Damnable ADHD!

Sounds as though your driven parents could have triggered your ADHD, or at least made it worse. My story is similar, shared here only to let you know others of us got hammered too.
My parents were uneducated, and thought berating and beating would bring out the best in their children. Never good enough. Always stupid (national merit honor society, jr. Arista, Arista, Service award, NYC first place in journalism, all boro orchestra [violin], law school, Court Magistrate published in NY Law Journal, married 52 years, terrific kids, and beautiful grandchildren). Still berated. They are long gone now, leaving me to figure out the truth for myself, with some anger for having my authtic life stolen from me all those years. All good now. Chin up!

When a child struggles in school or is not happy there, my first thought is what is the reason…..get assessment to see how it can be remedied. Sorry all the smart people didn’t think of that.

@shmerdloff
Damn shame. Congrats on all your accomplishments! You should be very proud. Sorry they missed out on the joy of watching you succeed.
Do you have ADHD? Folks/kids with ADHD often struggle with low self-esteem. To pile on negative, harsh, damning words directed at the sufferer only drives home and exacerbate the pain gnawing away at our core. That pain runs deep within and often will continue to haunt us throughout the rest of our lives. It is a phenomenon common among us. We may not remember why/how it got there, but we will recognize it's there when others refer to it. Oh yea, I have that pain that never goes away.
I suspect the underlying bio-chemical-electrical malfunctioning in my brain was not impacted directly by the barrage of attacks. Coping with the shame, the torture of failing over and over, coupled with the humiliation of public exposure without an empathetic adult's help, well that is as damning as hell.

@relieffrompain
Grammar school was in the Fifties. No resources or diagnoses. You were just a problem, bad or even evil. You will be left back. You'll never get into college. Teachers were bitter and resented us. One slapped me in the face holding a handful of keys. Told Mom. Did nothing. You'd get detention, being made to stand behind the piano or in the coat closet.
So, no, I didn't get a label. If I did, it would have been the alphabet based upon the psychologist: ADD,ADHD, ASPD, SAD, OPPOSITIONAL. I would be stigmatised with a label and medicated, all as an Orwellian punishment for being a pain in the rear.
Home was abusive and terrifying, so how could any academic gifts show? I misbehaved in class. Now it's called "acting out" your broken and agitated self. No school psychologist or laws to protect kids.
Most ironic was that my school experience was bad because of the abuse at home. Open School Night the teachers (not all of them) would poison my parents against me. He's not working up to his potential. He's lazy. He's a behavior problem.
My parents' solution was to come home and double up on the abuse, sending me back to school even more emotionally crippled to await the next parents' night.
As it turned out, whatever didn't kill me made me stronger, although I don't recommend it. A shrink told me I should have turned out a criminal. I didn't. Someone is watching out for me. All I have is the deepest gratitude for this country , state, and city (at least the way it used to be), and joy for Life.
When I look back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all.

TEACHERS! LEAVE THOSE KIDS ALONE!

@shmerdloff
Indeed, some "experts" deny the medical model to explain ADHD. To some of them, kids who act out in school do so merely as a symptom of their parents' refusal to discipline them. They deny the brain itself is responsible for these types of maladjustments, even when the literature yields more than overwhelming evidence. A child must not be diagnosed with ADHD by citing the dramatic changes medication makes almost instantly. Yet, the proof is in the pudding.

@relieffrompain
I am so sorry for all you have been through and all who have experienced what you have experienced.

My experience is as a mother of a child with ADHD. He is my only son and now 16. I am what they call “neurotypical” and my son is considered “neurodivergent.” I had my son when I was just about to turn 40 (struggled with infertility for years). He was “high maintenance” from the beginning. He didn’t sleep for the first 2 years of his life so work/parenting/home life was very stressful for me. My marriage became extremely stressful once my son was born for a variety of reasons. I knew something was off in my marriage but wasn’t sure what it was.

When my mother in law was showing signs of Alzheimer’s, I encouraged my then husband to get her evaluated and help. He was in denial and didn’t really do anything. I had her assessed and sure enough, she was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s! Since I was concerned for my son and genetics, I asked my then husband to get evaluated as a baseline since we were having so many marital problems that weren’t explained. He was diagnosed with anxiety and sleep deprivation and nothing else. He said to me, “see, I am normal/average!” He ignored my concerns for our marriage/family.

I decided to get divorced because things were so extremely stressful and my then husband was oblivious to any problem and would tell me, “sorry you feel that way!” My son was 3 and I did it to try to save what little sanity I had left. Fast forward to when my son was 7-8. He had 2 concussions and soon after he was diagnosed with ADHD (combined type attention and impulsivity). That explained a lot. I am thankful his 2nd and 3rd grade teachers were able to start to identify some of his struggles. His 4th grade teachers, despite a 504 plan, would call him out in class, belittle him, encourage other students to belittle him, and she once put him in the hall for “bad” behavior and forgot about him for an hour!!

Soon after, I decided to get him into a small private Christian school where he did much better. He went to that school 5th through 8th grade and now is in a private high school. He still struggles with attention, procrastination, planning, time management, impulsivity, strong negative emotions/anger at times, etc. but a good student. Many times he has been on the honors and high honors roll. I started him on medication in 4th grade and he has been on it ever since (currently taking 2 different types of ADHD medication). This has helped him at school and he gets much better grades on medication and I can’t imagine the struggles he would have without it.

After my son was diagnosed, my then ex husband finally went and got reassessed with a full psych evaluation and sure enough, he was diagnosed with ADHD!! This finally validated for me what affected our marriage and that I wasn’t crazy or imaging things. My son and his father both have anxiety and believe undiagnosed OCD and being on the autism spectrum due to sensory overload and struggles with social relationships/empathy and emotional regulation.

I did so much research and participated in ADDitude webinars to learn as much as I could about ADHD to support my son. His father is not really involved and limited in parenting plus I am my son’s sole provider. I have my own chronic health/pain issues and disability so this has been quite the challenge. I had a good career and have 3 degrees and thankful I saved/invested when I was young to help me manage financially today. What I realize now is that my son is hardwired the way he is and I need to support him to be the best HE can be and I cannot force anything on him. He is developmentally delayed and behind peers in many ways by 2-3 years. I may have wanted more for him but need to grieve my hopes and just love and support him no matter the path he takes in the future. He at least knows he is fully loved by me despite my frustrations at times, he knows his diagnosis and doesn’t feel shame for it but recognizes his differences/challenges, sees the value in taking his medication to help him focus at school and when doing anything important so he doesn’t get hurt. He gets regular counseling to talk to someone experienced with ADHD and other than me about how he is feeling to help support him.

I pray for him to be guided in what God’s plan is for him and his life and for me to know how best to love and help him. I admit I am very exhausted at times doing daily “scaffolding” until he can fully own things himself but I am all he has (I have no family so it is just him and me and very limited help from his father who I also think has early onset Alzheimer’s but he is in denial).

I am confident I have done everything possible to support my son and do the best I can on my own. He will struggle in a neurotypical world at times but he has awareness of the reasons for his struggles which is a better place to start than what his father started with (his parents were uneducated and hated doctors plus there was little know about ADHD at the time he was growing up).

Thank you for sharing your story. It was very inspiring and brave of you to do so.

@meryw

"He at least knows he is fully loved by me..." No, no, no. You've got it all wrong. Sorry, but you do. He knows he is fully loved. NOT AT LEAST. NOT AT LEAST. You couldn't do more for him. Kids know when they are loved. And it makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE! They can tell and what you have given to him is the greatest gift anyone can give their child. You are very smart, very sensible, very dedicated, willing to educate yourself AND you LOVE him. you LOVE him. you LOVE him. He is going to be just fine. You will see. Do you know what Einstein said?

If I had not been a Late Developer, I would not have developed the Theory Of Relativity

YOU LOVE HIM
THAT MEANS EVERYTHING

We are exceptionally sensitive to the pain of others. We perceive what is going on deep down in others instantly. Our filters don't work. We go immediately and directly to the "heart" of the matter in others. One of our gifts is to be concerned with the pain others experience. Deep down, we care very much for people who are in pain. We know what that is like. Our own deep and profound ache over disappointment in ourselves and the hurt we suffer for being rejected, leaves us able to pick up on and empathize with those in pain. It is uncanny. While we are intrinsically weak in certain areas, we are at the same time endowed with specific gifts. For example, often, we are the life of the party, abounding in energy, leading the way in being fun loving and daft. We don't have time to get absorbed in trivia. We seek meaning, the bottom line and we can overfocus on games and t.v. when the content stimulates us. We thrive on and pursue stimulation constantly, getting easily bored and miserable when nothing grabs our attention. That is one reason ADHD is damnable. Our ability to concentrate fluctuates wildly. We are unable to direct our attention to many things, and simultaneously hyperfocus on other things. People naturally conclude it is deliberate on our part, when in reality we have no control over it.

@dlydailyhope
"He at least knows he is fully loved by me..." No, no, no. You've got it all wrong. Sorry, but you do. He knows he is fully loved. NOT AT LEAST. NOT AT LEAST. You couldn't do more for him. Kids know when they are loved. And it makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE! They can tell and what you have given to him is the greatest gift anyone can give their child. You are very smart, very sensible, very dedicated, willing to educate yourself AND you LOVE him. you LOVE him. you LOVE him. He is going to be just fine. You will see. Do you know what Einstein said?

If I had not been a Late Developer, I would not have developed the Theory Of Relativity

YOU LOVE HIM
THAT MEANS EVERYTHING

(Here I meant this for you and sent it to someone else. Having a sense of humor and being able to laugh at ourselves are key -but not easy!)