S.P.A.C.E. ADHD Group

ADHD Parent Support Group

Guest Posts

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Neurodiversity Newsletter – Guest Post

Stockport Council’s latest Neurodiversity Newsletter is available.

This issue includes:

  • SEND, Neurodevelopmental & Wellbeing Offer
  • Neurodevelopmental Team
  • Multi-Agency Working
  • Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) directory
  • Information and Advice sessions (Coffee & Connect)
  • Neurodevelopmental Support Padlets with information about Early Years ( 0 – 5 ) Children and Young People ( 5 – 16 ) and Adults ( 16+ )
  • Live webinars for Parents and Carers
  • Recorded webinars for Parents and Carers
  • Future Webinars
  • Sensory Advice
  • Accessing NHS Autism or ADHD Assessments
  • Right to Choose
  • Neurodiversity Sensory Kits
  • World Autism Acceptance Month
  • Neuro-profiling tool
  • Community Training

If you wish to share any feedback regarding these updates or have any topics that you wish us to explore, please email the Autism Programme at: autism.programme@stockport.gov.uk

Neurodiversity Update February 2025 - click for PDF
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Neurodiversity training to Maternity Healthcare Staff – Guest Post

Information from Stockport Family at Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council.

If you have any questions, please email autism.programme@stockport.gov.uk directly.

As part of Stockport’s all-age autism strategy, we will be delivering some neurodiversity training to maternity healthcare staff.  To assist us in the planning we have engaged with healthcare staff to explore their current understanding of neurodivergence and have also engaged with new mums to capture their experiences.

In addition to this we would like to engage with mums of neurodivergent children and young people to understand more about their pregnancy journeys and key themes that they would like us to include in this upcoming training. 

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ADHD To Me

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

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Changes and Foundations; ADHD Parenting

Guest Post from Nichola – Heidi and Me Our Neurodiversity Journey

“When you know better you do better” (Maya Angelou, Author)

Maya Angelou, Author

Being the parent of a neurodivergent child, has changed me, forever.

Not in a negative way, or a compromised way, it has changed who I am, my outlook; made me a better person. I am stronger, I have a thirst for learning, a drive to improve; I have developed patience, communication skills and empathy.

My child’s ADHD life journey starts with me, I am the one who she relies on to help build her foundations. She doesn’t know that yet, she may not appreciate that yet, but when she is an adult, I want her to look back on our relationship and understand I did the best that I could.

We are constantly building and assembling those foundations of confidence, self acceptance, self advocacy, accepting mistakes and learning from them, self regulation, coping strategies, communication skills, navigating friendships, benefits of exercise, sleep hygiene and routine.

When my child asks if she can climb the door frame mid meal because her legs are aching, or she hangs upside down to do her homework, when she reaches for her weighted blanket to watch TV, or asks me to quickly massage her back before bed because she feels tense, I welcome all of that. I celebrate it.

It demonstrates to me that despite her young age, she is developing self awareness and self advocacy; skills which will see her succeed during her ADHD adulthood.

Our children, knowing that we are striving to understand their needs, that we support them, appreciate them, that we have their backs and are listening to them; are the greatest gifts that we as adults can give them.

But it’s not always that easy or simple is it? Sometimes being the parent is exhausting, overwhelming, feeling unsupported, and unappreciated by family and friends.

I have found my stability (and often sanity), in immersing myself in learning and developing; Parent groups, neurodiversity charities sites, articles and books are a great source of support.

And the best survival trick I have discovered… Self Care! Being more than “Mum” – time to be myself, to unwind, even if it’s just grabbing 10 minutes. You’ll be amazed at how your patience level grows when you have had some time to yourself.

A cup of tea alone and a sneaky hobnob (or three) in the kitchen, a hot bubble bath while the kids play computer games and evening gym classes; those are my life lines. Kindness, acceptance and understanding prevails; to your child and yourself.

“There is no such thing as a perfect parent. So just be a real one”. (Sue Atkins)

Sue Atkins

Thank You

A huge Thank You to Nichola from Heidi and Me. Our neurodiversity journey. Follow Heidi’s adventures on Facebook