I Grew Up With ADHD – This Is The Worst Thing You Can Do To A Neurodivergent Kid
Today’s world doesn’t cater for ADHD. Children are expected to sit in a classroom all day and if they display their natural behaviour, they are branded “too much”.
In fact, it’s thought kids with ADHD could be exposed to 20,000 negative comments by the age of 10; expressions like ‘Calm down!’, ‘Stop doing that’, ‘Sit still’ and ‘Why can’t you just be normal?’.
As a child, I never felt comfortable in my own skin. After I finished watching a film, I would act like the main character for days or even weeks, until I got bored and moved on to something else.
When I did interact with people, I found myself copying their mannerisms and their tone of voice. I even pretended to share their interests and hobbies. I altered who I was in order to appear likeable to whoever I was with.
ADHD children have as much right to be their authentic selves as anybody else and that means they might fidget, move around and get lost on their way to places – and none of that behaviour needs telling off.
The worst thing you can do to an ADHD kid is to try to turn them into a neurotypical kid or bring them closer to a neurotypical one.
Parents need to stop trying to knock the ADHD out of their child. We must accept it, without shame, and work with it.
How can you do that for your child?
Try to connect with other parents and spend time with other ADHD children. This will help you to learn by sharing common experiences.
It will also enable your child to spend time with other children who share similar traits. This puts them in an environment where they feel less pressure to mask because there will be less contrast between their authentic behaviour and the behaviour of the other children.
Make ‘effort’ the metric for success, too. Starting a task can be extremely hard for ADHD children. They might not be able to communicate this, so it’s important they’re encouraged and praised when they start a task – and not just when a task is completed.
And don’t forget to encourage physical play time and exercise. This will allow them to have a release for any pent-up hyperactivity and also give them the dopamine they need to be happy.
Use their hyperactivity to their advantage. Don’t tell them off for it. Examples of physical play time can include running, playing ‘hide and seek’, going to the beach, playing with friends, ball games, swimming, skipping, dancing and many others.
If I had been born with the understanding of ADHD I have now, my life would have been very different. So much pain would have been avoided.
I wish I could go back in time with the knowledge I have accumulated, put my arms around the younger version of me and tell him: you’re not broken. You don’t need to be fixed. Your brain works a little bit differently. And with the right tools, you can mitigate the challenges and lean into your strengths – and ultimately, achieve amazing things.
Alex Partridge is the founder of LADbible and UNILAD and the host of the ADHD Chatter podcast. His book Now It All Makes Sense: How An ADHD Diagnosis Brought Clarity To My Life is out now, published by Sheldon Press, priced £16.99.