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 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.
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 our 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.
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.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats.Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse
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.
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.
