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They are finding there is so much genetic overlap for these disorders which is why you see so much similarity in your child, yet there will be differences that might be influenced by his mothers genetics.> My father was no doubt an Aspie, he was a poor Italian boy in NYC but somehow attained a full ride to NYU when he was 16. My mother, a poor Polish girl who ran away from the coal country to NYC where she met my father. She has the bipolar phenotype running through her side of family and she was in and out of hospitals and attempted suicide a few times as well.
Oh yes. I got into family history as a lockdown hobby, and it runs well back on my side of the family. And suspect my wife has some ND traits as well, but her environment led her to develop some exceptional coping skills.
The key difference between my son and I that I note is that I escape into books and learning (as did my father before me), whereas my son escapes into physical activity, much like his mother's side did... surfing, boxing, extreme mountain biking... it's the adrenaline that's his coping 'drug'. (Notably I did get into extreme amounts of exercise at one point to cope, but mine was much less adrenaline... it was long distance and multi-day activity.)
> When I took them for the first time I finally understood how other people were able to exist in the world.
That moment of clarity is incomparable... the only comparison I can make to it from before the stimulants was when I was able to induce "runner's high" in myself.
> Regarding my nephew, I was frustrated with my brother, he did not listen to me. I was given Ritalin when I first saw a psychiatrist in 1996 and it threw me into an insane manic episode (I am still apologizing to my ex-girlfriend). That is how that "diagnosed" my bipolar disorder. So being he was realted, and showing some of the same behavior of my other brother who was also bipolar, I felt it was a wrong diagnosis.
I got a bipolar diagnosis a decade ago. Whether technically a misdiagnosis or not I do not know, but I consider the bipolar symptoms to be resulting from the ADHD... I was forever "failing to live up to my potential" and then when I did achieve miracles seemingly out of nowhere I became manic with "I can do anything" euphoria... only for the cycle to repeat. I think partly I didn't have enough life experience to recognise the cycle, because I did fine up until the end of my undergrad due to the formal external structures that kept me on the right path.
By the time I actually got the formal ADHD diagnosis and the prescription, I had already reached a high degree of self-awareness, and knew exactly what it was I wanted to be able to focus on.
But that when contrasted with my son's experience (and the others in this thread) are crystallising the view I'm trying to express... someone may very well have ADHD and lack executive function, but if they are in a pit of anxiety, depression and despair, then they need to work out what they want out of life and what to focus on first before going anywhere near stimulants. Because if you're focusing on wanting to be dead... well, I'm sure you can see the implication I'm getting at.