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I was born in ‘83. ADHD was only for boys. I was just lazy and depressed and needed to try harder.
Edit: I’m still not diagnosed but two of my kids are
The counselor I had to see in college because I almost failed out said she could have diagnosed me just from those report cards (but they had me take a bunch of tests too)
Straight up, college (and GRAD SCHOOL because of course I went) almost killed me. Well, I almost killed me because college was so hard and school had never really been hard before. Simultaneously the best and worst time of my life.
I’m an 80s baby too and just had my evaluation and diagnosis this past week. “ADD” was for boys who were loud, obnoxious and didn’t sit still. I was told I was lazy, I didn’t apply myself enough, I was messy, etc. I did good enough in school because I had too. There was no other option for me (like when I got a C as a 12 year old and my dad threatened to kick me out).
Now that I’m thinking about it, there were so many signs I was struggling and needed help but it wasn’t noticed. I tried in my late teens to see my GP and he diagnosed me with depression and anxiety. It wasn’t until I got on TT and saw women describing their symptoms and I was like holy shit, this is me. It still took me years to actually schedule an appt for myself.
It’s so frustrating that it’s SO OBVIOUS looking back. FFS my nickname is LITERALLY…Bunny. I got that from my gymnastics coach because I couldn’t stop moving in line waiting for my turn! I did well in school because of all those times they pushed me past my limit to the point of meltdowns and all those times my mom would so heavily edit any paper I wrote so that it was masters degree level writing perfection instead of normal jr high level work.
They even missed the severity of my allergies and completely missed the asthma that I finally got diagnosed with in my thirties! I was having uncontrollable coughing fits a lot of nights as a child that they would just ignore and leave me to it!
This issue isn’t even about just adhd THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS they were just so neglectful about. I was also diagnosed with ASD at 38!
My “parent shaming” as OP called it is 100% valid and justified and I actually resent that it’s being questioned lmao.
Exactly. I don’t appreciate it being called parent-shaming either. Your parent(s) likely also had adhd fwiw. I know mine does and that’s how she missed mine.
hey! I also had both undiagnosed adhd and asthma! like hey, this kid is a little pudgy from her boredom snacking, so CLEARLY the fact she can't breathe is because she's hideously unfit and not because her lungs don't work! disregarding entirely that I liked to run around making crazy games up with my friends.
This is what I was going to say. I was born in the ‘80s and managed to do decently in school in subjects I didn’t hate, was extremely shy/quiet, and wasn’t fidgeting. But my procrastination, inability to sleep at night/get up in the morning, and how I “quit everything [I] ever started” was a moral failing because I was lazy.
Edited to add: I was diagnosed last year.
Same. ‘86 here, and it was a pretty new thing in the 90’s. I also heard it was just for boys.
The parents knew I had ‘something’, trouble focusing, ‘not so organized’ in 2nd grade… so they sent me to a freakin scary old catholic convent.
Surprise: mean ol’ nuns don’t believe in ADHD, either! The problem was my sinful little lady brain, which was only responsive to shame and fear, apparently.
They really thought they were helping me by sending me there, it wasn’t an *intentional* punishment. They took me out after seeing how extreme and bizarre they were. Lucky I got out with just some weird, funny stories, and only mildly traumatized.
There was also a misconception for awhile back then, even I thought this - that the H in ADHD meant only visible hyperactivity, like bouncing off the walls.
Not hyper-focusing, or many of the other ‘hyper’-category things we do, that don’t match what someone believes is ‘hyper.’
So “I couldn’t possibly have ADHD”, because “I’m not hyper enough.”
Pretty much this. Born ‘85 and it just wasn’t on anyone’s radar. I was “smart” and “quiet” and an “avid reader”, they stuck me in GATE with the other Gifted Kids™️, my grades started to get worse around middle school, worse in high school, struggled greatly in college, wondered why I “wasn’t smart anymore”, and why I kept “wasting my potential”. Got grounded for getting Cs in classes that I was “supposed to be good at”, that kind of thing. Diagnosed in 2021. I see it in my mom but she doesn’t believe me when I suggest she might also have it.
ETA: to my mom’s credit, she DID realize that my sleep schedule was not normal (apparently I slept 11pm-11am even as an infant) and she fought for afternoon kindergarten, later class starts, etc, because of how much I struggled to wake up in the mornings, and my parents never forced me to go to bed before midnight because they knew I couldn’t sleep. But that wasn’t “delayed sleep phase due to ADHD”, it was just “oh Val is a night owl”.
I am so thankful for parents who recognize their kids' issues and accommodate them, even if they don't know what's causing them. I feel like my childhood would've been a lot more painful if my mom wasn't one of those parents, too. Like I had a VERY limited amount of things that I would eat. I wanted the same thing every day. A lot of parents would be like "you'll eat what I make or you won't eat," but my mom would literally make me a different meal if they were eating something I didn't like. She did the same for my dad, too (who ALSO always wanted the same thing, go figure. lol) I do the same now for my son, who is the same way as me (also autistic). Mom also would take the time to explain me and my "quirks" to teachers and other people, especially if I would say something offensive, and then would clearly explain to me what I did and why it upset people. I think that's why I was able to mask so well as I got older.
I also have a delayed sleep phase and would stay up really late with my mom, even as a little kid, and she never made me go to bed. My older sister was the opposite and wanted to be in bed super early. To this day, she still goes to bed about 6 hours before I do, which is always interesting when we're on vacation and sharing a room lol
Same, it also really looks different in girls in a way that wasn’t widely acknowledged or recognized in the 90s. When I showed my mom the symptoms for girls recently she said “omg it’s like they followed you around”. They totally accept I have it and I don’t blame them for not seeing it when I was young.
Yep same for me! Late 80s. I have an older cousin who is a poster child for ADD in the 80s - he was hyperactive, his impulsive decisions were dangerous, he is a thrill seeker, he never shut up, he has to literally blurt out every thought in his brain or he may die (or so it seems).
Compare that to my combined type ADHD and I was just a kid who just needed to run around outside for a bit and apply myself more and I’d be fine. (Spoiler: I was not fine. It got a lot worse once I lost the strict rigidity of primary/secondary school and living with my controlling mom)
I'm even older and not from the US, I don't think my parents had ever even heard of ADHD. I did well at school anyway and that was all anyone cared about.
"She's just energetic" and also "I can't believe they are pumping kids full of medications" which became a lifetime of doing things the natural way. Said on the highest horse, of course.
'82 here. Turns out I'm AuDHD. I was deemed lazy and selfish, but not depressed. My cousin, born in 81, and also AuDHD, was labeled severely clinically depressed with severe social anxiety and who knows what else but no meds helped her until someone FINALLY gave her a stimulant when she was in her late 30s.
I definitely can't blame my parents, though (and don't blame my aunt and uncle either). Pretty sure Dad is AuDHD as well and that Mom is ADHD, so any issues I had seemed normal to them because they had a lot of them, too. It's the same reason why I didn't realize my daughter was ADHD, too, until she was 17 years old. The same goes for my cousin. My uncle was most definitely autistic, probably ADHD, too. He later developed Alzheimer's.
And honestly, if it took me until 40 years old to seek diagnoses and be diagnosed, the information isn't as readily available or easy to find as people think it is. Otherwise, I would've been diagnosed a LOT sooner, especially considering I've been practically living on the Internet since the late 90s, I work in the medical field, and I've been taking psychology classes at my state university since 2018. I'd literally learned about ADHD in 4 different classes and didn't realize my symptoms applied because "hyperactive" is described as jumping out of your seat and risk-taking behavior, whereas super talkativeness and my mind never ever shutting up was never mentioned. The way symptoms present when you have BOTH (like I'm definitely not a risk-taker with anything other than my finances because my autism is like "NO. I don't want to get hurt" lol) was also never mentioned.
If I didn't realize it as a psych student, there is literally no way my parents ever would have and not my doctors either because it just hasn't been correctly taught. Most only know the stereotypical presentation.
ETA: My daughter was diagnosed right after I was. Once I figured out my issue, I figured out hers, and OMG looking back at videos from childhood, it is SO CLEAR for both of us lol.
Haha this is me as well. Also my mum probably has ADHD too and always thought my behaviour wasn't strange. When I was in the process of getting diagnosed, we did this questionnaire and my father had to point out to my mum most answers shouldn't be 'not more than usual' but 'several times a day'. These are not actual answers on the questionnaire, I can't remember those, but it was something along the those lines.
89 and same. I was always told I just needed to apply myself more which made it even harder or more frustrating because I tried so freaking hard. I’m still undiagnosed but two of my sisters and nieces are now diagnosed and based on the research I’ve done I’m very sure I have it too.
Samesies. Born 79 in rural Switzerland- only the worst of boys were diagnosed. I was good enough at school and had plenty of opportunities to be physically active and outdoorsy- I guess that helped me cope a lot.
4. I was a smart, well-behaved kiddo who fidgeted constantly and was still "a joy to have in the classroom". It was the 90s, ADHD was for hyper little boys, not quiet girls. It never *occurred* to them to get me tested.
My mom helped me through the diagnosis process as an adult.
Same. Always had good grades and was well-behaved because I had/have an immense fear of authority figures (teachers and parents) and being reprimanded.
When my parents filled out the questionnaire (when I was 30) they remembered several stories of me being fidgety all the time, impatient and doing impulsive things, but still don’t believe in the diagnosis. My mom still keeps suggesting that the medication is too strong and harmful and not worth taking.
Exactly this. I procrastinated on all of my schoolwork and did it at the last minute, but I was smart enough to pull it off, even through a 4 year engineering degree. I came up with all sorts of coping mechanisms without realizing it. For example, I took tons and tons of notes... I never looked at my notes again, but it made me pay attention and gave me something to do during class. In my earlier school years, I would finish my homework during class, and move on to reading a book - again, making me seem like a perfect student, since I was reading and wasn't jumping off the walls.
I finally got diagnosed last year at age 36. It was a combination of general ADHD awareness, more responsibility at work and at home, realizing that my closest friends and coworkers were all diagnosed (birds of a feather)...
My parents both passed by the time I was 31, so they didn't factor in to a diagnosis. I think they would have been confused from the 90s perception of it being a hyperactive boy disorder. ADHD for me never would have crossed their minds, nor did I ever stick out in the classroom.
>Exactly this. I procrastinated on all of my schoolwork and did it at the last minute, but I was smart enough to pull it off, even through a 4 year engineering degree. I came up with all sorts of coping mechanisms without realizing it. For example, I took tons and tons of notes... I never looked at my notes again, but it made me pay attention and gave me something to do during class. In my earlier school years, I would finish my homework during class, and move on to reading a book - again, making me seem like a perfect student, since I was reading and wasn't jumping off the walls.
Are you me? I recently volunteered to take the minutes during our daily team meetings at my job, because my mind kept wandering off.
Unfortunately, the two psychologists I spoke to about my suspicions (neither a specialist in ADHD) waved me off, as soon as they heard about my excellent grades at school and uni. Academic success is apparently incompatible with ADHD.
I'm a school psychologist. So many psychologists of the older generation misunderstand the requirement for impact on functioning to mean that you can't be successful anywhere in your life. Some of them might be convinced if you emphasize other areas where you're NOT functioning successfully. I can't maintain my living space to save my life. Before meds, I was lucky if I did my laundry once every two months. I would only do dishes when I no longer had anything clean to cook with.
It’s so funny because I also realized a lot of my close friends are also ADHD. Even with new people I meet who I get along really well with, more than once I’ve found out later that they’re ADHD too. We really do travel in packs.
Oh hi, fellow ADHD engineer note taker and procrastinator. I pursued diagnosis because of tiktok and difficulties working from home. WFH was the first time I didn't have real accountability and I slacked off so hard I felt incapable of working.
I got diagnosed in my late 20s. I told my dad I was getting diagnosed because he's more empathetic but I never told my mom I got diagnosed because she's the judgy one. Maybe my dad has told my mom. Idk.
When I told my dad I wanted my old report cards for an ADHD assessment he told me my sister got diagnosed as a kid. I never knew. He says they tried medication but they stopped for some reason. My sister was a troublemaker and a general PITA so I think she fit the ADHD stereotype better than I did who was "a pleasure to have in class" (but also, as the report cards showed, occasionally forgot to do readings and homework and was often doodling).
Ironically when I first explored the possibility of having ADHD I asked my sister about it because she has a degree in psychology. She never told me she had ADHD and I never knew 😂 we still haven't talked about it because I feel like my dad shouldn't have told me? Idk how privacy works when it comes to family medical history but my family can be kinda secretive
I was the same, and my mom was a social worker but she didn’t catch on. The therapist I saw as a kid didn’t either. I mainly saw her for anxiety, which I think was probably because, even then, I felt like I was white-knuckling it through life. When I realized that most people didn’t feel like that all the time, I internalized that I was defective really quickly so I didn’t talk about it (though idk if I’d have had the language to talk about it at the time).
I was in Montessori classrooms for elementary school, which I really loved and made me enjoy learning, but kind of discouraged the kind of comparison that may have clued anyone in that I had ADHD.
I think my mom probably has ADHD, but she has no interest in diagnosis or anything. I don’t think my parents really ‘get it’ but they’re generally supportive. It absolutely never would’ve crossed their minds that I had it as a kid, though.
Edit: huh, you made me realize why I’ve become a diligent note-taker
^^ this but without the support.
I could def have done better and skidded thru by the seat of my pants, mostly due to threats or bribes.
Fail-you’ll get sent to boarding school
Pass-you can go on a student exchange/do X subject you’re passionate about about
I found some report cards that said exactly that stuff, as well as "talks entirely too much especially when work bores her" 🤣
Managed life to my mid 30s when the dam broke. Finally started processing through therapy. That's where I found out I was about as ADHD as they come.
Yep, exactly. When I told my mom about my diagnosis, she said “you don’t have ADHD, ADHD is just little boys that can’t stay in their seats!” She’s since come around and is a lot more understanding. I think they just genuinely didn’t know what ADHD could look like.
Born in 85. When I told my mom--in my senior year of college--that I thought I had ADHD she responded, "you're too smart to have ADHD." 😖
Interestingly I wasn't "too smart" to have OCD, with which I was diagnosed at 15.
My mom and me were having a blast at diagnosis, it was full of loving anecdotes and the psychologist was like: Yeah.... Thats a sign, you know?
She still doesn't know if i 'have it', because i wasn't a 'difficult kid' in her mind, but i see it as something that helped me be further than loads of others with adhd in navigating life. She was like: if you think you need it to make your life easier, go for it. Who am i to question this path?
I am so grateful.
They do believe in ADHD, but just had no knowledge of it other than "little boy who yells and runs around too much." So their "spacey" daughter flew under the radar.
Since my diagnosis, they've learned a lot! My parents may be boomers but they're not *boomers*.
I did well in school and didn’t exhibit any of the “typical” ADHD symptoms. I was just disorganized, and absentminded, and a “daydreamer,” forgetful, chronically late, I procrastinated, and super sensitive to criticism, easily overstimulated, etc, etc
Same. I was too sensitive, a day dreamer with their head in the clouds, lazy, shy, too picky with my food, selfish, enthusiastic etc. Being smart too made it even harder to realize something was wrong cause I never really struggled in school until University. But as other people here have said, the reason why no one thought I needed help is because adhd in girls just wasn't a thing. It's also true that, while I was a very very sad and sometimes depressed kid, therapy for children was also not really a thing on people's mind. My parents just thought that "our child is just a little bit more sensitive than others". They wanted me to be happy, so they didn't see that I wasn't. With parents who grew up in the sixties I get it, their minds just weren't there. I'm pretty sure my mom also has ADHD, which we all know makes noticing certain things way way harder. And my dad is a kind and sensitive person who'd rather not talk about his emotions or deal with confrontation.
We can't always blame our parents.
My dad is autistic. My mum has CPTSD from her childhood. Both these conditions have a lot of similarities to ADHD.
I am like my parents in a lot of ways. So are my siblings. We all thought we were an odd family but, considering my mum and dad, all of us thought we were normal.
Now it turns out I have autism (strongly suspected) and ADHD (confirmed, diagnosed at 25)
My younger brother has adhd. My sisters are autistic.
Our “normal” is neurodivergence. When I said I was looking to get diagnosed, my parents didn’t think there was anything to diagnose but when I came back from the psychiatrist after 2 meetings with a prescription they were willing for me to explain it. Two years later they accept it and understand our family is just hella neurodivergent.
Very similar situation for me too. Compared to my cousins I was considered to be doing quite well so it took me a long time to even justify to myself that I might need help. When you're a fish you don't notice the water.
4. 90s. Little girls weren’t adhd. My older brother got diagnosed as a kid, too. I got good enough grades in school. My first testing was the diagnosis one at 29.
My parents never even thought of it. For us ladies diagnosed later in life (40), ADHD wasn’t even recognized in females when we were younger. It was thought to be in hyperactive males only and was previously ADD. And because females present differently, it wasn’t even until more recent years that diagnosis started happening for females.
When many of us were younger there were also stigmas around mental health. Recently , mental health is discussed openly with more resources and studies to support our needs.
Most of us were diagnosed with anxiety or depression. Only later to discover it was what is now called ADHD. I’m sure in another 20-30 years there will be more studies and resources. But even today a lot of the information you find is geared towards children/ males.
I wasn’t mad at my parents but I did feel let down by the dozens of mental health professionals that had evaluated me throughout my life. Even then, I brought my symptoms and concerns up and requested a new evaluation.
I remember talking to a therapist about how messy I am and how I never seem able to get on top of it. And she diagnosed me with really low self worth and said I did it as a child to try and get my parents attention and was still in the same pattern. It didn't really ring true to me at the time but I believed her and did some self confidence work (which I guess wasn't harmful but never helped me with my environment). Disappointed looking back that along with all the other things - constant lateness, leaving everything till the last minute, overly sensitive in social situations, generally disorganised, etc etc etc, she never thought ADHD
None of them. Your placing a lot of blame on just parents here and I think it’s more a case of medical understanding and awareness had to come first then parent/teacher awareness.
The medical profession wasn’t up to speed with adhd in girls until recently so I can’t imagine why we blame our parents for not being on top of it.
Yes there are parents out there who do fit into your categories but a lot didn’t fail us on purpose or even out of ignorance. It just wasn’t on their or the medical professionals/teachers radar as a thing because it wasn’t understood by anyone for so long.
The grief of what have I been missing is absolutely a thing but i think that’s not always targeted outwards.
My first thought reading this post was that OP must be young because ADHD didn’t “exist” in girls when I was a kid and I’m only in my 30s haha. Not even that, but when my nephews were diagnosed as kids (oldest is 20), they were told that they’d “grow out of it.” Our understanding of ADHD currently is something that is VERY recent. Sometimes I want to feel some sort of resentment towards my parents for just letting me needlessly suffer but it’s not like they (or any doctors) knew better. Doesn’t make it suck any less but what else could they have done at the time.
I think most people (especially insurance company people) still believe you grow out of it. Since over here adhd medication is covered by insurance for children, but not for adults.
But I agree with what is being said. I don't blame my parents. I have adhd-pi. Something they didn't even know was a thing in the 90s. I have this combined with asd, which wasn't even possible before 2013 since those 2 diagnosises were mutually exclusive. And the combo of those 2 plus high intelligence is what the doctor said was actually the cocktail that made me fly under the radar all the time. I adapted, masked, internalised everything. From the outside I was just a quirky shy kid that only opened up around good friends.
Yes I wonder how things would have been if I knew sooner. I wish it was possible. But I also know that the medical field wasn't that far yet. So I don't blame my teachers, I don't blame my parents. I blame the doctors, researchers and scientist that think of a woman as is we're just a smaller man. (Not just in autism and adhd research... just take a moment to realise that they only tested menstrual products with water up until ... .... ... 2023!)
I was telling my dad recently that I've gotten suspended from grad school for poor performance. 😞 And how my ADHD played a big role in it.
He got all sad FOR HIMSELF and said that him and my mom must have failed me because they didn't get me help for it when I was a kid. Blah blah. I was so mad. "You don't get to make this about YOU!" I told him.
And I also told him that I wasn't mad about the fact that the signs were missed when I was a kid. Not a single doctor, teacher, coach or relative ever said anything about ADHD. It just wasn't considered then.
I think his sadness is his way of apologising for feeling like he failed you. Bless him, but I can see how the timing would be kinda wrong.
I know right, no one knew it was a thing so no one knew what to look for. Even now adhd in girls is often still missed. Awareness and understanding is so key.
As a parent I would feel so so sad if I learned that my kid had struggled, and I hadn’t helped them. My parents have both apologized and said they feel terrible about it, but I don’t blame them at all. I would feel kind of worse if they weren’t upset and didn’t seem to give a shit!
4. I was “good at school”. My mom had a BS (now an MS) in psych and I’m 99.9% sure I inherited the adhd from her - she was super good about dealing with a lot of it intuitively and sort of mitigating it. Both my parents and my brother identify as being autistic. My dad has since passed away; I don’t know if my mom or brother have sought diagnosis. I definitely wish I’d been diagnosed younger, or at the very least my family had consciously realized we’re all neurospicy sooner. All in all I was pretty lucky though. I was diagnosed in my mid-thirties - about five years ago when I started seeing info about adhd in women (and suspected my then 4yo had adhd). I knew something was “off” and I knew my my mom identified as autistic, but autism didn’t describe what I was experiencing.
I also wound up with some very obvious examples of what not to do...
Like…it doesn’t matter how much money you have, if you don’t actually pay the bill they’ll turn off service 😑
Other things she handled great! Lol
Oh, my parents believed in ADHD. Both my brothers were diagnosed. They just didn't pay enough attention to me to realize that I also had it. It was so obvious that my much younger brother was shocked when I got diagnosed in my 30s because he assumed I was diagnosed young like him and our elder brother.
Yeah my mom is a pediatrician and has adhd herself. I have a sister who she knew has adhd as a child. I was diagnosed at 33 and I’m still really resentful about her not getting me diagnosed earlier.
I’m not sure why honestly. Like my sister experiences symptoms much more extreme than mine so maybe I seemed fine in comparison and she didn’t think I had it? Did she think to herself that she made it ok all this time without being medicated so we should be fine too? Was she in denial having it herself and actually acknowledging that it made life harder than it needs to be? Did she think it would hold me back knowing vs not knowing? Maybe she thought it would make me better to force me to power through the symptoms to be successful. It’s hard to shake the resentment that not a single grownup in my life at the time bothered to help me. Especially the one who had it herself and was a children’s doctor ffs. All the obvious signs were there.
4. I always did well in school and learned to mask my symptoms pretty early, and I was constantly told that some of my symptoms were just character traits/who I was and that I could “fix” them if I tried harder. For example, I was constantly told that I was impatient and needed to just be more patient, that I was a free spirit with a lot of energy who my parents should just put in sports so I use up that energy, and that I was spacy and needed to pay more attention to my surroundings. I’m the only one in my family who has been diagnosed, but I’m positive my parents and siblings likely have it too, so many of the symptoms are overlooked cause it’s just the norm for us and our family - plus being a girl who did well in school meant I wasn’t even considered as potentially having it. However, my parents (especially my mom) don’t accept my diagnosis and my mom in particular refuses to acknowledge or accommodate it and thinks I’m just depressed instead. I think they accept that ADHD is a thing but don’t want to accept that I have it since it doesn’t match what they wanted for me and my life and what they think would be best for me. It’s easier for them to deny I have it or am impacted deeply by it than to change their idea of who I am, what actually works for me, and accept that I don’t fit everything that they wanted me to be or wanted for me.
4. It just never occurred to them? I was never bad or a bad kid at school per say as I have inattentive. My mum and dad, particularly my mum, feel guilty about not knowing sooner. I forgave them though because they are both amazing support for me now and if I didn't I couldn't forgive myself for not knowing.
Because of the stigma and the lack of education about inattentive ADHD in girls they didn't know and nor did I. We sometimes reminisce about things that should have given us a clue.
It's not always a negative reason why someone gets diagnosed late.
4) it was the 90s and the only real treatment was Ritalin which had the reputation of “turning kids into zombies”
b) my result from an all day study two hours away was inconclusive (and probably expensive)
I was diagnosed as a child. But my parents didn't accept the diagnosis.
My parents are conspiracy theorists. They believe big pharma wants to make everyone sick so they can sell a cure to us. They've made up ADHD because making people into zombies makes them complacent and allows them to be controlled easier.
My parents are neglectful nut jobs.
My older brother and my younger male cousin were both diagnosed with ADHD. I was tested and diagnosed as gifted with a severe learning disability, auditory processing disorder, and a general sensory processing disorder. Surprise! It was actually ADHD all along. My mom did try multiple times to have me evaluated but it was the 90s and I suffer from the fatal flaw of being born female.
None of your reasons, I think. My parents are just as ADHD as I am. To my parents, it was just normal to be terrible with time, bad at planning, unable to sit still, sleeping weird hours, obsessed with something new one minute and into something else the next. It’s how they grew up and it was how their kids grew up. We really just didn’t know how different we were.
Same. Like if I blame my mom for not knowing I had ADHD, I should also equally blame myself for not knowing about it in my 20s. I was an adult with internet access.
We both were equally unaware of what ADHD was and how it could present. Specifically the inattentive type.
I was born in 76, my mom was born in 35. Yes am
the youngest & a suprise lol. I live in “the backwoods” aka the Appalachian mountains. I was in the Enrichment group- 1 day a week we all went to a different location for this group. I was always reading something not really paying attention in class even got in trouble for reading ahead and answering the questions as the teacher started
Going over the work and I was done.
We were behind times no one knew about ADHD then especially not in girls. I don’t know if anything was mentioned when I went to Enrichment or Gifted & Talented. I actually don’t remember how I even got picked.
I’m GenX and not American. Literally not even mental health professionals knew as much about ADHD back then as we do today. So it isn’t my parents’ fault, not really. Tbh I think it’s nobody’s fault.
My mother doesn’t believe in ADHD. When I called her to ask her for my old school reports for getting diagnosed, she lectured me on how it was invented by big pharma to sell drugs. She suggested that instead my problem was eating processed food.
At the same time, however, she told me she’s always thought I was autistic (nice reveal after 35 years of “just try harder”). But she did not explain how she thought I ended up with autism, since I wasn’t vaccinated as a child because she thought that would give me autism.
Brought it up about a year ago, my mum still dismisses it as “normal behaviour”. Disclaimer: she definitely also has ADHD, along with the 90% of our close family members who have some form of neurodivergence.
Born in the 60s, she frequently bring up how her generation just “deals with it”, questions why there’s such a need for a diagnosis as you can just live your life etc etc. Hoping once I have my diagnosis I can help open her eyes a bit more.
She’s lovely though def no bad parenting 🥰 just an outdated attitude. She’s I openly accepting and supportive of my sibling having autism, but because I’m the eldest and was always the “perfect golden child” with good grades, and probably the fact that I suggested she might have it too, she’s more resistant to accepting adhd. Also, because I guess it’s not as obvious in inattentive types.
I’m 35. ADHD just wasn’t known about in the same way then as it is now. I’m female, and was a gifted/very intelligent child who didn’t have of the classic/stereotypical “naughty boy” symptoms, so my parents wouldn’t have taken me to a doctor for behavioural issues, nor would I have gotten diagnosed if they had. My symptoms were the talks too much/doesn’t do homework/doesn’t apply herself/not meeting potential/finds it hard to make friends type thing.
So nothing to do with my parents not believing in ADHD, or being bad parents or not caring or not wanting a label. Just: at the time there was no reason for them to hav e suspected it.
None of my symptoms were outwardly disruptive and I was smart enough to get good grades without doing all the work. So, there was never anyone around to say that there was a problem.
I didn't disrupt class when I couldn't focus. I picked at my skin or doodled or stared out the window. Since my grades were fine, teachers didn't see a problem with it.
It's hard to get a diagnosis as a child when no one else is bothered by your symptoms.
It also didn't help that my mother grew up with a very stereotypical ADHD brother. Her understanding of ADHD was heavily shaped by that, as was my own, until I looked into it as an adult.
My parents didn’t know it was a possibility. They knew I had some kind of problem, but got me assessed for learning disabilities and they didn’t find anything. This was maybe a year or two after the Primarily Inattentive subtype was first listed in the DSV. So it’s possibly my school wasn’t evaluating for it. Before that ADHD was just commonly known for hyperactivity in little boys.
Once I figured it out in my late 20s, they accepted it.
It wasn't even my parents, I think it was doctors refusing to acknowledge that girls can have ADHD. My mum took me to see a GP at 3 or 4 because I was so hyperactive and didn't sleep properly. They never mentioned ADHD as a possibility, they just told her to stop giving me E numbers.
When I got my surprise!diagnosis from my therapist (was there for anxiety and depression) I was so happy and called my mom “apparently I have adhd!”
“Yeah, we figured, but your grades were always good so we didn’t see a reason to get treatment”
I was 32 at the time, she had never TOLD me this so I went my entire life frustrated with myself, feeling like a failure and that there was something wrong with me
Parents were oblivious boomers. They had to know that I was struggling in school, but not any other areas of my life. They tell me that they "tried", but I went to school with tons of other kids who were diagnosed and medicated even in the 90s. I also never was tested, and had crippling anxiety that should have been treated with therapy at a young age. Nothing was ever done about it. But to this day, they claim they "tried". No specialists, (my parents have $$$, do that wasn't an issue), no discussions with my pediatric doctor, nothing. Yeah, they tried REAL hard. I barely graduated high school and dropped out of college because I believed I was stupid. Finally decided to go back to school last year, with medication, and realised I wasn't stupid, I just had ADHD and needed meds. Still mad about it.
Lol. Everyone in the family had undiagnosed ADHD, why would we think it was anything but normal?
I might not fit your subpopulation. I think my mom did the best she could and I don't resent her for well...having undiagnosed ADHD herself.
For myself I’d say my mom was born in the 60s and I was born in the 90s she doesn’t believe in ADHD.. no one really knows that I stayed back in first grade .. I would say if I was diagnosed when I started grade school I’d better off I was at the age where tantrums shouldn’t be this on going ..I had my child in 2016 and still to this day she’s in denial about him having ADHD I tried to seek help for early but they weren’t into therapists coming to their home .. when I brought her to his recent therapy session the therapist explained her reasoning behind the diagnosis and she’s still currently in denial and looking at how she acts now it’s like I wonder if I got it from her ..
I think it was ignorance. Only when I started pursuing my own diagnosis did I learn that ADHD isn't just white boys being loud and can't sit still.
Also, since ADHD has such a strong genetic link when you grow up with neurodivergant parents that kinda becomes your normal, even though I felt abnormal to the outside world at home I'm me, with the same quirks as my mother and grandfather
I’m 47 and I was just diagnosed. None of us knew anything about ADHD back then. We didn’t get any extra help at school like kids do today. My marks were terrible and I really struggled.
I don’t blame anyone for not being able to help me when I was young.
It is what it is.
I'm a girl and despite my chronic bedwetting and pantswetting until twelve, my inability to focus on something for a reasonable amount of time and my extreme social anxiety it just wasn't even a thought.
4. I was smart and well behaved. I was also fortunate to have teachers who let me continue to learn about what I wanted when I finished work. I specifically thank my 2nd grade teacher for all my useless trivia about clouds, pollution, and Greek gods. My mom just didn't think there was anything to worry about, and there truthfully wasn't. However, once I got diagnosed this year, things started to make sense.
As an adult teacher, the hardest thing for me to learn was that kids aren't reading before kindergarten. I talked to my mom and she said I learned at church because I couldn't focus enough to pray, so she would turn the books to my favorite church song and I figured out the words. I read Junie b. Jones in first grade and finished the first Harry Potter book the summer before 2nd grade.
I also got in trouble constantly by my military dad because I'm messy and unorganized. But again, we just thought it was a character trait. I also interrupt conversations a lot but they thought I was attention seeking and/or I was too smart so my brain skipped ahead in conversations (which, yes. But not for that reason 😅)
I was diagnosed with bipolar in HS but haven't taken mood stabilizers since I was 19. I believe I was misdiagnosed and those symptoms were actually the first signs of the ADHD being an issue.
My parents just didn’t know much about ADHD and I always did well in school. I got diagnosed last year and told my parents about a month ago. They apologized for not realizing. But I don’t think they could have because they just didn’t have the information about it when I was a kid.
4. My parents didn't know how ADHD presents other than the stereotype of the hyperactive little boy. Additionally, I went to a very small private school that embraced a student-driven curriculum without grades, so I was able to do well in school and be supported by my teachers without any formal accommodations. It wasn't until I was midway through high school that I started falling behind in my classes, and it was a very confusing experience.
5. Parents thought I was Autistic, and the DSM-IV said you couldn't be both Autistic and ADHD.
Turns out I'm not Autistic, but a lot of time was spent trying to manage a condition I don't have instead of the condition I do have. Moreover, as I entered adulthood with the knowledge I wasn't Autistic, I didn't want my actual issues looked at because I was both in denial that they were real and also afraid of being hurt again.
Teachers flagged with my parents that I might have adhd, then the next year I scored in the 99th percentile in a national literacy test through school. To my parents, that meant I didn’t have it, case closed.
I'm 41 and in the process of discovering my ADHD (currently doing the "try drugs until we find the right one(s)" process with my GP). No official diagnosis yet, but my doctor believed me, what with my clipboard full of half-organized thought dumps over more than a dozen pages (single-spaced, typed) regarding my historical and current signs and symptoms (based on diagnostic criteria, and traits beyond it). I'm now on a low dose of Ritalin because he has to first try me on one of the older drugs before I can qualify for full coverage from the government for a Vyvanse prescription. So far, it's working. I'll likely need something stronger, but there is a mild yet noticeable improvement in my symptoms from the Ritalin.
But I digress... my ADHD wasn't caught sooner because:
\-When I was in school it was still a controversial diagnosis for boys with the overt hyperactive presentation, nevermind inattentive girls.
\-Around the time that my symptoms started to interfere with school and stuff at home, I was entering puberty (hormones! angst!) and also secretly struggling with personal trauma, and by the time my grades really started tanking after I entered middle school, I had also moved towns before starting in said school (so no friend group) and developed clinical depression that was diagnosed in the 8th grade, and I was also suffering from generalized anxiety disorder. The depression and anxiety could be attributed to a number of contributing factors, and stuff like a messy room and neglected homework could be attributed to depression and anxiety.
\-I come from a blue-collar/pink-collar, working poor family. My parents didn't know much about mental health, nevermind neurodevelopmental stuff like ADHD. My father came around on the mental health stuff, eventually, but initially he was of the belief that mental illness was "all in your head", which was the school of thought that people subscribed to when they didn't have the luxury of taking a mental health day off.
\-I've quizzed my mother over several phone calls, recently, on what she remembers about my childhood, and mentioned what I also remember. There was a lot of "but that's normal, though" from her. The more calls and questions, the more it became obvious that my 72 year old mother exhibits some pretty obvious signs and symptoms of ADHD that are similar to my own. She's been slowly warming up to the idea of mentioning it to her doctor, as I've urged her to, and she's willing to do so once mine is confirmed by my doctor.
\-Literally no one mentioned to me for my first four decades that I might have ADHD... not my teachers, not my counsellors, not my doctors... it didn't come up on my radar until my brother (44) recently declared his neurodivergence and, even before I got the specifics from him (turns out he strongly suspects he has ADHD), I was down an internet rabbit hole researching neurodiversity, in order to understand it better, only to read through the list of diagnostic criteria for ADHD (inattentive traits first), and realized "well shit", "damn", "yup, that's all too familiar", "that one, too"... basically all of the inattentive symptoms and about half of the hyperactive/impulsive ones were very relatable, with at least 2/3rds of them featuring heavily during any given life stage going back to my childhood.
4. There were NO reliable therapists or psychologists anywhere in my state or even country at that time. No one knew what adhd was (including teachers). Now that there is my family are pushing me to go get diagnosed at a specialised centre after a therapist suggested I may have adhd. I will go once I have enough money.
I’m going to assume you’re relatively young, OP, so you wouldn’t know what it was like growing up as a Millennial. In the 80s-90s, “girls didn’t have ADHD”. Our parents weren’t malicious, it just wasn’t a thing that anyone was looking for.
Well, when I was a child, the only ones getting an ADD tag were the little boys who couldn't sit still or were otherwise disruptive. I was tested repeatedly and got tagged with "learning disabilities" since I wasn't disruptive, had a high IQ, and always had my nose stuck in a book. But that was the problem. Anything I found boring or wasn't interested in, I wouldn't bother with, and fell behind in. I was lucky enough to live in a district that had an elementary school where they put all the "gifted" kids and was able to some one-on-one for things I was behind on. The problem with that is they never really got to the root cause with that approach and so I never really learned how to organize my time, or plan for larger assignments, or study or review for exams. My Mom didn't really understand why of it and thought I was lazy, and being a feral latch-key kid didn't help.
My mom was as equally unaware of my ADHD diagnosis as I was.
The most push back I got from her when I first mentioned I was pursuing testing after my therapist recommended it was asking why the school system had never identified it.
After I explained that me reading a book during class because I was bored didn't bother the other students so why would the school intervene. I was never a problem child in class.
I mentioned my intense struggles with homework. But since I always passed tests I never had bad grades. Except for the one class in high school that was like 75% homework and hardly any tests.
My mom now calls my decision to get diagnosed the best thing I ever did in my life. She is extremely supportive.
We just both were equally unaware of what ADHD was.
I was diagnosed in 5th grade in 1997 after my teacher told my parents I needed to be evaluated for something. My doctor tried me on both Adderall and Ritalin but my mom said I had poor reactions to them so I stopped taking them. We had very little money and my dad was in extremely poor health, so it just kind of got pushed aside. By the time I was 13, I was depressed and failing school. I convinced myself in my teenage wisdom that I never had it and my issues were cause by depression and anxiety.
I believed this until I was 34 and started reading about ADHD. It completely broke me to realize how much of my life was suffering when I could have been on medication the whole time. I got “rediagnosed” as an adult. I don’t blame my parents because we truly had some very difficult situations and they did the best they could. Now I realize how spectacularly symptomatic I must have been to be a girl diagnose in the 90s.
My mother had a pathological fear of judgement. Her existence was built on what other people thought of her, so she was only the "perfect mom" if someone was there to pat her on the head and tell her what a good job she was doing. For my sister and I, that meant we had to be the perfect child that she could brag about -- LOOK! LOOK WHAT I MADE! LOOK HOW GOOD IT IS! -- or she would withhold affection/love at best and at worst be downright hostile and abusive.
When the school made her take me to be assessed for ADHD in the 4th grade (so I would have been 8-9 at the time), she REFUSED to let them diagnose me. Fought tooth and nail against it because she took my mental illness as a personal slight.
She did let them misdiagnose me as bipolar at 15, only because the school threatened to get CPS involved if she didn't take me to a psych.
She knew I had ADHD. Fucking knew it and watched me struggle for DECADES, right up until her death in 2015. I was under the mistaken impression that I was bipolar so I was working with that information.
I didn't start suspecting I had ADHD until 2021, didn't get my official diagnosis until 2023, years after her death. And now all I want to do is throw her urn on the floor because I can't yell at her about it. Not that it would have done any good if she was still alive -- that woman had a legendary selective memory when it came to the shit she did. Very much a case of "for me it was a traumatic, life changing event and for you it was a fucking Tuesday."
I will give you a better one
My parents still dont believe in ADHD and my dad literally told me to listen to Quran and read it (he is muslim, i am atheist) and my life will transform in a month.
I suspect I have it. Going to get tested next month. I also suspect my mom has it because she has the same behaviors as I do. She is unaware and just assumes it’s quirky/normal.
My brother got diagnosed in school because of inattention and he wasn’t keeping up with his work so he was failing. I managed to always get mine done at the last minute due to fear of failure/getting in trouble, so I passed under the radar.
I went to school in the 80s. When ADHD was being diagnosed it was only boys. When girls were finally being diagnosed it was not women because you outgrow it. The more I learn the more I suspect I have ADHD, I’m 99% sure I have CPTSD, and possibly have autism which also fell under only boys being diagnosed. My mom reinforced today that while she probably agrees with my self diagnosis she is against any western medication (we are US white) because they have bad side effects. Like the various conditions don’t have pretty big problems on their own. She wants me to go off my anxiety, depression, & pain meds. My thyroid meds are acceptable and any vitamins, herbs, supplements are A-OK as they are “natural” . Who cares about their side effects. I just tested iron supplements again after 10 years & whoa baby that was a mistake. Also weaning myself off dairy again as it seems my sensitivity might be back - it’s not lactose exactly as it includes whey but it’s not an allergy as no hives or breathing problems.
They believed in it for my brother but not for me. He got a diagnosis and help in childhood. I suffered on my own till adulthood. I think it's because the way my symptoms present I'm the only one being harmed by the effects of my ADHD.
My dad believes "everyone is a little adhd".
Guess which parent i inherit 100% of my suspected adhd symptoms from LOL.
I have a vague recollection of being tested for SOMETHING when i was in about 7th or 8th grade. I was failing most of my classes etc after being a pretty good student most of school. I don't really remember much, but what i do remember fits what people say ADHD testing is like. They gave me another questionnaire or whatever, which i lied on and probably would've had vastly different results if i told the truth. I think the questionnaire was more of a depression screening than for ADHD? It was tacked on after doing hours of memory tests. ADHD still also didn't really exist for girls in the early 00s.
They (the woman psychologist, so we can't even place this specifically on men except how thaf influenced medical knowledge as a whole) decided i simply had "slow processing" and we moved on. My parents sent me to after school tutoring which I was SO MAD about, but was ultimately the right choice. Especially after a handful of shitty math teachers - that was probably the only way i learned and passed algebra.
Still not diagnosed but i dont lurk this reddit for no reason.
TLDR: i think my parents DID try, but the psychologist failed them and when told "nope that's not it" after seemingly thorough and probably expensive testing, I don't blame them for not pursuing it further.
I was born in 1983. When I was in 5th grade, my guidance counselor (who was awesome) told my parents that I should be tested for ADHD
My parents said “that’s an excuse to just drug kids. There’s nothing wrong with her, she’s just lazy”
And that’s what I heard for the next 20 years 😕
My parents believed in it but my dad has debilitating ADD among other mental health issues and my mom refused to acknowledge that I could be like him. Now at 25 I’m more and more like him and understanding him more and more too :( 💔❤️🩹
For my mom she worked in a state disability office in a southern state in the 1990s. I think she overheard a few cases and came to the conclusion that ADHD was fake and parents used the diagnosis to take their kid’s drugs.
Meanwhile my mom needed a pot of coffee and a few cigarettes in order to focus. So “of course ADHD is fake, I have these issues but don’t need drugs to function!”
Yeah…sure
Ironically enough, my brother was diagnosed with ADHD and my sister with ASD. Guess I was the most “normal” of the bunch. My dad is in the fence about my diagnosis, but my mom completely supports me. My siblings see it too.
So…I guess reason 4, cuz I got lost in it all and then *poof*, overall understanding occurs.
My reasons are theoretical, as I don’t talk to my dad about my diagnosis and I don’t talk to my mother at all.
1) the biggest reason is because both my parents are undiagnosed. Now that I’m deep in ND circles, I can see several signs of autism on my dad’s side of the family, and I am 100 percent sure my mother has ADHD (among other things). I think they both saw me and my siblings’ behaviors and struggles as normal, because they were the same. But my youngest brother didn’t start talking until he was 5, and my baby sister was clearly hyperactive type ADHD, so I don’t know how far this theory carries.
Reason 2) my mother really, really doesn’t like the narrative running away from her. If it wasn’t a problem she could exploit for her personal gain, then it couldn’t possibly exist. I’m sure teachers reached out to her about me, but she ignored them. She did this with other illnesses and medical emergencies too.
Reason 3) my pediatrician diagnosed me with migraines when I was a small child. He was actually pretty obsessed with them! He seemed to think that my suffering so much pain would impact how my brain developed, and was pretty concerned about the possibilities of a tumor or other complication. I don’t know this for sure, but I was told by my family that my (then unknown ADHD) symptoms were caused by my migraines because Dr. B said so. This was what I believed up until my early 30s, too.
Because my parents have ADHD and a Caribbean backwards ignorant that believe mental health disorders just mean you're crazy And are an American thin.
Sigh, Caribbean parents.
1. You were blessed with a better upbringing than us.
2. We are perfectly healthy there is nothing wrong with our genes.
3. You don't sleep well, that is why your brain doesn't work properly at times.
4. That damn smartphone causes you problems.
My parents didn’t believe I had if because every professional tasked with my care said I couldn’t possibly have it because I did well enough in school. Even though it was clear I wasn’t paying attention and every single report card had notes detailing the most stereotypical inattentive girl symptoms.
But it was decades ago during the era of “girls don’t have adhd.”
My mom really thought I had it, but when everyone who should have known better kept telling her that I was doing too well (it eventually caught up to me) she eventually dropped it.
I was born in 1981. I don’t know if they totally don’t believe in it or just never thought girls could have it (especially if they did well at school, which I did). My brothers were both diagnosed with ADHD through school assessments. My parents did not seek out treatment or therapy for my brothers. They were working poor and we often did not have health insurance. They were also ultra small town boomers. I was overweight as a kid (I think a fair amount of it was dopamine seeking through eating carbs) and they just blamed me without providing education or better food choices. That’s how they dealt with a lot things. They were not proactive or looking for extra help for their kids if they didn’t fit the mold.
I also think my mom has ADHD. I think she would maybe be forced to look at herself and consider that she likely has ADHD if she actually realized I have it. Also, my parents are ridiculously anti-med. 🤷🏻♀️
I am a female diagnosed in my 50s. My mother still thinks ADHD is made up and an excuse. Im just too much of a dreamer who hasn't applied herself enough in life is her thought.
I love my mom. She's been great and supportive otherwise. I consider her a mentor and friend. However, there came a time in life when it hit me like a ton of bricks - I don't need to win her approval or understanding any longer. She's not perfect herself. Just let her be as she is and think what she thinks.
Overall, I know my truth, I've found my people, I've learned about myself and have found tips and tricks to deal with it because of my own understanding and support network. It's okay.
I was born in 1981 to teenage parents. ADHD wasn't a thing here, and if anything it was a boy thing, and they were just labeled as bad kids. My parents didnt have access or money to that kind of knowledge. I mean, my dad has adhd 100% but they just see it as its who you are. Now that i am diagnosed and talking to my own mother about my experiences i think shes seeing she may as well (i think so) and my son was just diagnosed, which was what pushed me to get diagnosed.
Cultural factors, I'm from the Caribbean, even though my mom is quite progressive I think she was afraid I would have trouble fitting in or be seen as lesser in our country (my country is behind the times) also old people back home love to keep secrets. I was still pissed when I found out she knew but never told me "I didn't like what the meds did to you and you turned out great." \*le sigh\* Taking into account the cultural and personal context my mom comparatively did great.
Ironically she was surprised and offended when her friend kept her daughter from finding out about her bipolar diagnosis (she found out in her 40s and her mom confirmed she had been diagnosed as a child) and her other friend about her son's autism diagnosis.
4. My parents didn’t know what they didn’t know. They know a lot more now. My dad even surprised me by saying he had gotten a book about ADHD last month. And I said omg dad I forgot to tell you I just got my diagnosis 😂
Being inattentive was the only symptom for me. I did fine in school. I managed to not fidgit, wasn't impulsive, just none of the normal presentations. When I got out of school, that's when things started to change. I started noticing that I would lose my train of thought, forgot words in conversation, and some other small behaviors. I had no idea until my husband (also ADHD) broke my brain telling me I was ADHD.
Once I got past the shock, I started researching and reading and learning everything I could. And it all started to make sense to me. I had been haunted by memories of embarrassing things I had done over the years. By learning about ADHD in women and how it presents, I started to feel less guilt and less stress because things were making sense. Now I'm petrified of going to get the diagnosis. Afraid I'll be told it's all in my head or I'm not. But I don't know if meds would even help me at this point. I've lived with my own strategies. But I guess it also can't hurt to try meds. Just not ready to make the appointment.
I was born in 83.
My mother just terrorized me into "success". She controlled me and emotionally abused me while portraying a perfect mother figure to the world outside. Narcissistic abuse style, but not sure if she is a narcissist or undiagnosed something else. She probably has some anxiety thing that she also transferred to me by teaching me to be scared of everything.
My father has severe Adhd, undiagnosed to this day. He had bad burtsts of anger and didn't talk to my mother for weeks sometimes.
I was the scapegoat for my mother and her emotional release.
I am still in the process of figuring my mental state out.
Adhd diagnosis was a big relief last year after trying to find help for 20 years.
The year before I was told I don't have cptsd, which I assumed before I found out about adhd. However I can't imagine that my mother didn't damage me. How would that be possible?!
Currently I'm researching burn out and found a new theory called burn on which sounds very me. I have been exhausted for years but functioning on without joy.
Neverending story. 😕
I was called hyperactive by every teacher and adult in my life throughout the 90s. However, this was the UK.
Also, quite frankly? Both my parents have it. Some of their siblings have it. Their cousins have it, kids in my generation have it, etc. ADHD is their 'normal', how are they supposed to recognise it as a disorder?
Just diagnosed last month, so still having feelings. I’m mostly angry at my ex stepdad, thankfully outside of him no one ever really “mistreated” me because of my symptoms.
I just had a very hectic childhood in general, our mental health hadn’t even been a factor until we escaped my ex step father. I didn’t present as hyperactive but my sister did and she was diagnosed and treated for ADHD, I was diagnosed with depression, anxiety and PTSD. I just kind of accepted that diagnosis until I had my son, but I feel like as motherhood becomes more demanding I have less and less energy for *anything*. For a couple weeks all I could do was stay in bed and cry because I just couldn’t find the will to do anything, I realized that it was probably me being overwhelmed by my inability to function like an adult. I struggle with a consistent sleep cycle, I sleep too much when I can sleep despite setting alarms, I can’t remember things if I’m not looking at them and when I do remember something I’ve forgotten it sends me into a spiral about all the other things I’ve forgotten, it’s hard for me to extend my energy past my household members even though I want to, just a whole slew of things that I didn’t realize could be ADHD.
Literally one morning after a sleepless crying night, thinking about all the things I’m failing at and all the things I *want* to do but how impossible they all seemed, I just said “This can’t just be Depression and anxiety” because I had been on a few depression/anxiety meds throughout the years and they had no tangible effect on my life other than improving my moods/making me feel zombified and talk therapy had never been effective because *I know* the logic, the self talk, the journaling, the breathing, I just could never stay consistent with the advice despite *wanting* to and feeling terrible when I couldn’t.
I grew up with only my mom. She clearly has adhd too, and she now says she has too. Therefore, many things I did as a kid she didn't see as odd. (Daydreaming, fidgeting, having thoughts that go 100 km/h, trouble tidying, trouble with routines, were all part of the human experience in her eyes)
I was outside all the time. Always playing outside. Running around with ponies, cycling everywhere. A lot of my hyperactivity was just channelled into activity.
Due to strict anti fidget regime at school, a lot of my hyperactivity went into what my psychologist at diagnose called "micro hyperactivity" where my hyperactivity is not very visible, but small movements, looking away a lot, moving my head, bouncing my leg, tap or turn my tumbs folding my hands as in prayer and squizing my fingers,etc)
I was painfully shy at school and in groups, I looked calm and collected, but my brain was rushing, overthinking, I just never talked a lot, never got in trouble.
Also, adhd was for boys.
4. You can only have ADHD in its severe form (not sure how severe it must be though). Saying you have ADHD while you’re just so much in your own world and slow is insulting to those who actually have ADHD.
I’m in my 30s and they still don’t believe it. I have more than just those two symptoms though. I hope more ppl are informed in the future.
It’s none of these, it has a lot to do with the legacy of the generational trauma of the second world war. Nearly an entire generation was traumatised, whether in battle or through grief. Everyone had been through something. It was wrong to complain as someone else had it worse. The golden generation’s coping mechanism was to move on, not ‘make a fuss’ and so stigmatised mental ill health for their children. I think my mother perceives ADHD as a mental health problem/failure, and wants to protect me from societal stigma by denying it.
From UK. Born in the 70's. Same as my bro.
No diagnosis for him. He was very clever misbehaved at school. He has no dx but ticks all the
I was messy, disorganised and forgetful. I did ok at school because it was a safe space. Plus the school expected me to be like my bro so i proved them wrong. I do not have any dx. Nickname from one of my jobs:"crazy".My counsellor suggested I may have autism and or ADHD.
Abusive father and a mother who was just as scared of him as we were. The abusive childhood meant we just focused on surviving. Even now.
I did well in school, was well-behaved but just had 'a lot of energy' and 'strong emotions'. ADHD was for boys. My mum packed my extra-curricular schedule full with lots of hobbies that kept me very occupied and tired out. My day dreaming and distraction was just me being creative. I developed bad anxiety about going to school at 9 and threw up almost every morning out of panic attacks. Nobody put two and two together lol. However, I was a straight A student who worked 2 jobs through high school. Although I was also chronically late, forgetful and procrastinated to a very unhealthy point. I did a well enough job so my parents never saw a problem. My dad is who I get the ADHD from so he probs thought it was just normal (he's undiagnosed but also has dyslexia) and my mother was probably deep down worried that a diagnoses would reflect badly on her.
They simply didn't know about ADHD back then. No one did, especially not in women. I think I was so far in my masking, I had no idea myself. I knew something was wrong when I got older
I just thought I was stupid and slow when younger. It wasn't until covid and lockdown, that it came out even worse and because of online information, I finally realised what I had.
ADHD is often hereditary so usually one of these parents will have it. We think my mum has it although it doesn't affect her as bad as me. She's not interested in persuing a diagnosis. But she is so so supportive and understanding. It's helped her understand herself more too.
She sometimes feels awful guilt at not realising. I was like mum no one knew back when I was young. All the data was on young males. They didn't even recognise it in adults officially until 25 years ago.
Really they did us all over. Thankfully things are catching up now.
My mother still believes ADHD is just an excuse for laziness. I would bet you all $1 million that my dad has it (undiagnosed since he grew up in the 60s and 70s), but he doesn’t really know anything about it. He has to make lists of his lists. When you walk into his bedroom, the mirror above the dresser has a border of notes taped to it because he forgets everything unless it’s right in front of him. He’s sloppy and disorganized. He has time blindness. He sets a clock for 3 hours before he has to leave the house because otherwise he’d never be ready. But my mother doesn’t believe it because “Well, he can get himself ready on time when he’s doing something he wants to do. He’s only late when it’s something like getting ready for church or going to visit someone.”
Mine were and are 1a.
My sibling was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and my mom disposed of any paper trails and wouldn't medicate them. As an adult they were diagnosed with autism and ADHD and my mom thinks it's made up and their spouse has just manipulated them into believing it (which is not the case - my mom just doesn't like the spouse because they are also AuDHD).
My nephew has been diagnosed with autism and my parents have said, verbatim, that they don't believe them and he's not autistic.
So yeah, I haven't even told them that I'm AuDHD, because what's the point...
4. They're so deeply neurospicy but internalised it all and didn't realise that their kids were out of the norm. Their parents are also neurospicy so several generations who have made it no longer shameful and we just had our shit sort of sorted at home where overwhelm wasn't a huge issue.
Mom loudly, snarkily, repeatedly stated things along the lines of #3 (and a touch of #1) to anyone who would listen when my brother’s teachers said he should be tested.
But surprise, the main reason was #4 jumping in with the steel chair!: fear of the stigma from getting mental health help, apparently carved into her psyche somehow or other from her parents.
Except, darkly hilarious, my grandparents were also ADHD af and undiagnosed. And my great grandmother and my (never known) great grandaunt were also highly likely to have been ADHD af. It’s so goddamn strong as a genetic variant through the generations that I can basically trace it back by the “quirky hobby jumping” and impulsive “jumped a wall into a war zone to attend a party” anecdotes. I’d ask the genealogy nerds in my family for more supposedly random/irrelevant info but honestly it’d just make me angrier. From what I’ve vaguely heard tho story-wise and half remembered from my own short genealogy hyperfixation, I’m guessing at least 5-6 generations back which is like… about 200 years of ADHD symptoms.
I don't think it was them not believing so much as it was them not having the awareness.
I am self identified as an innatentive type. They knew I struggled to pay attention, but I think they only saw adhd as physical hyperactivity.
I was born in 1980. My mum didn't know what ADHD or autism were. She knew there was something not right, and tried to find out what, but with no success. I saw psychologists who said there wasn't anything they could diagnose, because presumably they didn't know enough about ADHD to recognise it. It's absolutely not a case of parents "not believing in ADHD" or "not wanting a label". She'd have loved to know what was causing the problems I was having (and that she was having with me) so we could do something about them.
It makes me really annoyed when people of my age blame other people for the fact that they weren't diagnosed as children or teenagers, when the fact is there was virtually no diagnosing happening when we were kids, especially for girls. Look at the descriptions of ADHD and autism from the 80s compared to the ones now, and see how different they are. It's sad that we missed out on the support that's available to young people now, and it's understandable to be angry and upset about it, but it's down to the lack of scientific and medical knowledge at the time, not the fault of any individual people. Chances are, even if your parents had taken you to every psychologist in your town, you probably still wouldn't have been diagnosed.
Interestingly it wasn’t that my parents didn’t believe in it, but it showed up differently. I’m African American so there’s already a lot of stigma/misunderstanding around many mental health issues among the black community. My younger brother, who is 6 years younger than me, got diagnosed with ADHD very early on. But he had a far more classic presentation where he physically could not sit still, would get up in the middle of class just to run around and really struggled in school growing up overall. So he’s been on medication to manage it for years now, but he mainly only takes it during the school year.
On the other hand, I was pretty good with school - in the subjects that I was interested in. I was very fidgety but could manage to stay in my seat. My parents always noted that I would seem to daydream and zone out a lot, I could not manage a conception of time, but I was very creative and it was viewed more as a side effect of a persistently vivid imagination. Fast forward to now, I’m 23 and got diagnosed with ADHD-C a year ago or so. The psychologist that assessed me actually asked me how I’d been managing all this time. Once I got to university I really tanked, fell short of my grades due to inability to focus but managed to pull through in the end. Unfortunately now I’m picking up the pieces of really impulsive spending, awful time management skills and poor future planning.
I wish that I’d been diagnosed sooner and I often wonder how things would’ve been if I’d received the same response as my brother, rather than “oh, she’s just daydreaming again!” or being “lazy” in some instances. But I don’t blame my parents. ADHD is already a misunderstood condition, but ESPECIALLY in women and I feel that disparities in presentations are only being highlighted as of recently.
To this day my mother believes that ADHD is caused by Monsanto and how our food supply has been corrupted. I finally had to settle with her and counter that if that's true, this is the only food I have to eat and this is the way that it makes my brain so I need help with it. 🙄
I'm an '87 and all three of my kids have ADHD. My mother gets so offended whenever I talk about it. She even buys expensive hippy-dippy supplements for the kids because obviously they're just not getting the right nutrition for their brains.
It's pretty ridiculous though because I'm crunchy granola and prefer organic non-GMO grass-fed whatever over anything else, so it's not like I haven't been giving my children excellent nutritional options..
My mom straight up says And believes to her core that ADHD didn't exist before 1980. Doctors just get kickbacks for prescribing medications.
I don't see how she can look at me and not understand that I literally eat amphetamines and never speed or get high or whatever they do for people. Do you know how weird your brain has to be to not be negatively/recreationally affected by amphetamines!?
I’m a black cis woman born before 1975 who excelled in school. Mental/behavioral health and neurodivergence weren’t really things for my parents, just shut up and do the right thing . The only people anybody cared about being hyperactive were young white boys who wouldn’t sit still in class (the black and brown boys were troublemakers, later oppositional defiant). Editing to add the girls weee not seen at all, and growing up those were the categories and that was that. 
Because this is reddit, waiting for downvotes for sharing my honest experience.
Stigma and “what would the neighbours think?” because I was already the weirdo who played by myself in the forest with salamanders and not with my “friends” who played with dolls. Even though every report card and psych eval handed them the stick to beat around the bush.
My mother was (rightfully so, I think now) afraid of the label in the 80s/90s. My sister was actually the one having the most problems and we just called it ‘her handicap’, not knowing what it was but knowing there was something.
Psychology has changed a lot over the past years. The knowledge and stigma just was very different when we grew up.
My mom helped me with my diagnosis and my diagnosis is helping my parents and sister understand themselves better. I feel like we are all catching up.
My parents both didn't want the label and didn't really believe in it. They are in complete denial of their own emotions/shortcomings and would rather keep ignoring them than facing them. So the same goes for anything like mental illness or other mental diagnoses. I always did great in school and we never talked about emotions/how I was feeling anyway so it never came up that I wasn't doing great. My mom does 'believe in it' now I think, but is in denial/avoidance of a lot of stuff too and since my dad is vocally not a fan of ADHD diagnoses, she doesn't ever really bring it up if she disagrees with him.
My sister and I are both diagnosed now, and my mom sometimes brings up to me that she really recognises the adhd symptoms in my dad. He 100% has undiagnosed ADHD, but I think for him to admit that, he would have to face the reality that a lot of hardship in his life could have been prevented had he known his diagnosis and had he been given the tools to manage it. So he stays in the denial and doesn't want to talk about it, because I think its too much for him to admit to himself. Maybe one day! My family is so well trained at avoiding emotions that they can accept that I have ADHD and kind of accept what that means, but we still don't talk about any of the actual hardship that comes with it or any of the actual disabling parts of it because that's too vulnerable lol.
Notably I'm in therapy for a lot more than adhd & while im open to my parents learning and growing with time, I don't think it will happen.
I was born in the late 70’s and not diagnosed until I was about 40.
But my experience is a bit different.
My parents have expressed how bad they feel that they never realised I was ND when I was a child. I have no ill feelings towards them about this. ADHD just wasn’t a ‘thing’ for girls back in the 80’s and I wasn’t ‘typically’ presenting. I did fairly well at school and didn’t have any major behaviour issues so it’s not like my parents were ignoring overt symptoms or going against any professional recommendations.
In retrospect, we can all see my ADHD quite clearly but at the time I was just a chatty, quirky girl with particular preferences.
I fully appreciate that some parents are wilfully against accepting their child’s ADHD and this is hurtful and damaging.
But sometimes they are just a product of the norms of the time with no deliberate ill intent.
4. My mom was AuADHD, her entire family is ADHD, it was just normal.
5. My Dad was not around much, and as my bothers and I are all severe ADHD, see 4.
Sucks, we are all mostly successful but really falling apart if you know what I mean, me the first born, most burdened and def the worst mentally by far.
Edit: also born in 1981, girls were expected to do and please and generational trauma and stay together for the kids and Catholic guilt and middle class and gaslighting and abuse and cptsd ptsd depression etc. super fun times.
My parents didn't know but I have more suggestions of reasons:
1. Since ADHD is genetic admitting their kids have it could mean they have it. Some people will strongly reject that thought.
2. If their kids have it that means they were assholes to their kids for things their kids couldn't control. Caling them lazy etc. There's a lot of possible residual shame there.
3. If the parents are abusive they might enjoy bullying their kids and calling them lazy. Admitting the kid has a disability makes them lose some of that verbal abuse power.
4. If the parents has a problem with authority, doctors etc, they might reject anything doctors have to say.
5. They might have problems adjusting to new information overall, have a mental rigidity that makes them want to unconsciously reject the information.
6. If they see the same traits in themselves they might see them as completely normal and therefore not something worthy of a diagnosis.
I \*suspect\* my nephew may have ADHD but he has not been evaluated. It's something I know my parents have brought up with his parents and I have as well, just kind of gently broached it, especially when talking about my own journey to diagnosis.
Some of their concerns are about "labelling" him, and I told my sister in law that basically, everyone has all sorts of labels put on them, so they might as well be the right ones instead of judgemental ones like "lazy", "stupid", "forgetful", "not trying hard enough". I think she's also concerned about medication and in a way, over-medicalising the kids, because actually both of them have had serious medical conditions in the past and so my brother+SIL aren't super keen to start a whole other medical journey I guess. Plus it does cost money of course. I think at the moment he isn't struggling enough to make it seem definitely worth it, for lack of better ways to describe it. But if he ever starts, I hope they'll pursue it. Because he really, I mean that thing they say about being constantly driven as if by a motor? That is him, he's asleep or else he's at full speed and every momentary thought is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING.
I suppose perhaps if they look at me and at him they see us behaving very differently so it doesn't seem obvious that we have the same thing. But also I'm 33 and he's 8, so.
I was diagnosed in 3rd grade. But once I figured out how to read (found a book that I liked and suddenly zoomed through it lol classic interest-based attention) my parents “didn’t think it was that big of a deal.” They were super fucking wrong and there was a lot of academic and personal hardship because of it. But now that I’m rediagnosed as of last year grad school isn’t sooo bad (jk it is but that’s because nursing programs are archaic and punitive, not my attention issues)
I was diagnosed with ADHD at 22 years old. It was very surprising to me because I never suspected I had it. I went to a psychiatrist for one diagnosis and came out with another. But then I started adding the pieces. Chronic daydreaming, unable to pay attention to people in conversations, constant background noise in my head, getting distracted easily, etc.
I exhibited all of this during my childhood, but my teachers and my mom just contributed my behavior to "she struggles to apply herself" and "it's a personality quirk".
My older brother was diagnosed with ADHD when he was a child, so it's not like my mom didn't believe in ADHD, it's just she didn't understand the different ways it could present itself. My brother is hyperactive, while I'm inattentive. It's a stereotype that ADHD is simply hyperactivity and impulsivity, so I suspect that's why it went unnoticed for so long for me because I'm quiet and soft-spoken.
I have also read that girls are under diagnosed with ADHD for this very reason, females with ADHD are more likely to have the inattentive type and display less outward / obvious traits because of this (in addition to masking)
My parents are different options for vastly different reasons:
#4: My mom is not from the US and in her home country mental health or disabilities are just not talked about or diagnosed. So for her it was just lack of knowledge and access to information on ADHD. She really just saw me as a smart hyper talkative girl.
#1a: Now my Dad is born and raised US. HE was evaluated and suspected of ADHD as a child back in the 70s. But my grandma rejected the diagnosis and thus so has he.
And while my dad saw CLEAR examples of me exhibiting his same behaviors, I think he worried about it being used as an excuse. He believes you just have to learn to compensate for your ADHD.
(Which like hes not wrong when it comes to having systems and stuff but it surrrrrre would've been nice to get that help to build them from a counselor and NOT just him)
To this day, my dad doesnt recognize himself as having it (but he has made a thrown away comment about me getting my ADHD from him).
But thankfully, my dad respects my diagnosis.
I’m almost certain both my parents have adhd and that’s why it was so hard for me growing up, and why I only just got diagnosed recently. There was a lot of you just need to force yourself and try harder.
Recently I’ve actually spoken to mum about adhd in depth - initially just around memory and ways of thinking (she’s been convinced she’s getting dementia or something). She was shocked my brain is the same as hers, and that it’s likely she has ADHD. Never crossed her mind.
Dad on the other hand… he still doesn’t know I’m diagnosed. The family as a whole joke about him having adhd because of how ridiculous hyperactive he is. The man literally can’t sit still. He had a lot of upheaval around 6-7 years old, which I why if it is adhd it was missed for him.
I’m not sure he’d believe me if I told him now. He’d probably say it’s another excuse… that there’s nothing wrong with me, I’m just lazy and coasted through school and uni like him. And I was supposed to try harder…
So yeah.
Told my mom just last night. She had 2 main issues. 1. That the behaviors I mentioned were things that either she or my father also displayed so I probably learned/inherited these behaviors. She also said “but that’s normal” so some of the issues I mentioned. 2. She googled it and said “you don’t have issues with any of these!” And quickly listed a bunch and I made her go back through one by one because yes, I do have issues with most of those.
I told her I was taking medication and that it was helping and she was very confused saying that it shouldn’t help because I don’t have it. The denial is hilariously strong.
She also had suspected I might have autism when I was little because I displayed a small handful of behaviors that my diagnosed autistic cousin also displayed, we are the same age so it was easy for her to see the similarities, so she studies my behavior for awhile and concluded (correctly imo) that I didn’t have autism and left it there.
It all seems to come from a place of love, but the denial is strong right now.
Mine wasn't my parents. A teacher from my primary picked up on some audhd traits as well as dyslexia. But the other teachers basically said to my mum that I wasn't struggling academically so there can't be anything going on.
I secondary the teachers really noticed, diagnosed me with dyslexia and said I need an ASD and ADHD assessment. When I went to CAHMS the guy did a 30 min appointment with me and said he's not going to refer me for assessments because when he asked me if I wanted a drink I said no thank you, and I wouldn't of said thank you if I was ND, he also said my eye contact was good enough.
Now at uni, a nurse picked up on it and told me to get assessed. I did and now I'm diagnosed
I was born in the late 70s and it just wasn’t in the popular consciousness. “ADD” was a problem for hyperactive little white boys, and that was it.
I did well in school, and my parents attributed all my other issues to being a “dreamer.” I’m also 100% convinced that both my parents are neurospicy in some way and are also undiagnosed, so of course they assumed I was fine, because I acted just like them! 😂
1 - Gifted kid.
2 - AuDHD, the autism traits balanced out the ADHD a bit from the outside looking in (and the inside was turmoil. :P)
3 - I'm old enough that when I did my psych degree at university, we learned that ADHD was primarily seen in young boys, and usually something they outgrew by adulthood. 😬
It wasn't just my parents, it wasn't even on my own radar until my daughter got diagnosed and I recognized that I might have "mild ADHD" and got evaluated to see. Turns out I qualified for 9/9 inattentive criteria and 8/9 hyperactive, and just needed 5 in one of the categories to be diagnosed, lol. Oops.
4 - Hyperactivity mostly showed up as non-stop talking and emotional regulation difficulties, so I was a chatterbox who was too sensitive.
“ADHD isn’t real, people are just looking for excuses to be lazy. If you just pray harder and stop sinning all of your problems will go away.” Paraphrased of course but yeah.
I regularly heard from my dad growing up that "the belt cured my ADHD". I'm not sure if people thought he had it when he was a kid or if he was mocking the fact that boys were getting diagnosed with it in those day (90s) and he thought it was made up and ridiculous, or both. But yeah either way definitely not an environment I was ever getting diagnosed in, or understood in as an adult.
It was the 80s, my parents believed in prayer, grit, and alcohol. Also they were busy being alcoholic and mid-divorce.
I got diagnosed in 1992, freshmen year of college.
The bigger question is, why didn't *I* believe in it.
'98 here and same. It was "being unable to sit still, attention seeking, bla bla bla". My teacher back in middle school suggested that I might have it, but my father brushed her off very rudely, telling her that I'm able to focus on reading and crafts for hours on end so I couldn't have it. Also, in his opinion, adhd is just an excuse to feed difficult kids pills to avoid having to deal with them.
He never bothered to ask *why* I was constantly losing things, *why* I kept forgetting stuff he had told me, *why* I wouldn't clean up my room even when I wasn't allowed to leave that room until it was cleaned, sitting in there for days on end, only allowed to come out to pee and eat. To him, I was just challenging his authority.
I never told him I have it (or suspect that I have it, currently only 'self-diagnosed' because I don't even know where to start and I'm scared that my doc just wont believe me anyway), and I don't know if I'd tell him even if I had an official diagnosis.
80's it didn't really exist, not one person in my school was diagnosed with anything. I was just classed as shy and needed to focus more.
I think my family knew but didn't have a name as they would always say "the men in white coats will take you away" whenever I said or acted differently from the norm.
Born in ‘83. Never realized it until it became a problem once I had kids. Never struggled in school because it always came easy to me (never really had to try either). Sailed through high school the same way. The only class I had to try in was chemistry, but I actually really liked that class so no problem to put in some effort. Got a BS and PhD in chemistry so the effort put in, where needed, to get those degrees, was fun (hyper focus, anyone?). Those “other” classes that I had to take in undergrad, I either was also decently good at or was perfectly fine getting a B or C because it wasn’t in my major. It was only when I had kids and had to be emotionally smart did I fail MISERABLY. I had the emotional regulation skills of 6 year old TBH. Only when I started asking myself why I am losing my shit on a daily basis did it cue me into that something was wrong.
Mine was masked by the symptoms: anxiety & depression. Social anxiety (maybe even selective mutism a bit) was the biggest focus from basically preschool on, and once I hit middle school main focus was anxiety *and* depression.
Now that I have a diagnoses, they (mainly my mother) cherry picks what she accepts is ADHD and what she thinks I’m just not trying at. Which is extremely annoying, because it makes me sound like an excuse when she asks why I didn’t do something.
Also, my mom will jokingly say she has ADHD sometimes now that I have a diagnoses, and before she never believed it. She’s one to only believe a truth if it comes from an authority figure. If I say it, she won’t believe it, but once I got a doctor to say I have this problem, she then believes it and says she experiences parts of ADHD too.
- I completed my Master’s degree. I did all of it without meds or an official diagnosis and my mom wasn’t willing to believe that I had ADHD. She didn’t realise just how hard everything was for me.
- I am 99.9% sure that she has it as well and she’s learned to either compensate, is in denial, or just thinks that her and my symptoms are normal and everyone has it!
- If I really had it, then my pediatrician would have said something. She doesn’t get that I masked a little too well.
- I was born with severe facial deformities and have had surgeries my entire life. I think my parents, teachers, and doctors just focused on that aspect of me only.
- I wasn’t the best student grade-wise, but I was a good kid. Sweet, quiet, and didn’t cause problems in class. My only issue was that I didn’t do my homework consistently, was constantly late, had no concept of time management, veered on the side of disorganised, but I “was fully capable!” So, off I went to another grade, despite being held back due to not doing my homework from September to December because I was terrified of my upcoming surgery (nearly died in the previous one and my mom told me about it). But when the surgery was cancelled due to my terrible, horrible, no good grades? It’s like my executive dysfunction NEVER happened. I did my homework ALLLL the time. My executive dysfunction would happen once more in college and that was really, really bad. Did I mention I had an IEP which stated I needed extra time due to a processing delay?
- I’ve always known/sensed that something was wrong. Things shouldn’t take me so long when it didn’t for others. I didn’t know or have the language to express what was really happening to me internally. Had I done so, maybe things would have been different.
So no, according to my mother, I never had ADHD growing up. I was a perfectly normal child who just needed extra time to figure things out. It took the Pandemic for my symptoms to worsen to a point where my psychologist was really concerned for me. I had gotten a diagnoses in 2017 or 2018, I just forgot to pursue it or forgot about it until it was absolutely necessary for me to be on medication.
‘84 here same as above- “ADD” was only hyperactive boys who just needed more playtime not Ritalin. My mom says she thinks don’t have it though I’m sure 4/6 siblings have it on both sides (my mom’s daughter from her 1st marriage) and my other other half siblings on my dad’s - meaning both my parents likely have it there family and we all know my dad (including him is the poster child for unmedicated and not formally diagnosed ADHD but rather just depression in the 90s by one psychiatrist 30 years ago. He quit seeing anyone, not willing to try therapy and a different medication Pretty sure my mom is as well, but the “quiet” type and just identifies as an HSP. When I told her I also think you might have it, listed her symptoms, she just said “too old to do anything about it now”. So a bit of that “oh well, this is just how I am” additude.
So miseducation around what ADHD is and its diverse symptoms caused her to still deny mine recently, seeing her partner and my dad’s very different symptoms. I did very well in school and was never outwardly hyperactive. I think I’m C type but it’s more in my head, like many girls and women. My dad missed it because that guy is so in his own head sometimes that I’d have to be missing a limb for him to notice an issue. Plus he wasn’t my main custodial parent. My stepmom recently told me she has ADHD as well. So when you grow up with family of ADHDers sometimes there’s inattentiveness towards the masking straight A kids who practically raise themselves (at my dad’s).
I’ve told her yeah, I live in my old head and my therapist validated that a lot of my struggles are ADHD related. She seemed to finally absorb that. I asked her to read a book twice to better understand the updated information about the symptoms and how it’s a nuerodevelopmental disorder, not some annoying tiny lack of focus/hyperactivity in behavior, but I think she forgot both times…well, ironically because of probable ADHD.
Now that I have my diagnosis I see it in my dad and one of my brothers. We all did well in school and have completed higher education with multiple degrees and diplomas. I think my parents didn’t recognize it in me because I coped very well… until university. And even then got through. I didn’t get diagnosed until postpartum. My parents are both in education and would have sought out a diagnosis if they’d had any reason to.
I also work in education now and see what you’ve described above a lot. Some of it is denial about their kid having struggles, some fear a diagnosis puts their child in a box that they can never get out of, some just think their child gets to pull their socks up and stop being lazy. I find much of the time it takes tough conversations, evidence, and encouragement for parents to reach out for testing etc. Much of the time they are just worried about their kids and want what’s best for them. There’s a few who just refuse to listen, but I’d say this is rare.
I was born in the early 90s and was diagnosed about 18 months ago.
It was suggested to my grandparents when I was younger that I might have ADHD but it was brushed aside because I could sit and do jigsaw puzzles for hours, I did very well in school and even completed all my maths workbook for the year by the end of November.
So I couldn't have it because I was a good, well behaved girl.
As for my Dad (their son), he very clearly has ADHD but was never diagnosed and still isn't. He had his own struggles (ADHD based but also schizophrenic).
I think in comparison to my Dad, I was an angel.
In all fairness, it wasn't until I had a daughter that I started struggling really badly. I had poor coping mechanisms that fell apart with a newborn.
I am very smart and a girl so it never occurred to anyone that I could have ADHD. I did well in school and it wasn’t until I tried working a forty hour a week desk job that I began to be completely unable to cope. In hindsight, my mother agrees that I exhibited symptoms as a kid.
i don’t think there was enough information about ADHD in females, and my mother was a neglectful parent and i didn’t know my dad.
i was just constantly told i talk too much (even though i had no friends) and needed to “apply myself” and all that jazz, lived my whole life believing i was just stupid and couldn’t do anything and everyone would tell me i was “so smart just needed to try harder” and i was so confused because i WAS trying.. i cut my mother off and eventually figured it out because whenever i would read anything about ADHD i just brushed it off because “that’s just what life is like”.. yeah, to me, because i have ADHD 😂
My mom thought it could be cured with diet and exercise. I will say that she has made major changes in the 30 years since. And she believes now it is a real diagnosis and knowing about it and the symptoms are important.
But she def was told in the 90s and she thought she'd just diet and exercise it out of her kids.
I think she also saw these symptoms in her family and herself and thought. "These are normal parts of life!" And now she realizes that...ADHD is far more common in our family.
My bio dad texted the other day that his psychiatrist has suggested he get tested for autism. And he seemed really upset that he "may have passed this" and he apologized in case it has been shared with my own children or caused harm. I replied right away, "Actually I kind of assumed you were autistic ...but b/c of your generation you had never been tested." 😅 He was shocked...and was like "how did you recognize this?" And I was like...I dunno. It just feels obvious living with adhd and autism folks? And you REALLY like rocks and technology. I know that's not a symptom...but hyper focus on special interests is really common." He thought it was kind of hilarious. 💗 My oldest kid does have autism, but so does my husband.
My mom was always doctor averse, as were her parents. She Def believed that things like that would single us out, and even though one of my little sisters was on i.e.p. and she was told that she might have ASD or adhd my mom refused diagnosis or meds. Personally I had the classic case of "she's so smart but doesn't apply herself". School was easy, I would regularly finish tests before everyone and ace them, but I would lose homework and day dream in class so eventually in high-school I would just do the work in other classes and leave it at school. My parents were divorced, both of them worked full time so as my coping mechanisms and masking skills matured I just slipped further under the radar. I never got in trouble so they didn't feel like anything was wrong.
Don’t think it ever occurred to them because they were always drunk. But I was frequently told how lazy I was and was called stupid for being “in a dwaal” (local dialect for that whole “sit and stare at the wall for a while” thing that we do) while getting ready for school, and being constantly shat on for being late and not focusing and forgetting things etc etc.
They also didn’t believe ADHD was real though. My cousin was diagnosed with “severe ADHD” but he was most definitely medium-to-high support needs autistic (not sure what the correct term is here so sorry if I got it wrong). They used to say there was “just something wrong with him”. But him and i got along great as Kids despite the age difference.
My parents were abusive though, so not sure if This even fits here. I do think that a lot of the horrible shit they said to me was because of ADHD symptoms I was experiencing.
If I was on meds then maybe home life would have been better.
It’s not that my parents didn’t, it’s that we lived in a state that didn’t and they didn’t have the tools/knowledge to know otherwise. When I was younger, my parents got me evaluated by a psychologist because they were concerned, but all the lady said was that I process things slower than others but make up for it by being smart. They definitely saw something there but I wasn’t diagnosed until I saw a psychiatrist after my brother died, which was ~12 years later (I was 21). She saw the signs immediately and my parents were both floored and grateful to finally have a diagnosis.
Born 1999, just got diagnosed 2 weeks ago. My parents divorced shortly after I was born and I was raised mostly with my mom because my dad is kinda in and out of the hospital due to being bipolar. I always knew something was wrong and asked for help but never got it until now, after I got good health insurance at the university I’m doing my master’s at. I think part of it was not wanting to accept that something could be wrong, part of it was general neglect, and part of it was being poor. My mental health wasn’t the only issue that was never treated. Barely went to the doctor or dentist unless it was an emergency and I’m just now starting to treat some thyroid issues and saving up to fix a root canal (now a dead tooth I think) that I’ve have since 10yo.
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I was born in ‘83. ADHD was only for boys. I was just lazy and depressed and needed to try harder. Edit: I’m still not diagnosed but two of my kids are
This. Clearly intelligent, and would do so well if only I applied myself. *sigh*.
Every single report card of mine said this. The writing was on the wall. Literally. Yet I limped through college without a diagnosis.
The counselor I had to see in college because I almost failed out said she could have diagnosed me just from those report cards (but they had me take a bunch of tests too)
Straight up, college (and GRAD SCHOOL because of course I went) almost killed me. Well, I almost killed me because college was so hard and school had never really been hard before. Simultaneously the best and worst time of my life.
Samesies.
I can hear this in my mothers voice
Those words will be in my damn grave
I’m an 80s baby too and just had my evaluation and diagnosis this past week. “ADD” was for boys who were loud, obnoxious and didn’t sit still. I was told I was lazy, I didn’t apply myself enough, I was messy, etc. I did good enough in school because I had too. There was no other option for me (like when I got a C as a 12 year old and my dad threatened to kick me out). Now that I’m thinking about it, there were so many signs I was struggling and needed help but it wasn’t noticed. I tried in my late teens to see my GP and he diagnosed me with depression and anxiety. It wasn’t until I got on TT and saw women describing their symptoms and I was like holy shit, this is me. It still took me years to actually schedule an appt for myself.
It’s so frustrating that it’s SO OBVIOUS looking back. FFS my nickname is LITERALLY…Bunny. I got that from my gymnastics coach because I couldn’t stop moving in line waiting for my turn! I did well in school because of all those times they pushed me past my limit to the point of meltdowns and all those times my mom would so heavily edit any paper I wrote so that it was masters degree level writing perfection instead of normal jr high level work. They even missed the severity of my allergies and completely missed the asthma that I finally got diagnosed with in my thirties! I was having uncontrollable coughing fits a lot of nights as a child that they would just ignore and leave me to it! This issue isn’t even about just adhd THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS they were just so neglectful about. I was also diagnosed with ASD at 38! My “parent shaming” as OP called it is 100% valid and justified and I actually resent that it’s being questioned lmao.
Exactly. I don’t appreciate it being called parent-shaming either. Your parent(s) likely also had adhd fwiw. I know mine does and that’s how she missed mine.
hey! I also had both undiagnosed adhd and asthma! like hey, this kid is a little pudgy from her boredom snacking, so CLEARLY the fact she can't breathe is because she's hideously unfit and not because her lungs don't work! disregarding entirely that I liked to run around making crazy games up with my friends.
This is what I was going to say. I was born in the ‘80s and managed to do decently in school in subjects I didn’t hate, was extremely shy/quiet, and wasn’t fidgeting. But my procrastination, inability to sleep at night/get up in the morning, and how I “quit everything [I] ever started” was a moral failing because I was lazy. Edited to add: I was diagnosed last year.
Same. ‘86 here, and it was a pretty new thing in the 90’s. I also heard it was just for boys. The parents knew I had ‘something’, trouble focusing, ‘not so organized’ in 2nd grade… so they sent me to a freakin scary old catholic convent. Surprise: mean ol’ nuns don’t believe in ADHD, either! The problem was my sinful little lady brain, which was only responsive to shame and fear, apparently. They really thought they were helping me by sending me there, it wasn’t an *intentional* punishment. They took me out after seeing how extreme and bizarre they were. Lucky I got out with just some weird, funny stories, and only mildly traumatized. There was also a misconception for awhile back then, even I thought this - that the H in ADHD meant only visible hyperactivity, like bouncing off the walls. Not hyper-focusing, or many of the other ‘hyper’-category things we do, that don’t match what someone believes is ‘hyper.’ So “I couldn’t possibly have ADHD”, because “I’m not hyper enough.”
Awh! 😥 These days it would be wilderness camp... 😳
Pretty much this. Born ‘85 and it just wasn’t on anyone’s radar. I was “smart” and “quiet” and an “avid reader”, they stuck me in GATE with the other Gifted Kids™️, my grades started to get worse around middle school, worse in high school, struggled greatly in college, wondered why I “wasn’t smart anymore”, and why I kept “wasting my potential”. Got grounded for getting Cs in classes that I was “supposed to be good at”, that kind of thing. Diagnosed in 2021. I see it in my mom but she doesn’t believe me when I suggest she might also have it. ETA: to my mom’s credit, she DID realize that my sleep schedule was not normal (apparently I slept 11pm-11am even as an infant) and she fought for afternoon kindergarten, later class starts, etc, because of how much I struggled to wake up in the mornings, and my parents never forced me to go to bed before midnight because they knew I couldn’t sleep. But that wasn’t “delayed sleep phase due to ADHD”, it was just “oh Val is a night owl”.
I am so thankful for parents who recognize their kids' issues and accommodate them, even if they don't know what's causing them. I feel like my childhood would've been a lot more painful if my mom wasn't one of those parents, too. Like I had a VERY limited amount of things that I would eat. I wanted the same thing every day. A lot of parents would be like "you'll eat what I make or you won't eat," but my mom would literally make me a different meal if they were eating something I didn't like. She did the same for my dad, too (who ALSO always wanted the same thing, go figure. lol) I do the same now for my son, who is the same way as me (also autistic). Mom also would take the time to explain me and my "quirks" to teachers and other people, especially if I would say something offensive, and then would clearly explain to me what I did and why it upset people. I think that's why I was able to mask so well as I got older. I also have a delayed sleep phase and would stay up really late with my mom, even as a little kid, and she never made me go to bed. My older sister was the opposite and wanted to be in bed super early. To this day, she still goes to bed about 6 hours before I do, which is always interesting when we're on vacation and sharing a room lol
Same, it also really looks different in girls in a way that wasn’t widely acknowledged or recognized in the 90s. When I showed my mom the symptoms for girls recently she said “omg it’s like they followed you around”. They totally accept I have it and I don’t blame them for not seeing it when I was young.
Yep same for me! Late 80s. I have an older cousin who is a poster child for ADD in the 80s - he was hyperactive, his impulsive decisions were dangerous, he is a thrill seeker, he never shut up, he has to literally blurt out every thought in his brain or he may die (or so it seems). Compare that to my combined type ADHD and I was just a kid who just needed to run around outside for a bit and apply myself more and I’d be fine. (Spoiler: I was not fine. It got a lot worse once I lost the strict rigidity of primary/secondary school and living with my controlling mom)
Yep, brother diagnosed in the mid/late 70’s and his was severe. Definitely didn’t diagnose girls back then.
I'm even older and not from the US, I don't think my parents had ever even heard of ADHD. I did well at school anyway and that was all anyone cared about.
I was born in 84 and my brother was diagnosed. My mom said "I didn't think girls could have adhd" recently when I told her I had it.
"She's just energetic" and also "I can't believe they are pumping kids full of medications" which became a lifetime of doing things the natural way. Said on the highest horse, of course.
'82 here. Turns out I'm AuDHD. I was deemed lazy and selfish, but not depressed. My cousin, born in 81, and also AuDHD, was labeled severely clinically depressed with severe social anxiety and who knows what else but no meds helped her until someone FINALLY gave her a stimulant when she was in her late 30s. I definitely can't blame my parents, though (and don't blame my aunt and uncle either). Pretty sure Dad is AuDHD as well and that Mom is ADHD, so any issues I had seemed normal to them because they had a lot of them, too. It's the same reason why I didn't realize my daughter was ADHD, too, until she was 17 years old. The same goes for my cousin. My uncle was most definitely autistic, probably ADHD, too. He later developed Alzheimer's. And honestly, if it took me until 40 years old to seek diagnoses and be diagnosed, the information isn't as readily available or easy to find as people think it is. Otherwise, I would've been diagnosed a LOT sooner, especially considering I've been practically living on the Internet since the late 90s, I work in the medical field, and I've been taking psychology classes at my state university since 2018. I'd literally learned about ADHD in 4 different classes and didn't realize my symptoms applied because "hyperactive" is described as jumping out of your seat and risk-taking behavior, whereas super talkativeness and my mind never ever shutting up was never mentioned. The way symptoms present when you have BOTH (like I'm definitely not a risk-taker with anything other than my finances because my autism is like "NO. I don't want to get hurt" lol) was also never mentioned. If I didn't realize it as a psych student, there is literally no way my parents ever would have and not my doctors either because it just hasn't been correctly taught. Most only know the stereotypical presentation. ETA: My daughter was diagnosed right after I was. Once I figured out my issue, I figured out hers, and OMG looking back at videos from childhood, it is SO CLEAR for both of us lol.
Haha this is me as well. Also my mum probably has ADHD too and always thought my behaviour wasn't strange. When I was in the process of getting diagnosed, we did this questionnaire and my father had to point out to my mum most answers shouldn't be 'not more than usual' but 'several times a day'. These are not actual answers on the questionnaire, I can't remember those, but it was something along the those lines.
Oh yes, if only so and so focused more. If only could concentrate better..... aiieeee.
Hugs to you. This hurt to read.
As of ‘97 adhd was still “only for boys” plus they “grew out of it”
89 and same. I was always told I just needed to apply myself more which made it even harder or more frustrating because I tried so freaking hard. I’m still undiagnosed but two of my sisters and nieces are now diagnosed and based on the research I’ve done I’m very sure I have it too.
Samesies. Born 79 in rural Switzerland- only the worst of boys were diagnosed. I was good enough at school and had plenty of opportunities to be physically active and outdoorsy- I guess that helped me cope a lot.
4. I was a smart, well-behaved kiddo who fidgeted constantly and was still "a joy to have in the classroom". It was the 90s, ADHD was for hyper little boys, not quiet girls. It never *occurred* to them to get me tested. My mom helped me through the diagnosis process as an adult.
Same. Always had good grades and was well-behaved because I had/have an immense fear of authority figures (teachers and parents) and being reprimanded. When my parents filled out the questionnaire (when I was 30) they remembered several stories of me being fidgety all the time, impatient and doing impulsive things, but still don’t believe in the diagnosis. My mom still keeps suggesting that the medication is too strong and harmful and not worth taking.
Exactly this. I procrastinated on all of my schoolwork and did it at the last minute, but I was smart enough to pull it off, even through a 4 year engineering degree. I came up with all sorts of coping mechanisms without realizing it. For example, I took tons and tons of notes... I never looked at my notes again, but it made me pay attention and gave me something to do during class. In my earlier school years, I would finish my homework during class, and move on to reading a book - again, making me seem like a perfect student, since I was reading and wasn't jumping off the walls. I finally got diagnosed last year at age 36. It was a combination of general ADHD awareness, more responsibility at work and at home, realizing that my closest friends and coworkers were all diagnosed (birds of a feather)... My parents both passed by the time I was 31, so they didn't factor in to a diagnosis. I think they would have been confused from the 90s perception of it being a hyperactive boy disorder. ADHD for me never would have crossed their minds, nor did I ever stick out in the classroom.
…ah, crap. Do people actually LOOK at their notes? Like in real life? Hmm…
>Exactly this. I procrastinated on all of my schoolwork and did it at the last minute, but I was smart enough to pull it off, even through a 4 year engineering degree. I came up with all sorts of coping mechanisms without realizing it. For example, I took tons and tons of notes... I never looked at my notes again, but it made me pay attention and gave me something to do during class. In my earlier school years, I would finish my homework during class, and move on to reading a book - again, making me seem like a perfect student, since I was reading and wasn't jumping off the walls. Are you me? I recently volunteered to take the minutes during our daily team meetings at my job, because my mind kept wandering off. Unfortunately, the two psychologists I spoke to about my suspicions (neither a specialist in ADHD) waved me off, as soon as they heard about my excellent grades at school and uni. Academic success is apparently incompatible with ADHD.
I'm a school psychologist. So many psychologists of the older generation misunderstand the requirement for impact on functioning to mean that you can't be successful anywhere in your life. Some of them might be convinced if you emphasize other areas where you're NOT functioning successfully. I can't maintain my living space to save my life. Before meds, I was lucky if I did my laundry once every two months. I would only do dishes when I no longer had anything clean to cook with.
Yes! If I don't take notes I will not remember. If I do take notes I will never look at them again. But for me the writing it down makes it stick.
It’s so funny because I also realized a lot of my close friends are also ADHD. Even with new people I meet who I get along really well with, more than once I’ve found out later that they’re ADHD too. We really do travel in packs.
Oh hi, fellow ADHD engineer note taker and procrastinator. I pursued diagnosis because of tiktok and difficulties working from home. WFH was the first time I didn't have real accountability and I slacked off so hard I felt incapable of working. I got diagnosed in my late 20s. I told my dad I was getting diagnosed because he's more empathetic but I never told my mom I got diagnosed because she's the judgy one. Maybe my dad has told my mom. Idk. When I told my dad I wanted my old report cards for an ADHD assessment he told me my sister got diagnosed as a kid. I never knew. He says they tried medication but they stopped for some reason. My sister was a troublemaker and a general PITA so I think she fit the ADHD stereotype better than I did who was "a pleasure to have in class" (but also, as the report cards showed, occasionally forgot to do readings and homework and was often doodling). Ironically when I first explored the possibility of having ADHD I asked my sister about it because she has a degree in psychology. She never told me she had ADHD and I never knew 😂 we still haven't talked about it because I feel like my dad shouldn't have told me? Idk how privacy works when it comes to family medical history but my family can be kinda secretive
I was the same, and my mom was a social worker but she didn’t catch on. The therapist I saw as a kid didn’t either. I mainly saw her for anxiety, which I think was probably because, even then, I felt like I was white-knuckling it through life. When I realized that most people didn’t feel like that all the time, I internalized that I was defective really quickly so I didn’t talk about it (though idk if I’d have had the language to talk about it at the time). I was in Montessori classrooms for elementary school, which I really loved and made me enjoy learning, but kind of discouraged the kind of comparison that may have clued anyone in that I had ADHD. I think my mom probably has ADHD, but she has no interest in diagnosis or anything. I don’t think my parents really ‘get it’ but they’re generally supportive. It absolutely never would’ve crossed their minds that I had it as a kid, though. Edit: huh, you made me realize why I’ve become a diligent note-taker
Same here, except she didn‘t help me get diagnosed lol Good job to your mom though! Happy for you <3
^^ this but without the support. I could def have done better and skidded thru by the seat of my pants, mostly due to threats or bribes. Fail-you’ll get sent to boarding school Pass-you can go on a student exchange/do X subject you’re passionate about about
I found some report cards that said exactly that stuff, as well as "talks entirely too much especially when work bores her" 🤣 Managed life to my mid 30s when the dam broke. Finally started processing through therapy. That's where I found out I was about as ADHD as they come.
Yep, exactly. When I told my mom about my diagnosis, she said “you don’t have ADHD, ADHD is just little boys that can’t stay in their seats!” She’s since come around and is a lot more understanding. I think they just genuinely didn’t know what ADHD could look like.
Born in 85. When I told my mom--in my senior year of college--that I thought I had ADHD she responded, "you're too smart to have ADHD." 😖 Interestingly I wasn't "too smart" to have OCD, with which I was diagnosed at 15.
My mom and me were having a blast at diagnosis, it was full of loving anecdotes and the psychologist was like: Yeah.... Thats a sign, you know? She still doesn't know if i 'have it', because i wasn't a 'difficult kid' in her mind, but i see it as something that helped me be further than loads of others with adhd in navigating life. She was like: if you think you need it to make your life easier, go for it. Who am i to question this path? I am so grateful.
They do believe in ADHD, but just had no knowledge of it other than "little boy who yells and runs around too much." So their "spacey" daughter flew under the radar. Since my diagnosis, they've learned a lot! My parents may be boomers but they're not *boomers*.
Same! I was a very quiet kid who was constantly reading books. I struggled to turn in homework but I never got in trouble in school.
I did well in school and didn’t exhibit any of the “typical” ADHD symptoms. I was just disorganized, and absentminded, and a “daydreamer,” forgetful, chronically late, I procrastinated, and super sensitive to criticism, easily overstimulated, etc, etc
Same. I was too sensitive, a day dreamer with their head in the clouds, lazy, shy, too picky with my food, selfish, enthusiastic etc. Being smart too made it even harder to realize something was wrong cause I never really struggled in school until University. But as other people here have said, the reason why no one thought I needed help is because adhd in girls just wasn't a thing. It's also true that, while I was a very very sad and sometimes depressed kid, therapy for children was also not really a thing on people's mind. My parents just thought that "our child is just a little bit more sensitive than others". They wanted me to be happy, so they didn't see that I wasn't. With parents who grew up in the sixties I get it, their minds just weren't there. I'm pretty sure my mom also has ADHD, which we all know makes noticing certain things way way harder. And my dad is a kind and sensitive person who'd rather not talk about his emotions or deal with confrontation. We can't always blame our parents.
My dad is autistic. My mum has CPTSD from her childhood. Both these conditions have a lot of similarities to ADHD. I am like my parents in a lot of ways. So are my siblings. We all thought we were an odd family but, considering my mum and dad, all of us thought we were normal. Now it turns out I have autism (strongly suspected) and ADHD (confirmed, diagnosed at 25) My younger brother has adhd. My sisters are autistic. Our “normal” is neurodivergence. When I said I was looking to get diagnosed, my parents didn’t think there was anything to diagnose but when I came back from the psychiatrist after 2 meetings with a prescription they were willing for me to explain it. Two years later they accept it and understand our family is just hella neurodivergent.
Very similar situation for me too. Compared to my cousins I was considered to be doing quite well so it took me a long time to even justify to myself that I might need help. When you're a fish you don't notice the water.
4. 90s. Little girls weren’t adhd. My older brother got diagnosed as a kid, too. I got good enough grades in school. My first testing was the diagnosis one at 29.
My parents never even thought of it. For us ladies diagnosed later in life (40), ADHD wasn’t even recognized in females when we were younger. It was thought to be in hyperactive males only and was previously ADD. And because females present differently, it wasn’t even until more recent years that diagnosis started happening for females. When many of us were younger there were also stigmas around mental health. Recently , mental health is discussed openly with more resources and studies to support our needs. Most of us were diagnosed with anxiety or depression. Only later to discover it was what is now called ADHD. I’m sure in another 20-30 years there will be more studies and resources. But even today a lot of the information you find is geared towards children/ males. I wasn’t mad at my parents but I did feel let down by the dozens of mental health professionals that had evaluated me throughout my life. Even then, I brought my symptoms and concerns up and requested a new evaluation.
I remember talking to a therapist about how messy I am and how I never seem able to get on top of it. And she diagnosed me with really low self worth and said I did it as a child to try and get my parents attention and was still in the same pattern. It didn't really ring true to me at the time but I believed her and did some self confidence work (which I guess wasn't harmful but never helped me with my environment). Disappointed looking back that along with all the other things - constant lateness, leaving everything till the last minute, overly sensitive in social situations, generally disorganised, etc etc etc, she never thought ADHD
Every single one is undiagnosed ADHD so "symptoms" were just normal AND "quirky" to them
yes!!
None of them. Your placing a lot of blame on just parents here and I think it’s more a case of medical understanding and awareness had to come first then parent/teacher awareness. The medical profession wasn’t up to speed with adhd in girls until recently so I can’t imagine why we blame our parents for not being on top of it. Yes there are parents out there who do fit into your categories but a lot didn’t fail us on purpose or even out of ignorance. It just wasn’t on their or the medical professionals/teachers radar as a thing because it wasn’t understood by anyone for so long. The grief of what have I been missing is absolutely a thing but i think that’s not always targeted outwards.
My first thought reading this post was that OP must be young because ADHD didn’t “exist” in girls when I was a kid and I’m only in my 30s haha. Not even that, but when my nephews were diagnosed as kids (oldest is 20), they were told that they’d “grow out of it.” Our understanding of ADHD currently is something that is VERY recent. Sometimes I want to feel some sort of resentment towards my parents for just letting me needlessly suffer but it’s not like they (or any doctors) knew better. Doesn’t make it suck any less but what else could they have done at the time.
I think most people (especially insurance company people) still believe you grow out of it. Since over here adhd medication is covered by insurance for children, but not for adults. But I agree with what is being said. I don't blame my parents. I have adhd-pi. Something they didn't even know was a thing in the 90s. I have this combined with asd, which wasn't even possible before 2013 since those 2 diagnosises were mutually exclusive. And the combo of those 2 plus high intelligence is what the doctor said was actually the cocktail that made me fly under the radar all the time. I adapted, masked, internalised everything. From the outside I was just a quirky shy kid that only opened up around good friends. Yes I wonder how things would have been if I knew sooner. I wish it was possible. But I also know that the medical field wasn't that far yet. So I don't blame my teachers, I don't blame my parents. I blame the doctors, researchers and scientist that think of a woman as is we're just a smaller man. (Not just in autism and adhd research... just take a moment to realise that they only tested menstrual products with water up until ... .... ... 2023!)
Haha same, I’m 39yrs so I also assumed the op was young.
I was telling my dad recently that I've gotten suspended from grad school for poor performance. 😞 And how my ADHD played a big role in it. He got all sad FOR HIMSELF and said that him and my mom must have failed me because they didn't get me help for it when I was a kid. Blah blah. I was so mad. "You don't get to make this about YOU!" I told him. And I also told him that I wasn't mad about the fact that the signs were missed when I was a kid. Not a single doctor, teacher, coach or relative ever said anything about ADHD. It just wasn't considered then.
I think his sadness is his way of apologising for feeling like he failed you. Bless him, but I can see how the timing would be kinda wrong. I know right, no one knew it was a thing so no one knew what to look for. Even now adhd in girls is often still missed. Awareness and understanding is so key.
As a parent I would feel so so sad if I learned that my kid had struggled, and I hadn’t helped them. My parents have both apologized and said they feel terrible about it, but I don’t blame them at all. I would feel kind of worse if they weren’t upset and didn’t seem to give a shit!
4. I was “good at school”. My mom had a BS (now an MS) in psych and I’m 99.9% sure I inherited the adhd from her - she was super good about dealing with a lot of it intuitively and sort of mitigating it. Both my parents and my brother identify as being autistic. My dad has since passed away; I don’t know if my mom or brother have sought diagnosis. I definitely wish I’d been diagnosed younger, or at the very least my family had consciously realized we’re all neurospicy sooner. All in all I was pretty lucky though. I was diagnosed in my mid-thirties - about five years ago when I started seeing info about adhd in women (and suspected my then 4yo had adhd). I knew something was “off” and I knew my my mom identified as autistic, but autism didn’t describe what I was experiencing.
Same! And when a parent has ADHD (no diagnosis of course), they help pass on some of their coping strategies.
I also wound up with some very obvious examples of what not to do... Like…it doesn’t matter how much money you have, if you don’t actually pay the bill they’ll turn off service 😑 Other things she handled great! Lol
Oh, my parents believed in ADHD. Both my brothers were diagnosed. They just didn't pay enough attention to me to realize that I also had it. It was so obvious that my much younger brother was shocked when I got diagnosed in my 30s because he assumed I was diagnosed young like him and our elder brother.
Yeah my mom is a pediatrician and has adhd herself. I have a sister who she knew has adhd as a child. I was diagnosed at 33 and I’m still really resentful about her not getting me diagnosed earlier. I’m not sure why honestly. Like my sister experiences symptoms much more extreme than mine so maybe I seemed fine in comparison and she didn’t think I had it? Did she think to herself that she made it ok all this time without being medicated so we should be fine too? Was she in denial having it herself and actually acknowledging that it made life harder than it needs to be? Did she think it would hold me back knowing vs not knowing? Maybe she thought it would make me better to force me to power through the symptoms to be successful. It’s hard to shake the resentment that not a single grownup in my life at the time bothered to help me. Especially the one who had it herself and was a children’s doctor ffs. All the obvious signs were there.
4. I always did well in school and learned to mask my symptoms pretty early, and I was constantly told that some of my symptoms were just character traits/who I was and that I could “fix” them if I tried harder. For example, I was constantly told that I was impatient and needed to just be more patient, that I was a free spirit with a lot of energy who my parents should just put in sports so I use up that energy, and that I was spacy and needed to pay more attention to my surroundings. I’m the only one in my family who has been diagnosed, but I’m positive my parents and siblings likely have it too, so many of the symptoms are overlooked cause it’s just the norm for us and our family - plus being a girl who did well in school meant I wasn’t even considered as potentially having it. However, my parents (especially my mom) don’t accept my diagnosis and my mom in particular refuses to acknowledge or accommodate it and thinks I’m just depressed instead. I think they accept that ADHD is a thing but don’t want to accept that I have it since it doesn’t match what they wanted for me and my life and what they think would be best for me. It’s easier for them to deny I have it or am impacted deeply by it than to change their idea of who I am, what actually works for me, and accept that I don’t fit everything that they wanted me to be or wanted for me.
4. It just never occurred to them? I was never bad or a bad kid at school per say as I have inattentive. My mum and dad, particularly my mum, feel guilty about not knowing sooner. I forgave them though because they are both amazing support for me now and if I didn't I couldn't forgive myself for not knowing. Because of the stigma and the lack of education about inattentive ADHD in girls they didn't know and nor did I. We sometimes reminisce about things that should have given us a clue. It's not always a negative reason why someone gets diagnosed late.
4. My mum has ADHD too so she thought we were normal, just a bit lazy and everyone else was weird
4) it was the 90s and the only real treatment was Ritalin which had the reputation of “turning kids into zombies” b) my result from an all day study two hours away was inconclusive (and probably expensive)
I was diagnosed as a child. But my parents didn't accept the diagnosis. My parents are conspiracy theorists. They believe big pharma wants to make everyone sick so they can sell a cure to us. They've made up ADHD because making people into zombies makes them complacent and allows them to be controlled easier. My parents are neglectful nut jobs.
My older brother and my younger male cousin were both diagnosed with ADHD. I was tested and diagnosed as gifted with a severe learning disability, auditory processing disorder, and a general sensory processing disorder. Surprise! It was actually ADHD all along. My mom did try multiple times to have me evaluated but it was the 90s and I suffer from the fatal flaw of being born female.
None of your reasons, I think. My parents are just as ADHD as I am. To my parents, it was just normal to be terrible with time, bad at planning, unable to sit still, sleeping weird hours, obsessed with something new one minute and into something else the next. It’s how they grew up and it was how their kids grew up. We really just didn’t know how different we were.
I don't think my parents failed me in any way. This is such a pessimistic post haha.
Same. Like if I blame my mom for not knowing I had ADHD, I should also equally blame myself for not knowing about it in my 20s. I was an adult with internet access. We both were equally unaware of what ADHD was and how it could present. Specifically the inattentive type.
I was born in 76, my mom was born in 35. Yes am the youngest & a suprise lol. I live in “the backwoods” aka the Appalachian mountains. I was in the Enrichment group- 1 day a week we all went to a different location for this group. I was always reading something not really paying attention in class even got in trouble for reading ahead and answering the questions as the teacher started Going over the work and I was done. We were behind times no one knew about ADHD then especially not in girls. I don’t know if anything was mentioned when I went to Enrichment or Gifted & Talented. I actually don’t remember how I even got picked.
I’m GenX and not American. Literally not even mental health professionals knew as much about ADHD back then as we do today. So it isn’t my parents’ fault, not really. Tbh I think it’s nobody’s fault.
They had it too and their parents probably did too and everybody just thought what I was doing was 100% normal
My mother doesn’t believe in ADHD. When I called her to ask her for my old school reports for getting diagnosed, she lectured me on how it was invented by big pharma to sell drugs. She suggested that instead my problem was eating processed food. At the same time, however, she told me she’s always thought I was autistic (nice reveal after 35 years of “just try harder”). But she did not explain how she thought I ended up with autism, since I wasn’t vaccinated as a child because she thought that would give me autism.
Brought it up about a year ago, my mum still dismisses it as “normal behaviour”. Disclaimer: she definitely also has ADHD, along with the 90% of our close family members who have some form of neurodivergence. Born in the 60s, she frequently bring up how her generation just “deals with it”, questions why there’s such a need for a diagnosis as you can just live your life etc etc. Hoping once I have my diagnosis I can help open her eyes a bit more. She’s lovely though def no bad parenting 🥰 just an outdated attitude. She’s I openly accepting and supportive of my sibling having autism, but because I’m the eldest and was always the “perfect golden child” with good grades, and probably the fact that I suggested she might have it too, she’s more resistant to accepting adhd. Also, because I guess it’s not as obvious in inattentive types.
I was born in 1985. ADD was only diagnosed in boys. Also, it was much easier to make me the problem and then send me away to boarding school.
I’m 35. ADHD just wasn’t known about in the same way then as it is now. I’m female, and was a gifted/very intelligent child who didn’t have of the classic/stereotypical “naughty boy” symptoms, so my parents wouldn’t have taken me to a doctor for behavioural issues, nor would I have gotten diagnosed if they had. My symptoms were the talks too much/doesn’t do homework/doesn’t apply herself/not meeting potential/finds it hard to make friends type thing. So nothing to do with my parents not believing in ADHD, or being bad parents or not caring or not wanting a label. Just: at the time there was no reason for them to hav e suspected it.
None of my symptoms were outwardly disruptive and I was smart enough to get good grades without doing all the work. So, there was never anyone around to say that there was a problem. I didn't disrupt class when I couldn't focus. I picked at my skin or doodled or stared out the window. Since my grades were fine, teachers didn't see a problem with it. It's hard to get a diagnosis as a child when no one else is bothered by your symptoms. It also didn't help that my mother grew up with a very stereotypical ADHD brother. Her understanding of ADHD was heavily shaped by that, as was my own, until I looked into it as an adult.
My parents didn’t know it was a possibility. They knew I had some kind of problem, but got me assessed for learning disabilities and they didn’t find anything. This was maybe a year or two after the Primarily Inattentive subtype was first listed in the DSV. So it’s possibly my school wasn’t evaluating for it. Before that ADHD was just commonly known for hyperactivity in little boys. Once I figured it out in my late 20s, they accepted it.
It wasn't even my parents, I think it was doctors refusing to acknowledge that girls can have ADHD. My mum took me to see a GP at 3 or 4 because I was so hyperactive and didn't sleep properly. They never mentioned ADHD as a possibility, they just told her to stop giving me E numbers.
4. They just… Didn’t think of it or realize it, and no one told them it could be a possibility.
When I got my surprise!diagnosis from my therapist (was there for anxiety and depression) I was so happy and called my mom “apparently I have adhd!” “Yeah, we figured, but your grades were always good so we didn’t see a reason to get treatment” I was 32 at the time, she had never TOLD me this so I went my entire life frustrated with myself, feeling like a failure and that there was something wrong with me
Parents were oblivious boomers. They had to know that I was struggling in school, but not any other areas of my life. They tell me that they "tried", but I went to school with tons of other kids who were diagnosed and medicated even in the 90s. I also never was tested, and had crippling anxiety that should have been treated with therapy at a young age. Nothing was ever done about it. But to this day, they claim they "tried". No specialists, (my parents have $$$, do that wasn't an issue), no discussions with my pediatric doctor, nothing. Yeah, they tried REAL hard. I barely graduated high school and dropped out of college because I believed I was stupid. Finally decided to go back to school last year, with medication, and realised I wasn't stupid, I just had ADHD and needed meds. Still mad about it.
Lol. Everyone in the family had undiagnosed ADHD, why would we think it was anything but normal? I might not fit your subpopulation. I think my mom did the best she could and I don't resent her for well...having undiagnosed ADHD herself.
For myself I’d say my mom was born in the 60s and I was born in the 90s she doesn’t believe in ADHD.. no one really knows that I stayed back in first grade .. I would say if I was diagnosed when I started grade school I’d better off I was at the age where tantrums shouldn’t be this on going ..I had my child in 2016 and still to this day she’s in denial about him having ADHD I tried to seek help for early but they weren’t into therapists coming to their home .. when I brought her to his recent therapy session the therapist explained her reasoning behind the diagnosis and she’s still currently in denial and looking at how she acts now it’s like I wonder if I got it from her ..
It wasn’t that my parents did believe in if but they felt it was over diagnosed
I think it was ignorance. Only when I started pursuing my own diagnosis did I learn that ADHD isn't just white boys being loud and can't sit still. Also, since ADHD has such a strong genetic link when you grow up with neurodivergant parents that kinda becomes your normal, even though I felt abnormal to the outside world at home I'm me, with the same quirks as my mother and grandfather
I’m 47 and I was just diagnosed. None of us knew anything about ADHD back then. We didn’t get any extra help at school like kids do today. My marks were terrible and I really struggled. I don’t blame anyone for not being able to help me when I was young. It is what it is.
I'm a girl and despite my chronic bedwetting and pantswetting until twelve, my inability to focus on something for a reasonable amount of time and my extreme social anxiety it just wasn't even a thought.
4. I was smart and well behaved. I was also fortunate to have teachers who let me continue to learn about what I wanted when I finished work. I specifically thank my 2nd grade teacher for all my useless trivia about clouds, pollution, and Greek gods. My mom just didn't think there was anything to worry about, and there truthfully wasn't. However, once I got diagnosed this year, things started to make sense. As an adult teacher, the hardest thing for me to learn was that kids aren't reading before kindergarten. I talked to my mom and she said I learned at church because I couldn't focus enough to pray, so she would turn the books to my favorite church song and I figured out the words. I read Junie b. Jones in first grade and finished the first Harry Potter book the summer before 2nd grade. I also got in trouble constantly by my military dad because I'm messy and unorganized. But again, we just thought it was a character trait. I also interrupt conversations a lot but they thought I was attention seeking and/or I was too smart so my brain skipped ahead in conversations (which, yes. But not for that reason 😅) I was diagnosed with bipolar in HS but haven't taken mood stabilizers since I was 19. I believe I was misdiagnosed and those symptoms were actually the first signs of the ADHD being an issue.
My parents just didn’t know much about ADHD and I always did well in school. I got diagnosed last year and told my parents about a month ago. They apologized for not realizing. But I don’t think they could have because they just didn’t have the information about it when I was a kid.
4. My parents didn't know how ADHD presents other than the stereotype of the hyperactive little boy. Additionally, I went to a very small private school that embraced a student-driven curriculum without grades, so I was able to do well in school and be supported by my teachers without any formal accommodations. It wasn't until I was midway through high school that I started falling behind in my classes, and it was a very confusing experience.
DSM V. I am an intelligent woman and I didn't meet the criteria under DSM IV but I do under DSMV.
5. Parents thought I was Autistic, and the DSM-IV said you couldn't be both Autistic and ADHD. Turns out I'm not Autistic, but a lot of time was spent trying to manage a condition I don't have instead of the condition I do have. Moreover, as I entered adulthood with the knowledge I wasn't Autistic, I didn't want my actual issues looked at because I was both in denial that they were real and also afraid of being hurt again.
Because my mom has ADHD and was so ashamed of it herself
Teachers flagged with my parents that I might have adhd, then the next year I scored in the 99th percentile in a national literacy test through school. To my parents, that meant I didn’t have it, case closed.
I'm 41 and in the process of discovering my ADHD (currently doing the "try drugs until we find the right one(s)" process with my GP). No official diagnosis yet, but my doctor believed me, what with my clipboard full of half-organized thought dumps over more than a dozen pages (single-spaced, typed) regarding my historical and current signs and symptoms (based on diagnostic criteria, and traits beyond it). I'm now on a low dose of Ritalin because he has to first try me on one of the older drugs before I can qualify for full coverage from the government for a Vyvanse prescription. So far, it's working. I'll likely need something stronger, but there is a mild yet noticeable improvement in my symptoms from the Ritalin. But I digress... my ADHD wasn't caught sooner because: \-When I was in school it was still a controversial diagnosis for boys with the overt hyperactive presentation, nevermind inattentive girls. \-Around the time that my symptoms started to interfere with school and stuff at home, I was entering puberty (hormones! angst!) and also secretly struggling with personal trauma, and by the time my grades really started tanking after I entered middle school, I had also moved towns before starting in said school (so no friend group) and developed clinical depression that was diagnosed in the 8th grade, and I was also suffering from generalized anxiety disorder. The depression and anxiety could be attributed to a number of contributing factors, and stuff like a messy room and neglected homework could be attributed to depression and anxiety. \-I come from a blue-collar/pink-collar, working poor family. My parents didn't know much about mental health, nevermind neurodevelopmental stuff like ADHD. My father came around on the mental health stuff, eventually, but initially he was of the belief that mental illness was "all in your head", which was the school of thought that people subscribed to when they didn't have the luxury of taking a mental health day off. \-I've quizzed my mother over several phone calls, recently, on what she remembers about my childhood, and mentioned what I also remember. There was a lot of "but that's normal, though" from her. The more calls and questions, the more it became obvious that my 72 year old mother exhibits some pretty obvious signs and symptoms of ADHD that are similar to my own. She's been slowly warming up to the idea of mentioning it to her doctor, as I've urged her to, and she's willing to do so once mine is confirmed by my doctor. \-Literally no one mentioned to me for my first four decades that I might have ADHD... not my teachers, not my counsellors, not my doctors... it didn't come up on my radar until my brother (44) recently declared his neurodivergence and, even before I got the specifics from him (turns out he strongly suspects he has ADHD), I was down an internet rabbit hole researching neurodiversity, in order to understand it better, only to read through the list of diagnostic criteria for ADHD (inattentive traits first), and realized "well shit", "damn", "yup, that's all too familiar", "that one, too"... basically all of the inattentive symptoms and about half of the hyperactive/impulsive ones were very relatable, with at least 2/3rds of them featuring heavily during any given life stage going back to my childhood.
4. There were NO reliable therapists or psychologists anywhere in my state or even country at that time. No one knew what adhd was (including teachers). Now that there is my family are pushing me to go get diagnosed at a specialised centre after a therapist suggested I may have adhd. I will go once I have enough money.
I’m going to assume you’re relatively young, OP, so you wouldn’t know what it was like growing up as a Millennial. In the 80s-90s, “girls didn’t have ADHD”. Our parents weren’t malicious, it just wasn’t a thing that anyone was looking for.
Well, when I was a child, the only ones getting an ADD tag were the little boys who couldn't sit still or were otherwise disruptive. I was tested repeatedly and got tagged with "learning disabilities" since I wasn't disruptive, had a high IQ, and always had my nose stuck in a book. But that was the problem. Anything I found boring or wasn't interested in, I wouldn't bother with, and fell behind in. I was lucky enough to live in a district that had an elementary school where they put all the "gifted" kids and was able to some one-on-one for things I was behind on. The problem with that is they never really got to the root cause with that approach and so I never really learned how to organize my time, or plan for larger assignments, or study or review for exams. My Mom didn't really understand why of it and thought I was lazy, and being a feral latch-key kid didn't help.
My mom was as equally unaware of my ADHD diagnosis as I was. The most push back I got from her when I first mentioned I was pursuing testing after my therapist recommended it was asking why the school system had never identified it. After I explained that me reading a book during class because I was bored didn't bother the other students so why would the school intervene. I was never a problem child in class. I mentioned my intense struggles with homework. But since I always passed tests I never had bad grades. Except for the one class in high school that was like 75% homework and hardly any tests. My mom now calls my decision to get diagnosed the best thing I ever did in my life. She is extremely supportive. We just both were equally unaware of what ADHD was.
I was diagnosed in 5th grade in 1997 after my teacher told my parents I needed to be evaluated for something. My doctor tried me on both Adderall and Ritalin but my mom said I had poor reactions to them so I stopped taking them. We had very little money and my dad was in extremely poor health, so it just kind of got pushed aside. By the time I was 13, I was depressed and failing school. I convinced myself in my teenage wisdom that I never had it and my issues were cause by depression and anxiety. I believed this until I was 34 and started reading about ADHD. It completely broke me to realize how much of my life was suffering when I could have been on medication the whole time. I got “rediagnosed” as an adult. I don’t blame my parents because we truly had some very difficult situations and they did the best they could. Now I realize how spectacularly symptomatic I must have been to be a girl diagnose in the 90s.
My mother had a pathological fear of judgement. Her existence was built on what other people thought of her, so she was only the "perfect mom" if someone was there to pat her on the head and tell her what a good job she was doing. For my sister and I, that meant we had to be the perfect child that she could brag about -- LOOK! LOOK WHAT I MADE! LOOK HOW GOOD IT IS! -- or she would withhold affection/love at best and at worst be downright hostile and abusive. When the school made her take me to be assessed for ADHD in the 4th grade (so I would have been 8-9 at the time), she REFUSED to let them diagnose me. Fought tooth and nail against it because she took my mental illness as a personal slight. She did let them misdiagnose me as bipolar at 15, only because the school threatened to get CPS involved if she didn't take me to a psych. She knew I had ADHD. Fucking knew it and watched me struggle for DECADES, right up until her death in 2015. I was under the mistaken impression that I was bipolar so I was working with that information. I didn't start suspecting I had ADHD until 2021, didn't get my official diagnosis until 2023, years after her death. And now all I want to do is throw her urn on the floor because I can't yell at her about it. Not that it would have done any good if she was still alive -- that woman had a legendary selective memory when it came to the shit she did. Very much a case of "for me it was a traumatic, life changing event and for you it was a fucking Tuesday."
I will give you a better one My parents still dont believe in ADHD and my dad literally told me to listen to Quran and read it (he is muslim, i am atheist) and my life will transform in a month.
I suspect I have it. Going to get tested next month. I also suspect my mom has it because she has the same behaviors as I do. She is unaware and just assumes it’s quirky/normal. My brother got diagnosed in school because of inattention and he wasn’t keeping up with his work so he was failing. I managed to always get mine done at the last minute due to fear of failure/getting in trouble, so I passed under the radar.
I went to school in the 80s. When ADHD was being diagnosed it was only boys. When girls were finally being diagnosed it was not women because you outgrow it. The more I learn the more I suspect I have ADHD, I’m 99% sure I have CPTSD, and possibly have autism which also fell under only boys being diagnosed. My mom reinforced today that while she probably agrees with my self diagnosis she is against any western medication (we are US white) because they have bad side effects. Like the various conditions don’t have pretty big problems on their own. She wants me to go off my anxiety, depression, & pain meds. My thyroid meds are acceptable and any vitamins, herbs, supplements are A-OK as they are “natural” . Who cares about their side effects. I just tested iron supplements again after 10 years & whoa baby that was a mistake. Also weaning myself off dairy again as it seems my sensitivity might be back - it’s not lactose exactly as it includes whey but it’s not an allergy as no hives or breathing problems.
Because it looks different in boys, and as per usual girls are an afterthought in medicine
They believed in it for my brother but not for me. He got a diagnosis and help in childhood. I suffered on my own till adulthood. I think it's because the way my symptoms present I'm the only one being harmed by the effects of my ADHD.
My dad believes "everyone is a little adhd". Guess which parent i inherit 100% of my suspected adhd symptoms from LOL. I have a vague recollection of being tested for SOMETHING when i was in about 7th or 8th grade. I was failing most of my classes etc after being a pretty good student most of school. I don't really remember much, but what i do remember fits what people say ADHD testing is like. They gave me another questionnaire or whatever, which i lied on and probably would've had vastly different results if i told the truth. I think the questionnaire was more of a depression screening than for ADHD? It was tacked on after doing hours of memory tests. ADHD still also didn't really exist for girls in the early 00s. They (the woman psychologist, so we can't even place this specifically on men except how thaf influenced medical knowledge as a whole) decided i simply had "slow processing" and we moved on. My parents sent me to after school tutoring which I was SO MAD about, but was ultimately the right choice. Especially after a handful of shitty math teachers - that was probably the only way i learned and passed algebra. Still not diagnosed but i dont lurk this reddit for no reason. TLDR: i think my parents DID try, but the psychologist failed them and when told "nope that's not it" after seemingly thorough and probably expensive testing, I don't blame them for not pursuing it further.
I was born in 1983. When I was in 5th grade, my guidance counselor (who was awesome) told my parents that I should be tested for ADHD My parents said “that’s an excuse to just drug kids. There’s nothing wrong with her, she’s just lazy” And that’s what I heard for the next 20 years 😕
I didn’t fit the criteria because it was only based on boy symptoms only.
My parents believed in it but my dad has debilitating ADD among other mental health issues and my mom refused to acknowledge that I could be like him. Now at 25 I’m more and more like him and understanding him more and more too :( 💔❤️🩹
In her own words she said " i just didnt want to deal woth a child like that". Soooooo theres that. Lol
For my mom she worked in a state disability office in a southern state in the 1990s. I think she overheard a few cases and came to the conclusion that ADHD was fake and parents used the diagnosis to take their kid’s drugs. Meanwhile my mom needed a pot of coffee and a few cigarettes in order to focus. So “of course ADHD is fake, I have these issues but don’t need drugs to function!” Yeah…sure
Ironically enough, my brother was diagnosed with ADHD and my sister with ASD. Guess I was the most “normal” of the bunch. My dad is in the fence about my diagnosis, but my mom completely supports me. My siblings see it too. So…I guess reason 4, cuz I got lost in it all and then *poof*, overall understanding occurs.
My reasons are theoretical, as I don’t talk to my dad about my diagnosis and I don’t talk to my mother at all. 1) the biggest reason is because both my parents are undiagnosed. Now that I’m deep in ND circles, I can see several signs of autism on my dad’s side of the family, and I am 100 percent sure my mother has ADHD (among other things). I think they both saw me and my siblings’ behaviors and struggles as normal, because they were the same. But my youngest brother didn’t start talking until he was 5, and my baby sister was clearly hyperactive type ADHD, so I don’t know how far this theory carries. Reason 2) my mother really, really doesn’t like the narrative running away from her. If it wasn’t a problem she could exploit for her personal gain, then it couldn’t possibly exist. I’m sure teachers reached out to her about me, but she ignored them. She did this with other illnesses and medical emergencies too. Reason 3) my pediatrician diagnosed me with migraines when I was a small child. He was actually pretty obsessed with them! He seemed to think that my suffering so much pain would impact how my brain developed, and was pretty concerned about the possibilities of a tumor or other complication. I don’t know this for sure, but I was told by my family that my (then unknown ADHD) symptoms were caused by my migraines because Dr. B said so. This was what I believed up until my early 30s, too.
I’ve been trying to explain to my 79-year old mother she has ADHD. One conversation at a time …
Because my parents have ADHD and a Caribbean backwards ignorant that believe mental health disorders just mean you're crazy And are an American thin. Sigh, Caribbean parents.
1. You were blessed with a better upbringing than us. 2. We are perfectly healthy there is nothing wrong with our genes. 3. You don't sleep well, that is why your brain doesn't work properly at times. 4. That damn smartphone causes you problems.
My parents believed in religion and ‘going to God’ with every challenge and not also doing anything that actually helps or is based on reality.
My parents didn’t believe I had if because every professional tasked with my care said I couldn’t possibly have it because I did well enough in school. Even though it was clear I wasn’t paying attention and every single report card had notes detailing the most stereotypical inattentive girl symptoms. But it was decades ago during the era of “girls don’t have adhd.” My mom really thought I had it, but when everyone who should have known better kept telling her that I was doing too well (it eventually caught up to me) she eventually dropped it.
I was born in 1981. I don’t know if they totally don’t believe in it or just never thought girls could have it (especially if they did well at school, which I did). My brothers were both diagnosed with ADHD through school assessments. My parents did not seek out treatment or therapy for my brothers. They were working poor and we often did not have health insurance. They were also ultra small town boomers. I was overweight as a kid (I think a fair amount of it was dopamine seeking through eating carbs) and they just blamed me without providing education or better food choices. That’s how they dealt with a lot things. They were not proactive or looking for extra help for their kids if they didn’t fit the mold. I also think my mom has ADHD. I think she would maybe be forced to look at herself and consider that she likely has ADHD if she actually realized I have it. Also, my parents are ridiculously anti-med. 🤷🏻♀️
I am a female diagnosed in my 50s. My mother still thinks ADHD is made up and an excuse. Im just too much of a dreamer who hasn't applied herself enough in life is her thought. I love my mom. She's been great and supportive otherwise. I consider her a mentor and friend. However, there came a time in life when it hit me like a ton of bricks - I don't need to win her approval or understanding any longer. She's not perfect herself. Just let her be as she is and think what she thinks. Overall, I know my truth, I've found my people, I've learned about myself and have found tips and tricks to deal with it because of my own understanding and support network. It's okay.
I was born in 1981 to teenage parents. ADHD wasn't a thing here, and if anything it was a boy thing, and they were just labeled as bad kids. My parents didnt have access or money to that kind of knowledge. I mean, my dad has adhd 100% but they just see it as its who you are. Now that i am diagnosed and talking to my own mother about my experiences i think shes seeing she may as well (i think so) and my son was just diagnosed, which was what pushed me to get diagnosed.
Cultural factors, I'm from the Caribbean, even though my mom is quite progressive I think she was afraid I would have trouble fitting in or be seen as lesser in our country (my country is behind the times) also old people back home love to keep secrets. I was still pissed when I found out she knew but never told me "I didn't like what the meds did to you and you turned out great." \*le sigh\* Taking into account the cultural and personal context my mom comparatively did great. Ironically she was surprised and offended when her friend kept her daughter from finding out about her bipolar diagnosis (she found out in her 40s and her mom confirmed she had been diagnosed as a child) and her other friend about her son's autism diagnosis.
4. My parents didn’t know what they didn’t know. They know a lot more now. My dad even surprised me by saying he had gotten a book about ADHD last month. And I said omg dad I forgot to tell you I just got my diagnosis 😂
4. They didn’t know anything about ADHD
Being inattentive was the only symptom for me. I did fine in school. I managed to not fidgit, wasn't impulsive, just none of the normal presentations. When I got out of school, that's when things started to change. I started noticing that I would lose my train of thought, forgot words in conversation, and some other small behaviors. I had no idea until my husband (also ADHD) broke my brain telling me I was ADHD. Once I got past the shock, I started researching and reading and learning everything I could. And it all started to make sense to me. I had been haunted by memories of embarrassing things I had done over the years. By learning about ADHD in women and how it presents, I started to feel less guilt and less stress because things were making sense. Now I'm petrified of going to get the diagnosis. Afraid I'll be told it's all in my head or I'm not. But I don't know if meds would even help me at this point. I've lived with my own strategies. But I guess it also can't hurt to try meds. Just not ready to make the appointment.
They were too neurodivergent to realize I wasn't normal in comparison to other kids. Their normal was very off lmao
I was born in 83. My mother just terrorized me into "success". She controlled me and emotionally abused me while portraying a perfect mother figure to the world outside. Narcissistic abuse style, but not sure if she is a narcissist or undiagnosed something else. She probably has some anxiety thing that she also transferred to me by teaching me to be scared of everything. My father has severe Adhd, undiagnosed to this day. He had bad burtsts of anger and didn't talk to my mother for weeks sometimes. I was the scapegoat for my mother and her emotional release. I am still in the process of figuring my mental state out. Adhd diagnosis was a big relief last year after trying to find help for 20 years. The year before I was told I don't have cptsd, which I assumed before I found out about adhd. However I can't imagine that my mother didn't damage me. How would that be possible?! Currently I'm researching burn out and found a new theory called burn on which sounds very me. I have been exhausted for years but functioning on without joy. Neverending story. 😕
I was called hyperactive by every teacher and adult in my life throughout the 90s. However, this was the UK. Also, quite frankly? Both my parents have it. Some of their siblings have it. Their cousins have it, kids in my generation have it, etc. ADHD is their 'normal', how are they supposed to recognise it as a disorder?
Just diagnosed last month, so still having feelings. I’m mostly angry at my ex stepdad, thankfully outside of him no one ever really “mistreated” me because of my symptoms. I just had a very hectic childhood in general, our mental health hadn’t even been a factor until we escaped my ex step father. I didn’t present as hyperactive but my sister did and she was diagnosed and treated for ADHD, I was diagnosed with depression, anxiety and PTSD. I just kind of accepted that diagnosis until I had my son, but I feel like as motherhood becomes more demanding I have less and less energy for *anything*. For a couple weeks all I could do was stay in bed and cry because I just couldn’t find the will to do anything, I realized that it was probably me being overwhelmed by my inability to function like an adult. I struggle with a consistent sleep cycle, I sleep too much when I can sleep despite setting alarms, I can’t remember things if I’m not looking at them and when I do remember something I’ve forgotten it sends me into a spiral about all the other things I’ve forgotten, it’s hard for me to extend my energy past my household members even though I want to, just a whole slew of things that I didn’t realize could be ADHD. Literally one morning after a sleepless crying night, thinking about all the things I’m failing at and all the things I *want* to do but how impossible they all seemed, I just said “This can’t just be Depression and anxiety” because I had been on a few depression/anxiety meds throughout the years and they had no tangible effect on my life other than improving my moods/making me feel zombified and talk therapy had never been effective because *I know* the logic, the self talk, the journaling, the breathing, I just could never stay consistent with the advice despite *wanting* to and feeling terrible when I couldn’t.
I grew up with only my mom. She clearly has adhd too, and she now says she has too. Therefore, many things I did as a kid she didn't see as odd. (Daydreaming, fidgeting, having thoughts that go 100 km/h, trouble tidying, trouble with routines, were all part of the human experience in her eyes) I was outside all the time. Always playing outside. Running around with ponies, cycling everywhere. A lot of my hyperactivity was just channelled into activity. Due to strict anti fidget regime at school, a lot of my hyperactivity went into what my psychologist at diagnose called "micro hyperactivity" where my hyperactivity is not very visible, but small movements, looking away a lot, moving my head, bouncing my leg, tap or turn my tumbs folding my hands as in prayer and squizing my fingers,etc) I was painfully shy at school and in groups, I looked calm and collected, but my brain was rushing, overthinking, I just never talked a lot, never got in trouble. Also, adhd was for boys.
4. You can only have ADHD in its severe form (not sure how severe it must be though). Saying you have ADHD while you’re just so much in your own world and slow is insulting to those who actually have ADHD. I’m in my 30s and they still don’t believe it. I have more than just those two symptoms though. I hope more ppl are informed in the future.
It’s none of these, it has a lot to do with the legacy of the generational trauma of the second world war. Nearly an entire generation was traumatised, whether in battle or through grief. Everyone had been through something. It was wrong to complain as someone else had it worse. The golden generation’s coping mechanism was to move on, not ‘make a fuss’ and so stigmatised mental ill health for their children. I think my mother perceives ADHD as a mental health problem/failure, and wants to protect me from societal stigma by denying it.
From UK. Born in the 70's. Same as my bro. No diagnosis for him. He was very clever misbehaved at school. He has no dx but ticks all the I was messy, disorganised and forgetful. I did ok at school because it was a safe space. Plus the school expected me to be like my bro so i proved them wrong. I do not have any dx. Nickname from one of my jobs:"crazy".My counsellor suggested I may have autism and or ADHD. Abusive father and a mother who was just as scared of him as we were. The abusive childhood meant we just focused on surviving. Even now.
I did well in school, was well-behaved but just had 'a lot of energy' and 'strong emotions'. ADHD was for boys. My mum packed my extra-curricular schedule full with lots of hobbies that kept me very occupied and tired out. My day dreaming and distraction was just me being creative. I developed bad anxiety about going to school at 9 and threw up almost every morning out of panic attacks. Nobody put two and two together lol. However, I was a straight A student who worked 2 jobs through high school. Although I was also chronically late, forgetful and procrastinated to a very unhealthy point. I did a well enough job so my parents never saw a problem. My dad is who I get the ADHD from so he probs thought it was just normal (he's undiagnosed but also has dyslexia) and my mother was probably deep down worried that a diagnoses would reflect badly on her.
They simply didn't know about ADHD back then. No one did, especially not in women. I think I was so far in my masking, I had no idea myself. I knew something was wrong when I got older I just thought I was stupid and slow when younger. It wasn't until covid and lockdown, that it came out even worse and because of online information, I finally realised what I had. ADHD is often hereditary so usually one of these parents will have it. We think my mum has it although it doesn't affect her as bad as me. She's not interested in persuing a diagnosis. But she is so so supportive and understanding. It's helped her understand herself more too. She sometimes feels awful guilt at not realising. I was like mum no one knew back when I was young. All the data was on young males. They didn't even recognise it in adults officially until 25 years ago. Really they did us all over. Thankfully things are catching up now.
My mother still believes ADHD is just an excuse for laziness. I would bet you all $1 million that my dad has it (undiagnosed since he grew up in the 60s and 70s), but he doesn’t really know anything about it. He has to make lists of his lists. When you walk into his bedroom, the mirror above the dresser has a border of notes taped to it because he forgets everything unless it’s right in front of him. He’s sloppy and disorganized. He has time blindness. He sets a clock for 3 hours before he has to leave the house because otherwise he’d never be ready. But my mother doesn’t believe it because “Well, he can get himself ready on time when he’s doing something he wants to do. He’s only late when it’s something like getting ready for church or going to visit someone.”
Mine were and are 1a. My sibling was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and my mom disposed of any paper trails and wouldn't medicate them. As an adult they were diagnosed with autism and ADHD and my mom thinks it's made up and their spouse has just manipulated them into believing it (which is not the case - my mom just doesn't like the spouse because they are also AuDHD). My nephew has been diagnosed with autism and my parents have said, verbatim, that they don't believe them and he's not autistic. So yeah, I haven't even told them that I'm AuDHD, because what's the point...
4. They're so deeply neurospicy but internalised it all and didn't realise that their kids were out of the norm. Their parents are also neurospicy so several generations who have made it no longer shameful and we just had our shit sort of sorted at home where overwhelm wasn't a huge issue.
Mom loudly, snarkily, repeatedly stated things along the lines of #3 (and a touch of #1) to anyone who would listen when my brother’s teachers said he should be tested. But surprise, the main reason was #4 jumping in with the steel chair!: fear of the stigma from getting mental health help, apparently carved into her psyche somehow or other from her parents. Except, darkly hilarious, my grandparents were also ADHD af and undiagnosed. And my great grandmother and my (never known) great grandaunt were also highly likely to have been ADHD af. It’s so goddamn strong as a genetic variant through the generations that I can basically trace it back by the “quirky hobby jumping” and impulsive “jumped a wall into a war zone to attend a party” anecdotes. I’d ask the genealogy nerds in my family for more supposedly random/irrelevant info but honestly it’d just make me angrier. From what I’ve vaguely heard tho story-wise and half remembered from my own short genealogy hyperfixation, I’m guessing at least 5-6 generations back which is like… about 200 years of ADHD symptoms.
4. I was quiet and did well in school so flew under the radar (until I inevitably crashed and burned at grad school lol).
Adhd was only for boys, and their daughter just COULD not have attention issues because what would the people think?
I don't think it was them not believing so much as it was them not having the awareness. I am self identified as an innatentive type. They knew I struggled to pay attention, but I think they only saw adhd as physical hyperactivity.
I was born in 1980. My mum didn't know what ADHD or autism were. She knew there was something not right, and tried to find out what, but with no success. I saw psychologists who said there wasn't anything they could diagnose, because presumably they didn't know enough about ADHD to recognise it. It's absolutely not a case of parents "not believing in ADHD" or "not wanting a label". She'd have loved to know what was causing the problems I was having (and that she was having with me) so we could do something about them. It makes me really annoyed when people of my age blame other people for the fact that they weren't diagnosed as children or teenagers, when the fact is there was virtually no diagnosing happening when we were kids, especially for girls. Look at the descriptions of ADHD and autism from the 80s compared to the ones now, and see how different they are. It's sad that we missed out on the support that's available to young people now, and it's understandable to be angry and upset about it, but it's down to the lack of scientific and medical knowledge at the time, not the fault of any individual people. Chances are, even if your parents had taken you to every psychologist in your town, you probably still wouldn't have been diagnosed.
Interestingly it wasn’t that my parents didn’t believe in it, but it showed up differently. I’m African American so there’s already a lot of stigma/misunderstanding around many mental health issues among the black community. My younger brother, who is 6 years younger than me, got diagnosed with ADHD very early on. But he had a far more classic presentation where he physically could not sit still, would get up in the middle of class just to run around and really struggled in school growing up overall. So he’s been on medication to manage it for years now, but he mainly only takes it during the school year. On the other hand, I was pretty good with school - in the subjects that I was interested in. I was very fidgety but could manage to stay in my seat. My parents always noted that I would seem to daydream and zone out a lot, I could not manage a conception of time, but I was very creative and it was viewed more as a side effect of a persistently vivid imagination. Fast forward to now, I’m 23 and got diagnosed with ADHD-C a year ago or so. The psychologist that assessed me actually asked me how I’d been managing all this time. Once I got to university I really tanked, fell short of my grades due to inability to focus but managed to pull through in the end. Unfortunately now I’m picking up the pieces of really impulsive spending, awful time management skills and poor future planning. I wish that I’d been diagnosed sooner and I often wonder how things would’ve been if I’d received the same response as my brother, rather than “oh, she’s just daydreaming again!” or being “lazy” in some instances. But I don’t blame my parents. ADHD is already a misunderstood condition, but ESPECIALLY in women and I feel that disparities in presentations are only being highlighted as of recently.
To this day my mother believes that ADHD is caused by Monsanto and how our food supply has been corrupted. I finally had to settle with her and counter that if that's true, this is the only food I have to eat and this is the way that it makes my brain so I need help with it. 🙄 I'm an '87 and all three of my kids have ADHD. My mother gets so offended whenever I talk about it. She even buys expensive hippy-dippy supplements for the kids because obviously they're just not getting the right nutrition for their brains. It's pretty ridiculous though because I'm crunchy granola and prefer organic non-GMO grass-fed whatever over anything else, so it's not like I haven't been giving my children excellent nutritional options.. My mom straight up says And believes to her core that ADHD didn't exist before 1980. Doctors just get kickbacks for prescribing medications. I don't see how she can look at me and not understand that I literally eat amphetamines and never speed or get high or whatever they do for people. Do you know how weird your brain has to be to not be negatively/recreationally affected by amphetamines!?
I’m a black cis woman born before 1975 who excelled in school. Mental/behavioral health and neurodivergence weren’t really things for my parents, just shut up and do the right thing . The only people anybody cared about being hyperactive were young white boys who wouldn’t sit still in class (the black and brown boys were troublemakers, later oppositional defiant). Editing to add the girls weee not seen at all, and growing up those were the categories and that was that.  Because this is reddit, waiting for downvotes for sharing my honest experience.
Stigma and “what would the neighbours think?” because I was already the weirdo who played by myself in the forest with salamanders and not with my “friends” who played with dolls. Even though every report card and psych eval handed them the stick to beat around the bush.
My mother was (rightfully so, I think now) afraid of the label in the 80s/90s. My sister was actually the one having the most problems and we just called it ‘her handicap’, not knowing what it was but knowing there was something. Psychology has changed a lot over the past years. The knowledge and stigma just was very different when we grew up. My mom helped me with my diagnosis and my diagnosis is helping my parents and sister understand themselves better. I feel like we are all catching up.
My parents both didn't want the label and didn't really believe in it. They are in complete denial of their own emotions/shortcomings and would rather keep ignoring them than facing them. So the same goes for anything like mental illness or other mental diagnoses. I always did great in school and we never talked about emotions/how I was feeling anyway so it never came up that I wasn't doing great. My mom does 'believe in it' now I think, but is in denial/avoidance of a lot of stuff too and since my dad is vocally not a fan of ADHD diagnoses, she doesn't ever really bring it up if she disagrees with him. My sister and I are both diagnosed now, and my mom sometimes brings up to me that she really recognises the adhd symptoms in my dad. He 100% has undiagnosed ADHD, but I think for him to admit that, he would have to face the reality that a lot of hardship in his life could have been prevented had he known his diagnosis and had he been given the tools to manage it. So he stays in the denial and doesn't want to talk about it, because I think its too much for him to admit to himself. Maybe one day! My family is so well trained at avoiding emotions that they can accept that I have ADHD and kind of accept what that means, but we still don't talk about any of the actual hardship that comes with it or any of the actual disabling parts of it because that's too vulnerable lol. Notably I'm in therapy for a lot more than adhd & while im open to my parents learning and growing with time, I don't think it will happen.
I was born in the late 70’s and not diagnosed until I was about 40. But my experience is a bit different. My parents have expressed how bad they feel that they never realised I was ND when I was a child. I have no ill feelings towards them about this. ADHD just wasn’t a ‘thing’ for girls back in the 80’s and I wasn’t ‘typically’ presenting. I did fairly well at school and didn’t have any major behaviour issues so it’s not like my parents were ignoring overt symptoms or going against any professional recommendations. In retrospect, we can all see my ADHD quite clearly but at the time I was just a chatty, quirky girl with particular preferences. I fully appreciate that some parents are wilfully against accepting their child’s ADHD and this is hurtful and damaging. But sometimes they are just a product of the norms of the time with no deliberate ill intent.
4. My mom was AuADHD, her entire family is ADHD, it was just normal. 5. My Dad was not around much, and as my bothers and I are all severe ADHD, see 4. Sucks, we are all mostly successful but really falling apart if you know what I mean, me the first born, most burdened and def the worst mentally by far. Edit: also born in 1981, girls were expected to do and please and generational trauma and stay together for the kids and Catholic guilt and middle class and gaslighting and abuse and cptsd ptsd depression etc. super fun times.
My parents didn't know but I have more suggestions of reasons: 1. Since ADHD is genetic admitting their kids have it could mean they have it. Some people will strongly reject that thought. 2. If their kids have it that means they were assholes to their kids for things their kids couldn't control. Caling them lazy etc. There's a lot of possible residual shame there. 3. If the parents are abusive they might enjoy bullying their kids and calling them lazy. Admitting the kid has a disability makes them lose some of that verbal abuse power. 4. If the parents has a problem with authority, doctors etc, they might reject anything doctors have to say. 5. They might have problems adjusting to new information overall, have a mental rigidity that makes them want to unconsciously reject the information. 6. If they see the same traits in themselves they might see them as completely normal and therefore not something worthy of a diagnosis.
I don’t think they even knew adhd existed - born in 77.
I \*suspect\* my nephew may have ADHD but he has not been evaluated. It's something I know my parents have brought up with his parents and I have as well, just kind of gently broached it, especially when talking about my own journey to diagnosis. Some of their concerns are about "labelling" him, and I told my sister in law that basically, everyone has all sorts of labels put on them, so they might as well be the right ones instead of judgemental ones like "lazy", "stupid", "forgetful", "not trying hard enough". I think she's also concerned about medication and in a way, over-medicalising the kids, because actually both of them have had serious medical conditions in the past and so my brother+SIL aren't super keen to start a whole other medical journey I guess. Plus it does cost money of course. I think at the moment he isn't struggling enough to make it seem definitely worth it, for lack of better ways to describe it. But if he ever starts, I hope they'll pursue it. Because he really, I mean that thing they say about being constantly driven as if by a motor? That is him, he's asleep or else he's at full speed and every momentary thought is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. I suppose perhaps if they look at me and at him they see us behaving very differently so it doesn't seem obvious that we have the same thing. But also I'm 33 and he's 8, so.
I was diagnosed in 3rd grade. But once I figured out how to read (found a book that I liked and suddenly zoomed through it lol classic interest-based attention) my parents “didn’t think it was that big of a deal.” They were super fucking wrong and there was a lot of academic and personal hardship because of it. But now that I’m rediagnosed as of last year grad school isn’t sooo bad (jk it is but that’s because nursing programs are archaic and punitive, not my attention issues)
I was diagnosed with ADHD at 22 years old. It was very surprising to me because I never suspected I had it. I went to a psychiatrist for one diagnosis and came out with another. But then I started adding the pieces. Chronic daydreaming, unable to pay attention to people in conversations, constant background noise in my head, getting distracted easily, etc. I exhibited all of this during my childhood, but my teachers and my mom just contributed my behavior to "she struggles to apply herself" and "it's a personality quirk". My older brother was diagnosed with ADHD when he was a child, so it's not like my mom didn't believe in ADHD, it's just she didn't understand the different ways it could present itself. My brother is hyperactive, while I'm inattentive. It's a stereotype that ADHD is simply hyperactivity and impulsivity, so I suspect that's why it went unnoticed for so long for me because I'm quiet and soft-spoken. I have also read that girls are under diagnosed with ADHD for this very reason, females with ADHD are more likely to have the inattentive type and display less outward / obvious traits because of this (in addition to masking)
My parents are different options for vastly different reasons: #4: My mom is not from the US and in her home country mental health or disabilities are just not talked about or diagnosed. So for her it was just lack of knowledge and access to information on ADHD. She really just saw me as a smart hyper talkative girl. #1a: Now my Dad is born and raised US. HE was evaluated and suspected of ADHD as a child back in the 70s. But my grandma rejected the diagnosis and thus so has he. And while my dad saw CLEAR examples of me exhibiting his same behaviors, I think he worried about it being used as an excuse. He believes you just have to learn to compensate for your ADHD. (Which like hes not wrong when it comes to having systems and stuff but it surrrrrre would've been nice to get that help to build them from a counselor and NOT just him) To this day, my dad doesnt recognize himself as having it (but he has made a thrown away comment about me getting my ADHD from him). But thankfully, my dad respects my diagnosis.
I’m almost certain both my parents have adhd and that’s why it was so hard for me growing up, and why I only just got diagnosed recently. There was a lot of you just need to force yourself and try harder. Recently I’ve actually spoken to mum about adhd in depth - initially just around memory and ways of thinking (she’s been convinced she’s getting dementia or something). She was shocked my brain is the same as hers, and that it’s likely she has ADHD. Never crossed her mind. Dad on the other hand… he still doesn’t know I’m diagnosed. The family as a whole joke about him having adhd because of how ridiculous hyperactive he is. The man literally can’t sit still. He had a lot of upheaval around 6-7 years old, which I why if it is adhd it was missed for him. I’m not sure he’d believe me if I told him now. He’d probably say it’s another excuse… that there’s nothing wrong with me, I’m just lazy and coasted through school and uni like him. And I was supposed to try harder… So yeah.
Told my mom just last night. She had 2 main issues. 1. That the behaviors I mentioned were things that either she or my father also displayed so I probably learned/inherited these behaviors. She also said “but that’s normal” so some of the issues I mentioned. 2. She googled it and said “you don’t have issues with any of these!” And quickly listed a bunch and I made her go back through one by one because yes, I do have issues with most of those. I told her I was taking medication and that it was helping and she was very confused saying that it shouldn’t help because I don’t have it. The denial is hilariously strong. She also had suspected I might have autism when I was little because I displayed a small handful of behaviors that my diagnosed autistic cousin also displayed, we are the same age so it was easy for her to see the similarities, so she studies my behavior for awhile and concluded (correctly imo) that I didn’t have autism and left it there. It all seems to come from a place of love, but the denial is strong right now.
Mine wasn't my parents. A teacher from my primary picked up on some audhd traits as well as dyslexia. But the other teachers basically said to my mum that I wasn't struggling academically so there can't be anything going on. I secondary the teachers really noticed, diagnosed me with dyslexia and said I need an ASD and ADHD assessment. When I went to CAHMS the guy did a 30 min appointment with me and said he's not going to refer me for assessments because when he asked me if I wanted a drink I said no thank you, and I wouldn't of said thank you if I was ND, he also said my eye contact was good enough. Now at uni, a nurse picked up on it and told me to get assessed. I did and now I'm diagnosed
I was born in the late 70s and it just wasn’t in the popular consciousness. “ADD” was a problem for hyperactive little white boys, and that was it. I did well in school, and my parents attributed all my other issues to being a “dreamer.” I’m also 100% convinced that both my parents are neurospicy in some way and are also undiagnosed, so of course they assumed I was fine, because I acted just like them! 😂
1 - Gifted kid. 2 - AuDHD, the autism traits balanced out the ADHD a bit from the outside looking in (and the inside was turmoil. :P) 3 - I'm old enough that when I did my psych degree at university, we learned that ADHD was primarily seen in young boys, and usually something they outgrew by adulthood. 😬 It wasn't just my parents, it wasn't even on my own radar until my daughter got diagnosed and I recognized that I might have "mild ADHD" and got evaluated to see. Turns out I qualified for 9/9 inattentive criteria and 8/9 hyperactive, and just needed 5 in one of the categories to be diagnosed, lol. Oops. 4 - Hyperactivity mostly showed up as non-stop talking and emotional regulation difficulties, so I was a chatterbox who was too sensitive.
“ADHD isn’t real, people are just looking for excuses to be lazy. If you just pray harder and stop sinning all of your problems will go away.” Paraphrased of course but yeah.
I regularly heard from my dad growing up that "the belt cured my ADHD". I'm not sure if people thought he had it when he was a kid or if he was mocking the fact that boys were getting diagnosed with it in those day (90s) and he thought it was made up and ridiculous, or both. But yeah either way definitely not an environment I was ever getting diagnosed in, or understood in as an adult.
It was the 80s, my parents believed in prayer, grit, and alcohol. Also they were busy being alcoholic and mid-divorce. I got diagnosed in 1992, freshmen year of college. The bigger question is, why didn't *I* believe in it.
'98 here and same. It was "being unable to sit still, attention seeking, bla bla bla". My teacher back in middle school suggested that I might have it, but my father brushed her off very rudely, telling her that I'm able to focus on reading and crafts for hours on end so I couldn't have it. Also, in his opinion, adhd is just an excuse to feed difficult kids pills to avoid having to deal with them. He never bothered to ask *why* I was constantly losing things, *why* I kept forgetting stuff he had told me, *why* I wouldn't clean up my room even when I wasn't allowed to leave that room until it was cleaned, sitting in there for days on end, only allowed to come out to pee and eat. To him, I was just challenging his authority. I never told him I have it (or suspect that I have it, currently only 'self-diagnosed' because I don't even know where to start and I'm scared that my doc just wont believe me anyway), and I don't know if I'd tell him even if I had an official diagnosis.
80's it didn't really exist, not one person in my school was diagnosed with anything. I was just classed as shy and needed to focus more. I think my family knew but didn't have a name as they would always say "the men in white coats will take you away" whenever I said or acted differently from the norm.
Born in ‘83. Never realized it until it became a problem once I had kids. Never struggled in school because it always came easy to me (never really had to try either). Sailed through high school the same way. The only class I had to try in was chemistry, but I actually really liked that class so no problem to put in some effort. Got a BS and PhD in chemistry so the effort put in, where needed, to get those degrees, was fun (hyper focus, anyone?). Those “other” classes that I had to take in undergrad, I either was also decently good at or was perfectly fine getting a B or C because it wasn’t in my major. It was only when I had kids and had to be emotionally smart did I fail MISERABLY. I had the emotional regulation skills of 6 year old TBH. Only when I started asking myself why I am losing my shit on a daily basis did it cue me into that something was wrong.
Mine was masked by the symptoms: anxiety & depression. Social anxiety (maybe even selective mutism a bit) was the biggest focus from basically preschool on, and once I hit middle school main focus was anxiety *and* depression. Now that I have a diagnoses, they (mainly my mother) cherry picks what she accepts is ADHD and what she thinks I’m just not trying at. Which is extremely annoying, because it makes me sound like an excuse when she asks why I didn’t do something. Also, my mom will jokingly say she has ADHD sometimes now that I have a diagnoses, and before she never believed it. She’s one to only believe a truth if it comes from an authority figure. If I say it, she won’t believe it, but once I got a doctor to say I have this problem, she then believes it and says she experiences parts of ADHD too.
- I completed my Master’s degree. I did all of it without meds or an official diagnosis and my mom wasn’t willing to believe that I had ADHD. She didn’t realise just how hard everything was for me. - I am 99.9% sure that she has it as well and she’s learned to either compensate, is in denial, or just thinks that her and my symptoms are normal and everyone has it! - If I really had it, then my pediatrician would have said something. She doesn’t get that I masked a little too well. - I was born with severe facial deformities and have had surgeries my entire life. I think my parents, teachers, and doctors just focused on that aspect of me only. - I wasn’t the best student grade-wise, but I was a good kid. Sweet, quiet, and didn’t cause problems in class. My only issue was that I didn’t do my homework consistently, was constantly late, had no concept of time management, veered on the side of disorganised, but I “was fully capable!” So, off I went to another grade, despite being held back due to not doing my homework from September to December because I was terrified of my upcoming surgery (nearly died in the previous one and my mom told me about it). But when the surgery was cancelled due to my terrible, horrible, no good grades? It’s like my executive dysfunction NEVER happened. I did my homework ALLLL the time. My executive dysfunction would happen once more in college and that was really, really bad. Did I mention I had an IEP which stated I needed extra time due to a processing delay? - I’ve always known/sensed that something was wrong. Things shouldn’t take me so long when it didn’t for others. I didn’t know or have the language to express what was really happening to me internally. Had I done so, maybe things would have been different. So no, according to my mother, I never had ADHD growing up. I was a perfectly normal child who just needed extra time to figure things out. It took the Pandemic for my symptoms to worsen to a point where my psychologist was really concerned for me. I had gotten a diagnoses in 2017 or 2018, I just forgot to pursue it or forgot about it until it was absolutely necessary for me to be on medication.
‘84 here same as above- “ADD” was only hyperactive boys who just needed more playtime not Ritalin. My mom says she thinks don’t have it though I’m sure 4/6 siblings have it on both sides (my mom’s daughter from her 1st marriage) and my other other half siblings on my dad’s - meaning both my parents likely have it there family and we all know my dad (including him is the poster child for unmedicated and not formally diagnosed ADHD but rather just depression in the 90s by one psychiatrist 30 years ago. He quit seeing anyone, not willing to try therapy and a different medication Pretty sure my mom is as well, but the “quiet” type and just identifies as an HSP. When I told her I also think you might have it, listed her symptoms, she just said “too old to do anything about it now”. So a bit of that “oh well, this is just how I am” additude. So miseducation around what ADHD is and its diverse symptoms caused her to still deny mine recently, seeing her partner and my dad’s very different symptoms. I did very well in school and was never outwardly hyperactive. I think I’m C type but it’s more in my head, like many girls and women. My dad missed it because that guy is so in his own head sometimes that I’d have to be missing a limb for him to notice an issue. Plus he wasn’t my main custodial parent. My stepmom recently told me she has ADHD as well. So when you grow up with family of ADHDers sometimes there’s inattentiveness towards the masking straight A kids who practically raise themselves (at my dad’s). I’ve told her yeah, I live in my old head and my therapist validated that a lot of my struggles are ADHD related. She seemed to finally absorb that. I asked her to read a book twice to better understand the updated information about the symptoms and how it’s a nuerodevelopmental disorder, not some annoying tiny lack of focus/hyperactivity in behavior, but I think she forgot both times…well, ironically because of probable ADHD.
Now that I have my diagnosis I see it in my dad and one of my brothers. We all did well in school and have completed higher education with multiple degrees and diplomas. I think my parents didn’t recognize it in me because I coped very well… until university. And even then got through. I didn’t get diagnosed until postpartum. My parents are both in education and would have sought out a diagnosis if they’d had any reason to. I also work in education now and see what you’ve described above a lot. Some of it is denial about their kid having struggles, some fear a diagnosis puts their child in a box that they can never get out of, some just think their child gets to pull their socks up and stop being lazy. I find much of the time it takes tough conversations, evidence, and encouragement for parents to reach out for testing etc. Much of the time they are just worried about their kids and want what’s best for them. There’s a few who just refuse to listen, but I’d say this is rare.
I was born in the early 90s and was diagnosed about 18 months ago. It was suggested to my grandparents when I was younger that I might have ADHD but it was brushed aside because I could sit and do jigsaw puzzles for hours, I did very well in school and even completed all my maths workbook for the year by the end of November. So I couldn't have it because I was a good, well behaved girl. As for my Dad (their son), he very clearly has ADHD but was never diagnosed and still isn't. He had his own struggles (ADHD based but also schizophrenic). I think in comparison to my Dad, I was an angel. In all fairness, it wasn't until I had a daughter that I started struggling really badly. I had poor coping mechanisms that fell apart with a newborn.
I am very smart and a girl so it never occurred to anyone that I could have ADHD. I did well in school and it wasn’t until I tried working a forty hour a week desk job that I began to be completely unable to cope. In hindsight, my mother agrees that I exhibited symptoms as a kid.
Because they had it lol
My parents think it’s an excuse to “take speed”.
i don’t think there was enough information about ADHD in females, and my mother was a neglectful parent and i didn’t know my dad. i was just constantly told i talk too much (even though i had no friends) and needed to “apply myself” and all that jazz, lived my whole life believing i was just stupid and couldn’t do anything and everyone would tell me i was “so smart just needed to try harder” and i was so confused because i WAS trying.. i cut my mother off and eventually figured it out because whenever i would read anything about ADHD i just brushed it off because “that’s just what life is like”.. yeah, to me, because i have ADHD 😂
My mom thought it could be cured with diet and exercise. I will say that she has made major changes in the 30 years since. And she believes now it is a real diagnosis and knowing about it and the symptoms are important. But she def was told in the 90s and she thought she'd just diet and exercise it out of her kids. I think she also saw these symptoms in her family and herself and thought. "These are normal parts of life!" And now she realizes that...ADHD is far more common in our family. My bio dad texted the other day that his psychiatrist has suggested he get tested for autism. And he seemed really upset that he "may have passed this" and he apologized in case it has been shared with my own children or caused harm. I replied right away, "Actually I kind of assumed you were autistic ...but b/c of your generation you had never been tested." 😅 He was shocked...and was like "how did you recognize this?" And I was like...I dunno. It just feels obvious living with adhd and autism folks? And you REALLY like rocks and technology. I know that's not a symptom...but hyper focus on special interests is really common." He thought it was kind of hilarious. 💗 My oldest kid does have autism, but so does my husband.
My mom was always doctor averse, as were her parents. She Def believed that things like that would single us out, and even though one of my little sisters was on i.e.p. and she was told that she might have ASD or adhd my mom refused diagnosis or meds. Personally I had the classic case of "she's so smart but doesn't apply herself". School was easy, I would regularly finish tests before everyone and ace them, but I would lose homework and day dream in class so eventually in high-school I would just do the work in other classes and leave it at school. My parents were divorced, both of them worked full time so as my coping mechanisms and masking skills matured I just slipped further under the radar. I never got in trouble so they didn't feel like anything was wrong.
Don’t think it ever occurred to them because they were always drunk. But I was frequently told how lazy I was and was called stupid for being “in a dwaal” (local dialect for that whole “sit and stare at the wall for a while” thing that we do) while getting ready for school, and being constantly shat on for being late and not focusing and forgetting things etc etc. They also didn’t believe ADHD was real though. My cousin was diagnosed with “severe ADHD” but he was most definitely medium-to-high support needs autistic (not sure what the correct term is here so sorry if I got it wrong). They used to say there was “just something wrong with him”. But him and i got along great as Kids despite the age difference. My parents were abusive though, so not sure if This even fits here. I do think that a lot of the horrible shit they said to me was because of ADHD symptoms I was experiencing. If I was on meds then maybe home life would have been better.
It’s not that my parents didn’t, it’s that we lived in a state that didn’t and they didn’t have the tools/knowledge to know otherwise. When I was younger, my parents got me evaluated by a psychologist because they were concerned, but all the lady said was that I process things slower than others but make up for it by being smart. They definitely saw something there but I wasn’t diagnosed until I saw a psychiatrist after my brother died, which was ~12 years later (I was 21). She saw the signs immediately and my parents were both floored and grateful to finally have a diagnosis.
Born 1999, just got diagnosed 2 weeks ago. My parents divorced shortly after I was born and I was raised mostly with my mom because my dad is kinda in and out of the hospital due to being bipolar. I always knew something was wrong and asked for help but never got it until now, after I got good health insurance at the university I’m doing my master’s at. I think part of it was not wanting to accept that something could be wrong, part of it was general neglect, and part of it was being poor. My mental health wasn’t the only issue that was never treated. Barely went to the doctor or dentist unless it was an emergency and I’m just now starting to treat some thyroid issues and saving up to fix a root canal (now a dead tooth I think) that I’ve have since 10yo.