6 COMMENTS!

ADHD Is Real -- and We're Not Stupid or Lazy

There’s work, acceptance, knowledge, medicine, love and faith, but no cure for ADHD. But, we don’t want to cure who we are.

Frank South, ADHD Dad blogger

6 Comments:

• Posted by Frank South - Nov 22 2009 @ 9:52 PM
  re: SmartStupid
  Thanks for the great comment, Sandy. Yeah, I think knowing why we do things the way we do - why our brain works like a dynamo one second and kicks back and goes fishing the the next - and accepting the good and bad of it are the primary tools we have to keep from compounding the stress of an already challenging day to day existence with feeling worthless, unconnected, or "GD stupid." Double edged for sure, but as you said, the more you understand about your ADHD the more powerfully you can cut through the b.s. Thanks again, and I hope you keep reading.
• Posted by Frank South - Nov 22 2009 @ 9:33 PM
  re: thank you and information on multi-tasking
  Hi Elizabeth, Thanks you for the thoughtful comment and I'm pleased that my post was usefull to you. And thanks for the thoughts on multi-tasking. As I and both of my kids (14 & 21) are ADHD, you can imagine that over the years we've also become mini-experts on simplifying and breaking tasks down to their component parts - and I agree with you on the usefulness of that strategy. Your natural overlap ideas are also right on the money. Something else to consider as well is that an ADHD brain adores this whole multi-tasking idea, but while the floor is drying, it will focus on the book galleys and really really get into them - "Hyperfocus" is the ADHD term - and the next time you look up the kids are home from school and the dog has knocked over the mop bucket you never put away as well as the can of floor wax you opened ahead of time so you wouldn't forget. Part of the frustration with living with this disorder is how slippery it is - you wedge in fixes for one aspect of it after another until you're freaking out trying to remember the right helpful thing when you need it but you're not going to pull it out because at that moment you're in the checkout line with your hand hovering over the keypad trying to remember your Safeway Club card number because you lost the card last month. It's just life - everybody in the world has stresses - most much worse than this - but as I said in the post, once you've finally managed to swallow your pride and accept your ADHD, you're not in the mood to hear other folks say it's not real. Thanks again for your comment, Elizabeth, it was definitely useful, and I hope you keep reading the blog.
• Posted by Frank South - Nov 22 2009 @ 8:53 PM
  re: I keep telling myself I'm not lazy
  Hi Sunflowers, LAZY? You completed 3 college degrees - that's impressive and that should tell you something very positive about your intelligence and ability to actually finish what you set out to do. One of the hadest things, as you've pointed out, is to shut up the judge inside us that is constantly telling us what a failure/imposter/lazy good-for-nothing scatterbrain we are. Try talking to your doctor (like maybe the therapist who said to not "Should" yourself - great advice.) Maybe get tested and see if the diagnoses fits your suspicions. If you are ADHD/ADD it's a good to know - you can handle it with medication, self-education, and other lifestyle changes I'm sure you're exploring with your daughter. The main thing is, I think, to take the time to organize your life so that you feel less overwhelmed and begin to appreciate and use all your gifts to fufill yourself - who cares what all those other people out there think or don't think? You're smarter than all of them put together. Okay, maybe a little over the top - but you get what I mean. Good luck, and thanks for the comment.
• Posted by Sandy - Nov 20 2009 @ 3:31 PM
  SmartStupid
  Lazy, careless, immature, brilliant, scattered, intense, charming, smart, flighty... Constant descriptions of my youth. Then there's my favorite from my so tactful Dad... "How can someone so smart be so GD stupid???" When I think of the wasted opportunities, the lost chances at things I desperately wanted but couldn't get organized enough to get it or follow through... all those years before anyone realized that girls do not present ADHD in the same way that my active, destructive & violent tempered younger brother did. It's depressing to have so many regrets and know that to a very large degree, it just wasn't my fault. I wasn't wired to do things the way that other people do them and attempting to conform to it just makes it harder to do anything at all. Now I know why I'm so creative and work so well only at the last minute, I know why I can plan an elaborate surprise party in a week but can't remember to balance my checkbook once a month. I know why it is that no matter how hard I try, I really cannot just clean one room from start to finish, but rather tend to tear apart the house as I move from room to room in an eccentric tornado of chaos... and yet the house is still cleaner when I run out of steam... even if not one single room is finished. I do nothing but multi-task, not able to focus on a single task on its own. But when I'm in hyperfocus... WOW, I'm a one woman dynamo! ADHD, like anything else, it's a double edged sword.
• Posted by ElizabethW. - Nov 20 2009 @ 12:06 AM
  thank you and information on multi-tasking
  This was a really good read. I have been in the "I'm not sure ADHD exists" camp for a while, primarily because counsellors automatically seem to want to classify my son as that despite the numerous times it has been ruled out by other counsellors. It occurs to me that this tendancy to overdiagnos ADHD is part of the problem causing the "snake-oil" salesmen that you mention, and your powerful words have caused me to rethink a lot. The situation you described-- the inability to make a decision, the lack of self-faith, the feeling of drowning -- those would be terrible things to suffer. And I found myself wondering about my son again. I mean, I don't believe that ADHD is his problem. He can focus, he can make decisions, and he can concentrate in spite of even incessant jabber around him. He does sometimes have trouble with each of these items, but then he's also six. Given the fact that concentration improves with age, I found myself wondering how any self-respecting psychiatrist really knows what is ADHD and what is immaturity when it comes to diagnosing a child. Are there ways that I can tell better than the useless questionnaires they give me to take home? I also found myself reliving a lesson I gave my son recently and I wondered if it would help you a little. I mean, I believe you when you say there is no cure, so I'm not offering you more snake oil. The one thing I'm good at is analyzing and articulating actions we take for granted everyday. My son wanted to look at the new lego catalogue but it was imperative that he eat breakfast because there was limited time. He asked me how I was able to read or write something while eating and not lose track of either thing. I found myself with an easy answer and provided it in a way that made him very pleased. Later when I repeated this to one of my coworkers, she was astonished. She had never thought of multi-tasking as a skill you could learn. She always imagined that it either existed in you or didn't. I'm a natural multi-tasker and yet I'm aware of the steps that it takes. Now, I find myself wondering if someone with ADHD would benefit from the steps as well as my precocious 6-year-old did. The truth about multitasking: everything in life has a pattern, so once you find the pattern, you know where you can break into the pattern and insert the steps of another pattern. My son wanted to eat and look at a catalogue. I told him that eating was a pattern: a. Scoop, b. bite, c. chew, d. swallow, and repeat. Looking at the catalogue required a similar pattern of 1. turn a page, 2. scan the contents, 3. study what interests him, and repeat. I then told him that he should put the two patterns together like this: 1, a, b, c, 2, 3, d. Once he got into it, I figured, chewing and scanning would be a naturally simultaneous thing. Sure enough, he got through the whole catalogue and all of his breakfast before our toothbrush alarm rang. There are things in multitasking that can overlap well. If you mop the kitchen floor and know it needs to dry before you can actually put the mop and bucket away, and you're supposed to be proofing galleys, then there's a natural overlap. Mop the floor, and while it dries, proof the galleys. If a job seems particularly overwhelming, you can break it into smaller pieces that don't seem so overwhelming, then view the whole thing as a pattern, the execution of which is never so scary a concept as "my whole livelihood depends on finishing this". It's just step A of a series of steps you must take and far less overwhelming than the whole picture. I hope that might be of use to you, but even if it isn't, please know your article was of use to me. I do thank you for opening my eyes.
• Posted by sunflowers - Nov 19 2009 @ 11:21 PM
  I keep telling myself that I'm not lazy
  I think my mom told me once or twice that I was lazy, and I've never been able to shake that label, regardless of how hard I work or how much I get done. (I have three college degrees--that should tell me something, shouldn't it?) It's the day-to-day grind that always gets me down. My son is getting married in two days and four days ago I made a list of about 8-10 things to complete. So far, I've completed 2-3 of them. I "should" have had most or all of them done by now, but I don't. I've done other things, but not the ones on my list, not the least of which is cleaning my bathroom, which hasn't been cleaned in who knows how long. I cringe every time I brush my teeth, but I just can't seem to make it a priority. I had a therapist who told me not to "should" on myself: "You SHOULD do this, You SHOULD be that," etc. That's probably the best advice I've ever received. It's hard to follow, but it's helpful. I haven't been officially diagnosed with ADD, but my husband is convinced I have it, especially after our daughter was diagnosed. It does explain some things, like the feeling of being an imposter (I'm not as good/nice/talented/whatever as people think I am; if they really knew how incompetent I am, they wouldn't like me), even when I'm successful. Well, I'm rambling. Thanks for listening.