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.
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.