@Gradually_Adjusting@adhd well I hope nobody perceives it as a joke....I'm dead serious. I've lied SO much when I was younger about why I didn't finish something. But I live in the US Deep South and nobody believes in mental issues here.🤦♂️
Nah dude from the parent's perspective this shit ain't always that funny lmao... I enjoy the humour but I also take it seriously. I'm grateful that so many people with ADHD make memes and shitposts about their experiences because it helps me to empathise with my kid.
It depends on what specifically you’re trying to get him to do, but something I’ve found very helpful is setting up the environment in a way that will lower the “initiation energy” of something to make it easier to start doing. YMMV on what does or doesn’t work for him, my spouse and I have found labels and organizing by task to be a huge help in making it easier to start things because now I have to devote 0% of my brain power to wandering around finding everything I need and staying on task, and I don’t need to root through drawers to find it.
Sensory adjustments to the environment might also be useful, like changing light levels, noise blocking headphones/ear plugs, or playing white noise/natural noises. And it sounds hippy dippy as fuck, but time in outdoor green spaces has been shown to improve symptoms in kids with ADHD, so if you guys aren’t regularly spending time outside or at the park it could be a good to incorporate it.
You’re already doing a lot more than many parents just by trying to understand and empathize instead of beating it out of him, so fist bump from a former neurodivergent kid. 🤜
What's helped me is a combination of physical exercise (which helps against feelings of unrest that may be bothering me) and sort of sliding into the subject, tackling the easier parts first and from there riding the dopamine wave.
Or because they're tired of hearing "I just forgot". You can only say "I forgot (because Zi was overwhelmed, because the task wasn't interesting, because I got distracted, because I can't remember lists, because I do a soft reset every time I walk through a doorway)" so many times, even though it keeps being true.
This is why I love my current job and my friendship group's. In both circles "I didn't do that because I've been struggling with my ADHD" is a completely valid reason.
I mean, at work it's followed by a short "what do we do to get over that hurdle?" because obviously I can't just, not do my job.
But at least I'm not having to make shit up, and I can actually get to the root of the problem (being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world) and address it. Even if addressing it is just my boss giving me a fake deadline to put the pressure on the task.
If you'd like to try and find a faster way to alienate a neurodivergent person, this is basically it.
My parents still have no clue how to regulate there comments when I mention my difficulties. They love pointing out how "pretty much everyone struggles with getting their real life taken care of."
Yeah, and I'm sure everyone else also sits there for hours at a time, lamenting themselves for not being able to get up and getting it done. It's less about the inability to get started, and more about the excruciating guilt you feel when simple tasks take hours of internal bargaining to finally get done.
The OP was talking about the feeling of needing to lie for fear others won't understand, but my suggestion is to not lie, being transparent works way more often. It works for me, anyways, and if people don't understand then that's their problem, not mine.
No idea where you dug all that shit out of, though, but good job I guess.
ADD/ADHD is an executive function failure related to feedback and it’s relationship to motivation. Normies never experience that on anything approaching a regular basis. As such, trying to explain that to them is like trying to explain what the colour of the number seven smells like. They’ll be all, “well, just do it. How hard could it be?”
They’ll be all, “well, just do it. How hard could it be?”
Though sometimes that’s exactly what I need someone to tell me. To the point that I do this with some of my other ADHD friends. “Do it right now. I’ll wait.”
I usually just say something like "I did say I was going to do that didn't I, sorry I haven't got to it yet" and people chuckle and move on. YMMV depending on your workplace, obviously.
I think it's very healthy to not lie... But as a 37 year old I was raised (rather firmly) with the understanding that "I didn't feel motivated to start" was a fully unacceptable "lazy" excuse.
For me, spinning some bullshit reason is so second nature that I'll do it before I realize it might be easier to just be transparent. To further complicate things I'm such a high achiever that I can usually dig myself out of the hole before eating any real pain so... I rarely eat serious shit for my lies.
If you can be honest I think that's by far the better tactic.