[Mike]

Two thoughts: give the kid tons of positive feedback and make him see he has strengths as well.

And let the parents know that this is the number one childhood mental health issue. And no other diagnosis comes with so much good news. Properly managed, the transformation can be astonishing! My son went from failing to honours.

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[Mike]

Hey Mannyc79,

I just want to add that there may be things you fail at, or really struggle with, or whatever, but one solution is to not do those tings. Hire someone else to do your accounts. Or whatever it is you hate doing or just don’t do well. Richard Branson, the multi-multi-millionaire speaks openly about the fact that he is terrible with numbers. Completely awful. Basically he’s dyslexic not just with words but numbers. He has someone else do that. Someone who loves adding up numbers. And why should a guy who can spin off one successful enterprise a month, and provide work for thousands of people, be wasting time adding numbers, right?

I know when you’ve failed a lot it’s hard to trust yourself and therefore hard to trust others. But there are reliable people out there.

The other thing I believe, or rather know from first hand experience, is that ‘failure’ is a really relative term. Whatever it is you can’t do, it’s probably a task or a job or a skill that’s been made up anyway. I mean, to be a bit facetious, Stephen Hawking is a complete failure at the Olympic High Jump. And the Track and Field. And Rowing. And Ice Hockey. I could list a thousand things he can’t do, all kinds of stuff he’d screw up, or fail at… Is he a failure? Should he feel bad about himself?

When I finally got that who I am matters. And who everyone is matters. And the best thing my kids can do is follow their bliss and do what they do well, and same for me, then I stopped feeling guilty or ashamed about my ‘failures.’

The fact that you’ve shared your fears with us here, hey, I acknowledge that. You’ve contributed to my life, to Fearwidg, and to everyone else who has read what your posting. And that ripple effect goes outward. Someone said that there is no such thing as a ‘small’ good deed. The ripples from the simplest action, whether it’s holding a door and smiling, or sharing a story on a blog, will ripple outwards in ways you can never imagine. How many people who are on the fence about getting diagnosed, are going to read your posting and go get checked… You don’t know. You may never know. That’s okay. Just know it’s beyond what you can imagine.

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[Mike]

You can also use these Forums to learn more and practice giving and getting advice. I think this website should have some of those problem solving sessions like Dr. J. is talking about. How would we go about that?

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[Mike]

I understand your reluctance to get diagnosed. It takes time. It costs money. It’s hard to find someone who can do it properly. Start with the website here and also some of the other ADHD resources. Hallowell’s books are good. As are others. I think the more you look around, the more you will decide that yes, this is VERY familiar sounding, or Nope, I don’t hear myself in this. Trust me, if you recognize yourself, if you learn more about it and start to realize, “Hey, I do that! I thought it was just a personality quirk.” you will start to get excited and energized and you will have all the motivation you need. It’s like spending your whole life struggling to understand people and then one day you land in a country where everyone speaks the same language you do. And you realize the problem was you speak English and you’ve spent your whole life in Borneo where they only speak Borneo-ese. Or whatever they speak there. It’s a relief.

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[Mike]

Purl Gurl says when goes back and she reads what she wrote she is embarrassed and throws stuff out. In a way that’s good. That’s the point. The more you can see that what seemed like mountains at the time was not really so bad, and in fact either turned out fine or just kind of went away, the more you should be able to look at today’s upsets and realize ‘this too shall pass.’ I notice some older people are pretty good at ignoring the small stuff. And even the big stuff. When you’re lived through The Great Depression and a half dozen recessions since then, the current economic conditions seem less frightening. So part of my journaling has been to look back at stuff I wrote when I was going through my divorce and think, “Wow, what melodrama!”

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[Mike]

And in the documentary ADD & Loving It, it was Doctor Kurtz who said the idea is to use the medication as ‘training wheels,’ which you put on a bike to help until you don’t need them. The hard part for me is that with the medication things get easier, clearer, I can do what I need to do, but I don’t feel motivated enough to do the other stuff, like Yoga or meditation or whatever to retain my brain. And I don’t want to take medication for the rest of my life. For one thing, it’s expensive.

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[Mike]

The other thing is finding the right people. Maybe this is a separate topic, but in the documentary ADD and Loving It? they showed Richard Branson, the guy behind Virgin Airlines and Virgin phones and so on and I’ve heard him speak in person. He’s amazing. He makes it quite clear there are areas of business, like the numbers and finances, that are totally beyond him and he’ll mess it up. When I heard a multi-millionaire admit he’s terrible with numbers and can’t read easily, it blew my mind. But then I think of say, the Beatles. None of them knew anything about finances, or accounting or whatever. They had people around them who knew that stuff. The trick is finding people you can trust. How do you do that? I think ADDers can have real problems trusting. But I also know from my own life, sometimes I’ve trusted way too much.

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[Mike]

Good question! I think there’s a difference between someone who is ADHD and is functional and people who are so severely ADHD they can’t function at anything. It’s kind of a matter of degree. I liked what Kate Kelly said in one of the videos about when someone asked her, “Isn’t everyone ADHD?” and she said, “Well, yeah, kinda, sometimes, a little.” Even people who are diagnosed as ADHD span a real range.

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[Mike]

I would say everyone is afraid to find out, cause it means something is ‘wrong’. And what’s scarier than having something ‘wrong’ with your brain. I like the idea that this is a mindset or style of thinking. And in certain situations it works well. And the trick is to know what those situations are.

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[Mike]

Love it. Funny how I could think I was a loser and lazy and even ‘weak’ and yet have actually accomplished a whole bunch of stuff in my life that other people actually admired. But cause the stuff I do well was so easy, compared to the stuff I struggled with, I dismissed all of my accomplishments. I actually thought, “Well, yeah, but that was easy. It doesn’t count.” So creating projects that involved 20 or 30 people working full time was just ‘lucky breaks’ whereas not being able to do the paperwork and having to rely on someone else was a sign that I wasn’t really qualified to create something this big, but somehow I’d gotten away with it.

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[Author]

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