Guest Post from an Anonymous Parent With ADHD
What is it like to be an adult with ADHD? It’s different for everybody but this is how it is for me.
It’s forgetting appointments
It’s being late – regularly
It’s being an hour early because you’re scared to be late.
It’s buying birthday cards for people but never posting them on time
It’s sending two birthday cards because you don’t remember sending the first one.
It’s perfectly preparing a joint of meat for Sunday dinner but only thinking about the roast potatoes and vegetables 5 minutes before serving.
It’s being fed up of other people claiming that their experiences of ADHD are true for everybody.
It’s being great at organising other people, but not yourself.
It’s hearing people with a recent diagnosis telling the world all about ADHD and getting some of it wrong.
It’s running with your kids to school most days because you always end up leaving late.
It’s dropping your kids at school and then having to run home for their PE kit, their art project, their musical instrument…
It’s forgetting to cancel things during the free trial.
It’s doing things at the last minute.
It’s needing to put all your appointments in your phone.
It’s being a bit loud when you didn’t mean to be.
It’s snacking constantly.
It’s being all in.
It’s telling your children to tidy their rooms when yours looks worse.
It’s playing on your phone when you should have gone to bed an hour ago.
It’s only realising that you have ADHD because you had one of your children diagnosed with ADHD.
It’s being told that you can’t have ADHD because you went to university and have a good job.
It’s defending your children.
It’s knowing how to manage a crisis.
It’s wondering how people put up with me.
It’s being late with the report.
It’s being the messy one.
It’s raising a house full of messy children.
It’s losing things.
It’s keeping things – just in case.
It’s knowing that it’s “here somewhere”
It’s feeling productive and trying to cram in lots of tasks before it wears off.
It’s spending too long on one task and then being too drained to do something else.
It’s forcing yourself to eat breakfast so that you can take your meds.
It’s having a 20 minute job take 4 hours, 10 hours or 3 days.
It’s thinking about a project whilst your brain constantly gives you ideas for another.
It’s having a brilliant idea when you don’t have a pen.
It’s starting one job and then starting another.
It’s doubting your competance despite being smart.
It’s watching your wages disappear in minutes.
It’s arguing with strangers on the internet.
It’s being fun.
It’s being spontaneous.
It’s stepping in at the last minute and fixing things.
It’s oversharing.
It’s hoping that your children don’t have to wait as long as you did for a diagnosis.
It’s making notes about everything but not being able to find them later.
It’s a having an up and down credit rating.
It’s paying for replacement birth certificates.
It’s not knowing where your marriage certificate is.
It’s making a choice between between being out of control or trying to control everything.
It’s having hundreds of unread emails.
It’s impulsive purchases.
It’s leaving spare things in the car for the days when you forget to take what you need.
It’s being obsessive about important things.
It’s never buying expensive things because you’ll probably lose them.
It’s knowing that it’s hereditary and hearing your parents tell you that they don’t have it.
It’s finding a password on a bit of paper but having no idea what it’s for.
It’s losing track of your finances.
It’s working hard, being interrupted and losing your train of thought.
It’s being sure that your house would stay tidy with just a few more storage boxes
It’s being late with the kids dinner money – again
It’s people being shocked when you arrive early.
It’s wondering if you’re in the right place if you arrive before the rest of the group.
It’s trying to stop your children going through the same painful experiences that you had to.
It’s getting a great work idea whilst you’re busy making tea for your children.
It’s not having the capacity to deal with interruptions.
It’s being awake when you know that you should be asleep and then struggling to get up in the morning.
It’s looking back at things and wondering what on earth you were thinking.
Its having sensory issues.
It’s struggling to listen to the person in front of me because all I can hear is the television.
It’s being given antidepressants.
It’s being able to come up with a brilliant idea and execute it in a matter of hours.
It’s doing a piece of work whilst regularly having ideas for other things.
It’s listening to ignorance.
It’s hearing that only children have ADHD.
It’s not knowing how much of me, is me and how much is my ADHD.
It’s “just nipping out” several times a day.
It’s training yourself not to interrupt.
It’s making cups of tea and forgetting about them.
It’s learning a lot.
It’s needing mnemonics and reminders to learn things.
It’s remembering unimportant things in great detail
It’s piles of unopened post.
It’s having notebooks full of information but not knowing where they are.
It’s getting a diagnosis that provides an explanation for the weird things you do.
It’s not opening letters from debt collection agencies.
It’s knowing what is officially good for me, but relying on many years of bad habits to get through day to day life.
It’s all or nothing.
It’s writing a blog post but being too embarrassed to sign it.
Anonymous
