I’ve been trawling the internet tonight to try to get some insight into ADHD diagnosis after a frustrating meeting last week with the clinical psychologist.  I’ve realised that I’m sometimes pretty bad at communicating things face to face so am putting together a letter with things that I think are significant but which I failed to get across in the meeting.  It’s hard.  It’s so demoralising to be negative about your child.  As I was looking at various websites I found the following insight which shows some of the way that ADHD affects peoples’ lives.  It’s from an adult’s perspective but does explain why things don’t necessarily get accomplised.

An insight

I decide to water my garden.

As I turn on the hose, I look over at my car and decide it needs washing.

As I start toward the garage, I notice mail on the table that I collected from the letter box earlier. I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.

I lay my car keys on the table, put the junk mail in the rubbish bin under the table, and notice that it is full.

So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the rubbish first.

But then I think, since I’m going to be near the post-box when I take out the rubbish anyway, I may as well pay the bills first.

I take my cheque book off the table, and see that there is only 1 cheque left.

My extra cheques are in my desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of Coke I’d been drinking.

I’m going to look for my cheques, but first I need to push the Coke aside so that I don’t accidentally knock it over.

The Coke is getting warm, and I decide to put it in the fridge to keep it cold.

As I head toward the kitchen with the Coke, a vase of flowers on the worktop catches my eye – they need water.

I put the Coke on the worktop and discover my reading glasses that I’ve been searching for all morning.

I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I’m going to water the flowers. I set the glasses back down on the worktop, fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote control.

Someone left it on the kitchen table. I realise that tonight when we watch TV, I’ll be looking for the remote control, but I won’t remember that it’s on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the front room where it belongs, but first I’ll water the flowers.

I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor.

So, I set the remote control back on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill.

Then, I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.

At the end of the day:
- the car isn’t washed
- the bills aren’t paid
- there is a warm can of Coke sitting on the worktop
- the flowers don’t have enough water
- there is still only 1 cheque in my cheque book
- I can’t find the remote control
- I can’t find my glasses
- and I don’t remember what I did with the car keys.

Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I’m really baffled because I know I was busy all day, and I’m really tired.