To think Jinny had ADHD

[CallMeMousie]

I've just been reliving my childhood reading the Jinny at Finmory books with DD. Now I read it as an adult I sympathise so much with her parents but I'm also wondering if Jinny had ADHD.

She never paid attention in school despite being very intelligent, was highly compulsive, always taking off at inappropriate times without a thought for danger, very creative and imaginative and of course hyper focused on Shantih and her art. She also never seemed to hold down any friendships as she was too busy galloping over the moors, even poor Sue got fed up with her behaviour in the end.

Not that it matters at all, but DD is awaiting ADHD assessment and it is striking a chord, nice for her to have a character to identify with (Although not to emulate please I'd have a fit if she buggered off over the moors all day alone age 12!). I wonder what other children's characters would be officially neurodiverse if they were written about today?

Definitely!

Not Anne. She could focus well when she wanted to. I think the extreme day dreaming and talkativeness was a trauma response in the plot, expressing the manic aspect of the author's mental health disorder in rl.

Not a children's character as such, as he was a real person, but I'm sure I remember reading a theory that Charles Ingalls (Pa in the Little House on the Prairie books) may have been bi-polar, and his manic phases were the impetus for the family upping sticks and moving on again in the covered wagon, as he could never settle anywhere, and the pattern of their migration made no real sense when compared with the journeys that other pioneers made.

i never knew how to say Shantih, my friend says shanTiTH and it drove me mad but i didn't know what it should be to correct her

Not Anne. She could focus well when she wanted to

Hyperfocus is a trait of ADHD and ASD and likely other ND conditions too.

The Sanskrit word, meaning peaceful, is pronounced like Shyaahn-tea, and that’s also how it’s intended to be pronounced in the T S Eliot poem The Wasteland. Assuming Shantih’s name was a reference to the poem, which as an adult I’ve always assumed it was, I’d guess that.

I haven't read those books for years! I think I still have a couple somewhere

There is a mother in one of the Georgette Heyer books, not a main character, who is portrayed as lazy but definitely comes across as someone with ME or some other chronic fatigue illness

Also - not entirely related but I had a horrifically bad chest infection last year. Multiple bouts of antibiotics, steroids, chest x rays. It came on really fast so I went from slight cough to not being able to breathe properly over the course of one day because I was coughing up so much fluid I couldn't get the air in. As I was recovering I watched a period drama and in it a woman died with the exact same symptoms as mine. It was sobering to realise how close I came to dying if I had lived in an earlier time or in a country where I was too far from easily accessible/affordable medical treatment.

Ah Patricia Leitch was/is one of my favourite writers. I always related to Jinny so much and god I would give anything to have a Shantih of my own.

I read A dream of fair horses, (or Fields of Praise as it is also known) as an adult, and had tears streaming down my cheeks when I finished it.

I think you may be on to something, I now believe as an adult who has really struggled my
whole life that I have something undiagnosed, be it ADHD or something else I don’t know…and I just felt like Jinny was me as I read them! Patricia could write characters who were so unlikeable at times but they were real (to me as a child) because most people are unlikeable sometimes and behave selfishly or on impulse. I loved her dad in the books and how sometimes it slipped in to his point of view.

She also wrote Jacky Jumps To The Top, I always remember shedding a tear when the riding school owner sold Flicka at auction, you could tell her dreams had just failed. Patricia could just weave such adult tragedy in to seemingly childish pony stories.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the Jinny books were a metaphor for girls being trapped in to lives they don’t want…Patricia Leitch always seemed to have a certain depth to her writing that went further than your average pony book.

In case you want to find more of her stuff, some of her books were published under the pseudonym Jane Eliot.

Visiting the ‘real’ Finmory on the Isle of Skye is on my bucket list 😄

I have often thought this, DH has said it to me before, I have had mastitis multiple times and it always starts as a twinge and within about thirty minutes to an hour I’m showing signs of serious infection. He has said how many times I would’ve probably died already without antibiotics!

I never thought sue got fed up of her as such, more that sue moved into a type of adolescence Jinny never did.

I like to think she married Ken.

But I do suspect the real mark Antony (not Shakespeare’s version) had ADHD.

I always thought Jinny might have had autism. ADHD makes sense as well.

Loved Jinny. Spent my entire childhood growing my hair, dyeing it red and being sulky around adults. I still feel Jinny speaks to me.

Oh and yes to illnesses. I have just (August) been diagnosed with a terribly debilitating auto immune issue. Not so many years ago it was fatal. It has rendered me exhausted for couple of years and is slow for it's effects to really be felt. I recall when DS1 now in Year 8 had to write a poem about his mum (me) for mother's day and he said 'My mum is very nice and always very tired'.

I know what it is now and medication means I can now be awake after 7 pm about 3-4 times a week. But a year ago I was so ill and wfh meant I mostly worked from bed.

When I was a young adult I would read about fainting women in books and feel frustrated with contempt and irritation. Now I wonder if it was a sign of something much more real and sinister.

I think Sue moved on also to a regular adolescence. I grieved for Sue in many ways. She went from pony mad to having the same sort of life that people like Jinny (and I) were railing against. school, some sort of qualification, urban life, a standard sort of job and then inevitably to having children and thinking back wistfully to her glory days.

I think Jinny would have ended up like Keziah the wild woman, and I also hope married to Ken. (Or she may have ended up a bit like Miss Tuke and that would have been good as well).

*wise woman

There were so many great women in the Jinny books actually. Miss Tuke who was devoted to her horses and took no nonsense, Keziah who was spiritual and wise, Nell from the shop who understood art but who let the side down by getting married.

I don't think Jinny should have married Ken, he was too judgemental. I like to think of her still riding over the moors and painting in her attic in her 40s, maybe with a nice steady farmer's son to keep the aga burning and get the ponies in when she forgets.

Ken would have been very annoying in real life.

I must re-read the Jinny series, I just finished Pony Surprise by Patricia Leitch, which is one I hadn't read as a kid and was a refreshing change in some ways from the usual plot lines of the genre (they still get the desired outcome in the end!), with a pony that absolutely will NOT entertain them in any way for 90% of the book!

I've nearly finished the Jill series, (again) and whilst there are some things there that I now read very differently - Jill being extremely rude to adults she views as beneath her in some way - I am glad that as a kid I read books where girls/women were forthright, getting on with things, strong and capable characters. I could have done a lot worse!

I'd not be surprised if Jinny were real, she'd be on the autistic spectrum, she was so passionate, and felt things so keenly... mm!

I used to love those books so much! Although, if I remember rightly, didn't Sue suddenly discover make up and weight loss (Chestnut Gold I think) and seemingly dumped Jinny to be friends with her sister Petra? It was many, many years ago that I read those books though! But even then I thought that was pretty crappy of Sue!

I think you're right. And looking back, she and my DD are so similar- and DD has been recently diagnosed.

Yes Sue did discover makeup and spent more time with Petra, but not before Jinny had gone nuts riding with imaginary horse people and caused a stampede which broke Sue's dad's ankle and dragged poor Sue about to archaeological digs where she disappeared off at random. I felt quite sorry for poor dependable Sue on re-reading!

This is a common misconception - most people with ADHD can focus very well on things they interest them! It's everything else that's the problem.