"I have my own way of doing things"

[Anonymous]

Quick backstory.

I think I'm a pretty successful person with ADHD. I've never been officially diagnosed but going back as far as second grade teachers knew something was different. But it was never really to help me, moreso as a reason why I was always in the trouble I was in.

So fast forward about 20 or 30 years and now I've got a son who acts almost identical to how I did back then, and questions about how to proceed.

Enter my wife into the picture. She sees me today and the quirks that make me me, but doesn't really understand why I do things that way. I tell her sometimes but never the full story because I'm not sure I fully understand other than it works.

But being that my son has a lot of the same traits as me, I've been helping him use some of the same things that helped me, and so far they've worked pretty well. But since areas they haven't (like his social anxiety).

So DW and I are talking about this off and on and different ways to approach it. In more passive because I'm confident we can find ways to help him. Partially because I faced and continue to face some of these very same issues.

But I fear I'm blinding myself because my son is not me. Should I be more focused on things like therapy, or my own out of the box solutions? For example one of the ways in trying to help him deal with anxiety is by running. Both in a personal thing, to help him calm down and in a social thing where he races kids his age at the playground. It's helped him make "friends" in a limited sense. They race, exchange names and then go on with their day after a few races but at least he's interacting with them right? But that won't work in a classroom so I'm back to brainstorming that one.

I just worry that in not worried enough about this, if that makes sense.

[Anonymous]

I’m also a reasonably successful person with ADHD and I think you need to reconsider. I had lots of coping mechanisms to keep performing despite my disorder. I wasn’t diagnosed until later adulthood when I began to struggle with the increasing demands of being mid career in my profession. Therapy/executive coaching helped a ton and helped me see some of my coping mechanisms and strategies weren’t that great.

[Anonymous]

I’m a successful dyslexic ADHD and yes I got my dyslexic ADHD kids all the help available.

Because they are not me, most people in my situation don’t “rise to the occasion “.

Its very self absorbed to say hey I’m great so I’ll give my kids the same experience as me so they can be just like me. Nope! I wouldn’t even do that to my neurotypical child.

[Anonymous]

He can do both therapy and your coping strategies. It’s not either/or.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He can do both therapy and your coping strategies. It’s not either/or.

+1 Take advantage of therapy and all the other available tools you probably didn’t have access to back then, but also talk to him about what is was like for you back then and how you’ve handled the challenges throughout your life.

[Anonymous]

OP here.

It's weird because I feel like I've of my hyper focus areas is just in problem solving. Give me a job saying to move things from bin 1 to bin 2 and I'll probably get fired within a week, but give me a problem / puzzle / confusing situation and I'll devote a lot of brain power towards correcting it.

I know what worked for me won't necessarily work for DS, but I am also one of two people who know him better than anybody else in the world. And not just that, but I see the genius in him. Part of me is not as excited about therapy because it didn't help (and in some ways hurt) my development. But it's not that I don't trust the therapists. It's more that I want him to believe in himself and that he can conquer these challenges. I know he'll have some that he won't conquer, or at least won't conquer initially, but I want to show him that it can be done, and not just in a movie but by him.

So we've done it with a lot of school stuff and now with bike riding. He has issues he needs to work on still and I'm just at a pause on exactly when we should see a therapist. Like on first seeing the problem? After he gets frustrated? After we get frustrated? What If my first idea works? What If my first one didn't?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here.

It's weird because I feel like I've of my hyper focus areas is just in problem solving. Give me a job saying to move things from bin 1 to bin 2 and I'll probably get fired within a week, but give me a problem / puzzle / confusing situation and I'll devote a lot of brain power towards correcting it.

I know what worked for me won't necessarily work for DS, but I am also one of two people who know him better than anybody else in the world. And not just that, but I see the genius in him. Part of me is not as excited about therapy because it didn't help (and in some ways hurt) my development. But it's not that I don't trust the therapists. It's more that I want him to believe in himself and that he can conquer these challenges. I know he'll have some that he won't conquer, or at least won't conquer initially, but I want to show him that it can be done, and not just in a movie but by him.

So we've done it with a lot of school stuff and now with bike riding. He has issues he needs to work on still and I'm just at a pause on exactly when we should see a therapist. Like on first seeing the problem? After he gets frustrated? After we get frustrated? What If my first idea works? What If my first one didn't?

he doesn’t live with you 24 hours a day, he has to learn to deal with the reactions of others when he cannot do something or has great difficulty with it. You are not always going to be there to cheer him on, he needs to learn coping strategies it comes from within.

There is no exact right time to see a therapist, but it is generally done when somebody is under distress. Look at your son‘s emotions, what do you see? Is he frustrated or stressed out? If so, it is probably time to see a therapist.

[Anonymous]

I'm in a similar situation, OP, and I got my kid evaluated.

[Anonymous]

You are a very successful person with ADHD. He is a different person. He may need different skills, but he deserves all of the tools available to him to figure this out. You'r backstory, skills and empathy are one of the things in his toolbox, but he also deserves a person with lots of experience and knowledge about lots of different tools and strategies. His anxiety may even be due to him knowing he is different and not yet having all of the tools. He might get there eventually on his own with you, or he might not. I'm not going to give a lot of negative what ifs, but this would be a good thing for him.
- anxious probable ADHD person who has tons of systems to be successful and runs that anxiety away but floundered until she was 27

[Anonymous]

I’m a successful adult with ADHD and I have one kid who is likely ADHD - all the same quirks as me. He does well in school in spite of being the youngest in his class and having my quirks - just like me. Only I will get him help so he doesn’t have to learn things the hard way like I did or always feel like he is failing to live up to his potential- as I did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m also a reasonably successful person with ADHD and I think you need to reconsider. I had lots of coping mechanisms to keep performing despite my disorder. I wasn’t diagnosed until later adulthood when I began to struggle with the increasing demands of being mid career in my profession. Therapy/executive coaching helped a ton and helped me see some of my coping mechanisms and strategies weren’t that great.

Can you share how you found a good executive functioning coach for adults?

[Anonymous]

Please get your son help! I plant to with my kids if they are ever diagnosed (too little to tell now). I don't want them to struggle like I did, and I am also reasonably successful now.

[Anonymous]

Hey OP. I am an adult with ADHD and a long list of LDs who has been successful. The people in my life now see my quirks but don't have any real understanding of how hard school was for me or why those quirks exist. They see me very differently then I do, which is actually pretty great because they remind me that I am more then the ADHD and LDs and redirect my focus to different traits that are pretty awesome.

But I find that I am very focused on watching for signs of ADHD and LDs for my 9 year old son. I am pretty sure he does not have any of my LDs, the smaller issues seem to have resolved themselves and he has not had any issues with school. I am pretty certain that he doesn't have ADHD but I also know that can present itself in many different forms so it is harder for me to relax on that. Luckily my DH is open to listening to my concerns and doing some research to understand why I am worried when DS Teachers were not. He is on board with testing if I think that it is needed, even if it is only to help me feel more comfortable. I know that DH would be on board with researching and doing what was needed to help DS succeed if there was an issue and that helps a lot.

If you see that there is an issue or might be an issue, I would proceed with appropriate testing. Hopefully your spouse listens to you about your experiences and why you want to make sure that your child has support that you might have been missing.

DS knows that I struggled in school. He also knows that I earned my PhD and that I am bright and capable but that I have different strengths then he does. He loves math and makes up math problems for us to do. My husband can do them in his head while we walk but DS knows that I need to write down the problem and talk out the solution because that is how I process. I get the correct answer but it takes me longer and I do it differently then he does. He seems to understand that there is nothing wrong with that.

[Anonymous]

I would get him help. He's a different person than you and may have different challenges. And you say you're "pretty successful", but is that the goal here? Consider aiming a little higher. It seems like you know the running races thing is not a real solution, for example.

Sometimes people with ADHD (especially men with wives, girlfriends, or assistants at work) don't realize the extent to which the people around them are accommodating or compensating for their ADHD. Your wife may be doing more support or tolerating more of your quirks than you realize. You, yourself, might not be managing as well as you think, it's more like the two of you together are managing. Question whether you want that for your son, should he be lucky enough to find a partner who wants to live that way.

Sometimes people with ADHD can do pretty well for the first few decades of life, but then in middle adulthood as the demands at work and home with multiple kids and aging parents become more complex, and the person starts to get older and less flexible and energetic, they start to struggle and things fall apart. There are so many posts on here from fed-up partners who didn't realize the toll their partner's ADHD would take on them in the long term.

[Anonymous]

Op here. Thanks this has been really helpful.