What do you think when you hear......

[MamaiBear]

..... a child/teen has adhd??

Just found out my 14 year old has adhd and wondering if we should keep it quiet (as I feel people don’t understand it - I didn’t!!) or share the news with coaches, parents, peers. His teachers know.

I’m worried telling people would label my son. He’s been an outsider and not accepted by his peers since around the age of 8 as it became obvious he was different. He was bullied and is now pretty much either assaulted or ignored by school mates and team mates. I’m worried if they know they’ll just use it to taunt him further. So I’m wondering...... what do you first think when you hear someone has adhd - would it make you more empathetic towards someone (it’s actually a legally recognised disability but because the person appears “normal” on the outside there is very little compassion I find

Thanks

I think you will get a mixed bag of people who get it and people who think it’s ‘made up’.

Personally, I don’t think much of it but it would help me understand certain things and I would adapt things accordingly, but I work regularly with teenagers who have ADHD so it’s a daily feature for me.

I think lots of people don’t get it, and even the people themselves, it’s good if your son is able to recognise what he finds difficult and is impacted by his ADHD and what he finds he is good at and is helped by his ADHD or if you can do this together, you can usually then put certain things in place and he can to adjust things for himself where others don’t understand, or tell people what he needs from them. For example a lot of the teens I work with with ADHD struggle to concentrate for longer than around 10 mins or prefer to be moving or have other distractions while doing stuff, so work I do with them might be outside so we can walk/ play a sport while we do it, I used to spend a lot of time playing pool with some of the teens whilst we completed whatever work they needed to do.

I would tell professionals though, so coaches etc, but probably not peers, unless it came up generally. Just because I think unless they have direct experience of it, they likely won’t understand it very well

Don't be afraid. Embrace this new information. I know adults who have spent many painful adolescent years in the wilderness thing to piece together what your child knows now.
Own it and move forward. His friends will have have much bigger minds and hearts than you give them credit for. Let him be grow as he should rather than fight the nature that is his personality.
He will need to make adjustments and sometimes ask if he is 'too much' but we all need to be our authentic selves.
I'm sure someone will be along soon with more articulate advice but well done to you for getting him this far so early on.

I meet lots through work and just think that it's a teen with ADHD, I wonder how it impacts on them and how I can help.

Let him decide. My teen was confirmed autistic at 12yo and we discussed who needed to know. I share on a need to know basis but he is very open about it and finds that the "label" means that people are more willing to do, think and listen.

He was bullied mercilessly beforehand and is still targeted but not as severely because (rightly or wrongly) teachers - and the police in our case - take it more seriously as he is classed as vulnerable.

ADHD is an umbrella term now so the words don't mean much to me. I would need more specifics to have an opinion what I was supposed to do with the information.

So not a label. Not much of anything tbh.