What is the first sign of ADHD you remember?

[techchick]

I'm watching a French show called "The Middleman" on the Criterion Channel: it's essentially a black comedy / horror story of untreated ADHD for those who know what they're looking at.

As I was watching: I remembered being in 8th grade and realizing an hour before English class began that we were supposed to have some sort of visual aid to describe our ancestry. I had absolutely no desire or motivation to do the damn thing. So I sat on the loo in a girls' room stall and drew a sad thatched-roof cottage on lined paper with my ballpoint pen. That was my display and I felt pathetic and demoralized showing it.

My "presentation" act got better as time went on, because I knew I couldn't get by with that, but it cost me greatly over the years. The effort we need to put forth just to get something "OK" together compared to neurotypicals means that there aren't spoons in the drawer for self-care like nutrition and care of our living space.

[troebia]

Hmm don't know much about ADHD but is this the show? https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ivmq1
It's funny, thanks for mentioning

I guess there are lots of ways of feeling like an outsider in school. I was bullied constantly by the popular "neurotypical" kids and I know some of them turned out badly later in life. I know it's not very healthy to desire revenge but f it, it feels sweet anyway...

[JennaM]

Good question! I think, for me, there wasn't a defining incident so much as several tendencies. I was diagnosed later in life, but it's shocking to me now how obvious it has always been.

My mother says my first word was NO and my first sentence was "That's not fair!" She's probably exaggerating, but a lot of us have a preoccupation with fairness and chafe against arbitrary rules. When I was four, the kindergarten cutoff left me at home while my neighborhood pals all went to school. The rage I felt was overwhelming. I spent the year running away with my tricycle, breaking into people's homes, swimming pools, and play rooms, and generally going wherever the anger took me. I gave a boy stitches, started a fire, treated my friends to the candy store with money stolen from my mother's wallet. At four!

My fifth grade teacher snidely remarked I should be a lawyer when I grew up since I liked to argue so much. In high school and college, I'd question the assignments a lot if they felt too tedious or familiar. So the need for newness has also been a chronic thing with me. Boredom and external constraints have always made my skin crawl.

Also, the need for attention, approval, affection... I wince at the lengths I went to to get these things, but I do now feel kind of tender for the girl I was then, always being told to be quiet, slow down, behave, do what you're told. I changed myself -- learned to mask, really -- by sheer force of will. Knowing I had wells of energy and creativity that no one around me really valued (just the opposite), I played their parts and won all the accolades, while feeling so much self-hatred it choked me sometimes. I wish I could go back there and tell myself not to pay any attention to everyone who wanted to repress all of that. To have faith that when I was older those things -- mischief, courage, creativity -- would be what I cherished most about myself. To know that these things I was naturally were the very things that would eventually make me successful in life and would turn out to be the things the people I care about most love the most in me.

I'll definitely check out The Middleman!