Q: “I have ADHD, and I’m the parent of a child who also has ADHD. Living with ADHD has made me super self-critical, and I don’t want to pass this way of thinking onto my child.
How can I teach my child differently? How can I model for them what it looks like to manage ADHD with self-compassion?”I was diagnosed with ADHD in my 40s, after my kids were all diagnosed one by one like dominoes. (I figured there was no way my husband could be solely responsible for all of their neurology!) So that’s when I went in for an evaluation, and I was diagnosed with learning and attention issues.I cried for a few weeks after the diagnosis, and then … my whole life made sense.
I understood why I had done everything in my life. Honestly, I was amazed by how much I had accommodated for myself all this time, without knowing I had ADHD.[Read: Your After-Diagnosis Acceptance Guide]But, like you, I realized that I had also spent most of my life beating myself up.
Many of us with ADHD, regardless of our age at diagnosis, learn to hit ourselves over the head with a stick to get ourselves to do anything.