How do you help someone with ADHD?

 

How do you help someone with ADHD?

I can answer you from the perspective of someone with Adult ADHD that started in childhood, mother of three with ADHD, and now at least three of my grandchildren are diagnosed…

First, you need to *understand* us. Our brains are literally wired differently. They’re calling it “Neurodiversity” now, which I like better, because it really is just thinking differently, not so much like we’re crippled by some ‘disorder.’ But life for us is like having 35 tabs open in your browser, all on different topics across several genres, and knowing exactly how each one correlates to the others (I actually do this a lot, boggles my husband’s mind.) Sometimes it’s like having five different radio stations going all at once in our heads; rock, talk radio, news, classical and reggae.

And we really want to be understood. Our biggest issues in relationships is when we feel the other person doesn’t understand us and we feel alone. My son had an issue over 20 years ago where he was being defiant in the principal’s office in the presence of a police officer. When I walked in, the cop was unclasping his handcuffs to take him to Juvenile hall. I sat in a child-sized chair in front of my son and said “So, what’s going on?” After 10 mins of being heard, he was calm and understood that his response to the situation was inappropriate (although I took issue with the school because he was being bullied.) Later the officer said he’d never seen anyone so effectively handle an ADHD kid **that** wound up. I replied “All he wanted was for his feelings to be heard and understood.”

We feel very deeply. We seem to get our feelings hurt pretty easily. Because we attach to the things that get our attention so acutely, when they’re taken from us or otherwise destroyed we feel like we’re being hurt. We’re often told we talk too much, because we want others to understand and feel things as much as we do. And we don’t understand why people can go through life without feeling things like we do.

We’re not stupid. I was tested in grade school and have a very high IQ. And yet I forget simple things like remembering to set my alarm the night before so I make an appointment, or what I had for dinner last night. I can hear a song and tell you the song title, band name, and usually the album name, what the album cover looked like, the track, the lead singer, and often a bit of other trivia about the song, band or album. My husband calls me his “own personal ‘Behind the Music’.” Yet many ADHD kids grow up to be adults with a lot of self esteem issues from being called lazy, stupid, crazy, spoiled or weird. We often have PTSD (and some like me have actual physical scars) from abusive childhoods, bullying, poor grades because they just don’t think like the other kids, and a high suicide rate.

We move at a very fast pace. We thrive in situations were we can apply what we know and are good at in a focused manner. My ADHD son would be so into a video game he wouldn’t notice his bathroom urges and wet his pants as a teenager. If I’m working on an important project or event, I typically spend the last two weeks before the event in what my kids call “pre event psychosis” where I get almost zero sleep, only face-planting my keyboard for 15 mins at a time, with little side effects. My husband says he marvels at everything I do out-of-sight until he notices them or I bring them up. My grandparents used to call it “running circles around them” (sometimes literally.)

We want to be helpful, and involved. We forget that people might not want our help, because we’re so busy butting in trying to join in and offer help. We have so many ideas how you can improve what you’re doing that we don’t understand why you’re comfortable doing things the same way every time. Or by yourself. Or it’s not the best/fastest/most fun way possible. We don’t understand why people say “go away, I’ll do it myself” or “I don’t want your help.”

We’re easily distracted. I’ve been called scatter-brained, forgetful and spastic, among other things. For example the other day I was sitting at my desk writing a fiction story on my computer, fixing a USB charging cord, making a short grocery list, organizing my top desk drawer and talking to people in the room, all at the same time. I also fed the fish on my desk, and periodically swapped out the page of the document I was scanning into my computer. What most people don’t understand is that ADHD people can actually do that, and we’re usually good at it. We will also have a thousand and one unfinished projects. Many unfinished.

We need different coping mechanisms. For some ADHD people, they need quiet to function, to keep the distractions limited. Me, I like to listen to music, preferably non-lyrical like “hand-pan” music or binaural tones. Something with energy. I put headphones on and five hours later I have the outline of a small novel (and sometimes that’s bad, because it started as a simple reply on Facebook that went WAY out of control!!) However, if my husband can’t find something in the fridge, without looking up from my computer I can say “second shelf, towards the back, under the sour cream behind the mayo.” And my office area that looks so cluttered and disorganized? I know what and where everything is, so please don’t move anything.

Yet we’re visionary too! Some of the best writers, philosophers and scientists were or are ADHD. We think outside the box so much, we forget to think *inside* the box, and “Neurotypical” people don’t have a reference in normal thinking to understand what we’re talking about. It’s not anyone’s fault, we just have a different perspective on the world. We can imagine all the “what ifs” in the universe (which can challenge even the most patient parent.) But we’re usually very good problem solvers, inventors and creators.

We get easily frustrated. Because we move at such a fast pace, we have trouble learning the rest of the world doesn't manifest things as fast as we’d like. We want to be instant Mozarts and Wozniaks, we want the paint to dry faster, we want our TV show to come on now, we want to arrive at our destination as soon as we pull out of the driveway (are we there yet?) We can be pushy and demanding because we want things to go at our speed. And if we grasp a concept, we want to move on to the next step, whether the people around us are on the same page or not.

We also have trouble slowing down, which is why things like belly breathing, grounding and centering, meditation, yoga, martial arts or even simple playtime in the bath can improve our mood and behavior rather impressively. Learning to do these things is hard for us though…

We get easily depressed. The problem with moving fast in a slower paced world is that we get disappointed on a regular basis. We’re different, and a lot of ADHD people describe feeling like a “Stranger in a Strange Land” (good book by the way…) With all the expectations we have of ourselves and our world, and the disappointment from them, people with ADHD have some of the highest rates of mental health disorders and suicidal ideation overall. (It’s also why learning how to adjust one’s perspective and let go of expectations and live in the now is so therapeutic for us.)

Our brains specialize. Much like a savant, we’re usually really good at something, but lackluster at most of the other things around us. When we fixate on a topic or field, it’s one of the few times that we are able to shut out the distractions, and so we excel at that thing. The drawback is that it’s also really hard to get interested in anything else. If we’re good at math in school, we don’t hear the bell ring ending the class, we get distracted at our locker looking *one more time* at those equations, and we miss 90% of everything the next four teachers talk about because in our head we’re seeing numbers and fractions and sums. (As you can tell, mine was English class, adding sociology in college.)

The best way you can help us is to understand us. Be patient. Be kind. Don’t get angry when we try to help. Or when we don’t remember. Learn more about how we think and approach us from our perspective once in a while. Help us set up the structures, reminders and mechanisms that help us function. Or at least try to learn how NOT throw us off-track if we’re doing good.

For kids, give them lots of stuff to do, but make sure it’s something that catches their interest. Don’t be surprised when that interest changes overnight. Learn the concept of a “teaching moment.” In those moments, you have their attention - use it to teach them why the situation is good or bad. Don’t nag about the failures or differences as much as recognizing and praising the successes. ADHD people have so many little failures throughout the day that praising us for a success goes a long way.

Realize they are mini adrenaline junkies! My daughter’s teacher realized she needed to be evaluated at seven when, instead of going around the table like most her peers at that age would, to get a marker she wanted she not only went across the table for it, but she did so standing, not crawling, and didn’t understand why it was such an issue. I loved to climb trees, big tall pine trees, all the way where I could touch the top, despite it swaying from my weight, or my mother’s terrified screams.

Make them learn to read, without it they will have trouble finding coping mechanisms because neurotypical people don’t think like they do, but in the myriad of universes and galaxies in stories they can find descriptions of things that their minds will connect with.

And it goes without saying I hope that most of all, we’re human. We deserve the same love and respect you would give anyone else. And if you do, you’ll find no better or more loyal helpers in all of society. Just let us be u