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The ADHD Iceberg
(lemy.lol)
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this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2025
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ADHD memes
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The lighter side of ADHD
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I'd like to note that users here are adults, a lot of whom didn't get ADHD support as children. Some of us weren't diagnosed until adulthood. Others of us were diagnosed, but had parents who "don't believe in" insert-scientific-fact-here. Many of us are behind in life now due to a lack of support during crucial years. These memes aren't an end-all, be-all of ADHD, but a way for all of us to find humor in our predicaments.
As someone who had parents in denial, I hope it brings you comfort to know that acknowledging and supporting your child is giving him a huge leg-up compared to many of us here. You won't mislabel your kid as "lazy" and burden him with poor self-esteem about it, the way many of us were treated. Add in the benefits of tech, like having programmable timers, alarms, and reminders, and your kid already has tons more support than many of us did growing up.
You're doing good, Mom/Dad/Parent. You're providing your kid with the what he needs to do better than the generation before him. That is progress, and that is awesome.
I was in the "I masked hard until I lost the structure going into uni" camp, and even then I didn't actually get a diagnosis until 31. It's super familial and looking back, my dad 100% has ADHD and kinda suspect my mom has ADHD too, it's not that they were in denial they just didn't see anything as atypical, no teacher ever flagged me either, again, hindsight, I was overly talkative to the point of distraction and absolutely had emotional disregulation.
My parents did their best and were supportive of me, it sucks I was late diagnosed but was not due to them at all.
Thanks, that's what we're working toward. I appreciate the encouragement though. We hold him to a high standard, but we also support him in every way we can. He still struggles, but he willingly reads more than most adults I know. It kills me to think of anyone as bright and kind as him not getting the support they need. It's still a daily struggle, but he has more good moments than bad and ADHDers I know recall being "essentially feral" at his age.
I love this. Not just for the obvious ("kid likes reading") but because we live in a society of "TL;DR" and it never made much sense to me. Even with ADHD, I prefer long-form messages and social media that doesn't have a character limit. The rise of "TL;DR" seems to be mainstream, which likely means neurotypicals... it's really ironic, isn't it? Those who supposedly have "normal" attention spans can't bother to read through more than a paragraph sometimes. Yet, those of us who supposedly have an "attention deficit" will pour over articles, books, Wikipedia pages, and more for hours or days on end. We clearly have the capacity to pay attention, even if much of the modern world sucks at grabbing and maintaining it.
Pore* over
That's the ticket really, he has endless energy and focus, provided he is onto something that is actually interesting to him. At 6 he's reading and understanding comics written for young teens (we had a quick word about a character who came out as trans and he easily understood). Sharp kid, just don't bore him.
The most important thing that you can do for this kid is to make sure he knows how to study properly when he gets into school. Every word you've said so far could describe me to a T when I was 6, and I did great in school without ever trying, so when I graduated high school and went off to college I flunked out halfway through because I never learned how to study. It bored me, so when I didn't just "get" something immediately like I had always done before, I often just didn't learn anything.
I consider that to be the one big major thing that prevented me from executing on the trajectory I was on. Had I learned how to learn when I needed to, today I could be some six figure code wizard milking investment money out of VC's and techbros. Instead I'm an automotive mechanic near the poverty line with no college degree to my name.
I'm not upset with my own life path, per se, for a number of reasons - I enjoy my work, I consider it ethical (in as far as supporting the automotive industry can be ethical...) and not least of which I'd probably have never met my partner if not for this twisted road I've gone down. But sometimes when I think about it too much the sense of lost potential is a little overwhelming.
Learning how to make himself sit down and learn something even when it's boring is a necessary skill that he may not develop on his own. I sure didn't, and look where it put me.
Take up this torch, kid, and do better than me. You have it in you. Someday soon we might all be depending on you.