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ADHD Dad Blog
Recent Blog Posts
With every grunting swing of the pick, I dig a hole deeper to bury my ADHD — my worry, my anxiety, and my memories of a life that never happened, but should have. I swing the pick down harder than I need to and the head buries itself into the hard-packed dirt with a dark, gratifying thunk. I get a deep satisfaction from this. It’s like I’m stabbing some beast in its thick, vital gut. Swing it down, thunk. Pull it up, and the rip of the roots being torn from their home makes it sweeter. Down and up again,...Continue Reading »
"I let her down, believing my ADHD daughter had her school work under control because it was easier for me not to worry about it - father and daughter, tag-team procrastinating." It’s 7:30 Sunday night when I tap on the bedroom door of my 16 year-old daughter, Coco. She looks up from the laptop on her desk, her forehead still furrowed in concentration from working on a PowerPoint project that’s due tomorrow and the thumb of her right hand twitching over her rollerball mouse. "What?" she asks, her blue eyes under black- and purple-streaked hair darting from me...Continue Reading »
"What's wrong with you?!" I yell at my 23-year-old ADHD son after a thoughtless incident with a tattoo gun. Then I remember myself at that age... and hope I can survive growing up all over again. This week I got a middle-of-the-night call from our 23-year-old son, Harry, who moved to Hawaii almost a year ago. "Hey, Dad? What do you think it is when your arm hurts bad and kind of swells up, like a pimple but bigger?" he asks. "Plus I think I’ve got a fever." I tell him to get to an ER; he’s got an infection. Probably from that...Continue Reading »
I am crazy. That is not debatable. But what's so strange about wanting my daughter to believe her ADHD dad is an unruffled, wise, power-tool-handy father figure this holiday season? "Parenting is the greatest of all hum-a-few-bars-and-I'll-fake-it skills." – Stephen King, Duma Key I can't exactly see where I'm going while carrying this seven-foot pine tree, but I keep moving ahead to the Christmas tree check-out shack with our prize. My 16-year-old daughter, Coco, is behind me carrying extra decorating loot we've picked up. My daughter and I both have ADHD with co-morbid short-term memory and temper...Continue Reading »
Just last week, Coco was a 6-year-old Brownie camping in our back yard. Now she's 16 and I feel overwhelmed that we haven't done enough to prepare her, to make her safe in the real world with her ADHD. "Do you ever feel like something bad is going to happen, but you know if it does everything will still be okay because you know everything's really basically good but you still feel really bad anyway?" My daughter, Coco, who has attention deficit disorder like here dad, asks me on the way home from school. She rests her red and black Keds straight in front of her...Continue Reading »
How I cope when attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD) symptoms, family stress, and life's daily demands collide. “Don’t you worry about a thing, ’cause every little thing is going to be all right.” -Bob Marley “Mom says to tell you that now I have the most expensive hair in the house,” my daughter, Coco, tells me over the phone from our home in Georgia. Coco called me as soon as my wife, Margaret, brought her back from the salon where...Continue Reading »
Do you ever procrastinate processing your emotions? After a recent stressful visit with my family, I've been keeping busy, staying focused on anything but how I feel. "Once again, I had that feeling of drowning when I hadn’t even known I was in the pool." -Charlaine Harris (Dead and Gone) I’m overdue on this blog post and a whole bunch of other things I’m writing. I should just sit down and type. But I can’t focus on that because I can’t make up my mind about calling my 23-year-old...Continue Reading »
My aging father's health has been getting worse, and my recent ADHD-fueled outburst has made things worse. But my son, who also has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD), handles stress and anxiety with ease. Can I learn from his example? “Your move,” he says. I look up at my father, and he nods at the chessboard between us on the dining room table. Mom’s in my parent's bedroom taking an afternoon nap. Dad sips his coffee and takes a bite of the liverwurst sandwich I made for him. “Well,” Dad says. “Are you going to do something or just give up?” Good question. At the end of...Continue Reading »
Stress, a death in the family, and my father's alcoholism trigger alcohol cravings -- a desire to be anxiety-free -- even after 10 years of sobriety. Like ADHD, alcoholism is with me for life. I blame a lot of what happened during my last visit to Delaware to help out my parents on their cat, Clifford. I know you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but I’m going to anyway. In my last post, I described the anger I was feeling -- and how I was coping with it -- at the toll my 87-year-old father’s drinking...Continue Reading »
On a recent visit to my parent's house, my father's alcoholism and other challenging family dynamics surface. Ten years sober, I put the lessons I've learned about overcoming substance-abuse problems and all of my ADHD and anxiety coping skills to the test. “Let go of me!” It must be near midnight, but I don’t know what day it is. I do know that the man in front of me is very angry and very drunk. I try to keep a grip on his wrist, but it's slick with blood and sweat. “Stop it!” he says. “Leave me alone!” As my mother and I finally get the man, my 87-year-old...Continue Reading » « All Blogs |
    
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