ADHD is not your scapegoat… so grow-up!

If I need glasses to drive, but choose not to put them on and have an accident, will any judge in the world let me off?  I don’t get why so many young men I deal with seem to feel that adhd is a license to goof off, to get away with being late, forgetting homework.  Seriously folks, a diagnosis is to help you find best fit solutions – not excuse bad behaviour!  You idiots are giving the rest of us a bad reputation, and I for one don’t like it.

If I am in a wheelchair, it means I have to plan my transit routes differently, it does not mean you can never use transit.  The same holds true for adhd. A scapegoat is something that is meant to bear the blame for another.  Never let ADHD be your scapegoat.  Got a problem, welcome to the rest of the world.  We all have problems.  The answer will be different because you have adhd, not that there is no solution.  The solutions for other people may not work for you – so that means you may need to search further.  Let me take you through an example.

Time management is often an issue for us.   Some folks have wonderful internal clocks that mentally go bing and tell them to tidy up their work space just before quitting time.  Most of us with adhd can’t imagine having such an internal clock.  That is why there are ALARM CLOCKS!  Like, duh, imagine that, a gadget that will actually fill in the gap in ability… but there’s a problem.  You see, when I’m in hyper-focus (one of the benefits of ADHD, we can super-concentrate), I won’t hear many alarm clocks.  The only alarm in my house I will not ignore is the kitchen timer.  The “don’t burn food” trigger in my brain means it will cut through even my strongest zone moments.    I went through roughly 10 different alarms to find that out.  But just hearing the alarm isn’t the end of it for some.  Yes, hearing the alarm now means we have to make a conscious choice to stop what we are doing, put it away and follow the plan.  Too hard you say?  To which I counter, why?  Be honest folks, I’m not asking a silly question here.

Get real with yourself… why can’t you turn off the tv, or game, or iPod and move on to what you should be doing?  If its MORE interesting, its easy to turn it off, so obviously the next task is LESS interesting.  Less interesting can still trigger adrenaline and get us going if the negative pay-off for missing it is worse… like when we have to pay our tuition or face a hefty fine.  That interest scale can be mentally played with folks, you don’t have to settle with LESS all the time.  Find something in the LESS to make it MORE.  Good example, homework.  Why would homework be fun?  Well, for one, connect the dots upwards.  What does homework get you in the real world… a better job, more money in less time, access to the education you want (and though they won’t tell you in the younger grades, once you do your required courses the rest is only what you want to learn).  To explain that further… lets say you don’t like English courses.  You want to study music.  So, your English homework is the quest you must take to reach music-land where you only have to take your music classes. Yes folks, most required courses outside of your area end after one or two credits.  Those courses can be morphed in your mind to be the equivalent of a dragon guarding your treasure.  Another real world example… why play stack the blocks with an infant?  Because that infant grows up and then you get to play with the next generation of really cool toys.  Connect the dots folks, you aren’t choosing LESS, you’re choosing long-term MORE.

For every hiccup that is ADHD someone out there has found a work around.  The question is not can it be done, but are you willing to do it?  Are you willing to put the excuses aside and actually make a better life for yourself?  Oh, wait, I’ve lost you, you’ve gone back to your video-game…