“Pug, you’re an incredibly smart kid, but you’re lazy.”
Me, unable to remember homework, but acing every test and going above-and-beyond on any project with freeform requirements, leading to solid Bs and Cs despite half my assignments being a flat 0 for not being turned in: “Yeah.”
… kind of wish someone looked a little deeper into the issue at the time.
My mom used to talk in code a lot for no fucking reason. She’d throw out the weirdest segues and irrelevant stories. When I (barely) graduated from a gifted kids high school, she jumped from telling me she was proud of me, to telling me that when my sister was little, all her teachers told her that she should be “tested” - heavily implying it was for learning disabilities - and added that “none of [her] babies are retarded.”
2 things - that sister had dyscalculia and never got beyond an associates degree because she kept failing math. And it took until my mom died to figure out she was also talking about me - and every one of my siblings.
When going through my mom’s things, I found out that she ignored the advice of several teachers and school counselors to get me tested for ADHD. Because she didn’t want a ‘damaged’ kid.
You got the “good” (/s) adhd. There’s the other adhd where you suck at tests because you can’t pay attention and you don’t do the homework or projects either.
Well, I definitely didn’t pay attention in class. I slept through a number of my classes on the regular. But I was a little bookworm desperately short of books, so I gleefully and willingly poured over the textbooks in my free time. Or in math class, which bored me to tears and I was never any good at.
We have starkly different opinions about our textbooks. I found mine achingly uninteresting. Regular fiction/fantasy/sci-fi books? I could devour a novel in a day. “Sailed the ocean blue in 1492”? Couldn’t be bothered.
Our literature textbooks had Asimov and Twain, while history has always been an obsession of mine. Science was good too, until it got into chemistry, at which point it veered too much into math for me to care.
Sounds more interesting than ours, which had snippets of made-up quotes or stories to demonstrate proper form when writing. History is awesome in my current opinion, it’s fascinating. In school it was nothing more than being forced to memorize names, dates, and places. I’ll diverge from your opinion on math here, I hated it in regular school, but I really enjoyed college maths like physics because it had application and real-world results. Not just pointlessly solving versions of a2+b2=c^2.
I got this but my parents did know I had ADHD. My mom didn’t want to put me on mods though, so I mostly just got weird stuff done to manage it. Like making me sit in the bathroom with no distractions, not allowed to leave until homework was done, among other things.
ADHD still affects me in the workplace, but I’m fortunately in a position where it’s not too detrimental and my bosses both like me and understand my challenges.
“Pug, you’re an incredibly smart kid, but you’re lazy.”
Me, unable to remember homework, but acing every test and going above-and-beyond on any project with freeform requirements, leading to solid Bs and Cs despite half my assignments being a flat 0 for not being turned in: “Yeah.”
… kind of wish someone looked a little deeper into the issue at the time.
Growing up neurodivergent in the 80s and not being disruptive enough to demand said deeper look may lead to:
Who are you and how did you read my diary?
deleted by creator
Same. There’s more of us?
I only have about half of those, so…yay?
Ha. Rookie! /j
Help lol
It ain’t much but it’s honest work.
My mom used to talk in code a lot for no fucking reason. She’d throw out the weirdest segues and irrelevant stories. When I (barely) graduated from a gifted kids high school, she jumped from telling me she was proud of me, to telling me that when my sister was little, all her teachers told her that she should be “tested” - heavily implying it was for learning disabilities - and added that “none of [her] babies are retarded.”
2 things - that sister had dyscalculia and never got beyond an associates degree because she kept failing math. And it took until my mom died to figure out she was also talking about me - and every one of my siblings.
When going through my mom’s things, I found out that she ignored the advice of several teachers and school counselors to get me tested for ADHD. Because she didn’t want a ‘damaged’ kid.
Now that’s a tough pill to swallow. How’d you cope with that?
Can’t have ADHD if you don’t get tested! Fucking brilliant.
Fuck, man, the stigmatization of neurodivergence has done so much damage to so many people :(
It really, really has.
Same here. I didn’t get diagnosed until a couple of years ago but the signs were always there…
Now I’m just biding my time until my youngest two get the diagnosis (my husband and I both are ADHD, and our other kids have already been diagnosed).
High potential + severe adhd => ticking bomb
You got the “good” (/s) adhd. There’s the other adhd where you suck at tests because you can’t pay attention and you don’t do the homework or projects either.
Well, I definitely didn’t pay attention in class. I slept through a number of my classes on the regular. But I was a little bookworm desperately short of books, so I gleefully and willingly poured over the textbooks in my free time. Or in math class, which bored me to tears and I was never any good at.
We have starkly different opinions about our textbooks. I found mine achingly uninteresting. Regular fiction/fantasy/sci-fi books? I could devour a novel in a day. “Sailed the ocean blue in 1492”? Couldn’t be bothered.
Our literature textbooks had Asimov and Twain, while history has always been an obsession of mine. Science was good too, until it got into chemistry, at which point it veered too much into math for me to care.
Sounds more interesting than ours, which had snippets of made-up quotes or stories to demonstrate proper form when writing. History is awesome in my current opinion, it’s fascinating. In school it was nothing more than being forced to memorize names, dates, and places. I’ll diverge from your opinion on math here, I hated it in regular school, but I really enjoyed college maths like physics because it had application and real-world results. Not just pointlessly solving versions of a2+b2=c^2.
Different strokes…
I got this but my parents did know I had ADHD. My mom didn’t want to put me on mods though, so I mostly just got weird stuff done to manage it. Like making me sit in the bathroom with no distractions, not allowed to leave until homework was done, among other things.
ADHD still affects me in the workplace, but I’m fortunately in a position where it’s not too detrimental and my bosses both like me and understand my challenges.
How’d that turn out? How’d college and/or employment go?