That ended with me finally explaining to him how the way he and my mother treated me as a child, with undiagnosed (and really not even conceptually understood at the time) ADHD caused me lasting trauma that persists to this day. I’m a 45 year old man, and I cried.
I have started to mentally replace “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” with “every hurt you heal makes you stronger”. I am sorry you got hurt, I wish you the best on your journey to heal.
I’ve just had to explain to the 80yo grandmother that you can’t yell at my 19yo son because his anxiety ticks are annoying you.
She went full send on telling him that no woman or friends would ever want to be around him unless he stopped… She got even angrier because she yelled at him to stop, and the ticking got louder and more frequent… (duh…)
The only way I managed to get even a glimpse of consideration out of her was to leverage her pride in being a “baby whisperer” as a grandmother, and explained that yelling at an anxious ND about their ticks is like yelling at a baby to make them stop crying…
Only then did she stop for even a moment and actually have a thought about what was happening…
She still yells at him, but at least now we have a way to puller her back a little, as this description makes her feel terrible enough about it, that she leaves him alone for a bit out of feeling guilty…
Why are you seeing her when she cannot behave around your son?
There are likely factors we don’t know about. Not every situation is perfect, but we can only hope to make it better for today or tomorrow. Thank you for your concern.
THIS. Thankyou…
I feel like I’m having that conversation with my father all the time and he still doesn’t get it.
The icing on that cake is that he totally has undiagnosed ADHD and PTSD, and he’s a rich old white man so he gets to go through life ignoring the consequences (for other people) and saying things like “That’s not my problem,” when anyone calls him out.
Similar story. The old man was adhd/asd/ptsd and went through life a narcissist burning everyone around him, but it was never his fault when it ha renga rice consequences. Hope you have better success, mike never really learned or accepted what he was doing.
I have doubts as to how much really sank in
Eventually the science will show ADHD and a slew of other ND psychoclassifications are entirely genetic. It’s very likely one of your parents are driving the same brain around as you, with all its faults and strengths. In their childhood psych didn’t have the labels and treatments, you didn’t really want to mess with those abusers. Society also found it ok to beat children that didn’t behave. The parent with the ND brain was probably beat by their parent until they figured out how to wear the right mask. And not just beaten by their parents, but every single authority figure, teachers, pastors, etc. The cycle of physical abuse was only recently broken. We still haven’t broken the cycle of emotional abuse this society forces on ND people. The majority of psych pseudoscience still ongoing considers ND to be subhuman, excluding us from studies, using derogatory language that only serves to dehumanize and not empathize, recognize, and accommodate. They fail to recognize the positive aspects that are unique and common amongst ND, so we end up not even realizing in ourselves. In your parent’s generation they’d treat perfectly capable ND people with a lobotomy. There are probably more psych professionals practicing today that were taught by books written by the same folks who practiced lobotomies, than those that learned the still incorrect (but at least more correct than a fucking lobotomy fixes everything) science from 10 years ago.
Sorry for the rant.
This is me, so much. Both my parents, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents. After I got my diagnosis, it’s like all of a sudden my family’s whole history of immigrant trauma snapped into relief.
one of your parents are driving the same brain around as you, with all its faults and strengths
… and a firmly-rooted “I accomplished so much through anger and self-hate, so you can too” image. Don’t forget that.
I feel you. Even with diagnosed ADHD my parents treated me like I was “lazy”. Feels bad. I’m glad you were able to have that talk with your dad.
Hey brother, it fucking sucks and I can only imagine how teachers and folks around you responded to you out of ignorance when, with understanding, there are excellent ways to mitigate and control your expression and thought process in a healthy manner.
I’m glad you figured yourself out and I hope things get smoother from here on out. Much love from a fellow neurodivergent - if you need to vent or talk things through we’re always here and listening.
Imagine there being no ND diagnosis at all, no concept between normal and short-bus, and the parents mostly taking advice from fellow Christians because there were no other authorities to look to beyond the family doctor.
You missed that wonder by about a decade.
Also, those previous gens were obvs not diagnosed themselves, and had their own traumas they were masking.
If you’re up to it, think about where those parents came from.
The 20th century was toxic, we’re just starting to climb out.
Yes, and the intergenerational trauma goes back to time immemorial. Healing my own trauma has made me recognize how absolutely ubiquitous it is. I feel called to do what I can to help shift things for others, seems to me to be the thing this world needs most.
Meanwhile I have done my best with my kid. My best obviously wasn’t good enough. Even a psych degree did not prepare me, and I still feel like that talk is headed my way in a decade or two. ADHD is a fucking nightmare.
I saw my own parents trying so hard with me and my siblings: to be better than their parents, and more sensitive than the society around us. They succeeded in being better than their origins, but still fucked us up in their own unique way.
I think we can only expect your parents to love us and to try their best, given the cards they were dealt.
It can take some processing to get to that realisation though. I hope your kid sees that you love them and were trying your best.
I’m 43. I feel you. Lately I started processing what happened to me because of ADD. I’m lucky, fell on my feet and have a good life but I’ve lost so much time and was misunderstood for so long.
I’m lucky, fell on my feet
This is such a perfect way to put it
Can’t decide if I fell on my arse or on my head.
I’m 21 and my parents don’t even want to acknowledge it. It’s taboo in my society and it sucks I can’t move out cause I have yet to complete my degree and it feels impossible in this situation. It feels like a cycle that I can’t get out of.
Hope you feel better.
Oh my gosh, that’s terrible. Happy to chat anytime. Took me 4 tries to get my degree.
How did he respond?
At the end he looked abashed.
Sometimes we have no words, I guess
It didn’t last long
🫂 I’m sorry, friend.
Been there, had that talk. Thankfully, my parents are mature, capable of introspection and have worked on becoming better people throughout their lives. So it went quite well, although I will say it doesn’t make much of a difference with regard to the past. That’s for me to sort out now.
Fucking good for that. That conversation sucks and I’m proud of you for doing it!
