
Plot twist for me:
Is it really, though?
Yeah. The twist is, like this picture, neither of us really knew what that entailed until it was too late. :')
You’re describing Brendan and his mom from Home Movies
This was exactly my teens, but I’m lucky that my mother quickly understood once it got bad enough and changed. She now does more than I’d ever ask and wish for, and I wouldn’t be here without her.
if they aren’t hitting you it is because they don’t love you
