Good Grades Matter—but My Daughter’s Self-Esteem Matters More

When my daughter with ADHD struggled in a school system that wasn’t designed for kids with special needs, I always told her knowledge was most important. A good grade was just the icing on the cake.

tmclerc

July 17, 2019 at 11:50 pm

Thank you for this article. I have ADHD and so does my daughter. I loved to be at school and being the one who scored the highest grade in class all the way through college. For my daughter, High School was a torture chamber for her along with getting anxiety about “bad” grades and generally, all the people there. For her getting a “B” was awful and if she ever got a “C”, that was going to be a death sentence. I told her one day that the actual grades don’t matter, just get the HS diploma. So with that note, she was the first (and to date, the only one) to graduate early from her HS as a Sophomore. Now, she is in college and loving it. I tell my daughter that with ADHD, she will always need to find that alternative route or do a detour around the norm or the situation that will work for her. I encourage her to be the different one and seek out the other ways towards her goals, and that it is okay to do it her way, to make it work. And because of that thinking, I still do my laundry at midnight because it works for me.