T w e n t y S i d e d

I have undiagnosed ADHD. Pretty sure I had it as a kid, but I was raised by parents and in a community in which such an idea was originally eschewed because that was considered a mental illness, and normal people don’t get mental illnesses. By the time I was a young adult, there was grudging acceptance that SOME kinds of mental affectations, disorders, or behaviors COULD occur, but probably you could avoid them by raising your kids right and generally not indulging the seven deadly sins. And boy is that a topic for another time. As the diagnosing of ADHD in children increased from the late 1980’s into the 2000’s; it became a political issue. Those who believed themselves to be “normal, traditional Americans” came to believe ADHD diagnosis were “crutches” used by parents and teachers to avoid doing their job. I’m sure you all have seen some variation on the meme “There’s no such thing as ADHD. If you had a gun to your head, you would study.”

No. I would be dead, asshole. It doesn’t work like that, and people refuse to learn. But I was RAISED believing it was all BS, so problems I had related to ADHD were clearly moral or intellectual failings on either my parents or myself, and my parents were pretty damned clear it wasn’t THEIR fault. That I carried the lessons learned from this into parenting myself is another long discussion, but for the matter at hand, as usual, it means I couldn’t write what I wanted to write this week. Thank God it wasn’t depression-related this time, as I would be in bed right now or stuffing food into my face instead of writing…which I DO really want to do. So we’re gonna talk about other things this week.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “ADHD on my mind”

Paige Francis He/him