“At least you didn’t do worse than chance.”
I had to laugh. My dad had unloaded a huge, unwanted box of old school papers on me. While most went into the recycling, I found a few gems. Among them, a pattern-recognition exercise where I scored an overall 25% on a four-part multiple choice.
As my husband pointed out, at least I didn’t get below 25%, or I would’ve done worse than blind chance.
What does this have to do with ADHD?
Well, I have a hunch: I can figure out which image doesn’t belong. I think I could’ve done it in second grade, too. But it takes me a while. I’m not a natural visual thinker. The oddball image doesn’t jump out at me. In other words, I have to keep my eyes (and brain) on the pictures long enough to figure it out.
And look at this page of math problems. My accuracy rate was okay, but I left huge chunks blank at the end.
Looking back at my elementary school papers and report cards, I see a trail of ADHD clues.
I see a smart kid who made a lot of silly mistakes on assignments. Who forgot to do homework. Whose attention span was too short to figure out simple pattern recognition exercises. Who got distracted and ran out of time before finishing an assignment. This, on top of the report cards detailing my lack of impulse control or (related, for sure) social skills.
And yet, because I was smart — my IQ and advanced reading skills landed me in the gifted program — and a girl, no one suspected ADHD. This was, and remains, common. If ADHD runs in your family and you have introverted, sensitive, academically gifted children, it’s something to watch for.
Grown-ups with late-diagnosis ADHD: do you ever look back at all the clues and wonder how no one knew?
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This is fantastic. Hard, cold evidence.
But stil….little J…. 🙁
Oh hell yes! All I ever heard was “You are not working up to your potential!” which was frustrating because I was TRYING AS HARD AS I COULD. Near perfect SAT scores however my high school graduation rank was 119th out of 121. By high school I was so frustrated I gave up. Mostly I skipped school and smoked pot 24/7. I have been successful, considering. I am a gainfully employed tax paying homeowner and have managed to stay out of jail. I was diagnosed ten years ago at the age of 40 and FINALLY my life made sense. It’s not any easier but now I know that I am not a total fuck up.
I was like that too. I got a perfect 36 in reading and 32 on English on the ACT… yet I graduated with a 2.8 GPA by the skin of my teeth.
The story of my life too, Jaclyn!
My teachers thought I was a daydreamer. Always telling me I needed to “try harder”, and put forth more effort.
I just stumbled across your site and now I’m super stoked to read through allllll your archives. I’m expecting to get my ADHD diagnosis tomorrrow, and based on my husband’s last session with his therapist, we’re beginning to think his diagnosis won’t be long in coming either. I’ve also got referrals to get our two eldest kids assessed, unfortunately the adhd clinic isn’t even accepting kids onto their waiting list at the moment.
Anyway. All that to say I’m very much looking forward to learning from your experiences.
Welcome, Amanda! It sounds like you have your hands full! Good luck with all the ADHD assessments, and I hope the blog provides some helpful inspiration along the way 🙂
Pretty close to a carbon copy of my report cards, behavior reports and tests. One time on a multiplication quiz, I answered the first 3 lines pretty incorrectly, didn’t finish the rest and drew a picture as an answer to the bottom half of my multiplication tables questions and didn’t answer any of those… Obviously I failed. I gave the paper back to the teacher and told her I did it on the back…..on the back I wrote out all the problems printed out on the test on the front side and answered them 100% correct. When asked about it because I failed it, I said I don’t even remember drawing the picture, but writing the problems down and figuring out on the back helped me concentrate better. But no one thought there was something wrong, I got in tourble for being a disruptive, attention-seeking brat who didn’t like to play nice or follow the rules. Nope, sorry, just my brain doesn’t work like that!
That’s interesting, I remember in high school, everyone would groan when a teacher said we had to show all of our work on a math test or homework. If given the chance, most of my classmates wouldn’t have written everything out.
I never understood this, as I enjoyed the calming effect of writing out every painstaking step of a calc/physics problem. I showed way more work than was required most of the time.
Part of this was my memory — I’d have no idea how I arrived at my answer if I didn’t write out my thought process — but I’m also not confident I even could’ve answered the questions any other way.
I’m a big writer/recopier. I copy my calendar from my computer into my notebook by hand at the beginning of every week. It slows me down and helps me process.
My SAT score was plastered on my high school wall for the highest 10 in our grade. Funny because 1 I had a emotional break down mid exam and decided I didn’t give a crap anymore & walked out before completing it. Also funny because my GPA was lower than a 2.0.
I loved learning, I loved education, I hated everything about school. From how loud & annoying everyone was to how slow or fast everything went & I never did homework unless it was a paper about something that interested me. I sucked at spelling until I started to home school my kids & learned by teaching them.
My kids & my husband are either ADD or ADHD & it didn’t even occur to me until I was researching it so I could help my son, that I too have ADD. I told my husband “Babe, I think I’m ADD!” He laughed. I got offended. He got serious & Said “Oh, I thought you knew!? Baby, you spaced out durring out wedding vows!”
HAHAHAHA, the sad thing is that it’s on video so I can’t deny it, I did space out durring the vows. So much of my childhood made sense in that moment. It was a big gigantic light bulb moment. They always put me in the gifted and talented then the next year they’d put me one level down because I never did the school or home work. Then a yr would go by and they’d stick me back into gifted and talented and the next year move me again. Unmotivated & undisciplined and super chatty.
That’s why those are the traits we work on in our kids because I don’t want them to be underachievers like mom.
Oh yes, in our house, there is much anxiety over not letting ADHD go unaddressed for an entire childhood/young adulthood like happened for us.
And I originally gave my husband a book about ADHD “so he could understand me better.” He was floored by what he read — before that moment he’d never considered that he had it, too. Amazing what we don’t see all those years 😉
“Grown-ups with late-diagnosis ADHD: do you ever look back at all the clues and wonder how no one knew?” YES!! Especially because now, after I have pushed myself to get a diagnosis, I see it in so many family members. Unfortunately though, we are all rather intelligent so there was not really a learning difficulty and therefore no need for diagnosis. I strongly disagree with that. ADHD is not only a learning disorder, it affects so many more aspects of life.
It sure does. My family is the same way: I can see clearly how this runs through generations, but it was never academically debilitating enough for us to be diagnosed. In terms of health and relationships? That’s another story.