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ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

claimingattention.substack.com

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

#31

Post by kstrauser »

compacct27 wrote: post #4

Biggest fear as a new parent is basically this. What if my ideals estrange my kid? They’re not bad ideals, but the kid might just not be wired for them. Working hard, doing good for others, building skills, all of that. I wonder what this guy’s parents were seeing, what they were going through. From what I’ve seen from parents going through it, it can be really super challenging to handle a hyperactive child while st…

The biggest win we had as parents, I think, is always explaining why we had each rule and expectation. We’re not doing this because we don’t want you to have fun. We’re doing this for these specific reasons that benefit you.

Now that are kids are older and out of the house, they voluntarily follow pretty close to our teachings, largely because they saw friends do the opposite and experience the bad consequences we foretold. “Huh, Dad was right: staying up too late and sleeping through a work alarm really does make bosses cranky.” They’ve each thanked us for taking the time to teach why things are important instead of just laying down inscrutable laws. I know I hated that as a kid.

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

#32

Post by baq »

fzeroracer wrote: post #19
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.

From the article: > Instead, they 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. I'm perfectly inclined here to agree with the author in blaming the parents for putting the child in a borderline abusive e…

if the author really has ADHD, he's blind to half (or more) the things the parents did and especially to why they did them. not his choice, that's how ADHD works, doesn't make it any easier for anyone.

you'd want to read parents' rebuttal, or at least commentary before judging them based on this post.

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

#33

Post by nijuashi »

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.

[flagged]

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

#34

Post by icnexbe7 »

StefanBatory wrote: post #17
sibeliuss wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is: there isn't a "right" way. That's exactly what the author is trying to say. By failing to recognize the ways in which they were different, they forced a mode upon them and here we are. A whole medicalized generation addicted to stimulants trying to fit in where in past generations you had artists and rebels and seekers and every other kind of misfit that made life interesting and unique and challenging…

I don't think you meant it but I don't like how you phrased it. That in the past if you were to have ADHD, you'd be an artist or a rebel and so on, implying that it is something cool. And that nowadays it's just addiction to stimulants. I know of quite few colleagues and friends with ADHD who need stimulants to get anything done at all, even to get out from their bed. Who were treated unsuccessfully for anxiety, depr…

[flagged]

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

#35

Post by sibeliuss »

StefanBatory wrote: post #17
sibeliuss wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is: there isn't a "right" way. That's exactly what the author is trying to say. By failing to recognize the ways in which they were different, they forced a mode upon them and here we are. A whole medicalized generation addicted to stimulants trying to fit in where in past generations you had artists and rebels and seekers and every other kind of misfit that made life interesting and unique and challenging…

I don't think you meant it but I don't like how you phrased it. That in the past if you were to have ADHD, you'd be an artist or a rebel and so on, implying that it is something cool. And that nowadays it's just addiction to stimulants. I know of quite few colleagues and friends with ADHD who need stimulants to get anything done at all, even to get out from their bed. Who were treated unsuccessfully for anxiety, depr…

[flagged]

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

#36

Post by kerkeslager »

knodi wrote: post #6

Parenting is hard, right or wrong are always in far future’s hindsight. I felt the need to blame my dad, until I had my own kids.

> Parenting is hard, right or wrong are always in far future’s hindsight.

The idea that we can't possibly know what good parenting is until some time in the future, is an absurd abdication of your responsibility as a parent.

Parenting is hard and nobody expects you to do it perfectly, but that doesn't mean you get to throw up your hands and pretend like good parenting can't be done.

> I felt the need to blame my dad, until I had my own kids.

It sounds like your shift in thought process had more to do with a shift in what thoughts made you feel good about yourself, rather than what thoughts are actually true.

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

#37

Post by treis »

fzeroracer wrote: post #19
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.

From the article: > Instead, they 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. I'm perfectly inclined here to agree with the author in blaming the parents for putting the child in a borderline abusive e…

It really depends on how long study time is. That sounds like proper parenting so long as we're talking like an hour or two.

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

#38

Post by BowBun »

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…

I enjoy this take. As someone who feels like they align with a lot of symptoms associated with ADHD, I thrive in startup environments and would rather be unemployed than work in a corporate environment. That checks out! And there's no harm to it, there are plenty of opportunities for people of all kinds. I think the danger is expecting that any environment fits everyone. We're too many and too diverse for that to be true.

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

#39

Post by avereveard »

kerkeslager wrote: post #25
avereveard wrote: post #3

As a neuroatypical I feel this. But also society has to happen, even if I am at the outskirts of it. 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. Society just don't care, and blaming parent for trying to impart that lesson is harsh, and w…

> 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 / shut out me, mommy, the cars, everything else was irrelevant at that moment.

I will find out other ways to explain later on, but the fact remain that I had to act to prevent harm, and it generated resentement. We got to puddles later, but things don't cancel out that way.

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

#40

Post by exceptione »

sibeliuss wrote: post #10
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.

The point is: there isn't a "right" way. That's exactly what the author is trying to say. By failing to recognize the ways in which they were different, they forced a mode upon them and here we are. A whole medicalized generation addicted to stimulants trying to fit in where in past generations you had artists and rebels and seekers and every other kind of misfit that made life interesting and unique and challenging…

I wonder how much room there is for misfits these days. Young people have to nail it or fail with a high student debt burden.

I think in the past we missed a language to label the "weird" and unproductive people. But I know of communities were it was common for an employer to "hire" such people for a period, then pass the buck to another employer. Now the thing is, in the past, it was for the public normal to see a commercial enterprise as a social enterprise too.

Nothing of that is left anymore in today's Management Schools. In the technocratic thought of Nazism it started by just killing "unsocial elements" (read: people with disabilities).

  The Euthanasia Program required the cooperation of many German doctors, who reviewed the medical files of patients in institutions to determine which individuals with disabilities should be killed. The doctors also supervised the actual killings. Doomed patients were transferred to six institutions in Germany and Austria, where they were killed in specially constructed gas chambers. Infants and small children with disabilities were also killed by injection with a deadly dose of drugs or by starvation. The bodies of the victims were burned in large ovens called crematoria.

  (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-murder-of-people-with-disabilities)
Okay, that escalated quickly. But talking about fitting in has to answer what it means to be human. And if we as society are actually at ease with people that are not as productive in current business processes. We obviously don't want to kill them, but on the other hand we require them to be "normal". Helping kids learning/trying to adapt a bit is not bad per se. But can we handle it when it doesn't work?
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