Something that pisses me off to no end is the commonly accepted idea that confidence is a momentary emotion you can conjure in yourself like a joyful laugh at a memory. Sure, for people who have had a life that structurally empowered them and rewarded them for having the brain they did maybe it is…
For someone with ADHD who has been told they aren’t enough and are also too much their whole life and never had the diagnosis? You can’t just make that go away with telling them they have ADHD and giving them a hug. Lasting damage has been done to that child and they may never recover their confidence in adulthood the way other people do.
I wish we would stop treating confidence like it is child’s play, it isn’t. If you undermine a child’s confidence you have hurt that child at a more permanent level than almost any other way you can non-physically hurt them.
Especially for someone who is very sensitive about what other people think of them, which a lot of ADHD people tend to be (a lot of us rely on it to motivate us to get things done!), you can’t just think better about yourself. Your confidence is like an instinct that has been learned through the summation and culmination of your experiences. If those experiences are people shitting on you for things you can’t help, you won’t be a confident person, period. That is how that works and I wish people would stop pretending it is all just wishy washy perspective taking that can be undone by simply thinking harder. Maybe for a very narrow range of people in a much larger subset this is possible, but beyond that? No
And it doesn’t just go away if the parents/guardians just decide to stop treating it entirely for arbitrary reasons.
I know i have ADHD, i know i was treated for ADHD until like 10 years old (and symptoms never went away) but because my parents “didn’t like how i was when i was on medication”, i had no treatment at all through middle school and high school, and they long since destroyed my childhood medical records so i have nothing to show for it. Frankly I feel like i should be more angry at them than I am. I probably shouldn’t have graduated high school.
Yeah 45+ years of that…
I’m feeling that.
Hey, stop calling me out!
I always thought my problems as a child were due to a bad TBI when I was 7. And it certainly didn’t help, but my half century of archetypal ADD induced issues would have been nice to know about at some point in an official/helpful capacity.
I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was 6 and still concluded I am stupid, weak, annoying, and unlovable.
Yeah I didn’t get diagnosed until like 20, and I don’t think not knowing negatively impacted me. I knew I was different, but I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me. I still often thought “If they can do it, I can too.”
Now I know there’s something wrong with me I do often wonder what’s the point of trying. I feel like I’m fighting an uphill battle, but I guess I also think that my successes are even more of an accomplishment?
Now I know there’s something wrong with me
There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re being forced to live in an extremely unnatural situation.
audhd. still dealing with those “I’m stupid, a failure” every day because of that.
existing really messes you up
Wait, I’m supposed to think I’m not those things if I know about my condition?
You’re supposed to think your condition is those things and that you aren’t your condition, rather you are you (whomever that may be), affected by a condition.
For me there was a difference between “I’m all the shitty things I know myself to be” and then finding out about my definite ADHD / possible autism. My mindset changed from “I am the unmanageable problem” to "I have some problems that can be addressed ". Helped me quite a bit to have a little shift in paradigm.
Yeah, I feel this so hard. I only got diagnosed with ADHD in my mid 20s and now just starting the process of getting assessed for Autism.
It’s been a rough childhood with my family taking the route of learning through negative reinforcement, which did not feel consistent and sometimes the punishment was sometimes spaced far enough in time from when I did a bad thing that I didn’t know what I was being punished for sometimes. It also didn’t help that I got bullied a lot in school if I’m just not left alone, sometimes even initiated by staff too (not the teachers).
I’ve only found my childhood psychologist report recently that I was recommended to get tested for a condition that has long since been rolled into the autism spectrum.
The funny thing is my family didn’t want me to “catch” autism so I never got assessed.
Now I get to maybe be diagnosed AND work on the issues I have from what I used to think was all my fault, that I was lazy, etc etc.
Good fun! /s
But at least they don’t have to go to the RFK Jr.
slavetherapy campsIt’s a place for the autistic people to concentrate.
My rationale for not having my son diagnosed is that we live in the US. I am afraid by having that label he will be rounded up and put in a camp. He is already ADHD and Tourettes diagnosed so I figured that should be enough, no point in adding on Autism when it’s one of RFKs obsessions.
It’s one of the reasons I haven’t considered getting an autism diagnosis. I’m pretty sure I have it, but even talking with the doctor I get my ADHD medication from she agreed that while it can be helpful to “know”, there isn’t much else outside of that.
It’s not like my ADHD where I can get a prescription that helps me manage the symptoms. If I just work on the assumption I have it and use that to process things and know when I’m getting overwhelmed and how to deal with it, and also stop masking all the time, then I get the same benefit that I would from an official diagnosis without opening myself up to more discrimination or fascist targeting.
Between being queer and having ADHD I already have enough things they want to throw me into gas chambers for.
Can your child not get diagnosed and just not tell others if it doesn’t want to? I mean only because the child has the diagnosis doesn’t mean that other children or teachers or whatever need to know, does it?
I understand your fears. I live in the US. My son is autistic. My youngest brother is autistic. Both I and my youngest sister have ADHD.
We were all diagnosed as children and my parents could only afford to help the worse off of us (my youngest brother) so that’s where their time, effort, and money went.
I struggled for years. My sister struggled for years. Because there was no support for us.
But I want you to understand that (as someone who suspects they also have Autism), the support for children with autism and ADHD far outweighs what is available for adults, and it might be more beneficial to him to give him support now than to allow him to suffer in some aspects without it.
The support he’s already getting likely won’t cover everything.
I would fight for your son and my son and all the others who could likely be affected by the current regime. Others will too. There’s so many more of us than people think and there’s power in that.
At the end of the day your child and his care is your business. I’m sure you’ve thought this through a million times.
I just wanted to express that there’s a downside to it.
Spot-on. I’ve always thought I had a deficiency somewhere. The self-blaming was very tough at times. Nowadays, whatever I am, I know I’m doing my best… I’m just wired a little differently. And life feels wholly different.
i understand the frustration, but this post is just trying to upset people
How do you figure?
When my nephew was little, he was wild. Like had to have that backpack with a leash or else if you look away for a second he was 20 yards away wild. Then he started going to school and got kicked out of a couple schools for hitting other kids because they would change the rules of the game halfway through. We heard that they got him tested but never admitted to us that he had autism, even when we all pretty much knew. I don’t think they finally said it to any of us until he was like in high school and has been home schooled for the last 10 or so years.
I don’t know if they’ve ever told him about it or not. Looking back it’s all clear, but back then he was just a hyper little shit who didn’t listen. Knowing would’ve made watching him a lot easier
Hey just because I have diagnosis does not mean that I’m not objectively annoying.
Uh oh
Do all your countries still call it ADHD? I know it as ADHS (syndrome instead of disorder)
But to the topic, my son is 6 years old, and we won’t just ignore it 🫶🏻
