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I read obsessively and had a really hard time coming back from whatever story I was deep in to. I would also get in trouble reading in class in elementary school. I would speed through whatever work we were supposed to be doing and then hide the book under my desk to finish it.
You are unlocking memories of mine OMG!!! I read so much! Never really had many friends. I carried my book with me and read while walking, or going outside. My teachers used to yell at me to play at recess because I just wanted to read. I used to stuff my homework assignments in my desk, and then say that I forgot them the next day.
Yep. I didn’t know how to get anywhere once I started driving myself because I was always reading in the car. I read at the car, at breakfast, at night by the light of my fish tank. Pretty much any time I could.
Your comment about the fish tank made me laugh because I used to sit in the backseat of our minivan on long night drives and hold my book up to read by the light of cars behind us. This was my fish tank light moment.
I read all the books that the birthday boy had received as presents at a birthday party in elementary school, rather than participate in the games.
Surprisingly, he kept inviting me in following years!
I would read so hard that I would look around after a bit and realize the class had moved from their desks to the front of the room and no one got me, they just left me there reading :(
Maybe end each chapter with instructions to get up and stretch or other small mindfulness acts. This might help your obsessive readers build the skills to take small breaks.
I wrote my assigned page and problem numbers on my hand or on small pieces of paper then randomly put them in my textbook. I rarely did homework. This was chalked up to laziness or an attitude problem. In reality, I was so emotionally and mentally exhausted after school I couldn’t do it. I forgot to eat, often stayed up late hyper focused on a craft or book, and never developed a good daily schedule. My teachers were frustrated that i was so smart, but didn’t apply myself to my work. At the same time, I would go out of my way to help others. My parents lived in two houses (pretty sure dad has ADHD too) so I often left books and needed supplies at the wrong house. I am only now learning about RSD, but I remember a lot of negative self talk and expecting rejection from all of my friends, family, and even acquaintances. I was always creative and crafty and could often engineer a solution to a problem that others didn’t think of.
I read books insatiably but often out of order: first few chapters, last chapter, and then skipping around to see how the conflict developed. My handwriting was pretty bad because my thoughts raced ahead of my ability to write them.
I wobbled between reading this intently for some books (that I enjoyed) while also skipping huge chunks of other books (that I didn’t enjoy). I remember reading a Babysitter’s Club book about a critter called Tiger for a book report and HATED IT. I skipped a ton of the book and absorbed basically nothing. After announcing I’d finished it, my mom asked me what kind of an animal is Tiger? I hadn’t a clue.
Another one: my room needed to be picked up if I wanted to do fun things. Picked up to me meant that the floor needed to be cleared. So I’d shove things in any old place to make it look picked up. After I’d left for college (College, folks! It’s not like I was 5 yrs old!!), my mom went through my old bedroom closet and found a pair of underwear in a jewelry box. 😂
Cutting corners was where my ADHD rang true.
Having to read chapters in class for me was hard, I’d always want to read ahead and I’m also a fast reader so I’d be way ahead and then they’d call on me to read aloud so I’d have to stop reading, shuffle back pages and THEN I’d stumble on my words cause my brain reads too fast for my mouth to speak it properly. I’ve learned to slow down a bit over time tho lol buuuut I do remember reading Twilight in pretty much 4 straight hours. I devoured that book!
I can either pay attention to the words on the page or to the words I’m hearing but I CANNOT follow along as someone reads aloud, so that was always so stressful for me in school, especially if the order for who read was random/ “popcorn” style
I was constantly trying to figure out which page everyone was on (desperately scanning the text, asking my desk neighbor, etc.) in case I was called to read next and then finally finding the right spot and then forgetting to read along anymore after like a paragraph
This all through school. In high school I became very adept at reading and walking. I would do it through the halls and while walking home. The walking home was slightly concerning because it was not obvious if I stopped reading while crossing the road. Also I was allowed to get as many books as I could carry from the library so had massive stacks tucked under my chin.
You unlocked a memory I have of me reading a book while riding my bike on the street… i used to do this often with no helmet because it was the 90’s. I am not sure how I am still alive.
I'm surprised I never tried to ride my bike and read. I made friends with my high school librarian and she lived within biking distance. I spent a few summer regularly biking to her house to hang out and borrow from her personal collection. She had a lot of graphic novels that the library often didn't. I miss her and should call her. (Yes my mother checked out my friendship with her, nothing shady just a good woman willing to be kind and a mentor to a troubled teen)
omg me too!!!!! i would also speed read to get through it so i could have a “break” from paying attention or so i could get up and “blow my nose” to walk around 😂 they always read too slow for me
Omg that memory of reading ahead then the teacher not believing how many pages I read when asked. I was like — why would I lie? I thought that was kinda normal
Unless it was the very start of the year, I’d have probably read the entire book already, especially it was anything interesting (like novels for English class or science text books).
Then I could spend the rest of the class drawing or reading my latest library book.
Meanwhile the rest of the class was assigned 1 chapter per class and going through the book at a snails pace.
Same. Why can't I read like that anymore, though?
My brothers would throw books at me when they were mean and wanted to distract me so I wouldn't tell on them to my parents.
I used to read in band class when the teacher was working with other sections. I was a flute player, so if she wasn't working with the woodwinds, it was irrelevant to me and i immediately whipped out my current book obsession.
My classmate next to me kept borderline bullying me/hating on why I was reading and how I should be present in class. Like bitch why do you care?? The teacher doesn't?! I was picked for honors band lol, I didn't pay attention or practice for shit
Yes! I still get stuck in stores I’m reading where the feeling of them seems to hang around when I’m not actually reading.
I definitely used reading as an escape, probably sobering to do with immersive experience giving me dopamine and something to focus intently on
One of the worst memories I have is being told that since I forgot something important, I must not care enough about it. I burst into tears trying to get them to understand I did care, and I couldn’t help my forgetfulness. I didn’t know why I was the way I was, so I couldn’t explain why this happened.
The most validating thing about my diagnosis was finding out that wasn’t something I could choose to fix, and it wasn’t due to being lazy or not caring enough.
Not exactly heartwarming, but the self confusion growing up not knowing why I couldn’t do the things I should be able to do, no matter how hard I tried to change or “be better”.
That was my exact childhood. I was always so heartbroken when my parents or teachers told me I was lazy, didn't care, or wasn't trying because I was doing the exact opposite and it wasn't working. I felt like such a failure cause no could see how much I cared
That used to happen to me all the time— actually it still does.
I think it’s incredibly important to make the story authentic and not sugarcoat life with ADHD, because that would make it feel disingenuous and fake. I want it to be relatable and real.
there ought to be someone and various people telling to the adhd persons: ‘ I just said so’, ‘I was saying’, ‘we’ve talked about this already’, ‘I said in our last meeting’ or when the person is trying to repeat what they heard, there should be one that’s annoyed by this because they think it’s a waste of time.
I’m curious has anyone else placed breakdealer limits for how many times you hear these sort of things, until you cut the person out of your life?
I had a friend who made me feel like absolute crap and I could never figure out why. Reading your comment made me realize it was partly because they used phrases like this. Like I was an inferior friend for not being able to remember what their plans were three days earlier…
That’s a great idea! I hear that so much even now but as a kid… ALL THE TIME. It gives me a good idea for dialogue with other characters that are boring or saying things that my MC already thinks she knows or doesn’t want to hear!
Also, I heard that I couldn’t have ADHD because I am a girl and I was smart when I tried to get diagnosed at 18. When I tried to get my son diagnosed at 6, I was told he was able to sit still, was reading at age 4, and he was just sensitive in social situations.
My parents also told me the same thing around being clumsy and dropping or spilling things. It was really painful trying to tell them I did care, I just couldn't do it right.
Yes! Even as an adult I tend to have wild daydreams and also feel like I get “stuck” in fictional worlds from books I’m reading or tv series. I have some favorite series that are my go to comfort shows and I’ve watched them from start to finish dozens of times!
I feel like I get stuck in my own head! Fictional worlds are great too of course, but literally anything my brain finds interesting I can get completely lost in.
All of this is 100% accurate. And you just made me want to re-watch Everything Everywhere All At Once Again.
Oooohhh OP if you haven't, check that out for narrative depictions of ADHD and maladaptive daydreaming!
It's not exactly the same, but I actually did have a "daydream multiverse" in grade school lol basically the lore was built as an excuse to self-insert me and my friends into fictional worlds of whatever I was watching/reading/playing at the time and, later, meet and hang out with the Japanese voice acting casts. We were all mages called "portal masters" and we could open portals to other universes and understand different languages. We also had a "magic pocket lining" which just meant our pockets could hold an infinite amount of objects, but we could transfer the property to other clothes. I actually did not tell any of said friends about this; it was all in my own head lol
My daydreams are fantastic! And the curiosity I felt as a kid is still with me today. I remember getting in trouble because I was supposed to be raking the leaves, but instead I spent a solid hour following ants and being positively memorized by how much they could carry haha
One time I got distracted while playing Frisbee and literally said "oh look! A butterfly!" right after my sister had thrown the Frisbee and it smacked me right in the face 🤣
I felt particularly ashamed of being disorganized, messy, struggling in school, not having perfect bubbly handwriting, forgetting to take care of personal hygiene things, and being socially awkward and shy. I was painfully aware of what was expected of my gender and felt like I’d never be good at being a girl.
I have an old diary entry from 11/12 years old that talks about feeling like everyone got a handbook for how to be a girl except me
This was me as well, I think the worst part was trying to get a handle on bodily functions especially my period. I would forget that I should make sure my pad or tampon wasn’t about to leak or that I had one in at all. Lead to a lot of really uncomfortable and awkward situations high school where I’d leak through because I wouldn’t remember until I physically felt it. Was also really expensive. I always wondered why everyone else can do it but I’m absolutely horrible at managing it.
I was called melodramatic a LOT as a child. I still am. Even post-dx my family hasn’t figured out that my strong reactions to things are due to my adhd and that I have very little control over it.
I remember being told to calm down, to stop crying a lot, that I was making a big deal out of nothing. The message received of course was that my excitement, or concerns, or fear, or pain was not important or was inconvenient.
It led to me becoming quite calm and sardonic by high school, but at the expense of always holding excitement inside and pushing it down, at never wanting anyone to ever see me get upset or to see me express strong feelings. Now I can barely even identify emotions anymore I’ve become so used to not acknowledging or expressing them.
But I’m learning now! Lol slowly but surely. Embracing the “drama” I guess
You, my friend, very accurately just described the biosocial theory on which the foundation of DBT rests on. Embrace the drama, your emotions are telling you something valuable. The reactions they cause and the actions you choose to take may not always be in line with the original emotion, or very helpful, but the core emotion it self is true and important. Good on you for doing the work!
Maybe something about making friends? we all have different experiences with that, but I think it’s important to have some of those struggles in kids books instead of making it seem like they should automatically be everyone’s friend 🤷🏾♂️
Yes! I’ll be including a best friend character in the second/third chapter, after struggling with feelings of loneliness and isolation in the beginning.
I had a best friend for like half a year in 1st or 2nd grade who told me I wasn’t cool enough to be friends with anymore and dropped me as a friend. That was one of my formative experiences early in life.
We were also poor so that might have helped but I only ever had one friend a year until middle school. Then I found other neurodivergent people and a bunch of lgbt++ people (although most of us didn’t realize yet lol). Some I’m still friendly with although most are not super close anymore. My closest friends are adhd or autistic now mostly.
Please look up RSD and ADHD. it’s not an official disorder yet, but it’s a really common issue, especially for girls. It’s essentially misreading social cues and expecting rejection from friends. I did a lot of role play in my head to prepare myself for different social situations and would often prepare myself for the inevitable rejection that was coming. Then I would just avoid that friend because I didn’t want to have that rejection.
I think something that’s common and I’d love to see in a book, is parents missing the signs not out of malice, but because one of them is also undiagnosed ADHD.
I think in general families with some members who have ADHD is a pretty interesting topic.
My sister and I were both not diagnosed until adulthood (and we both would be diagnosed with autism as well). My mother was also diagnosed with ADHD after us,even though she hadn’t even considered it for herself and it was her psych that suggested an evaluation.
I think since ADHD runs in families and theres many differences in ways ADHD can present, having siblings with ADHD is an interesting thing to explore.
My sister was a lot more of the “gifted, talkative, undiagnosed child who would grow to experience burnout and depression” type who didn’t consider ADHD for a while since she was so academically successful for a while.
Whereas I had other learning disabilities diagnosed on top of my undiagnosed adhd/autism. Since I needed so much help it was a lot more “obvious” that I was disabled.
But I also think it could be interesting to explore one sibling who is more “obvious” being diagnosed and the less “obvious” sibling not being diagnosed.
This is so true! Many times parents don’t identify ADHD (and autism) in their children because to them the behaviors aren’t unusual to them. That’s also why some parents are resistant to accepting their adult children’s diagnosis because “everyone does/has trouble with that”.
Yes! I’m definitely going to include one the parents having very strong, evident ADHD traits (but I’ll leave it unsaid and undiagnosed).
I’m still debating whether or not I want the MC to be/get diagnosed in the book. I’m leaning no, simply because it’s missed so much in girls and I think that’s more realistic, but it’s my book so I can do whatever I want. I’m not sure yet. Thoughts?
I suppose it depends on what age range your target audience is, and what age is the MC at the end of the book?
And what do you want your reader to take away after finishing the book?
Do you just want readers who may be undiagnosed to feel seen? Or do you want them to feel seen and realize why they felt different?
I think you could include like at the end of the book, in like an acknowledgment section that the characters experience was inspired by fact that you grew up with undiagnosed adhd. That way the information is still in the book without it being in the story?
That’s a great idea and probably what I’ll end up doing.
The book is going to be specifically for girls aged 10-12 (since that is such a hard time in life) but I want it to be at a level that younger girls can comprehend it and older girls can still relate to it.
Glad I could help!
Lmk if you ever want want to do a feedback/critique swap! I also enjoy writing (mainly short fiction, generally just a few pages long).
It would be awesome as a choose your own adventure book. Then the reader can see the different effects of diagnosis, therapy, meds, supportive teachers, etc.
I love that idea. Even with being diagnosed in the 90's, I didn't get any help and had a horrible time in school. I have been an artist since I was born and I was kept back from art class as punishment for talking in class. It was devastating, I wrote an ominous note in 3rd grade saying if I couldn't make art I might as well be dead. The only feed back from anyone was that I was very bright but couldn't keep my mouth shut and distracted the other students. No one even told my mom in 4th grade that I was a the top of my class academically but behaviorally I was at risk for suspension. "I guess ADHD just makes you talk too much" was literally the only thing I got from it. So diagnosis or no diagnosis, we're still treated like outcasts.
Not until high school when I was able to control more of my classes did things start to calm down. I wrote our class song but I still graduated almost bottom of the class because I just stopped caring. I think my principal pitied me and made my teachers pass me to graduate.
I'm from a family of four kids. Three girls and one boy. One of my sisters very "obviously" seemed ADHD but I don't know if anyone ever suggested she get tested.
Out of the four of us, the girls are diagnosed and our brother is not. He probably has ADHD but hasn't been tested. Of course, he's the only one in elementary school who my parents were told needed to be tested for it They didn't see anything wrong. He was just a boy who needed to get more energy out, which is why he was standing at his desk instead of sitting in the chair. Turns out my parents most likely also had/have ADHD! So all six of us have it or most likely do, which explains a lot about our family!
My attention would be captured by *anything* I could read. I'd read cereal boxes if breakfast conversation bored me. If teachers were just droning on in class, I'd already be sneaking a book to read under my desk. I got in trouble for this so many times over the years.
Everyone said I talked too fast. But teachers also liked that I worked fast (in everything except physical ed and home economics). So that's how I fell through the cracks and did not get diagnosed till I was an adult.
“Needs to apply herself.”
That’s basically what I heard growing up. I was so smart, I was grasping the concepts, I did good work…but I *needed to apply myself.* I was good enough to be put in special advanced classes but then disappointed those who put me in them.
Exactly! When I was free to read whatever book I wanted or topic for a project, I flourished. I’d go down a rabbit hole and then be more knowledgeable on the subject than many of my teachers.
When the thing was assigned and/or I didn’t care for it, I just couldn’t muster up the focus to do more than the bare minimum. That’s when you get “the main export of Tuvalu is frozen fish” answers.
My 6yo rambles on at me constantly about everything and gets to thoroughly enjoy boring me to death because I act excited.
My parents were the opposite and constantly told me to go away/leave them alone etc. Though I will give them credit, before I could read when I was 4-maybe 6? They did read me medical encyclopedias for bed because that's what I wanted.
Yup, my parents didn't have time to listen to me ramble about anything and never showed any interest in my interests. As a kid it hurt a lot and definitely caused ongoing issues. Now with my kids, I listen to every single story, and get really excited about stuff they are excited about, even if it takes all my energy to feign interest.
I went to therapy as a kid when my parents got divorced, due to my dad drinking. Around 11, 12 years old.
My therapist was amazing and managed to get me to talk, understand and process my emotions and stop thinking I had any responsibility in fixing my parents in any way.
She and my mom had a meeting about my progress, I was going twice a week. My therapist told my mom she thought I was ready to reduce it to once a week. My mom was extremely surprised and said she thought I needed to go three times instead. My therapist asked why, and my mom said it was because I didn't obey her enough and didn't keep my room tidy.
My room is still, to this day, never tidy.
I would just like to ask you something. You said you want to hear the good too, and that you want to make a heartwarming story. I am not assuming you will, but please don't make it seem like ADHD is a super power or something. It is not, it sucks. It doesn't need to ruin your life, define your whole personality or make you be in pain all the time, of course, but I deeply dislike the super power trope that I have seen in some tiktoks and instagram posts.
OH MY GOD THANK YOU for your last point.
I could cheerfully punch anyone in the face who claims ADHD is a superpower.
In my experience it is a debilitating condition which went undiagnosed for three decades and that has contributed to a lot of traumatic experiences I have gone through. It being undiagnosed for so long has made me ‘cope’ with so many things I didn’t need to if I had known I had ADHD.
Sadly, my retroactive realisation of how much of my childhood was affected by my ADHD has left me angry and wishing I didn’t get diagnosed. This means I have a very negative perception of my own ADHD. But I do agree that it doesn’t necessarily have to be something a person hates, but it isn’t this magical superpower either.
I absolutely pinky swear to not make it a superpower. That is the furthest thing from my intent for this book. Cuz, hell yeah. It sucks. I just wanted to get a complete and realistic picture of what ADHD is like for other women, not just me.
I was in a gifted and talented program so I was supposed to be smart but I could never do my homework unless it was the middle of the night or remember things. It really colored my self image for awhile.
I was also the “always angry” child. Because of this my family had a running joke about being “outraged” and I was dismissed a lot or treated differently than my sister. Now when they make the joke I reply with “oh you mean my literal disability?” And suddenly it’s not so funny and awkward.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my family and they’re supportive but it’s something that really rubs me the wrong way still.
I have a very distinctive memory of being in 4th or 5th grade and sitting with the other girls and looking over and seeing they all had such perfect, girly handwriting while I wrote in essentially chicken scratch, and feeling like even though I like these girls and they like me, there's something about me that makes me different from them, and you can see it in the handwriting.
I'm f34 and only got diagnosed late last year. I've been reflecting on my childhood a lot since then and can recognise several behaviours that were clearly ADHD symptoms. Here's a bit of a summary:
- I always felt like I didn't belong no matter who I was with or what I was doing.
- I preferred spending time alone rather than trying to work out how to act around certain people.
- I was curious and would ask lots of questions and often got told I was being rude but I didn't understand why certain questions were considered inappropriate.
- I read a lot of fantasy books because it was an escape from everyday life.
- I was told frequently that I was stubborn or lazy when I didn't complete tasks and that I needed to try harder.
- I would always be imagining different scenarios which would vary between happy and sad.
"inside voice, (me)!" No matter what I was doing. I was always too loud, I guess. I also kept getting in trouble for not sitting properly on my chairs in church and school. I wasn't even fidgeting a lot beyond playing with the hem of my dress, but I liked to sit on my one leg. I was eventually broken of the habit. Young Ladies can't sit that way, I guess. Growing up in the 80s there was a lot of discipline without even attempting to understand the child.
When I was growing up, my biggest issue was uncontrolled emotion. I was prone to tantrums over small issues and anger bursts, and bc of that I faced very harsh verbal punishment from my parents. No parent back then wanted their little girl to behave wildly like I did. To this day I struggle with the notion that I’m a bad person, bc that was what I was told repeatedly. I was also an overall awkward child and suffered bullying at school, so I relied a lot on books to lift up my mood. I read fiction like crazy all through childhood and pre-teen years, and then a bit less in teen years when I managed to make friends and live a little outside of my bubble.
The other common issues with kids with ADHD (difficulty at school, restlessness, loudness etc) I kept very well hidden and then I overcame most of them. I was always terrified of punishment and rejection, especially at school. Doing well at school was mostly all I had going for me to make parents and teachers like me.
It’s just amazing that you’re writing this book ❤️ the struggle is real, and the more knowledge we have, the better. And it’s great to teach girls how different their symptoms might be from those of boys, they’ll probably have a lot of standing up for themselves to do, especially with doctors.
since my childhood was Really Fucking Depressing, i wont share my experiences. tho if you want i could.
i just want you to know that i love this idea and ill be looking forward to reading it. i hope it will help many girls like us <3
Mine was depressing too and personally I feel like if I want the end of the story to have the kind of emotional impact I want, there needs to be real struggle and weight, especially in the beginning.
You don’t have to but if you’d like to share, I’m listening.
i started writing, it got long, so i switched over to [a google document](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RkZrmkSmcI2mEf3RQFQdN1y9KghUiCowBC2Uw756rkI/edit?usp=sharing). have not been able to finish it yet, theres still a lot to tell and a lot that i left out and would like to add somewhere. i dont know if ill finish it sometime soon since i need a particular mood to want to write about that stuff. youre welcome to read it tho.
also, most of it probably isnt specifically adhd related on the surface because of the complexities of real life, but its one of the red threads that touches everything in my and my parents' lives.
i appreciate you.
CW/TW for the document: descriptions of domestic violence, bullying, attempted suicide, probably other things as well, let me know if i should mention something else
I would cry every day from school. In class, at home, on the weekends doing homework. If I were to write a character with ADHD I would make them cry a lot
My almost 8f and 6f with ADHD both cry a lot. One very striking thing to me was realizing how young they were when they started the self blame and shame cycle, and how quickly their self-esteem and confidence spiraled downward once the cycle began. I’d had those feelings for as long as I could remember but I didn’t get diagnosed until 32. These feelings started manifesting is crying/despair for both my girls by age 5. It totally floored me.
I have a TON of memories of feeling my cheeks catch on fire, and the lights in the room dim around the edges like a vignette when I felt intense shame for blurting out a comment in class, or when I felt criticized, or when I had a flash of righteous rage inside me that I had to hold in. Also, the internal “what I’d say to that snob if she ever did x to me” rumination that plagued me for so so long.
Fourth grade I remember struggling a lot with listening, remembering class instructions, being in my own little world.
"Is something wrong with you?!" "Do you have hearing loss?!" "You need to pay attention!" "Why are you crying? Quit crying! There's nothing to cry about!"
I ended up just constantly feeling like I was on the verge of tears from the scheer anxiety of "messing up" somehow. At recess, I'd go hide somewhere on the playground and cry out whatever I could. I'd get home and go hide in the barn to cry into my cat's fur. I'd hide under my blankets and cry as I was going to sleep.
You should make each chapter an entirely different hobby / part of the character. If it feels chaotic, then it’s perfect 😄
And like others have said, lots of big emotions, desperation to fit in, but wild creativity and imagination.
this'll be a bit long
i've always been really really bad at waking up in the mornings. i'd never have time to brush my teeth or if i was awake and did have time i would lay in bed and do nothing after getting dressed. i usually stalled until the last minute and then rushed to get up and dressed with the 5 minutes left before the bus(i guess some things never change lol). i felt pretty bad about my bad hygiene and felt like i was lazy
i also didn't have time to pack a lunch in the morning either and forgot to do it at night so i stopped eating at school when my mom stopped packing it for me (i have a lot of food allergies though so this isnt universal)
i would talk during class and yell out answers and the teachers would get upset at me for yelling out answers. i forgot to do my homework a lot too and never finished it unless i finished it in school. i asked so many questions in class to stay engaged and my teachers always said i had good questions but in boring classes i just zoned out and doodled then rushed through the class work at the end.
on the plus side! i've always been creative and curious and i had a super high reading level when i was young cause of how much i read. i did a lot of stuff when i was young (soccer, cooking class, racing a dirt bike, 4H, etc.) cause i wanted to try everything and i was considered pretty smart too :)
Once I was in middle school my mom expected me to pack my own lunch. Reasonable, I guess. If she had bothered to follow up with me to make sure I was actually doing it.
Well, I always forgot. We had a big coin jar of spare change and I raided it almost every morning for quarters in a rush.
As a kid, I was either:
A) Super extroverted, social, charismatic, high-energy, kinda intense, impatient, bossy, demanding/needy
or
B) Completely lost in my own mind for hours, narrating or creating a semi-fictional story about my life, spacing out on the couch while aggressively twirling my hair around my finger, not wanting to be disturbed
No in between.
FUCKING STOP AND GO TO THE BATHROOM. PLAYTIME WILL STILL BE THERE WHEN YOU GET BACK. I’d like to see some representation of the less “lol look at my tik tok I’m quirky” traits and some of the more core weird ones. That’s what finally convinced me to look at a diagnosis seriously in my 30s.
My sister was famous for that as a kid. Only a few months ago I realized that I was waiting to go to the bathroom until I'd finished a certain amount of emails I was writing or tasks I was completing and I asked her about it. She said she still does it as a way to motivate herself to finish a task. I'd never understood why she did it, but now I do. We both got diagnosed as adults.
"Just write it down in your assignment pad"
"She'd do better if she just wasn't so lazy or of she applied herself"
"Your room is a pigstye" (that's a big one)
"Pay attention"
"You're very smart, you're just probably bored and need harder work" (when I was struggling to understand simple concepts)
And then the constant question of why everyone still treated me differently when I didn't think there was anything "wrong" with me.
I have back and forthed on saying anything because my comment is going to be overwhelmingly negative because that’s my perception of getting my diagnosis and having all the lightbulb moments about my childhood once I was diagnosed at 34. I just want to stress that I am not being negative about your idea, OP - I think it’s great.
For things I now know as often being related to undiagnosed ADHD, I was bullied constantly through primary and secondary school. Not every single reason for bullying was to do with that, but a lot of it. And lots of not fitting in.
Primary school bullying: because I wasn’t ‘cool’ which was said to me by someone I had never met before on the first day of school. Because I would cry a lot. Because I would get angry when I was picked on and emotionally lash out, which they found funny. Because I had tomato in my sandwiches for lunch. Because I wouldn’t swear. Because I didn’t have branded trainers. Because I liked watching Star Trek. And sometimes it was just because kids are vindictive little shits who just do it because it was funny.
Secondary school bullying: because I hung out with someone who was FTM trans, and thus I was labelled also trans, and bullied for it. Because two of my friends were in a relationship so the entire friendship group had to be comprised of lesbians (even though one of them was my trans friend and was bullied for looking like a boy and being trans), so I was bullied for that. Because one of the friendship group wore a Marilyn Manson hoodie to school, so we were all devil worshippers. Because I was trying to do well in school and wasn’t only concerned with losing my virginity or trying to bunk off, or smoke, or go to a rave, or go and see a boyfriend who was concerningly older than me. Because I had a large rucksack which was practical for carrying all my stuff in. Because I would answer questions in class. Because someone started a rumour I had a crush on a male teacher. I couldn’t stand the cliquey, bitchy nature of secondary school (I went to an all girls’ secondary school) and I could not understand how girls would bitch and say horrific things about each other when they weren’t there, then be all nice to their face. It has irreparably damaged my general perception and disposition toward women and girls.
College (I went to art college for a year before uni): was not bullying but I didn’t fit in with the cliquey girls from more privileged backgrounds. I didn’t have a car, I couldn’t drive, I didn’t go to a private school, I didn’t live in a big house in beautiful Kent, I wasn’t interested in dressing up for the student bar theme nights and getting off my face drunk, I wore band T-shirts and jeans and hoodies and Converse and not wearing more feminine fashion. It was a combo of not being able to relate due to being from such different backgrounds, but also because I wasn’t into what everyone else was doing.
My younger brother is autistic and struggled (and still struggles) much more than I do. But my parents assumed I was fine because I had a reading age about 10 years ahead of my actual age. I would devour books at lightning speed and my mum actually told me off for reading books she had got me for taking on holiday before we had gone on holiday. Because I did well academically in school they took that to mean I was fine.
They also called me airheaded, silly, forgetful, a chatterbox, too eager to talk and a whole host of other things that mean I feel shame, anger and frustration now when I can’t remember something. I very vividly remember my dad yelling at me that ‘you clearly forgot where it was’ when I couldn’t find something - but my point was someone must have moved it because I found it in a bag with a load of other stuff I didn’t put in the bag, and I had kept elsewhere. But of course, nobody would have touched my stuff except they did all the time. I even had possessions very pointedly placed in the bin to show that they had not been put away and so were being thrown out as I clearly didn’t want them.
Because I was supposedly smart and NT, there was little tolerance for what they would consider bullshit, or messing up in ways that would be more understandable for my brother.
I was always the weird girl, the odd one out, always feeling like I didn’t belong, always wishing I was somewhere else, always wishing I was someone else, wondering why I couldn’t remember and do things the way my peers could. Wondering why it felt so hard to do things that others found easy.
Because of my upbringing and my undiagnosed ADHD coming together, as a child I had (and still do have) an inability to speak against authority figures even when they were wrong, a crippling fear of failure, of being wrong, of getting into trouble, perpetually feeling I am not good enough, that I cannot do enough or be enough, that I’m a disappointment, that I’m picky, fickle, impatient, stupid, and forgetful. I have crippling anxiety, self-doubt and a complete lack of self-confidence. My self esteem is in the toilet and almost always has been.
I have always perceived through social interaction that I am, when not masking, too loud, too intense, too much, too outspoken, too over the top. I have often felt like a pity invite, a pity friend, a ‘you are just here because you know X and we don’t have the heart to tell you to fuck off’ friend. So I make myself more socially acceptable and I don’t really know how to be that outgoing, confident person I was for a very brief time aged 15-16 when the stars somehow aligned and I had a solid friendship group, peers who I got on with and was performing well academically. The problem is, I don’t really feel like I am myself anymore. I long for the young girl who was herself and did not care to make herself acceptable to others by changing her interests. I don’t know where she went.
When I was diagnosed, the day it was confirmed, I had euphoric relief because I realised there was a reason that I had no control over as to why I was the way that I was. Now, I just have permanent background anger that I wasn’t helped by the adults around me when I was struggling as a child and I keep thinking about how much better life would have been if I had been diagnosed as a child. And all the things that frustrate me about myself are things I cannot change because of a condition I have that medication will only help so much.
In many ways I hate that I looked into getting assessed and diagnosed. Someone on this sub posted several months ago that pre-diagnosis they could treat ADHD traits they had noticed (of which there were maybe three) as quirks of their personality. Post diagnosis they are noticing all these things they did not notice before and it frustrates them that they can’t not notice them or do anything about them. I feel the same.
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. Much of it resonates with me, and much of it will be included in the book I’m writing. I don’t want to sugarcoat ADHD or make it a cute, silly, quirky little superpower. It sucks, man. Especially when you are surrounded by people that label and treat you as “other”. I want the main character in my book to learn how to focus on what she’s good at and not worry so much about what she isn’t good at. I want it to be realistic but empowering, with an overall hopeful message to girls that struggle with ADHD.
Thank you for taking the time to read it - I hadn’t realised how long it was!
I totally agree on the superpower thing. I replied to another commenter that I hate the toxic positivity mentality that ADHD is a superpower. I get trying to be upbeat about something you can’t change but there’s also being realistic about it as well.
I think it’s crucial that young girls are shown how to be hopeful and positive about life with ADHD. I think if I had been diagnosed as a child I would be a bit more at peace with it.
>I was always the weird girl, the odd one out, always feeling like I didn’t belong, always wishing I was somewhere else, always wishing I was someone else, wondering why I couldn’t remember and do things the way my peers could. Wondering why it felt so hard to do things that others found easy.
This hit me so hard. Thanks for sharing your experience with such honesty. ADHD can be so isolating, but it helps to know I'm not alone in it 💜
I think that’s one of the best things I have got from this sub - I’m not alone. It doesn’t make it better or easier but it is comforting to know I am not the only one ❤️
I get super passionate about a thing and that’s all I can think about for a while and people start associating me with that topic. When I meet the same person after a few months or a year, they would assume my personality is because of my interest in X. But in reality it’s more like X,Y, and Z.
My interest keeps changing and people associate it with my personality. And they think I’ve changed as a person the next time I meet them. But in reality I’m just exploring everything that fancies me.
I do this too! It’s always awkward when I meet people through a particular niche hobby and then inevitably lose touch when I stop (or pause) said hobby and suddenly have nothing in common
Ooof! Same. It’s especially hard in dating situations as well, when you’ve bonded over something and then when you pause it, you don’t have anything in common.
My first real friend was a girl I met walking around the block with my dad. I impulsively ran into her yard and asked her to be my friend.
As it turned out, her mom was an old childhood friend of my mother's, likely she was also ADHD lol - and her and her two brothers would often sleep over my house and vice versa.
It was awesome. I have very fond memories of that time.
I was extremely vibrant as a kid but my story is sad. I was pushed around a lot. I spent so much time in my daydreams due to reality being hard and just got diagnosed recently even tho every male family member has adhd. Butttt— i would like to add that the little girl who wanted to be an astronaut ballerina director actress is finally a ballerina and actress working on her own Indy film!
I always was told i had to be one way— i have religions trauma and come from a fairly sexist world POV. I was never given anything and was bred to be a housewife and when i couldn’t keep up with tasks i was abused and also binge ate and did drugs in adolescence to cope with my symptoms and abuse. I felt very invisible and repressed. I used to have the wildest fantasies of crazy worlds and ppl could rescue me or i would rescue myself. It was very lonely too. Now I’m finally finding my voice and place in the world. I did abandon religion because it was just too ridiculous even for me. And it went against my core values of equality and equity for all.
I was diagnosed at about age 7 or so. My parents didn’t do jack shit with my diagnosis because they thought the only option was Ritalin. No research or any thought went into my symptoms after that. I struggled but made it all the way thru high school graduation completely apathetic toward learning. When I took the placement test for college I did so horribly on reading comprehension that I was put in ESL class. I never graduated or got a degree, despite having gone to 3 totally different community colleges over the years. It’s frustrating to think of what my potential could have been, had I gotten ANY sort of care or treatment or at the very least therapy. So that was my experience as having an ADD diagnosis as a child.
Oh also, I didn’t display the hyper, loud, disruptive traits that often go hand in hand with the diagnosis. I was more “check out from learning and go take a nap in the reading section of my kindergarten class” and later in HS was still sleeping thru classes or relentlessly drawing on assignment papers, daydreaming, and generally zoning the fuck out.
I talked so much and was so disruptive in grade school that in 3rd grade the teacher moved my desk right up to the front of the class next to hers and that’s where I sat all year.
I had sensory issues, my shoes always felt too tight, I couldn't concentrate once my brain zeroed in on that. I would sit at my desk wiggling my toes in my shoes, trying to make my feet feel better, but all i wanted to do was rip off my shoes and socks and throw them across the room. Instead I just had to sit there quietly at my desk completely overwhelmed by the discomfort.
I also has a really difficult time focusing on conversations, my mind would start to wander, I felt so bad about it because I would do this with close friends all the time, I could tell people were frustrated with me, and I felt so guilty, but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't stay present.
So basically, a lot of frustration, a lot of beating myself up for not being able to do things that i thought I should be able to do.
A very early ADHD memory for me was my second grade teacher dumping my desk out in front of the class and shouting at me for being messy. The humiliation and shame has stayed with me the rest of my life.
I was called messy and lazy so often by adults that I internalized it and all but stopped trying by 6th grade.
Impulsivity caused me to do very stupid things for attention or peer approval. I had so much detention for flipping people off by like, 4th grade.
My ADHD has never felt very "manic pixie dream girl" but rather "depressed and lonely troll girl."
edit: and oh god the personal hygiene. I never brushed my teeth or hair, would show to school with mats and slept through classes. Lost my only friend in middle school because she shouted that my breath smelled like dog shit on the bus. Ah.
As a kid my emotional outbursts were bad. And it didn't take much for me to fall apart, hair wasn't the way I wanted it, the shirt I wanted to wear was dirty, someone said something and I felt attacked (which was often).
I was also super clumsy and would spill or break stuff all the time, got yelled at a lot for that.
And I doodled a lot and on everything, especially in classes I found boring.
Yes the doodling I forgot about the DOODLING they kept me sane during social studies and math lol
I also had bad emotional outbursts as a child and plan to include a couple in the story. I was super picky about my hair and clothes too and I’d get so upset if they weren’t right.
I was constantly given crap by my teachers for not focusing or forgetting homework. They would report this to my mother who would ground me. It was a very difficult experience seeing how others could just easily do this work while I constantly struggled and didn’t know why. I remember once my teacher pulled me aside and asked me “what are you daydreaming about?”
The answer was nothing. My mind was often blank, or just so overwhelming I couldn’t quite pinpoint what I was thinking about. She told me “you’re wrong, you need to tell me what you are daydreaming about.” I kept insisting there was nothing, because there really wasn’t or I didn’t know what there was: I was just there. After arguing with her a bit I finally told her I was thinking about my aunt in Florida (states away from me). Which was a lie, but she had visited some weeks ago and it was the only thing in my life going on that seemed like a reasonable enough answer.
This same teacher refused to let me go to the nurse when I accidentally bashed my head on a desk, because “you’re a bad student and that is the karma you get.” I was in pain. Also wouldn’t let me go to the nurse when my throat hurt- turns out it was strep throat. This was second grade.
In 5th grade I had my teacher yell at me in front of the class for being to scared to read my written story to the whole class. That class I was an outcast and bullied for my differences. I often had experiences where the teacher would humiliate me in front of everyone, not just this teacher alone.
I was actually pretty smart when I was able to put my mind to work, it was just a struggle.
While the bullying from my classmates was never too bad, due to the lack of understanding in ADHD in girls and women, at that time and in the area I lived, it was often that my teachers would be my first bullies. On top of their lack of understanding, without any resources to help me, my mom also just never got me help because it was not seen as anything more than me being stubborn or bad. It wasn’t until high school I really learned about ADHD- I knew it was a thing but I didn’t know it’s depths, but once I did, it was validating. It was like “oh holy sh** that’s me!?”
My mom still believed that I just needed to focus more, and that my struggles were my fault. So here I am now, out of high school (barely graduated but I did), and freshly diagnosed- and my mom doesn’t know due to her lack of support. I do appreciate the one teacher in high school who saw me. She still had her issues with me but she had genuine concern. She pushed me in ways other teachers never bothered to try. She worked with me, she was a safe space- but also pushed my tight boundaries (respectfully though) that I had built over the years and helped me overcome them. That was the one class that I ended up with a nearly perfect grade in. Sadly that was one of the only teachers that saw me, but without her I wouldn’t be where I am today.
Sorry this is long, and mostly negative, probably not the best for an heartwarming story, but I hope you’re able to take something out of this to help your process! Thank you for doing this! I wish there was more understanding of young girls going through the struggles of ADHD, we all deserved better and I’m grateful you are doing this. I hope it goes well!
No! This is so heartwarming! I teared up a bit because I went through a lot of the same thing and I’m so damn proud of you for making it and I’m so happy you’ve gotten the help and recognition you deserve.
Thank you! And I’m sorry you had to go through so much of the similar experiences too. And I’m glad you’ve also gotten help and recognition and going as far as to try and hopefully make it better for future generations! I would of loved to have resources and books that I could relate too back when I was a child.
Let’s see. My parents threatened to take things away from me because I’d lose interest and my grades would drop. I’d be told that I’m too smart for this shit.
Oh my dad still tells me that he thinks he got the wrong baby from the hospital any time I’m not prim and quiet.
I’m hella smart but I’ve only heard how weird I am. Like throughout my entire life preschool through to career…. You’re so weird. It can be lonely but it’s also very freeing. I’m also autistic so that’s probably why I’m so weird but I’m not afraid to do things by myself because I’m always doing things by myself.
I’m definitely not the sweet, ladylike little girl my parents were expecting, but I’ve learned to embrace who I am and I try not to let others’ opinions bring me down. That’s kinda how I want the book to go: start off with the MC feeling kinda sad and frustrated, and end feeling hopeful and empowered.
I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned yet, I was really into art and there were always sketches all over my notes. I could concentrate on the material better when I was drawing things.
Thanks for an unlocked memory. Jurassic Park just came out. I was already obsessed with dinosaurs. So my little 8 year old self was constantly walking on my toes pretending to be a raptor.
Then I decided I liked walking on my toes even if I didn't have my hands up, I could still be a raptor in my mind. We did a hike at our day camp and I was doing the whole thing on my toes.
Gave myself a damn charlie horse and had an instant realization, nope. My raptor time is done.
1) I was getting in trouble for not getting motivated by typical rewards for neurotypicals. For example, if all students are given a certain award for completing their super long and boring homework, that was motivating anyone in class, but me. This was very confusing for my teacher and my family. 2) Well, not proud, but I figured out I can get away by beating bullies for being a cute girl. I was always standing up to them. There was that… 3) My favorite one is I was not able to sit down enough long to study for exams. I am from a country where education is very competitive. Before an exam night, I had to waste maybe 80% of the time running in house and read my notes just before sleep time (at best). However, i had high grades, which made other kids started to think I am lying about how much I actually study. This was again very confusing. Those kids were saying they finish extra books, study until late hours, even at weekends. I was not sure how any of it is even possible or if they are the ones lying. At a parents teacher meeting, my mother was accused of hiding “how much I actually study”. She was shocked. Well similar events lead me to have anxiety attacks.
I had a really hard time keeping my room clean, and it was a running joke to my parents and they’d tell all my business to their friends. The fact that everyone knew/talked about the state of my room made me feel like I never had privacy, and to this day I value privacy highly because I never had it in my childhood home. I also loved sugar (dopamine deficiency) and that was joked about by many adults in my life as well. Because all these parents/family friends saw my messiness/gluttony/forgetfulness etc. as personality traits, I did too. This lead to over 15 years of disordered eating, low self-esteem, and people pleasing (ADHD was obviously not the only cause, but a big factor). I think the biggest danger is that people attributed gendered terms to me (ditzy, forgetful, not ladylike, not reliable). I mean gendered as in, I didn’t have traits that a girl/woman was expected to have, therefore it was a problem. Undiagnosed ADHD and people’s reactions to it gave me low self esteem. Cut to me as an adult, I was in a severely abusive relationship because I was more susceptible to gaslighting. I can’t trust my own memory or judgement, and he took advantage of that and fully convinced me that I couldn’t think for myself. I know that’s not applicable to the childhood years, but people pleasing and low self esteem are so so important to get a handle on before you end up in a life-threatening situation. I wish young girls with ADHD knew how to react to people’s judgements. I hope they can learn to focus on all their positive traits, and the helpful aspects of their “negative” traits.
I have a vivid memory of one day in sixth grade, crying at recess because there wasn't anything I was really good at. I was a smart kid, I had some of the top marks in my class, but when I looked at my friends, all I could see was that one of them was really good at art, and another one was really good at being friends with everyone, and another was really good at singing. They each had their thing. I was a little bit good at a lot of things, but I didn't have a thing like everyone else did, and no matter what I was always second best. That really hurt.
As a very young child, like toddler age, I had sensory and anxiety issues. I would twist my hair with my fingers so much that it would get in knots and my mom had to cut them out. It was nearly impossible for my mom to get me off my pacifier. I don’t think it was gone until I was nearing 5. I hated and was terribly afraid of any kind of loud noises. Balloons, fireworks, tornado sirens. I always covered my ears. Was always very unorganized in school, homework assignments and papers never in folders and always had a messy desk. I would get in trouble both when I was very young and in high school for writing during class. I liked to write stories and poems and sometimes draw. I remember always daydreaming and many times I would get called on and have no idea what was even going on in the room around me. All throughout school I would also ask to go to the nurses office a lot because I knew I could lay down in the dark with relaxing music on if I told them I didn’t feel good. Looking back on it now I realize that I was actually just overwhelmed and overstimulated and anxious and that I needed to decompress. I had horrible difficulties with math, like years behind my grade level bad. In grade school I had a special math tutor but after that it was never brought up again. I remember always struggling with math though to the point it would cause me to meltdown and cry. The only reason I passed high school algebra and graduated is because the boy next to me helped me cheat and would do my homework and give me all the test answers. I failed college algebra three times before I finally was able to pass and move on so I could finish my degree. I always had normal girly girl interests but I was and am still obsessive about my interests. It’s almost like I can’t get enough of them. I feel like I can never learn enough or have enough information about something I like. I played with dolls and other childish things a lot longer than my peers. I was always insanely shy and quiet, like basically mute unless I knew you. Then I wouldn’t shut up. So in school if you sat next to me and we vibed I couldn’t stop talking and goofing off. Always had “cannot refrain from unnecessary talking” on my report cards. This haunted me from first grade all the way throughout high school. I even remember goofing off so much with this other girl in my high school art class that my teacher got so sick of it she held both of us after class one day. She lost it and screamed in both of our faces like a psycho and made me miss my bus. The other girl and I had to sit in the corner of the room isolated from the other kids the rest of the school year. I always heard that I wasn’t living up to my potential and that I wasn’t applying myself enough. I was always a C student but I excelled in English/vocabulary/reading easily and breezed through tests and would finish before everyone else and be bored having to sit in silence and be tortured waiting for the rest of the class to finish. I always just felt like I was unlike everyone else and there was no where that I fit in. My ADHD mostly looks like intense internalized anxiety and I’ve pretty much learned to correct any social difficulties I had as a child/adolescent through masking. So now in professional settings like work I force eye contact and have learned how to engage in small talk. Also the hyper focus. I don’t know how it was ever missed because I could hyperfocus a whole day and night away. I could sit on the recliner in my grandmas den and watch Nickelodeon for ten hours without moving, I could play the sims all night until morning without sleeping. Same with animal crossing and harvest moon. It’s like even if the room was on fire my focus wouldn’t break if I’m doing something I love.
Something that would have helped me a lot as an undiagnosed girl is understanding what Rejection Sensitivity Disorder is and how it can affect relationships. I'm just now starting to unpack it in my therapy sessions, and learning about it as an adult has really helped when I started a new career and had to meet all new people, but wow, would it have been helpful to know why I felt the way I did so often as a kid, and why my friendships always followed a similar pattern.
Imagining I had magical powers to lift all the objects in my room to clean under them and put everything in it’s right place.
The night before any field trip or anything out of the ordinary, not being able to sleep because I was so anxious.
Never communicating where I was despite knowing I should, and being told every day. Being anxious the entire time I was anywhere because I knew I should have told someone.
I had a profound understanding that I operated better under duress, so I’d do things like imagining I was in a concentration camp in order to accomplish a task- typically physical, because anything on paper was anxiety fuel to be avoided at all costs.
Being told in abundance that I was weird, but relishing in it. (I like being weird, is that weird?)
Being tested for a gifted program and excelling in the first test and failing the second. (Reading comprehension off the charts, storytelling? failure.) So I’m not gifted? That has irked me since it happened.
Never realizing that I didn’t fit in, but not understanding how other girls related to one another. Flitting from friend group to friend group but only really connecting with maybe one person out of that group. Eventually friending other “outsiders” regardless of gender, and absorbing their personalities because I didn’t know who to be or how to be myself.
Keeping a religious (for me) stream of consciousness journal. Most consistent thing I did from 5th grade to graduation of HS.
That’s all for I can think of at the moment. I hope any of this is helpful.
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Maybe mess with the chapters and lengths, split the chapters, stop them abruptly and continue them later after a different, tangential chapter has resolved.
Try to create that branching narrative that adhd people can end up thinking/expressing themselves in.
Plus you could spend time going into detail, interesting detail, but not needed for the story. Just to give the info-dumping feel?
Having a parent with ADHD.
My mom and me had such a hard time coordinating whether I was going home on the bus or if she was picking me up. She'd be so late to pick me up that they'd lock the gates to the school. Or I'd be sitting out on our porch waiting for her to come home.
In middle school - forgetting my key and getting very good at breaking into my own house. In highschool it was breaking into my own car, and learning how to hook up jumper cables in the dark. I left my lights on and let my battery die so much, I learned how to do it without light. And in college it was coming home, when my parents where out of town and I locked myself out of the house. Except, we didn't live in a shitty rental anymore. So I had to go through the ceiling in the garage, climb through a fiberglass insulation stuffed closet and face the drop from the ceiling into my sister's closet! 🤣
We moved after elementary school and I quickly went from an average liked kid to a complete loser. Day dreaming about alternate worlds where the black board would open up and all of us would be taken to the other side. Where of course there would be some kind of crisis and I'd finally be able to prove myself as valuable to other people. High school I finally got some people to say "you know I didn't realize but..(insert back handed compliment about being smart or a good, likeable person)." And the first few times I heard it, it felt like I had arrived. Of course these days, it's a tired trope and I have such a chip on my shoulder. Thanks, nice to know you figured out I do belong after all. But as a kid...oh man. That was water in the desert.
I was told to shut up so much in middle school, I just stopped talking. The day dreams latched onto my conflict between wanting to "be kind" and understanding towards others and being pissed I was rejected all the time. I absolutely had 2 personas representing these view points that I would talk with (inside my thoughts of course) instead. Honestly, if I had TikTok then, I would have thought I had DID. But I was just trying to sort out my thoughts with no other alternative. One eventually killed off the other. It was very dramatic.
I'm sure I could pull a little deeper, and am happy to scrape more memories.
I’m definitely going to hint that one of the parents have ADHD in the book, although I think I’ll leave it unsaid.
I was left out a lot too, and was constantly bullied for being “weird”, so I definitely can write from experience for that.
Thanks for sharing! Hearing what you had to say helped dig up some of my old memories.
If you can think of anything else, please share.
Oh shit, just remembered another one. My organizational system. Stuff the homework in the textbook it's assigned to. Things fell out. My backpack was a pit.
Random little story. I was undiagnosed as a kid. When I was 11-12 years old a boy in my class had adhd. My teacher explained at one point that stuff was difficult for him and told us "when he's doing his work, and a car passes by outside, he can't help but hear that car". I thought the teacher must be half deaf.
The sound of my refrigerator is driving me insane right now lol
I complain to my family that the lights are too loud.
It’s frustrating that it doesn’t seem to bother anyone else.
I also probably had sensory processing disorder, and I couldn’t handle loud noises, like fire alarm drills made me cry until I was 11, and I hated brushing my hair or having my hair messed with, which combined with executive dysfunction and really difficult fine hair, meant that in seventh grade I had a giant rats nest at the base of my head until my mom finally got me a haircut (she also has executive functioning problems and was solo parenting and working full time and I probably refused to go at least once). I was not very popular.
I also remember trying to pay attention and putting so much focus into paying attention and looking like I was really listening that I would suddenly realize I’d missed whatever the person was saying while I was trying to arrange my face into a listening expression.
I cried to my mother almost every night after she put me to bed. I would go into her room and cry about how I was frightened of getting murdered in my sleep or dying peacefully even. And how will I know what comes after death? How can I be ok with not knowing?
Basically, having an existential crisis night after night because I couldn’t get my brain to quiet down
Messy desks, messy hair (hated hair brushing because it hurt), “weird” (like Lilo from Lilo and stitch), morbid, curious, bookworm, knows random facts about random things, these are some of the highlights of child-me. Really smart…until middle school/high school
People kept telling me to talk less, be more careful with which things I talked about, learn to read the room, etc.
People also kept taking offense at things I didn't mean to offend with.
It gave me a feeling that I was dumb for not being able to control my talkativeness, and it made me feel like the odd one out cause I noticed people shy away from me, but couldn't pinpoint why, or how to act differently.
I wish someone had told me that there wasn’t anything wrong with me, that everyone’s brains are different and that sometimes miscommunications happen because people don’t understand how my brain works. And then given me tools for how to prevent or address those miscommunications. Stuff like if I’m really excited about something, that’s great! If other people respond negatively to me sharing that excitement, it’s probably just because in that moment they weren’t ready to hear about it. That other people have times that they are available to share in my excitement, and times that they are not. That would have been really helpful. Because basically as a kid no one explained to me why people were having negative reactions to certain things as I was doing or what I could do to get along better with them, so instead it just seemed like I was just bad.
My experience when I was younger was that I was diagnosed as a child and then overlooked because my brother was tested the same day as me. Basically "yea she got it but this other kid needs to be on meds yesterday" and he was(I believe) about 5 or 6 at the time.
He was put on meds and I got to watch him grow up on them. When we lost insurance when he was getting to teenage years, I watched him go through literal withdrawal from the loss of his meds, headaches, throwing up, etc. This taught me that meds are bad.
Took me about 8 more years of learning before I decided to see a doctor for it for myself and got on meds and I'm still learning to take my meds and to not be scared of them.
In school I was a gifted but distracted kid. I was quiet but impulsive, very artistic, hated math with a passion because it never made sense and I never had a teacher truly explain it to me. Rejection sensitivity was so strong in me, and object permanence has never existed. I've always picked up on other people's emotions, but I've never quite learned how to think about their reactions before I speak. My attitude has always been either "I'm the best person ever and I'm going to look and dress like it" or "I literally want to disappear into the void"
I have a couple of strong memories I'd be willing to share from when I was in the 2nd and 3rd grades, as well as stories from when I was younger. I've also been teaching my mom that she has adhd if you want to explore the hereditary side of it.
I remember being taught certain subjects where you had to memorize dates or math equations that were just taught just because the knowledge is needed, it was never explained and I always felt so stupid when I was called on because I would not understand it. It was only until I entered high-school and developed my own study habits and found out if I know why something needs to be a certain way I will be more likely to remember it. I needed more story in history about how there was a war for two years before the other forces started rallying together and then revolted, or I need math really simplified and all equations explained like I’m 5 but once I have it I will remember a majority of the information forever.
My teachers often told my mother that I was too smart but prone to making “silly, careless mistakes” which were holding me back from being at the very top academically. My mother lamented my ‘carelessness’, pushing me to pay more attention. It hurts me so much that I internalized this a personal shortcoming because I didn’t know I had a disability.
I read so much growing up! This is a great idea!
And also can you find a way to include TWO tear off bookmarks because if the reader is going to experience how it feels, they need to make sure one winds up in the freezer and won’t be seen again for a month so they will need a backup lol
My parents love to tell me about the night I had a meltdown for an hour because they took my shoes off. I wanted to take my *own* shoes off, and as soon as they put them back on and I took them off myself, I happily went to bed!
Something I was thinking about today. I seriously vibe with the "pure imagination" song from Charlie and the chocolate factory and today it clicked!!!I think it's because growing up, i was always lost in my own world.... of pure imagination 🎶
I was always obsessed with art and spent hours drawing, painting, listening to music. During class instead of paying attention. Also got lost in books, especially Harry Potter!
Ruminating was a big thing for me, if I saw something mildly upsetting, I’d ruminate over it for days while it felt like no one else cared. When we went to Vancouver and saw east Hastings, why was I the only one upset for days about this? Embarrassing moments would cause crippling anxiety from ruminating over it.
The whole gifted child child thing, and straight A student? What no one saw was the emotions behind the scenes, the procrastination yet must be a perfectionist, and staying up past midnights in the eighth grade!!!! To do my homework and projects. The endless tears and emotions my mom had to deal with.
One of my earliest memories is of inventing a boring counting game to help myself fall asleep, because my brain was always so, so loud and busy that it would keep me awake for hours and hours. I'm talking since I was 5 years old, just fantasizing about magic stories or playing through scenarios in my head of 'what if X happens tomorrow', both positive (ie daydreaming) or negative (ie catastrophizing).
Focusing on counting (and, in my childhood bedroom, focusing on the sound of my analog wall clock) forced me to stop the thoughts enough to sleep. Most nights my mind would wander off a time or two, but I'd just start over until I was asleep. Almost like a proto-mindfulness practice, but invented by a 5 year old. It turned a 3-4 hour insomnia into a 20-40 minute insomnia. I used that game EVERY NIGHT for twenty years. As of a few years ago, I have found excellent podcasts that fill the role of stopping my brain from wandering, and I've also been diagnosed so I'm less stressed/anxious and have learned mindfulness techniques. But still on bad nights, usually if I'm stressed or have too much on my plate, I'll return to that old counting method.
i was undiagnosed in childhood. While i was a bright child and performed well in school, i had few friends and always felt pop lonely. At home, my mom shouts at me for making my room messy, forgetting to attend tuition classes and showering for too long. I get shouted at for fidgeting too. But if I don’t fidget I can’t sit down for long.
I’m frequently late for school, and while at school im always late for the lesson after recess. I listen attentively in math class but space out for all other classes. My textbooks are full of doodles and comics. A funny thing is school is, i can get silver medal for national math olympiad, but i can barely get an A for fundamental math exams. My teachers all have fixed feeling about me.
Other ppl often comment that im not ‘girl-like’ because of my messiness, carelessness and the tendency to move about more.
I have memories of going to sleepovers as a kid and not being able to block out the sound of other kids breathing, the rustle of a sleeping bag, etc. I would lie awake for hours and feel really anxious and alone that I was the only one awake.
One thing that really sticks out in my memory is in elementary school, for a while they put me in the supply closet to do my work to “keep from being so distracted”. What they didn’t take into account was how many things in that closet I found fascinating. Especially the rolling rack of colored paper.
I love this idea!! My overwhelming feeling as a child was of being thought of as lazy, but always doing really well by cranking last minute. Always feeling like I was behind and had to catch up. And being terrible at putting ideas into prsctice
I always felt “other” and not quite like I belonged. I was skinny, long, lanky and awkward. I was clumsy and often moved before my body caught up to my brain. As a little black girl growing up in a predominantly white school in the mid 90’s I was dismissed as naughty, stupid and someone who didn’t listen. No one ever assumed I had ADHD because that was something only boys have, definitely not black girls! I did not fit the fully girl mould as I was a tomboy with too much energy to be considered a girly girl. I fell and hurt myself a lot playing, always doing things on impulse.
I was stubborn and refused to do things I did not want to: no eating my veggies, don’t make me nap if I don’t want to. No impulse control, especially when it came to sweets and sugary things. I would steal little sweets here and there, never able to control my craving. My notebooks were filled with doodles and my handwriting was ( and still is) very messy. Then I shifted at age 12 when a teacher told me I was more. I literally became the polar opposite and all my externalised hyper activity became internalised. I became more concerned with school and academics but I was always told I’m not quite reaching my full potential. Good but not great. I felt like I worked 3 times harder than everyone but I just managed to be above average. Yet always wanted to break thorough with brilliance. I was anxious about grades and not ever wanting to be labelled as “bad” again. I was only diagnosed at age 30.
Man…the way my 2nd grade teacher would yank my test out from under me when I was trying to think of an answer but couldn’t even focus enough to think so I would repeatedly drop my pencil on its eraser cap and catch it when it’d bounce back up staring off into space and watching other students completing their tests with no problem.
I used to come home crying all the time because the teacher was so mean to me for not participating/acting the same way other students would in class. My parents never believed me. One day that teacher called for a parent teacher conference. I don’t know what happened at that conference, but afterwards my parents believed me and apologized. My teacher was a helluva lot nicer and wasn’t such a see you next Tuesday. Though she did have her moments.
The way I was treated afterwards was more of like if I had an IEP and was allowed to do certain things other kids didn’t have the same permissions to do.
When I grew up I was called emotional, sensitive and grumpy which was me struggling with emotional regulation. I would get intense headaches because I was constantly stressed by social life and school. One time I sat in front of our front door crying to my mom because I had a tummy ache. I didn’t want to go to school. I begged her to call the doctors as it genuinely hurt so bad.
I went to the doctors a few hours later and left a blood sample. They said there was nothing wrong. I went the day after that again… Nothing wrong. Then I went once more that week. Nothing wrong. They told my parents I may just be stressed.
I had very big emotions and I still do. I easily cried at confrontation as a kid. And I was impulsive, easily irritated. I was quiet but I was loud. Whenever I would have fun I would always be really loud which disturbed people but I was in my own bubble and would forget their complaints in a second and keep going. I was also bossy and I was bossed around. I was bullied by someone I considered my best friend which made me feel insecure.
As of school I didn’t have to put much effort into school to begin with and was ahead of my classmates until I stopped learning new things as I was bored and wouldn’t listen during classes. I always just went with what I naturally picked up on. That caused me trouble later on in school. Everyone saw me as the smart kid. Not only academically but also emotionally. ‘Mature for your age’ they said.
I remember being sensitive to textures and scents as well. And I’d spend a lot of my time (an unhealthy amount leaving me in skipping meals and sleep) playing my favourite game that I was introduced to in 2009. Minecraft! It was a hyperfixation for years.
I also tended to lean towards being with adults more often than kids my own age.
Lots of really strong emotions that I didn't quite know what to do with. Most of the time I was well behaved and well mannered but when I got upset about something I would just totally meltdown and my parents just did not get it. They thought I was acting out or trying to get my way but I just had a lot of trouble emotionally regulating. And then of course being "the weird girl" and having teachers say I had "so much potential", not really fitting in, getting lost in books and daydreams, never sitting still long enough to do my homework even though it was easy for me, being more comfortable roughhousing with the boys than navigating social dynamics I didn't understand with the girls. Wow how did I go undiagnosed for so long... 😅
I masked like crazy as a child because i learned early on that i didn’t quite get how to socialize like everyone else. I remember lots of times where i would remain silent and allow myself to fade in to the background - especially around adults. They’d say “why are you so quiet?” and it made me feel like there was something wrong with me.
I also had explosive emotional reactions to things - my parents figured i was just being stubborn and dramatic so they would send me to my room. Sometimes i would sit at the top of the stairs and just scream. My parents hated it but i had no idea how to deal my big feelings alone.
my daydreaming was my safe place. and i would have very intense storylines in my head as i played alone with my toys. I wasn’t comfortable playing with other kids cause it felt like i had to perform. I just wanted to play in my head.
i’d like to add that my undetected ADHD led to depression, eating disorders and weed dependency in my teens/early 20’s. i’m 24 and in a psych ward right now - in the process of getting a diagnosis.
My mom is likely ADHD as well which may be the reason she overlooked so many of the signs.
During early childhood, I struggled a lot with knowing that something was really hard but not knowing WHY. Like emptying the dishwasher, remembering that I had a party invitation in my schoolbag and that I needed to give it to my parents and actually RSVP, staring at my math worksheet in class not understanding anything, not understanding what I didn’t understand, not really even being able to THINK in the bustle of the classroom, just sitting there holding back tears, trying not to cry, trying to look like I was thinking the problem through whenever the teacher walked by, not really knowing why asking for help felt so impossible.
I think that, as a child, on a subconscious level, I had an understanding that you’re supposed to know why you need help. But in most of the things I struggled with most, I understood that I was supposed to be able to do them. I am supposed to empty the dishwasher because I am supposed to help out with household chores. I am supposed to work through this math problem because I am in school and this is a maths class.
I had an understanding of what I was supposed to do. I found these things very hard to do, and I usually just held back tears and tried to do them to the best of my ability anyway. If I did ask the adults around me to help, or try to talk about it, I had a vague, childish understanding that I would need to say something along the lines of ‘I need help because…’ and that what a sentence I just didn’t know how to finish.
Now, I am predominantly inattentive, that’s what I was diagnosed with. But the psychologist who gave me the diagnosis was pretty clear that it wasn’t because I didn’t HAVE hyperactive symptoms, it’s because there wasn’t sufficient proof of hyperactivity before the age of 12. My mum said I was quite active at a young age, always balancing on everything, decided I needed an energy outlet for it, and signed my up for dance classes. No one ever told me to ‘sit still’ and ‘stop fidgeting’, but boy did I get told to stop sitting or behaving in an ‘unladylike’ manner ALL the time. When I was active and exciteable, I was singing or dancing or excitedly babbling away at something I was passionate about. And I was quite internally hyperactive as well, always thinking about something, with a very active mind. Even so whatever hyperactive behaviours I may have had (or have) it was ADHD-I for me.
Being ADHD-I, generally clever and good in school (despite comments about needing to check my work more thoroughly because I made careless mistakes), most of the time, adults did not notice I was struggling. The only times they really DID notice I struggled to do something were when I failed to do household chores. My mum would pull me up on it and try to discipline me about the importance of being part of the household and helping out. I know you don’t like chores, everybody doesn’t like chores.
That’s always what people tell you about your ADHD struggles. There’s this thing that’s hard for you in a way you can’t articulate and when other people do notice, they only listen long enough to tell you that there’s no excuse, these things need to be done, of course you don’t like it, nobody does, but it needs to be done.
The message YOU receive as someone with ADHD being told those things is “This is how hard it’s supposed to be and you’re the only one who can’t do it.”
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I read obsessively and had a really hard time coming back from whatever story I was deep in to. I would also get in trouble reading in class in elementary school. I would speed through whatever work we were supposed to be doing and then hide the book under my desk to finish it.
You are unlocking memories of mine OMG!!! I read so much! Never really had many friends. I carried my book with me and read while walking, or going outside. My teachers used to yell at me to play at recess because I just wanted to read. I used to stuff my homework assignments in my desk, and then say that I forgot them the next day.
Yep. I didn’t know how to get anywhere once I started driving myself because I was always reading in the car. I read at the car, at breakfast, at night by the light of my fish tank. Pretty much any time I could.
Your comment about the fish tank made me laugh because I used to sit in the backseat of our minivan on long night drives and hold my book up to read by the light of cars behind us. This was my fish tank light moment.
I read all the books that the birthday boy had received as presents at a birthday party in elementary school, rather than participate in the games. Surprisingly, he kept inviting me in following years!
I would read so hard that I would look around after a bit and realize the class had moved from their desks to the front of the room and no one got me, they just left me there reading :(
Also looking up and realizing everyone else is eating at the dinner table or had gotten up and left the room.
Maybe end each chapter with instructions to get up and stretch or other small mindfulness acts. This might help your obsessive readers build the skills to take small breaks.
Same!!
I wrote my assigned page and problem numbers on my hand or on small pieces of paper then randomly put them in my textbook. I rarely did homework. This was chalked up to laziness or an attitude problem. In reality, I was so emotionally and mentally exhausted after school I couldn’t do it. I forgot to eat, often stayed up late hyper focused on a craft or book, and never developed a good daily schedule. My teachers were frustrated that i was so smart, but didn’t apply myself to my work. At the same time, I would go out of my way to help others. My parents lived in two houses (pretty sure dad has ADHD too) so I often left books and needed supplies at the wrong house. I am only now learning about RSD, but I remember a lot of negative self talk and expecting rejection from all of my friends, family, and even acquaintances. I was always creative and crafty and could often engineer a solution to a problem that others didn’t think of. I read books insatiably but often out of order: first few chapters, last chapter, and then skipping around to see how the conflict developed. My handwriting was pretty bad because my thoughts raced ahead of my ability to write them.
I wobbled between reading this intently for some books (that I enjoyed) while also skipping huge chunks of other books (that I didn’t enjoy). I remember reading a Babysitter’s Club book about a critter called Tiger for a book report and HATED IT. I skipped a ton of the book and absorbed basically nothing. After announcing I’d finished it, my mom asked me what kind of an animal is Tiger? I hadn’t a clue. Another one: my room needed to be picked up if I wanted to do fun things. Picked up to me meant that the floor needed to be cleared. So I’d shove things in any old place to make it look picked up. After I’d left for college (College, folks! It’s not like I was 5 yrs old!!), my mom went through my old bedroom closet and found a pair of underwear in a jewelry box. 😂 Cutting corners was where my ADHD rang true.
Having to read chapters in class for me was hard, I’d always want to read ahead and I’m also a fast reader so I’d be way ahead and then they’d call on me to read aloud so I’d have to stop reading, shuffle back pages and THEN I’d stumble on my words cause my brain reads too fast for my mouth to speak it properly. I’ve learned to slow down a bit over time tho lol buuuut I do remember reading Twilight in pretty much 4 straight hours. I devoured that book!
I can either pay attention to the words on the page or to the words I’m hearing but I CANNOT follow along as someone reads aloud, so that was always so stressful for me in school, especially if the order for who read was random/ “popcorn” style I was constantly trying to figure out which page everyone was on (desperately scanning the text, asking my desk neighbor, etc.) in case I was called to read next and then finally finding the right spot and then forgetting to read along anymore after like a paragraph
This all through school. In high school I became very adept at reading and walking. I would do it through the halls and while walking home. The walking home was slightly concerning because it was not obvious if I stopped reading while crossing the road. Also I was allowed to get as many books as I could carry from the library so had massive stacks tucked under my chin.
You unlocked a memory I have of me reading a book while riding my bike on the street… i used to do this often with no helmet because it was the 90’s. I am not sure how I am still alive.
I'm surprised I never tried to ride my bike and read. I made friends with my high school librarian and she lived within biking distance. I spent a few summer regularly biking to her house to hang out and borrow from her personal collection. She had a lot of graphic novels that the library often didn't. I miss her and should call her. (Yes my mother checked out my friendship with her, nothing shady just a good woman willing to be kind and a mentor to a troubled teen)
omg me too!!!!! i would also speed read to get through it so i could have a “break” from paying attention or so i could get up and “blow my nose” to walk around 😂 they always read too slow for me
Omg that memory of reading ahead then the teacher not believing how many pages I read when asked. I was like — why would I lie? I thought that was kinda normal
Unless it was the very start of the year, I’d have probably read the entire book already, especially it was anything interesting (like novels for English class or science text books). Then I could spend the rest of the class drawing or reading my latest library book. Meanwhile the rest of the class was assigned 1 chapter per class and going through the book at a snails pace.
Same. Why can't I read like that anymore, though? My brothers would throw books at me when they were mean and wanted to distract me so I wouldn't tell on them to my parents.
Omg yes I couldn’t be kept away, it was the only thing that made me happy at that age
omg same except I was really dumb, I just didn’t do the work and would “sneakily” read while holding the book under my desk
Me too. I could literally get lost in a book.
I used to read in band class when the teacher was working with other sections. I was a flute player, so if she wasn't working with the woodwinds, it was irrelevant to me and i immediately whipped out my current book obsession. My classmate next to me kept borderline bullying me/hating on why I was reading and how I should be present in class. Like bitch why do you care?? The teacher doesn't?! I was picked for honors band lol, I didn't pay attention or practice for shit
As a former flute player and bookworm, I commend your hutzpah. And coordination. Salute!
LITERALLY SAME. I have no unique experiences lmaooooo xD
Yes! I still get stuck in stores I’m reading where the feeling of them seems to hang around when I’m not actually reading. I definitely used reading as an escape, probably sobering to do with immersive experience giving me dopamine and something to focus intently on
One of the worst memories I have is being told that since I forgot something important, I must not care enough about it. I burst into tears trying to get them to understand I did care, and I couldn’t help my forgetfulness. I didn’t know why I was the way I was, so I couldn’t explain why this happened. The most validating thing about my diagnosis was finding out that wasn’t something I could choose to fix, and it wasn’t due to being lazy or not caring enough. Not exactly heartwarming, but the self confusion growing up not knowing why I couldn’t do the things I should be able to do, no matter how hard I tried to change or “be better”.
That was my exact childhood. I was always so heartbroken when my parents or teachers told me I was lazy, didn't care, or wasn't trying because I was doing the exact opposite and it wasn't working. I felt like such a failure cause no could see how much I cared
That used to happen to me all the time— actually it still does. I think it’s incredibly important to make the story authentic and not sugarcoat life with ADHD, because that would make it feel disingenuous and fake. I want it to be relatable and real.
there ought to be someone and various people telling to the adhd persons: ‘ I just said so’, ‘I was saying’, ‘we’ve talked about this already’, ‘I said in our last meeting’ or when the person is trying to repeat what they heard, there should be one that’s annoyed by this because they think it’s a waste of time. I’m curious has anyone else placed breakdealer limits for how many times you hear these sort of things, until you cut the person out of your life?
I had a friend who made me feel like absolute crap and I could never figure out why. Reading your comment made me realize it was partly because they used phrases like this. Like I was an inferior friend for not being able to remember what their plans were three days earlier…
That’s a great idea! I hear that so much even now but as a kid… ALL THE TIME. It gives me a good idea for dialogue with other characters that are boring or saying things that my MC already thinks she knows or doesn’t want to hear!
Also, I heard that I couldn’t have ADHD because I am a girl and I was smart when I tried to get diagnosed at 18. When I tried to get my son diagnosed at 6, I was told he was able to sit still, was reading at age 4, and he was just sensitive in social situations.
"now what did I just tell you??????" "I HAVE NO IDEA!!!!!"
My parents also told me the same thing around being clumsy and dropping or spilling things. It was really painful trying to tell them I did care, I just couldn't do it right.
[удалено]
Yes! Even as an adult I tend to have wild daydreams and also feel like I get “stuck” in fictional worlds from books I’m reading or tv series. I have some favorite series that are my go to comfort shows and I’ve watched them from start to finish dozens of times!
I feel like I get stuck in my own head! Fictional worlds are great too of course, but literally anything my brain finds interesting I can get completely lost in.
Definitely! Boredom is torture!
All of this is 100% accurate. And you just made me want to re-watch Everything Everywhere All At Once Again. Oooohhh OP if you haven't, check that out for narrative depictions of ADHD and maladaptive daydreaming!
I love this idea \^\^\^\^
It's not exactly the same, but I actually did have a "daydream multiverse" in grade school lol basically the lore was built as an excuse to self-insert me and my friends into fictional worlds of whatever I was watching/reading/playing at the time and, later, meet and hang out with the Japanese voice acting casts. We were all mages called "portal masters" and we could open portals to other universes and understand different languages. We also had a "magic pocket lining" which just meant our pockets could hold an infinite amount of objects, but we could transfer the property to other clothes. I actually did not tell any of said friends about this; it was all in my own head lol
My daydreams are fantastic! And the curiosity I felt as a kid is still with me today. I remember getting in trouble because I was supposed to be raking the leaves, but instead I spent a solid hour following ants and being positively memorized by how much they could carry haha
Yes! The curiosity! I used to watch bugs for hours at a time!!
One time I got distracted while playing Frisbee and literally said "oh look! A butterfly!" right after my sister had thrown the Frisbee and it smacked me right in the face 🤣
I felt particularly ashamed of being disorganized, messy, struggling in school, not having perfect bubbly handwriting, forgetting to take care of personal hygiene things, and being socially awkward and shy. I was painfully aware of what was expected of my gender and felt like I’d never be good at being a girl. I have an old diary entry from 11/12 years old that talks about feeling like everyone got a handbook for how to be a girl except me
That’s me 🥹
I always felt so embarrassed for forgetting deodorant.
This was me as well, I think the worst part was trying to get a handle on bodily functions especially my period. I would forget that I should make sure my pad or tampon wasn’t about to leak or that I had one in at all. Lead to a lot of really uncomfortable and awkward situations high school where I’d leak through because I wouldn’t remember until I physically felt it. Was also really expensive. I always wondered why everyone else can do it but I’m absolutely horrible at managing it.
I was called melodramatic a LOT as a child. I still am. Even post-dx my family hasn’t figured out that my strong reactions to things are due to my adhd and that I have very little control over it. I remember being told to calm down, to stop crying a lot, that I was making a big deal out of nothing. The message received of course was that my excitement, or concerns, or fear, or pain was not important or was inconvenient. It led to me becoming quite calm and sardonic by high school, but at the expense of always holding excitement inside and pushing it down, at never wanting anyone to ever see me get upset or to see me express strong feelings. Now I can barely even identify emotions anymore I’ve become so used to not acknowledging or expressing them. But I’m learning now! Lol slowly but surely. Embracing the “drama” I guess
I could have written this word for word.
Me too
You, my friend, very accurately just described the biosocial theory on which the foundation of DBT rests on. Embrace the drama, your emotions are telling you something valuable. The reactions they cause and the actions you choose to take may not always be in line with the original emotion, or very helpful, but the core emotion it self is true and important. Good on you for doing the work!
Maybe something about making friends? we all have different experiences with that, but I think it’s important to have some of those struggles in kids books instead of making it seem like they should automatically be everyone’s friend 🤷🏾♂️
Yes! I’ll be including a best friend character in the second/third chapter, after struggling with feelings of loneliness and isolation in the beginning.
I had a best friend for like half a year in 1st or 2nd grade who told me I wasn’t cool enough to be friends with anymore and dropped me as a friend. That was one of my formative experiences early in life. We were also poor so that might have helped but I only ever had one friend a year until middle school. Then I found other neurodivergent people and a bunch of lgbt++ people (although most of us didn’t realize yet lol). Some I’m still friendly with although most are not super close anymore. My closest friends are adhd or autistic now mostly.
Please look up RSD and ADHD. it’s not an official disorder yet, but it’s a really common issue, especially for girls. It’s essentially misreading social cues and expecting rejection from friends. I did a lot of role play in my head to prepare myself for different social situations and would often prepare myself for the inevitable rejection that was coming. Then I would just avoid that friend because I didn’t want to have that rejection.
I like this. I've always had best friends but was never anyone else's best friend. I was like the backup friend. It's hard.
I think something that’s common and I’d love to see in a book, is parents missing the signs not out of malice, but because one of them is also undiagnosed ADHD. I think in general families with some members who have ADHD is a pretty interesting topic. My sister and I were both not diagnosed until adulthood (and we both would be diagnosed with autism as well). My mother was also diagnosed with ADHD after us,even though she hadn’t even considered it for herself and it was her psych that suggested an evaluation. I think since ADHD runs in families and theres many differences in ways ADHD can present, having siblings with ADHD is an interesting thing to explore. My sister was a lot more of the “gifted, talkative, undiagnosed child who would grow to experience burnout and depression” type who didn’t consider ADHD for a while since she was so academically successful for a while. Whereas I had other learning disabilities diagnosed on top of my undiagnosed adhd/autism. Since I needed so much help it was a lot more “obvious” that I was disabled. But I also think it could be interesting to explore one sibling who is more “obvious” being diagnosed and the less “obvious” sibling not being diagnosed.
This is so true! Many times parents don’t identify ADHD (and autism) in their children because to them the behaviors aren’t unusual to them. That’s also why some parents are resistant to accepting their adult children’s diagnosis because “everyone does/has trouble with that”.
Yes! I’m definitely going to include one the parents having very strong, evident ADHD traits (but I’ll leave it unsaid and undiagnosed). I’m still debating whether or not I want the MC to be/get diagnosed in the book. I’m leaning no, simply because it’s missed so much in girls and I think that’s more realistic, but it’s my book so I can do whatever I want. I’m not sure yet. Thoughts?
I suppose it depends on what age range your target audience is, and what age is the MC at the end of the book? And what do you want your reader to take away after finishing the book? Do you just want readers who may be undiagnosed to feel seen? Or do you want them to feel seen and realize why they felt different? I think you could include like at the end of the book, in like an acknowledgment section that the characters experience was inspired by fact that you grew up with undiagnosed adhd. That way the information is still in the book without it being in the story?
That’s a great idea and probably what I’ll end up doing. The book is going to be specifically for girls aged 10-12 (since that is such a hard time in life) but I want it to be at a level that younger girls can comprehend it and older girls can still relate to it.
Glad I could help! Lmk if you ever want want to do a feedback/critique swap! I also enjoy writing (mainly short fiction, generally just a few pages long).
That would be great! Can you DM me so that I don’t forget lol?
It would be awesome as a choose your own adventure book. Then the reader can see the different effects of diagnosis, therapy, meds, supportive teachers, etc.
I love that idea. Even with being diagnosed in the 90's, I didn't get any help and had a horrible time in school. I have been an artist since I was born and I was kept back from art class as punishment for talking in class. It was devastating, I wrote an ominous note in 3rd grade saying if I couldn't make art I might as well be dead. The only feed back from anyone was that I was very bright but couldn't keep my mouth shut and distracted the other students. No one even told my mom in 4th grade that I was a the top of my class academically but behaviorally I was at risk for suspension. "I guess ADHD just makes you talk too much" was literally the only thing I got from it. So diagnosis or no diagnosis, we're still treated like outcasts. Not until high school when I was able to control more of my classes did things start to calm down. I wrote our class song but I still graduated almost bottom of the class because I just stopped caring. I think my principal pitied me and made my teachers pass me to graduate.
I'm from a family of four kids. Three girls and one boy. One of my sisters very "obviously" seemed ADHD but I don't know if anyone ever suggested she get tested. Out of the four of us, the girls are diagnosed and our brother is not. He probably has ADHD but hasn't been tested. Of course, he's the only one in elementary school who my parents were told needed to be tested for it They didn't see anything wrong. He was just a boy who needed to get more energy out, which is why he was standing at his desk instead of sitting in the chair. Turns out my parents most likely also had/have ADHD! So all six of us have it or most likely do, which explains a lot about our family!
My attention would be captured by *anything* I could read. I'd read cereal boxes if breakfast conversation bored me. If teachers were just droning on in class, I'd already be sneaking a book to read under my desk. I got in trouble for this so many times over the years. Everyone said I talked too fast. But teachers also liked that I worked fast (in everything except physical ed and home economics). So that's how I fell through the cracks and did not get diagnosed till I was an adult.
Yessss the cereal boxes
“Needs to apply herself.” That’s basically what I heard growing up. I was so smart, I was grasping the concepts, I did good work…but I *needed to apply myself.* I was good enough to be put in special advanced classes but then disappointed those who put me in them.
Same here! Gifted classes but struggled to do the work. Not because it was hard but because my imagination was more interesting.
Exactly! When I was free to read whatever book I wanted or topic for a project, I flourished. I’d go down a rabbit hole and then be more knowledgeable on the subject than many of my teachers. When the thing was assigned and/or I didn’t care for it, I just couldn’t muster up the focus to do more than the bare minimum. That’s when you get “the main export of Tuvalu is frozen fish” answers.
My 6yo rambles on at me constantly about everything and gets to thoroughly enjoy boring me to death because I act excited. My parents were the opposite and constantly told me to go away/leave them alone etc. Though I will give them credit, before I could read when I was 4-maybe 6? They did read me medical encyclopedias for bed because that's what I wanted.
Yup, my parents didn't have time to listen to me ramble about anything and never showed any interest in my interests. As a kid it hurt a lot and definitely caused ongoing issues. Now with my kids, I listen to every single story, and get really excited about stuff they are excited about, even if it takes all my energy to feign interest.
I was always “too much” and that still affects me deeply
I went to therapy as a kid when my parents got divorced, due to my dad drinking. Around 11, 12 years old. My therapist was amazing and managed to get me to talk, understand and process my emotions and stop thinking I had any responsibility in fixing my parents in any way. She and my mom had a meeting about my progress, I was going twice a week. My therapist told my mom she thought I was ready to reduce it to once a week. My mom was extremely surprised and said she thought I needed to go three times instead. My therapist asked why, and my mom said it was because I didn't obey her enough and didn't keep my room tidy. My room is still, to this day, never tidy. I would just like to ask you something. You said you want to hear the good too, and that you want to make a heartwarming story. I am not assuming you will, but please don't make it seem like ADHD is a super power or something. It is not, it sucks. It doesn't need to ruin your life, define your whole personality or make you be in pain all the time, of course, but I deeply dislike the super power trope that I have seen in some tiktoks and instagram posts.
OH MY GOD THANK YOU for your last point. I could cheerfully punch anyone in the face who claims ADHD is a superpower. In my experience it is a debilitating condition which went undiagnosed for three decades and that has contributed to a lot of traumatic experiences I have gone through. It being undiagnosed for so long has made me ‘cope’ with so many things I didn’t need to if I had known I had ADHD. Sadly, my retroactive realisation of how much of my childhood was affected by my ADHD has left me angry and wishing I didn’t get diagnosed. This means I have a very negative perception of my own ADHD. But I do agree that it doesn’t necessarily have to be something a person hates, but it isn’t this magical superpower either.
I absolutely pinky swear to not make it a superpower. That is the furthest thing from my intent for this book. Cuz, hell yeah. It sucks. I just wanted to get a complete and realistic picture of what ADHD is like for other women, not just me.
I was in a gifted and talented program so I was supposed to be smart but I could never do my homework unless it was the middle of the night or remember things. It really colored my self image for awhile. I was also the “always angry” child. Because of this my family had a running joke about being “outraged” and I was dismissed a lot or treated differently than my sister. Now when they make the joke I reply with “oh you mean my literal disability?” And suddenly it’s not so funny and awkward. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family and they’re supportive but it’s something that really rubs me the wrong way still.
Ohhh. Oh maybe that’s why I remember having a bad temper. I still do sometimes.
I have a very distinctive memory of being in 4th or 5th grade and sitting with the other girls and looking over and seeing they all had such perfect, girly handwriting while I wrote in essentially chicken scratch, and feeling like even though I like these girls and they like me, there's something about me that makes me different from them, and you can see it in the handwriting.
I'm f34 and only got diagnosed late last year. I've been reflecting on my childhood a lot since then and can recognise several behaviours that were clearly ADHD symptoms. Here's a bit of a summary: - I always felt like I didn't belong no matter who I was with or what I was doing. - I preferred spending time alone rather than trying to work out how to act around certain people. - I was curious and would ask lots of questions and often got told I was being rude but I didn't understand why certain questions were considered inappropriate. - I read a lot of fantasy books because it was an escape from everyday life. - I was told frequently that I was stubborn or lazy when I didn't complete tasks and that I needed to try harder. - I would always be imagining different scenarios which would vary between happy and sad.
"inside voice, (me)!" No matter what I was doing. I was always too loud, I guess. I also kept getting in trouble for not sitting properly on my chairs in church and school. I wasn't even fidgeting a lot beyond playing with the hem of my dress, but I liked to sit on my one leg. I was eventually broken of the habit. Young Ladies can't sit that way, I guess. Growing up in the 80s there was a lot of discipline without even attempting to understand the child.
When I was growing up, my biggest issue was uncontrolled emotion. I was prone to tantrums over small issues and anger bursts, and bc of that I faced very harsh verbal punishment from my parents. No parent back then wanted their little girl to behave wildly like I did. To this day I struggle with the notion that I’m a bad person, bc that was what I was told repeatedly. I was also an overall awkward child and suffered bullying at school, so I relied a lot on books to lift up my mood. I read fiction like crazy all through childhood and pre-teen years, and then a bit less in teen years when I managed to make friends and live a little outside of my bubble. The other common issues with kids with ADHD (difficulty at school, restlessness, loudness etc) I kept very well hidden and then I overcame most of them. I was always terrified of punishment and rejection, especially at school. Doing well at school was mostly all I had going for me to make parents and teachers like me. It’s just amazing that you’re writing this book ❤️ the struggle is real, and the more knowledge we have, the better. And it’s great to teach girls how different their symptoms might be from those of boys, they’ll probably have a lot of standing up for themselves to do, especially with doctors.
since my childhood was Really Fucking Depressing, i wont share my experiences. tho if you want i could. i just want you to know that i love this idea and ill be looking forward to reading it. i hope it will help many girls like us <3
Mine was depressing too and personally I feel like if I want the end of the story to have the kind of emotional impact I want, there needs to be real struggle and weight, especially in the beginning. You don’t have to but if you’d like to share, I’m listening.
i started writing, it got long, so i switched over to [a google document](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RkZrmkSmcI2mEf3RQFQdN1y9KghUiCowBC2Uw756rkI/edit?usp=sharing). have not been able to finish it yet, theres still a lot to tell and a lot that i left out and would like to add somewhere. i dont know if ill finish it sometime soon since i need a particular mood to want to write about that stuff. youre welcome to read it tho. also, most of it probably isnt specifically adhd related on the surface because of the complexities of real life, but its one of the red threads that touches everything in my and my parents' lives. i appreciate you. CW/TW for the document: descriptions of domestic violence, bullying, attempted suicide, probably other things as well, let me know if i should mention something else
I would cry every day from school. In class, at home, on the weekends doing homework. If I were to write a character with ADHD I would make them cry a lot
I cried every day in 5th grade. It was a rough year.
My almost 8f and 6f with ADHD both cry a lot. One very striking thing to me was realizing how young they were when they started the self blame and shame cycle, and how quickly their self-esteem and confidence spiraled downward once the cycle began. I’d had those feelings for as long as I could remember but I didn’t get diagnosed until 32. These feelings started manifesting is crying/despair for both my girls by age 5. It totally floored me. I have a TON of memories of feeling my cheeks catch on fire, and the lights in the room dim around the edges like a vignette when I felt intense shame for blurting out a comment in class, or when I felt criticized, or when I had a flash of righteous rage inside me that I had to hold in. Also, the internal “what I’d say to that snob if she ever did x to me” rumination that plagued me for so so long.
Fourth grade I remember struggling a lot with listening, remembering class instructions, being in my own little world. "Is something wrong with you?!" "Do you have hearing loss?!" "You need to pay attention!" "Why are you crying? Quit crying! There's nothing to cry about!" I ended up just constantly feeling like I was on the verge of tears from the scheer anxiety of "messing up" somehow. At recess, I'd go hide somewhere on the playground and cry out whatever I could. I'd get home and go hide in the barn to cry into my cat's fur. I'd hide under my blankets and cry as I was going to sleep.
You should make each chapter an entirely different hobby / part of the character. If it feels chaotic, then it’s perfect 😄 And like others have said, lots of big emotions, desperation to fit in, but wild creativity and imagination.
Being a black kid with autism/ADHD was very dangerous
this'll be a bit long i've always been really really bad at waking up in the mornings. i'd never have time to brush my teeth or if i was awake and did have time i would lay in bed and do nothing after getting dressed. i usually stalled until the last minute and then rushed to get up and dressed with the 5 minutes left before the bus(i guess some things never change lol). i felt pretty bad about my bad hygiene and felt like i was lazy i also didn't have time to pack a lunch in the morning either and forgot to do it at night so i stopped eating at school when my mom stopped packing it for me (i have a lot of food allergies though so this isnt universal) i would talk during class and yell out answers and the teachers would get upset at me for yelling out answers. i forgot to do my homework a lot too and never finished it unless i finished it in school. i asked so many questions in class to stay engaged and my teachers always said i had good questions but in boring classes i just zoned out and doodled then rushed through the class work at the end. on the plus side! i've always been creative and curious and i had a super high reading level when i was young cause of how much i read. i did a lot of stuff when i was young (soccer, cooking class, racing a dirt bike, 4H, etc.) cause i wanted to try everything and i was considered pretty smart too :)
Once I was in middle school my mom expected me to pack my own lunch. Reasonable, I guess. If she had bothered to follow up with me to make sure I was actually doing it. Well, I always forgot. We had a big coin jar of spare change and I raided it almost every morning for quarters in a rush.
you get me
Between always using plastic to pay, and inflation, I will not be able to afford my own kids the same out. So I guess I'll have to step it up! 😂
As a kid, I was either: A) Super extroverted, social, charismatic, high-energy, kinda intense, impatient, bossy, demanding/needy or B) Completely lost in my own mind for hours, narrating or creating a semi-fictional story about my life, spacing out on the couch while aggressively twirling my hair around my finger, not wanting to be disturbed No in between.
FUCKING STOP AND GO TO THE BATHROOM. PLAYTIME WILL STILL BE THERE WHEN YOU GET BACK. I’d like to see some representation of the less “lol look at my tik tok I’m quirky” traits and some of the more core weird ones. That’s what finally convinced me to look at a diagnosis seriously in my 30s.
If this is an interesting road for you I can flesh out details but “stop to go to the bathroom” seems self explanatory for so many 😂😂
You just reminded me to go to the bathroom. Many thanks 😊
Every time it’s a new revelation….ignoring the urge to pee does not make the pee disappear.
This is why I started looking into adhd diagnoses for my nephew and then figuring out I had it, too.
My sister was famous for that as a kid. Only a few months ago I realized that I was waiting to go to the bathroom until I'd finished a certain amount of emails I was writing or tasks I was completing and I asked her about it. She said she still does it as a way to motivate herself to finish a task. I'd never understood why she did it, but now I do. We both got diagnosed as adults.
"Just write it down in your assignment pad" "She'd do better if she just wasn't so lazy or of she applied herself" "Your room is a pigstye" (that's a big one) "Pay attention" "You're very smart, you're just probably bored and need harder work" (when I was struggling to understand simple concepts) And then the constant question of why everyone still treated me differently when I didn't think there was anything "wrong" with me.
lol my mom always said the pigsty one. don't forget the nike-inspired, "you just have to do it."
Uuuggghhhh "why can't you just do it? It's so easy"
I have back and forthed on saying anything because my comment is going to be overwhelmingly negative because that’s my perception of getting my diagnosis and having all the lightbulb moments about my childhood once I was diagnosed at 34. I just want to stress that I am not being negative about your idea, OP - I think it’s great. For things I now know as often being related to undiagnosed ADHD, I was bullied constantly through primary and secondary school. Not every single reason for bullying was to do with that, but a lot of it. And lots of not fitting in. Primary school bullying: because I wasn’t ‘cool’ which was said to me by someone I had never met before on the first day of school. Because I would cry a lot. Because I would get angry when I was picked on and emotionally lash out, which they found funny. Because I had tomato in my sandwiches for lunch. Because I wouldn’t swear. Because I didn’t have branded trainers. Because I liked watching Star Trek. And sometimes it was just because kids are vindictive little shits who just do it because it was funny. Secondary school bullying: because I hung out with someone who was FTM trans, and thus I was labelled also trans, and bullied for it. Because two of my friends were in a relationship so the entire friendship group had to be comprised of lesbians (even though one of them was my trans friend and was bullied for looking like a boy and being trans), so I was bullied for that. Because one of the friendship group wore a Marilyn Manson hoodie to school, so we were all devil worshippers. Because I was trying to do well in school and wasn’t only concerned with losing my virginity or trying to bunk off, or smoke, or go to a rave, or go and see a boyfriend who was concerningly older than me. Because I had a large rucksack which was practical for carrying all my stuff in. Because I would answer questions in class. Because someone started a rumour I had a crush on a male teacher. I couldn’t stand the cliquey, bitchy nature of secondary school (I went to an all girls’ secondary school) and I could not understand how girls would bitch and say horrific things about each other when they weren’t there, then be all nice to their face. It has irreparably damaged my general perception and disposition toward women and girls. College (I went to art college for a year before uni): was not bullying but I didn’t fit in with the cliquey girls from more privileged backgrounds. I didn’t have a car, I couldn’t drive, I didn’t go to a private school, I didn’t live in a big house in beautiful Kent, I wasn’t interested in dressing up for the student bar theme nights and getting off my face drunk, I wore band T-shirts and jeans and hoodies and Converse and not wearing more feminine fashion. It was a combo of not being able to relate due to being from such different backgrounds, but also because I wasn’t into what everyone else was doing. My younger brother is autistic and struggled (and still struggles) much more than I do. But my parents assumed I was fine because I had a reading age about 10 years ahead of my actual age. I would devour books at lightning speed and my mum actually told me off for reading books she had got me for taking on holiday before we had gone on holiday. Because I did well academically in school they took that to mean I was fine. They also called me airheaded, silly, forgetful, a chatterbox, too eager to talk and a whole host of other things that mean I feel shame, anger and frustration now when I can’t remember something. I very vividly remember my dad yelling at me that ‘you clearly forgot where it was’ when I couldn’t find something - but my point was someone must have moved it because I found it in a bag with a load of other stuff I didn’t put in the bag, and I had kept elsewhere. But of course, nobody would have touched my stuff except they did all the time. I even had possessions very pointedly placed in the bin to show that they had not been put away and so were being thrown out as I clearly didn’t want them. Because I was supposedly smart and NT, there was little tolerance for what they would consider bullshit, or messing up in ways that would be more understandable for my brother. I was always the weird girl, the odd one out, always feeling like I didn’t belong, always wishing I was somewhere else, always wishing I was someone else, wondering why I couldn’t remember and do things the way my peers could. Wondering why it felt so hard to do things that others found easy. Because of my upbringing and my undiagnosed ADHD coming together, as a child I had (and still do have) an inability to speak against authority figures even when they were wrong, a crippling fear of failure, of being wrong, of getting into trouble, perpetually feeling I am not good enough, that I cannot do enough or be enough, that I’m a disappointment, that I’m picky, fickle, impatient, stupid, and forgetful. I have crippling anxiety, self-doubt and a complete lack of self-confidence. My self esteem is in the toilet and almost always has been. I have always perceived through social interaction that I am, when not masking, too loud, too intense, too much, too outspoken, too over the top. I have often felt like a pity invite, a pity friend, a ‘you are just here because you know X and we don’t have the heart to tell you to fuck off’ friend. So I make myself more socially acceptable and I don’t really know how to be that outgoing, confident person I was for a very brief time aged 15-16 when the stars somehow aligned and I had a solid friendship group, peers who I got on with and was performing well academically. The problem is, I don’t really feel like I am myself anymore. I long for the young girl who was herself and did not care to make herself acceptable to others by changing her interests. I don’t know where she went. When I was diagnosed, the day it was confirmed, I had euphoric relief because I realised there was a reason that I had no control over as to why I was the way that I was. Now, I just have permanent background anger that I wasn’t helped by the adults around me when I was struggling as a child and I keep thinking about how much better life would have been if I had been diagnosed as a child. And all the things that frustrate me about myself are things I cannot change because of a condition I have that medication will only help so much. In many ways I hate that I looked into getting assessed and diagnosed. Someone on this sub posted several months ago that pre-diagnosis they could treat ADHD traits they had noticed (of which there were maybe three) as quirks of their personality. Post diagnosis they are noticing all these things they did not notice before and it frustrates them that they can’t not notice them or do anything about them. I feel the same.
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. Much of it resonates with me, and much of it will be included in the book I’m writing. I don’t want to sugarcoat ADHD or make it a cute, silly, quirky little superpower. It sucks, man. Especially when you are surrounded by people that label and treat you as “other”. I want the main character in my book to learn how to focus on what she’s good at and not worry so much about what she isn’t good at. I want it to be realistic but empowering, with an overall hopeful message to girls that struggle with ADHD.
Thank you for taking the time to read it - I hadn’t realised how long it was! I totally agree on the superpower thing. I replied to another commenter that I hate the toxic positivity mentality that ADHD is a superpower. I get trying to be upbeat about something you can’t change but there’s also being realistic about it as well. I think it’s crucial that young girls are shown how to be hopeful and positive about life with ADHD. I think if I had been diagnosed as a child I would be a bit more at peace with it.
>I was always the weird girl, the odd one out, always feeling like I didn’t belong, always wishing I was somewhere else, always wishing I was someone else, wondering why I couldn’t remember and do things the way my peers could. Wondering why it felt so hard to do things that others found easy. This hit me so hard. Thanks for sharing your experience with such honesty. ADHD can be so isolating, but it helps to know I'm not alone in it 💜
I think that’s one of the best things I have got from this sub - I’m not alone. It doesn’t make it better or easier but it is comforting to know I am not the only one ❤️
I get super passionate about a thing and that’s all I can think about for a while and people start associating me with that topic. When I meet the same person after a few months or a year, they would assume my personality is because of my interest in X. But in reality it’s more like X,Y, and Z. My interest keeps changing and people associate it with my personality. And they think I’ve changed as a person the next time I meet them. But in reality I’m just exploring everything that fancies me.
I have a friend that calls me fish girl lmao
Did you like fishes at some point ? 😂
Yes lol but it’s not my whole personality haha
Yes, exactly! Thank you. Makes me wonder if people aren’t multifaceted.
I do this too! It’s always awkward when I meet people through a particular niche hobby and then inevitably lose touch when I stop (or pause) said hobby and suddenly have nothing in common
Ooof! Same. It’s especially hard in dating situations as well, when you’ve bonded over something and then when you pause it, you don’t have anything in common.
My first real friend was a girl I met walking around the block with my dad. I impulsively ran into her yard and asked her to be my friend. As it turned out, her mom was an old childhood friend of my mother's, likely she was also ADHD lol - and her and her two brothers would often sleep over my house and vice versa. It was awesome. I have very fond memories of that time.
I was extremely vibrant as a kid but my story is sad. I was pushed around a lot. I spent so much time in my daydreams due to reality being hard and just got diagnosed recently even tho every male family member has adhd. Butttt— i would like to add that the little girl who wanted to be an astronaut ballerina director actress is finally a ballerina and actress working on her own Indy film! I always was told i had to be one way— i have religions trauma and come from a fairly sexist world POV. I was never given anything and was bred to be a housewife and when i couldn’t keep up with tasks i was abused and also binge ate and did drugs in adolescence to cope with my symptoms and abuse. I felt very invisible and repressed. I used to have the wildest fantasies of crazy worlds and ppl could rescue me or i would rescue myself. It was very lonely too. Now I’m finally finding my voice and place in the world. I did abandon religion because it was just too ridiculous even for me. And it went against my core values of equality and equity for all.
I was diagnosed at about age 7 or so. My parents didn’t do jack shit with my diagnosis because they thought the only option was Ritalin. No research or any thought went into my symptoms after that. I struggled but made it all the way thru high school graduation completely apathetic toward learning. When I took the placement test for college I did so horribly on reading comprehension that I was put in ESL class. I never graduated or got a degree, despite having gone to 3 totally different community colleges over the years. It’s frustrating to think of what my potential could have been, had I gotten ANY sort of care or treatment or at the very least therapy. So that was my experience as having an ADD diagnosis as a child.
Oh also, I didn’t display the hyper, loud, disruptive traits that often go hand in hand with the diagnosis. I was more “check out from learning and go take a nap in the reading section of my kindergarten class” and later in HS was still sleeping thru classes or relentlessly drawing on assignment papers, daydreaming, and generally zoning the fuck out.
being so loud and “weird” in middle school that people stopped being my friend :( learning how i had to “tone myself down” if i wanted to be “cool”
I talked so much and was so disruptive in grade school that in 3rd grade the teacher moved my desk right up to the front of the class next to hers and that’s where I sat all year.
I had to sit in the front by the bus driver one year because I talked too loud.
I had sensory issues, my shoes always felt too tight, I couldn't concentrate once my brain zeroed in on that. I would sit at my desk wiggling my toes in my shoes, trying to make my feet feel better, but all i wanted to do was rip off my shoes and socks and throw them across the room. Instead I just had to sit there quietly at my desk completely overwhelmed by the discomfort. I also has a really difficult time focusing on conversations, my mind would start to wander, I felt so bad about it because I would do this with close friends all the time, I could tell people were frustrated with me, and I felt so guilty, but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't stay present. So basically, a lot of frustration, a lot of beating myself up for not being able to do things that i thought I should be able to do.
Yes, the sensory issues. Thanks for mentioning that. I’ll definitely be incorporating that into the story. And guilt. Lots of guilt.
A very early ADHD memory for me was my second grade teacher dumping my desk out in front of the class and shouting at me for being messy. The humiliation and shame has stayed with me the rest of my life. I was called messy and lazy so often by adults that I internalized it and all but stopped trying by 6th grade. Impulsivity caused me to do very stupid things for attention or peer approval. I had so much detention for flipping people off by like, 4th grade. My ADHD has never felt very "manic pixie dream girl" but rather "depressed and lonely troll girl." edit: and oh god the personal hygiene. I never brushed my teeth or hair, would show to school with mats and slept through classes. Lost my only friend in middle school because she shouted that my breath smelled like dog shit on the bus. Ah.
As a kid my emotional outbursts were bad. And it didn't take much for me to fall apart, hair wasn't the way I wanted it, the shirt I wanted to wear was dirty, someone said something and I felt attacked (which was often). I was also super clumsy and would spill or break stuff all the time, got yelled at a lot for that. And I doodled a lot and on everything, especially in classes I found boring.
Yes the doodling I forgot about the DOODLING they kept me sane during social studies and math lol I also had bad emotional outbursts as a child and plan to include a couple in the story. I was super picky about my hair and clothes too and I’d get so upset if they weren’t right.
I was constantly given crap by my teachers for not focusing or forgetting homework. They would report this to my mother who would ground me. It was a very difficult experience seeing how others could just easily do this work while I constantly struggled and didn’t know why. I remember once my teacher pulled me aside and asked me “what are you daydreaming about?” The answer was nothing. My mind was often blank, or just so overwhelming I couldn’t quite pinpoint what I was thinking about. She told me “you’re wrong, you need to tell me what you are daydreaming about.” I kept insisting there was nothing, because there really wasn’t or I didn’t know what there was: I was just there. After arguing with her a bit I finally told her I was thinking about my aunt in Florida (states away from me). Which was a lie, but she had visited some weeks ago and it was the only thing in my life going on that seemed like a reasonable enough answer. This same teacher refused to let me go to the nurse when I accidentally bashed my head on a desk, because “you’re a bad student and that is the karma you get.” I was in pain. Also wouldn’t let me go to the nurse when my throat hurt- turns out it was strep throat. This was second grade. In 5th grade I had my teacher yell at me in front of the class for being to scared to read my written story to the whole class. That class I was an outcast and bullied for my differences. I often had experiences where the teacher would humiliate me in front of everyone, not just this teacher alone. I was actually pretty smart when I was able to put my mind to work, it was just a struggle. While the bullying from my classmates was never too bad, due to the lack of understanding in ADHD in girls and women, at that time and in the area I lived, it was often that my teachers would be my first bullies. On top of their lack of understanding, without any resources to help me, my mom also just never got me help because it was not seen as anything more than me being stubborn or bad. It wasn’t until high school I really learned about ADHD- I knew it was a thing but I didn’t know it’s depths, but once I did, it was validating. It was like “oh holy sh** that’s me!?” My mom still believed that I just needed to focus more, and that my struggles were my fault. So here I am now, out of high school (barely graduated but I did), and freshly diagnosed- and my mom doesn’t know due to her lack of support. I do appreciate the one teacher in high school who saw me. She still had her issues with me but she had genuine concern. She pushed me in ways other teachers never bothered to try. She worked with me, she was a safe space- but also pushed my tight boundaries (respectfully though) that I had built over the years and helped me overcome them. That was the one class that I ended up with a nearly perfect grade in. Sadly that was one of the only teachers that saw me, but without her I wouldn’t be where I am today. Sorry this is long, and mostly negative, probably not the best for an heartwarming story, but I hope you’re able to take something out of this to help your process! Thank you for doing this! I wish there was more understanding of young girls going through the struggles of ADHD, we all deserved better and I’m grateful you are doing this. I hope it goes well!
No! This is so heartwarming! I teared up a bit because I went through a lot of the same thing and I’m so damn proud of you for making it and I’m so happy you’ve gotten the help and recognition you deserve.
Thank you! And I’m sorry you had to go through so much of the similar experiences too. And I’m glad you’ve also gotten help and recognition and going as far as to try and hopefully make it better for future generations! I would of loved to have resources and books that I could relate too back when I was a child.
Let’s see. My parents threatened to take things away from me because I’d lose interest and my grades would drop. I’d be told that I’m too smart for this shit. Oh my dad still tells me that he thinks he got the wrong baby from the hospital any time I’m not prim and quiet. I’m hella smart but I’ve only heard how weird I am. Like throughout my entire life preschool through to career…. You’re so weird. It can be lonely but it’s also very freeing. I’m also autistic so that’s probably why I’m so weird but I’m not afraid to do things by myself because I’m always doing things by myself.
I’m definitely not the sweet, ladylike little girl my parents were expecting, but I’ve learned to embrace who I am and I try not to let others’ opinions bring me down. That’s kinda how I want the book to go: start off with the MC feeling kinda sad and frustrated, and end feeling hopeful and empowered.
I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned yet, I was really into art and there were always sketches all over my notes. I could concentrate on the material better when I was drawing things.
same. i spent the entirety of my 5th grade math class drawing and drawing and drawing.
I pretended to be a unicorn TO MY DETRIMENT.
Thanks for an unlocked memory. Jurassic Park just came out. I was already obsessed with dinosaurs. So my little 8 year old self was constantly walking on my toes pretending to be a raptor. Then I decided I liked walking on my toes even if I didn't have my hands up, I could still be a raptor in my mind. We did a hike at our day camp and I was doing the whole thing on my toes. Gave myself a damn charlie horse and had an instant realization, nope. My raptor time is done.
1) I was getting in trouble for not getting motivated by typical rewards for neurotypicals. For example, if all students are given a certain award for completing their super long and boring homework, that was motivating anyone in class, but me. This was very confusing for my teacher and my family. 2) Well, not proud, but I figured out I can get away by beating bullies for being a cute girl. I was always standing up to them. There was that… 3) My favorite one is I was not able to sit down enough long to study for exams. I am from a country where education is very competitive. Before an exam night, I had to waste maybe 80% of the time running in house and read my notes just before sleep time (at best). However, i had high grades, which made other kids started to think I am lying about how much I actually study. This was again very confusing. Those kids were saying they finish extra books, study until late hours, even at weekends. I was not sure how any of it is even possible or if they are the ones lying. At a parents teacher meeting, my mother was accused of hiding “how much I actually study”. She was shocked. Well similar events lead me to have anxiety attacks.
I had a really hard time keeping my room clean, and it was a running joke to my parents and they’d tell all my business to their friends. The fact that everyone knew/talked about the state of my room made me feel like I never had privacy, and to this day I value privacy highly because I never had it in my childhood home. I also loved sugar (dopamine deficiency) and that was joked about by many adults in my life as well. Because all these parents/family friends saw my messiness/gluttony/forgetfulness etc. as personality traits, I did too. This lead to over 15 years of disordered eating, low self-esteem, and people pleasing (ADHD was obviously not the only cause, but a big factor). I think the biggest danger is that people attributed gendered terms to me (ditzy, forgetful, not ladylike, not reliable). I mean gendered as in, I didn’t have traits that a girl/woman was expected to have, therefore it was a problem. Undiagnosed ADHD and people’s reactions to it gave me low self esteem. Cut to me as an adult, I was in a severely abusive relationship because I was more susceptible to gaslighting. I can’t trust my own memory or judgement, and he took advantage of that and fully convinced me that I couldn’t think for myself. I know that’s not applicable to the childhood years, but people pleasing and low self esteem are so so important to get a handle on before you end up in a life-threatening situation. I wish young girls with ADHD knew how to react to people’s judgements. I hope they can learn to focus on all their positive traits, and the helpful aspects of their “negative” traits.
I have a vivid memory of one day in sixth grade, crying at recess because there wasn't anything I was really good at. I was a smart kid, I had some of the top marks in my class, but when I looked at my friends, all I could see was that one of them was really good at art, and another one was really good at being friends with everyone, and another was really good at singing. They each had their thing. I was a little bit good at a lot of things, but I didn't have a thing like everyone else did, and no matter what I was always second best. That really hurt.
As a very young child, like toddler age, I had sensory and anxiety issues. I would twist my hair with my fingers so much that it would get in knots and my mom had to cut them out. It was nearly impossible for my mom to get me off my pacifier. I don’t think it was gone until I was nearing 5. I hated and was terribly afraid of any kind of loud noises. Balloons, fireworks, tornado sirens. I always covered my ears. Was always very unorganized in school, homework assignments and papers never in folders and always had a messy desk. I would get in trouble both when I was very young and in high school for writing during class. I liked to write stories and poems and sometimes draw. I remember always daydreaming and many times I would get called on and have no idea what was even going on in the room around me. All throughout school I would also ask to go to the nurses office a lot because I knew I could lay down in the dark with relaxing music on if I told them I didn’t feel good. Looking back on it now I realize that I was actually just overwhelmed and overstimulated and anxious and that I needed to decompress. I had horrible difficulties with math, like years behind my grade level bad. In grade school I had a special math tutor but after that it was never brought up again. I remember always struggling with math though to the point it would cause me to meltdown and cry. The only reason I passed high school algebra and graduated is because the boy next to me helped me cheat and would do my homework and give me all the test answers. I failed college algebra three times before I finally was able to pass and move on so I could finish my degree. I always had normal girly girl interests but I was and am still obsessive about my interests. It’s almost like I can’t get enough of them. I feel like I can never learn enough or have enough information about something I like. I played with dolls and other childish things a lot longer than my peers. I was always insanely shy and quiet, like basically mute unless I knew you. Then I wouldn’t shut up. So in school if you sat next to me and we vibed I couldn’t stop talking and goofing off. Always had “cannot refrain from unnecessary talking” on my report cards. This haunted me from first grade all the way throughout high school. I even remember goofing off so much with this other girl in my high school art class that my teacher got so sick of it she held both of us after class one day. She lost it and screamed in both of our faces like a psycho and made me miss my bus. The other girl and I had to sit in the corner of the room isolated from the other kids the rest of the school year. I always heard that I wasn’t living up to my potential and that I wasn’t applying myself enough. I was always a C student but I excelled in English/vocabulary/reading easily and breezed through tests and would finish before everyone else and be bored having to sit in silence and be tortured waiting for the rest of the class to finish. I always just felt like I was unlike everyone else and there was no where that I fit in. My ADHD mostly looks like intense internalized anxiety and I’ve pretty much learned to correct any social difficulties I had as a child/adolescent through masking. So now in professional settings like work I force eye contact and have learned how to engage in small talk. Also the hyper focus. I don’t know how it was ever missed because I could hyperfocus a whole day and night away. I could sit on the recliner in my grandmas den and watch Nickelodeon for ten hours without moving, I could play the sims all night until morning without sleeping. Same with animal crossing and harvest moon. It’s like even if the room was on fire my focus wouldn’t break if I’m doing something I love.
Something that would have helped me a lot as an undiagnosed girl is understanding what Rejection Sensitivity Disorder is and how it can affect relationships. I'm just now starting to unpack it in my therapy sessions, and learning about it as an adult has really helped when I started a new career and had to meet all new people, but wow, would it have been helpful to know why I felt the way I did so often as a kid, and why my friendships always followed a similar pattern.
Imagining I had magical powers to lift all the objects in my room to clean under them and put everything in it’s right place. The night before any field trip or anything out of the ordinary, not being able to sleep because I was so anxious. Never communicating where I was despite knowing I should, and being told every day. Being anxious the entire time I was anywhere because I knew I should have told someone. I had a profound understanding that I operated better under duress, so I’d do things like imagining I was in a concentration camp in order to accomplish a task- typically physical, because anything on paper was anxiety fuel to be avoided at all costs. Being told in abundance that I was weird, but relishing in it. (I like being weird, is that weird?) Being tested for a gifted program and excelling in the first test and failing the second. (Reading comprehension off the charts, storytelling? failure.) So I’m not gifted? That has irked me since it happened. Never realizing that I didn’t fit in, but not understanding how other girls related to one another. Flitting from friend group to friend group but only really connecting with maybe one person out of that group. Eventually friending other “outsiders” regardless of gender, and absorbing their personalities because I didn’t know who to be or how to be myself. Keeping a religious (for me) stream of consciousness journal. Most consistent thing I did from 5th grade to graduation of HS. That’s all for I can think of at the moment. I hope any of this is helpful.
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Maybe mess with the chapters and lengths, split the chapters, stop them abruptly and continue them later after a different, tangential chapter has resolved. Try to create that branching narrative that adhd people can end up thinking/expressing themselves in. Plus you could spend time going into detail, interesting detail, but not needed for the story. Just to give the info-dumping feel?
Having a parent with ADHD. My mom and me had such a hard time coordinating whether I was going home on the bus or if she was picking me up. She'd be so late to pick me up that they'd lock the gates to the school. Or I'd be sitting out on our porch waiting for her to come home. In middle school - forgetting my key and getting very good at breaking into my own house. In highschool it was breaking into my own car, and learning how to hook up jumper cables in the dark. I left my lights on and let my battery die so much, I learned how to do it without light. And in college it was coming home, when my parents where out of town and I locked myself out of the house. Except, we didn't live in a shitty rental anymore. So I had to go through the ceiling in the garage, climb through a fiberglass insulation stuffed closet and face the drop from the ceiling into my sister's closet! 🤣 We moved after elementary school and I quickly went from an average liked kid to a complete loser. Day dreaming about alternate worlds where the black board would open up and all of us would be taken to the other side. Where of course there would be some kind of crisis and I'd finally be able to prove myself as valuable to other people. High school I finally got some people to say "you know I didn't realize but..(insert back handed compliment about being smart or a good, likeable person)." And the first few times I heard it, it felt like I had arrived. Of course these days, it's a tired trope and I have such a chip on my shoulder. Thanks, nice to know you figured out I do belong after all. But as a kid...oh man. That was water in the desert. I was told to shut up so much in middle school, I just stopped talking. The day dreams latched onto my conflict between wanting to "be kind" and understanding towards others and being pissed I was rejected all the time. I absolutely had 2 personas representing these view points that I would talk with (inside my thoughts of course) instead. Honestly, if I had TikTok then, I would have thought I had DID. But I was just trying to sort out my thoughts with no other alternative. One eventually killed off the other. It was very dramatic. I'm sure I could pull a little deeper, and am happy to scrape more memories.
I’m definitely going to hint that one of the parents have ADHD in the book, although I think I’ll leave it unsaid. I was left out a lot too, and was constantly bullied for being “weird”, so I definitely can write from experience for that. Thanks for sharing! Hearing what you had to say helped dig up some of my old memories. If you can think of anything else, please share.
Oh shit, just remembered another one. My organizational system. Stuff the homework in the textbook it's assigned to. Things fell out. My backpack was a pit.
Ahh yes the good ol’ stuff n’ shut lol I still do that haha
Thank you for this thread. I'm enjoying going down memory lane.
Random little story. I was undiagnosed as a kid. When I was 11-12 years old a boy in my class had adhd. My teacher explained at one point that stuff was difficult for him and told us "when he's doing his work, and a car passes by outside, he can't help but hear that car". I thought the teacher must be half deaf.
The sound of my refrigerator is driving me insane right now lol I complain to my family that the lights are too loud. It’s frustrating that it doesn’t seem to bother anyone else.
Oh, I completely understand. I always thought I must have super sensitive hearing or something.
I was a chronic daydreamer. I was always off in my own little world I created.
I also probably had sensory processing disorder, and I couldn’t handle loud noises, like fire alarm drills made me cry until I was 11, and I hated brushing my hair or having my hair messed with, which combined with executive dysfunction and really difficult fine hair, meant that in seventh grade I had a giant rats nest at the base of my head until my mom finally got me a haircut (she also has executive functioning problems and was solo parenting and working full time and I probably refused to go at least once). I was not very popular. I also remember trying to pay attention and putting so much focus into paying attention and looking like I was really listening that I would suddenly realize I’d missed whatever the person was saying while I was trying to arrange my face into a listening expression.
I cried to my mother almost every night after she put me to bed. I would go into her room and cry about how I was frightened of getting murdered in my sleep or dying peacefully even. And how will I know what comes after death? How can I be ok with not knowing? Basically, having an existential crisis night after night because I couldn’t get my brain to quiet down
I used to cram papers into my desk until it wouldn’t close. I got in trouble for it, but I honestly didn’t know what to do with them.
Messy desks, messy hair (hated hair brushing because it hurt), “weird” (like Lilo from Lilo and stitch), morbid, curious, bookworm, knows random facts about random things, these are some of the highlights of child-me. Really smart…until middle school/high school
People kept telling me to talk less, be more careful with which things I talked about, learn to read the room, etc. People also kept taking offense at things I didn't mean to offend with. It gave me a feeling that I was dumb for not being able to control my talkativeness, and it made me feel like the odd one out cause I noticed people shy away from me, but couldn't pinpoint why, or how to act differently.
I wish someone had told me that there wasn’t anything wrong with me, that everyone’s brains are different and that sometimes miscommunications happen because people don’t understand how my brain works. And then given me tools for how to prevent or address those miscommunications. Stuff like if I’m really excited about something, that’s great! If other people respond negatively to me sharing that excitement, it’s probably just because in that moment they weren’t ready to hear about it. That other people have times that they are available to share in my excitement, and times that they are not. That would have been really helpful. Because basically as a kid no one explained to me why people were having negative reactions to certain things as I was doing or what I could do to get along better with them, so instead it just seemed like I was just bad.
My experience when I was younger was that I was diagnosed as a child and then overlooked because my brother was tested the same day as me. Basically "yea she got it but this other kid needs to be on meds yesterday" and he was(I believe) about 5 or 6 at the time. He was put on meds and I got to watch him grow up on them. When we lost insurance when he was getting to teenage years, I watched him go through literal withdrawal from the loss of his meds, headaches, throwing up, etc. This taught me that meds are bad. Took me about 8 more years of learning before I decided to see a doctor for it for myself and got on meds and I'm still learning to take my meds and to not be scared of them. In school I was a gifted but distracted kid. I was quiet but impulsive, very artistic, hated math with a passion because it never made sense and I never had a teacher truly explain it to me. Rejection sensitivity was so strong in me, and object permanence has never existed. I've always picked up on other people's emotions, but I've never quite learned how to think about their reactions before I speak. My attitude has always been either "I'm the best person ever and I'm going to look and dress like it" or "I literally want to disappear into the void" I have a couple of strong memories I'd be willing to share from when I was in the 2nd and 3rd grades, as well as stories from when I was younger. I've also been teaching my mom that she has adhd if you want to explore the hereditary side of it.
I remember being taught certain subjects where you had to memorize dates or math equations that were just taught just because the knowledge is needed, it was never explained and I always felt so stupid when I was called on because I would not understand it. It was only until I entered high-school and developed my own study habits and found out if I know why something needs to be a certain way I will be more likely to remember it. I needed more story in history about how there was a war for two years before the other forces started rallying together and then revolted, or I need math really simplified and all equations explained like I’m 5 but once I have it I will remember a majority of the information forever.
My teachers often told my mother that I was too smart but prone to making “silly, careless mistakes” which were holding me back from being at the very top academically. My mother lamented my ‘carelessness’, pushing me to pay more attention. It hurts me so much that I internalized this a personal shortcoming because I didn’t know I had a disability.
Lots and lots and lots of bullying because of my ADHD which I thought was just my personality
I read so much growing up! This is a great idea! And also can you find a way to include TWO tear off bookmarks because if the reader is going to experience how it feels, they need to make sure one winds up in the freezer and won’t be seen again for a month so they will need a backup lol
Love the tear-off bookmark idea ☺️
Being called annoying for talking a lot. Really changed me
My parents love to tell me about the night I had a meltdown for an hour because they took my shoes off. I wanted to take my *own* shoes off, and as soon as they put them back on and I took them off myself, I happily went to bed!
I’d encourage you to discuss the emotional regulation issues a lot of us had/have. The hyper focus on a passion, moving between passions etc
Something I was thinking about today. I seriously vibe with the "pure imagination" song from Charlie and the chocolate factory and today it clicked!!!I think it's because growing up, i was always lost in my own world.... of pure imagination 🎶 I was always obsessed with art and spent hours drawing, painting, listening to music. During class instead of paying attention. Also got lost in books, especially Harry Potter!
Oh god I really want to come back to this when it’s not bed time. Can someone reply so I have the notification when I wake up please
Ruminating was a big thing for me, if I saw something mildly upsetting, I’d ruminate over it for days while it felt like no one else cared. When we went to Vancouver and saw east Hastings, why was I the only one upset for days about this? Embarrassing moments would cause crippling anxiety from ruminating over it. The whole gifted child child thing, and straight A student? What no one saw was the emotions behind the scenes, the procrastination yet must be a perfectionist, and staying up past midnights in the eighth grade!!!! To do my homework and projects. The endless tears and emotions my mom had to deal with.
One of my earliest memories is of inventing a boring counting game to help myself fall asleep, because my brain was always so, so loud and busy that it would keep me awake for hours and hours. I'm talking since I was 5 years old, just fantasizing about magic stories or playing through scenarios in my head of 'what if X happens tomorrow', both positive (ie daydreaming) or negative (ie catastrophizing). Focusing on counting (and, in my childhood bedroom, focusing on the sound of my analog wall clock) forced me to stop the thoughts enough to sleep. Most nights my mind would wander off a time or two, but I'd just start over until I was asleep. Almost like a proto-mindfulness practice, but invented by a 5 year old. It turned a 3-4 hour insomnia into a 20-40 minute insomnia. I used that game EVERY NIGHT for twenty years. As of a few years ago, I have found excellent podcasts that fill the role of stopping my brain from wandering, and I've also been diagnosed so I'm less stressed/anxious and have learned mindfulness techniques. But still on bad nights, usually if I'm stressed or have too much on my plate, I'll return to that old counting method.
I had trouble using “my indoor voice”
i was undiagnosed in childhood. While i was a bright child and performed well in school, i had few friends and always felt pop lonely. At home, my mom shouts at me for making my room messy, forgetting to attend tuition classes and showering for too long. I get shouted at for fidgeting too. But if I don’t fidget I can’t sit down for long. I’m frequently late for school, and while at school im always late for the lesson after recess. I listen attentively in math class but space out for all other classes. My textbooks are full of doodles and comics. A funny thing is school is, i can get silver medal for national math olympiad, but i can barely get an A for fundamental math exams. My teachers all have fixed feeling about me. Other ppl often comment that im not ‘girl-like’ because of my messiness, carelessness and the tendency to move about more.
I have memories of going to sleepovers as a kid and not being able to block out the sound of other kids breathing, the rustle of a sleeping bag, etc. I would lie awake for hours and feel really anxious and alone that I was the only one awake.
One thing that really sticks out in my memory is in elementary school, for a while they put me in the supply closet to do my work to “keep from being so distracted”. What they didn’t take into account was how many things in that closet I found fascinating. Especially the rolling rack of colored paper.
I love this idea!! My overwhelming feeling as a child was of being thought of as lazy, but always doing really well by cranking last minute. Always feeling like I was behind and had to catch up. And being terrible at putting ideas into prsctice
I don’t think anything I could say about my experience would be considered heartwarming or inspiring
I always felt “other” and not quite like I belonged. I was skinny, long, lanky and awkward. I was clumsy and often moved before my body caught up to my brain. As a little black girl growing up in a predominantly white school in the mid 90’s I was dismissed as naughty, stupid and someone who didn’t listen. No one ever assumed I had ADHD because that was something only boys have, definitely not black girls! I did not fit the fully girl mould as I was a tomboy with too much energy to be considered a girly girl. I fell and hurt myself a lot playing, always doing things on impulse. I was stubborn and refused to do things I did not want to: no eating my veggies, don’t make me nap if I don’t want to. No impulse control, especially when it came to sweets and sugary things. I would steal little sweets here and there, never able to control my craving. My notebooks were filled with doodles and my handwriting was ( and still is) very messy. Then I shifted at age 12 when a teacher told me I was more. I literally became the polar opposite and all my externalised hyper activity became internalised. I became more concerned with school and academics but I was always told I’m not quite reaching my full potential. Good but not great. I felt like I worked 3 times harder than everyone but I just managed to be above average. Yet always wanted to break thorough with brilliance. I was anxious about grades and not ever wanting to be labelled as “bad” again. I was only diagnosed at age 30.
Man…the way my 2nd grade teacher would yank my test out from under me when I was trying to think of an answer but couldn’t even focus enough to think so I would repeatedly drop my pencil on its eraser cap and catch it when it’d bounce back up staring off into space and watching other students completing their tests with no problem. I used to come home crying all the time because the teacher was so mean to me for not participating/acting the same way other students would in class. My parents never believed me. One day that teacher called for a parent teacher conference. I don’t know what happened at that conference, but afterwards my parents believed me and apologized. My teacher was a helluva lot nicer and wasn’t such a see you next Tuesday. Though she did have her moments. The way I was treated afterwards was more of like if I had an IEP and was allowed to do certain things other kids didn’t have the same permissions to do.
When I grew up I was called emotional, sensitive and grumpy which was me struggling with emotional regulation. I would get intense headaches because I was constantly stressed by social life and school. One time I sat in front of our front door crying to my mom because I had a tummy ache. I didn’t want to go to school. I begged her to call the doctors as it genuinely hurt so bad. I went to the doctors a few hours later and left a blood sample. They said there was nothing wrong. I went the day after that again… Nothing wrong. Then I went once more that week. Nothing wrong. They told my parents I may just be stressed. I had very big emotions and I still do. I easily cried at confrontation as a kid. And I was impulsive, easily irritated. I was quiet but I was loud. Whenever I would have fun I would always be really loud which disturbed people but I was in my own bubble and would forget their complaints in a second and keep going. I was also bossy and I was bossed around. I was bullied by someone I considered my best friend which made me feel insecure. As of school I didn’t have to put much effort into school to begin with and was ahead of my classmates until I stopped learning new things as I was bored and wouldn’t listen during classes. I always just went with what I naturally picked up on. That caused me trouble later on in school. Everyone saw me as the smart kid. Not only academically but also emotionally. ‘Mature for your age’ they said. I remember being sensitive to textures and scents as well. And I’d spend a lot of my time (an unhealthy amount leaving me in skipping meals and sleep) playing my favourite game that I was introduced to in 2009. Minecraft! It was a hyperfixation for years. I also tended to lean towards being with adults more often than kids my own age.
Lots of really strong emotions that I didn't quite know what to do with. Most of the time I was well behaved and well mannered but when I got upset about something I would just totally meltdown and my parents just did not get it. They thought I was acting out or trying to get my way but I just had a lot of trouble emotionally regulating. And then of course being "the weird girl" and having teachers say I had "so much potential", not really fitting in, getting lost in books and daydreams, never sitting still long enough to do my homework even though it was easy for me, being more comfortable roughhousing with the boys than navigating social dynamics I didn't understand with the girls. Wow how did I go undiagnosed for so long... 😅
I masked like crazy as a child because i learned early on that i didn’t quite get how to socialize like everyone else. I remember lots of times where i would remain silent and allow myself to fade in to the background - especially around adults. They’d say “why are you so quiet?” and it made me feel like there was something wrong with me. I also had explosive emotional reactions to things - my parents figured i was just being stubborn and dramatic so they would send me to my room. Sometimes i would sit at the top of the stairs and just scream. My parents hated it but i had no idea how to deal my big feelings alone. my daydreaming was my safe place. and i would have very intense storylines in my head as i played alone with my toys. I wasn’t comfortable playing with other kids cause it felt like i had to perform. I just wanted to play in my head.
i’d like to add that my undetected ADHD led to depression, eating disorders and weed dependency in my teens/early 20’s. i’m 24 and in a psych ward right now - in the process of getting a diagnosis. My mom is likely ADHD as well which may be the reason she overlooked so many of the signs.
During early childhood, I struggled a lot with knowing that something was really hard but not knowing WHY. Like emptying the dishwasher, remembering that I had a party invitation in my schoolbag and that I needed to give it to my parents and actually RSVP, staring at my math worksheet in class not understanding anything, not understanding what I didn’t understand, not really even being able to THINK in the bustle of the classroom, just sitting there holding back tears, trying not to cry, trying to look like I was thinking the problem through whenever the teacher walked by, not really knowing why asking for help felt so impossible. I think that, as a child, on a subconscious level, I had an understanding that you’re supposed to know why you need help. But in most of the things I struggled with most, I understood that I was supposed to be able to do them. I am supposed to empty the dishwasher because I am supposed to help out with household chores. I am supposed to work through this math problem because I am in school and this is a maths class. I had an understanding of what I was supposed to do. I found these things very hard to do, and I usually just held back tears and tried to do them to the best of my ability anyway. If I did ask the adults around me to help, or try to talk about it, I had a vague, childish understanding that I would need to say something along the lines of ‘I need help because…’ and that what a sentence I just didn’t know how to finish. Now, I am predominantly inattentive, that’s what I was diagnosed with. But the psychologist who gave me the diagnosis was pretty clear that it wasn’t because I didn’t HAVE hyperactive symptoms, it’s because there wasn’t sufficient proof of hyperactivity before the age of 12. My mum said I was quite active at a young age, always balancing on everything, decided I needed an energy outlet for it, and signed my up for dance classes. No one ever told me to ‘sit still’ and ‘stop fidgeting’, but boy did I get told to stop sitting or behaving in an ‘unladylike’ manner ALL the time. When I was active and exciteable, I was singing or dancing or excitedly babbling away at something I was passionate about. And I was quite internally hyperactive as well, always thinking about something, with a very active mind. Even so whatever hyperactive behaviours I may have had (or have) it was ADHD-I for me. Being ADHD-I, generally clever and good in school (despite comments about needing to check my work more thoroughly because I made careless mistakes), most of the time, adults did not notice I was struggling. The only times they really DID notice I struggled to do something were when I failed to do household chores. My mum would pull me up on it and try to discipline me about the importance of being part of the household and helping out. I know you don’t like chores, everybody doesn’t like chores. That’s always what people tell you about your ADHD struggles. There’s this thing that’s hard for you in a way you can’t articulate and when other people do notice, they only listen long enough to tell you that there’s no excuse, these things need to be done, of course you don’t like it, nobody does, but it needs to be done. The message YOU receive as someone with ADHD being told those things is “This is how hard it’s supposed to be and you’re the only one who can’t do it.”