What Life With ADHD Is Really Like

ADHD is more complex than being hyper all the time

Standardized testing are a boredom fest that almost every child goes through. Filling in those tiny little bubbles, endless multiple choice questions and being told to never, ever mark on the test. For most kids its very tiring. They come home feeling like their brain has been drained of ever answer they can think of. They crash into bed and feel grateful that this only happens once a year. Teachers spend a lot time preparing young children for these test. This is both to help with test scores and to help with that post-test crash. However, I remember nothing like this. The first test I ever took like this was in second grade. I know that my teachers prepped me for it, I didn't pay attention. In fact, I couldn't pay attention to anything. My teacher, Mrs. Carrol(she was one of my favorite teachers and still is.) had me sit in the back of the room so that I could focus on my test but it didn't work. I didn't do a thing. I couldn't color small enough to make my pencil marks fill in those tiny holes. My second grade mind did not understand what was going or why this was so important. At home, things were worse. As a child(and still as an adult at times, I'll be honest) I would fly into fits of rage. Throwing things, breaking things, hitting my self, clawing my face and hitting anyone that came near me. My dollhouse had to be anchored to the wall so that I wouldn't pull it down on top of myself. My Mum and Grammy knew that this wasn't normal and had me tested for ADHD. It was a test I passed and I was diagnosed with both ADHD and Tourettes Syndrome(that's a another post for a different day)

Common signs of ADHD in children

 I was one of the first kids in my small school to be given an IEP due to Tourettes and ADHD. An IEP is and Individual Education Plan. They are designed by the teachers and parents of the child to help them in school. My IEP made it so that when standardize testing came around I had a teacher or teacher's aid that would read the questions and write my answers down for me. As I got older this changed and by high school I didn't need any help testing at all. It contained a few other things as well. I had less spelling words than the other kids did(I had ten while the other kids had twenty), I was excused from timed test and I was able to get special help if it needed it. Even with all this, it soon became clear that it wasnt enough.

My favorite of all the Harry Potter books

 I loved reading as a kid. Despite my ADHD I was a very advanced reader for my age. My main obsession was the Harry Potter books. Both my Mum and Grammy had all of them. Grammy refused to take me to see the Chamber Of Secrets movie until I finished the book. Slowly, reading got harder. I could no longer sit still, no matter how good a book was. I would begin to read a page, my mind would space out and ten minutes later I would be left starring at the same page. My ADHD had robbed me of one of my biggest hobbies. We decided that the best choice was put me on medication.

Mine came in a bottle, not a box

Because of my Tourettes I was very limited to what types of ADHD medicine I could take. Almost all ADHD medicines are a stimulant and have been proven to make Tourettes worse. Luckily for us a medicine called Strattera had been put onto the market and was proven to not interfere with Tourettes. I was on and off Strattera all through school. I had very little side effects from it and because I had a medical card it didn't cost my family anything. It was like the static in my brain was turned down. My grades improved and I could read an entire book again. Without it I do not believe that my grades or my attention span would have been what it was.

These are common things that children with ADHD get called.

Even with the medicine I was still bullied. By students and teachers. When I was in elementary school I had very few friends and no friends at all until third grade. No one wanted to be friends with the twitchy kid who couldn't sit still. A teacher in sixth grade went against my IEP and made me do timed test with the rest of the class. I was at the age where kids knew that I was an IEP kid. I was labeled as "one of the dumb kids", at least I felt that way. On these timed test the teacher wrote in blood, red ink "You're getting slower every time!" which was enough to leave me in tears. The same teacher didn't test me for our math program, she gave me second grade math lessons because she judged me due to my IEP. This went on until my Mum and Grammy put a stop to both of these thing. A third grade teacher called me names like "big mouth" and would single me out for punishment. It took my Mum two visits to the school to make it stop. In high school I had a few teachers that didn't like me but that was due more to the way I dressed and less about my ADHD. I kept my IEP through out high school but used it less and less. I didn't need the extra help anymore. I felt a little bit more normal because of this.

Childhood ADHD to Adult ADHD

Now we come to what I've really wanted to talk about. How ADHD effects me as an adult. After I turned 18 the state took my medical card and I had to stop taking my medicine. For the first time in a long time I was without medicine and I'm still without it today. I get overwhelmed very easy. If I have too many things around or too many things to do, I crash and I can't do anything. Everything in my mind freezes and sometimes I swear I can hear the gears grinding to a stop. I look around and every thing that I need to do looks big and scary. I feel like I'll never be able to do it all. Sometimes this can lead into a mild to serve panic attack. I forget things all the times. I forget where I put my phone, my shoes, my socks, my equipment at work, if you can name it I've forgotten where it was. Forgetfulness is a very common annoyance of ADHD. But its more than just losing my phone. I forget important things. Birthdays, stories I've been told, due dates for bills. I can't begin to describe what its like to have my husband have to tell me a story again because I flat out forgot it. It makes me feel terrible and I worry that one day he'll resent me for it.

This painful to look at. Which focus do you focus on? This was the best photo I could find for this part of the post.

Speaking of my husband, something that I've never seen touched on about adult ADHD is sex. Does ADHD effect your sex life.? Yes. It can. Wherever we like to admit it or not sex takes focus. You have to focus on yourself and your partner at the same time, making sure that everyone involved is enjoying and okay with everything that is happening. Focus like that is hard to keep a grip on sometimes. This is very annoying. Losing focus is a tell tail sign of ADHD and losing focus during sex is terrible. Even through your body is loving everything that is going on and you are loving everything that is going doesn't mean that your mind wont try to wander. I have yelled at myself in my head during sex before so that I can focus on whats going on in front of me, or behind me, or what ever.

I freaking love butterflies

  A lot of people think that ADHD is simple, that's its funny OMG MY GOD ITS A KITTY CAT things like that. Sometimes it is like that. I have stopped mid sentence because I saw a cat, or a chicken, or a deer(I live in the country) and its funny to me. I laugh and so does the person I'm talking to. But its not all funny. Its also having a trashed house and feeling like you are a failure as a wife because you will never get it clean. Its having to work a huge skid of freight that is only knee high but looks stacked to the sky. Its forgetting birthdays, its being late because you lost track of time. Its something that effects your entire life and who you are as a person. Impulsiveness and being forgetful is part of who I am now. I still have wild fits of rage as an adult. I still feel different from others because I am. I don't view the world the way most people do and I can't really explain that to you. I feel left behind a lot, everything moves to fast for me keep up at times, I get overwhelmed and I crash. ADHD doesn't just effect kids, it effects adults too. Its something that becomes part of who we are and I'm okay with that. I wouldn't be the person that I am today if I didn't have ADHD and despite everything I wouldn't want to change anything.


ADHD Resources
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