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ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

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Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#131

Post by cromulent »

swayvil wrote: post #116
patcon wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't "habitually one-pointed" people be very focussed, rather than distracted? Or is the idea that a very distracted person being honed into a focussed and aware person is a duality that's valued -- able to live in both worlds? (Rather than a very focussed person being taught to be distracted and highly integrative?)

I know. But I'm told they're calling "Aspergers" ADHD now. And the brittleness that comes with habitual focus looks like massive distraction. I mean you've got these guys who can focus to the point of magic, but one push and they crack. And we're borrowing somebody else's terminology anyway. So don't expect precision.

As someone who has both diagnoses late in life (autistic/Aspergers and ADHD), they explained it to me as different things. The ADHD wants to respond to stimulus, the autism wants to resist it and impose order. One at a time is fine. If they both activate, then the result is massive stress.

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#132

Post by void-pointer »

_yb2s wrote: post #127
void-pointer wrote: post #104

I feel like I’m going mad. Is ADHD a debilitating condition that can be consistently and independently diagnosed, with verifiable symptoms and clear criteria as to who _has_ ADHD and, more importantly, who _hasn’t_? or is it a loosely defined group of behaviours that all people experience at different severities at some point in their lives, which have all been grouped into a nebulous so-called disorder (although man…

ADHD is ultimately a disability of reduced executive function, and all of the seemingly disconnected symptoms are connected by that common fact. Everyone has challenges with executive function in life - especially if chronically sleep deprived, but the degree of severity varies substantially to the point where people with ADHD are radically different from people without on a lot of axes. It's quite the opposite of "a…

But how does “there are specific, actionable things they can do to fix it” mesh with the declaration that people with ADHD are part of a community of neurodivergent people who seem to actively push against the idea that they need fixing?

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#133

Post by insonable »

swayvil wrote: post #116
patcon wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't "habitually one-pointed" people be very focussed, rather than distracted? Or is the idea that a very distracted person being honed into a focussed and aware person is a duality that's valued -- able to live in both worlds? (Rather than a very focussed person being taught to be distracted and highly integrative?)

I know. But I'm told they're calling "Aspergers" ADHD now. And the brittleness that comes with habitual focus looks like massive distraction. I mean you've got these guys who can focus to the point of magic, but one push and they crack. And we're borrowing somebody else's terminology anyway. So don't expect precision.

I think you mean it's called ASD or has been rolled into ASD now? ADHD is more of a set of regulation issues than a set of social-cues issues, but I'm oversimplifying.

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#134

Post by robocat »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #76
robocat wrote: post #12

This is blaming the parents for society, and the complaints appears to not be specific to ADHD. Parents do their best within the knowledge they have. Blaming your parents for the outcomes of society is childish. Fortunately the author is maturing out of childhood - and discovering as we all do that they are the only person that has the motivation and ability to find their own solutions to their own problems. Society…

>This is blaming the parents for society Pragmatically speaking: I offer that society isn't going to read the article but some parents will. And parents won't change the direction of society but they can parent differently. That's where I see potential value in the article.

On rereading, I can't see anything actionable for parents. Article says:

  The whole experience was abusive.

  [my parents] relied on discipline as the only solution: withholding rights, denying privileges, banning books outside the curriculum because they "caused inattention," cutting off the internet, locking TV channels with passwords, and limiting socialization during study time.
We can wish our parents were appropriately liberal, and personally I am fortunate to have been brought up by permissive but not lax parents.

but strict ("authoritarian") parents do not change their habits easily. In my experience parents don't know how to teach independence (the key to adulthood).

My smartest friends left home at 15, to avoid their loving but overbearing/overcontrolling parents.

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#135

Post by _yb2s »

godelski wrote: post #83
lqet wrote: post #15

> John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down perfectly captured this when he noticed that schools, another place where authority figures hang out, ruthlessly disciplined any child who tried to assert individuality. There has been an interesting result recently, which was discussed here [0]. In an online game where participants had to forage for resources, people with attention deficits scored higher, because they preferred…

> People with ADHD - and their parents and teachers - should therefore embrace their individuality as a kind of reservoir talent in the human gene pool. Being a researcher with ADHD I find academia very very weird. I feel like my ADHD (and others I know) should be a superpower. Loving to dig down into rabbit holes and a bunch of different topics, which can allow connecting different things. Not needing reasons to go…

I'm also an academic researcher with ADHD, and feel exactly the same as you. Sometimes my hyperfocus and sense of adventure leads to big discoveries and resulting publications that keep me successful... but that is interspersed with months or years of guilt and terror over not meeting expectations at regular intervals. I love science, but I do feel like my health is suffering from this, and that I'm putting much more energy into trying to hide/mask ADHD than actually doing my job.

Anyways, you are not alone, there are others like you also going through this. I am thinking about how nice it would be to have a community for ADHD academics to share advice and strategies.

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#136

Post by _yb2s »

ghxst wrote: post #123
godelski wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People with ADHD - and their parents and teachers - should therefore embrace their individuality as a kind of reservoir talent in the human gene pool. Being a researcher with ADHD I find academia very very weird. I feel like my ADHD (and others I know) should be a superpower. Loving to dig down into rabbit holes and a bunch of different topics, which can allow connecting different things. Not needing reasons to go…

> It literally feels like the walls are closing in and there's not enough Adderall that can fix that. My psychiatrist told me that when using any amphetamine-based medication for ADHD, it's important to see it as a way to reinforce routines and habits, whatever they may be, and not necessarily a fix to ADHD itself but rather as a tool to help my brain. With that in mind, I was advised to take my medication and immedi…

I think the lowest effective dose of the mildest possible stimulant is a pretty good strategy for people with ADHD doing any type of creative work. It also probably helps to take it intermittently so you can have the benefits of both being with and without it.

I find my creativity is still pretty much 100% on a very low (basically small child level) dose of ritalin. I won't even touch adderall- it completely killed my creativity and ability to sleep soundly.

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#137

Post by kerkeslager »

avereveard wrote: post #39
kerkeslager wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a neuroatypical parent of a neuroatypical children, I still have to guide them understanding the structures and expectations of society, and I see often time that she resents me for it, as the autor resent their upbringing. I think where a lot of parents go wrong is representing things as "because I said so" when in fact, there is a very good reason for what the parent is doing and explaining that reason to the…

That's not how neuroatypical children operate. Explaining whys will just disconnect them. You need extra work to embed the explanation as experiences in the field they currently relate to. That doesn't always works, or you get caught in situation where there's just no time to go the extra mile: today conflict was because she decided running into pool of a busy parking lot was what she wanted and she would ignore / sh…

> That's not how neuroatypical children operate. Explaining whys will just disconnect them.

Given "neuroatypical" encompasses a pretty wide variety of neurologies, it's pretty clear that you're speaking far too broadly here. There's no possible way you could know this. It's just plain not correct.

That might be true for your daughter, but it certainly wasn't true for me as a child.

> That doesn't always works, or you get caught in situation where there's just no time to go the extra mile: today conflict was because she decided running into pool of a busy parking lot was what she wanted and she would ignore / shut out me, mommy, the cars, everything else was irrelevant at that moment.

I'm not sure how you could read my comment and conclude I think you should calmly explain to a child that they are in imminent danger. Obviously you should get her out of danger first, then explain.

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#138

Post by spudlyo »

cromulent wrote: post #102
spudlyo wrote: post #71

I retired from the industry a bit over a year ago, which led to some tension between my wife and I; these kinds of drastic lifestyle changes can be hard on a couple. We ended up seeing a couples therapist who, among other observations, strongly believed I suffered undiagnosed ADHD. So, in my mid 50s, having already in my own mind succeeded at life, I saw a specialist for an official diagnosis. After filling out sever…

Lots of similarities here. Getting diagnosed rocked my world, because I finally understood that other people experienced the world differently. > the therapist said that she had rarely been more certain of a positive ADHD diagnosis > my utter failure as a student, the huge highs and lows of my professional career, my distrust and lack of respect for authority of any kind, and my pride in my achievements as an autodid…

Heh, it just so happens I'm also a left-handed Latin language learner and enthusiast who has been on HN since 2009. Are you me? Drop me an email (it's in my profile) I bet we'd both really enjoy corresponding a bit more.

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#139

Post by al_borland »

hkpack wrote: post #2

The person blaming his parents because they tried to do their job of, well, parenting a child with ADHD. I’ve read that psychotherapy is much more difficult when there is no-one to blame. So it might help for him, until he will have his own kids with ADHD and fail in a completely opposite way. I would not recommend anyone to blame parents of neurodivergent kids, as it is a very difficult job to do right.

I tried therapy for a couple years and it seemed like any time I brought up anything, I was being pushed to blame my dad. I felt like it was going to drive a wedge between us and my opinion of who he is today would be colored by who he was 30-40 years ago due to all this blame. He has changed a lot in those decades and I think his heart is in the right place, even if his actions sometimes call that into question.

Keyed off by a YouTube video, I thought there is a good chance I have autism and ADHD. I brought this up to the therapist and it was mostly dismissed, while my dad shouldered the blame. I went and got tested anyway, and it turns out I was right, and stopped seeing the therapist.

When I told my dad about my diagnosis he almost instantly started to question if he has the same things, and started opening up about how he feels, that he works hard to hide/mask. The more he’s looked into it, the more he believes this to be true. Looking back at where we had friction when I was a kid, they can pretty much all be explained by his own neurodivergence. Even issues today make significantly more sense.

While it is easy to say the parents should have done this or that and we need to have empathy for these kids with “bad” parents. I think we also need to have empathy for these undiagnosed parents who were doing the best they could without any tools, support, or even knowledge of what was going on… as the diagnosis criteria was either non-existent or only recognized extreme cases.

Re: ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

#140

Post by kerkeslager »

je42 wrote: post #69
kerkeslager wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a neuroatypical parent of a neuroatypical children, I still have to guide them understanding the structures and expectations of society, and I see often time that she resents me for it, as the autor resent their upbringing. I think where a lot of parents go wrong is representing things as "because I said so" when in fact, there is a very good reason for what the parent is doing and explaining that reason to the…

Explainations need to be 2-3 short sentences. Longer, and even teenagers with Ahdh may not follow or retain the explanation offered.

That's a pretty broad statement.

Obviously you need to gauge whether your child is engaged in what you're saying. Maybe you have some experience that leads you to believe this, but I would encourage you to stop speaking for all neuroatypical people. Your experience is limited.

My personal experience with ADHD is that my focus latches on to certain things, which may not be the thing I want them to latch on to, or the thing that is most urgent to focus on. But often a conversation, particularly a conflict, is the thing my focus latches on to most readily.

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