Sometimes I think the most debilitating part of ADHD is how it’s best friends with shame.
Heather Ercse, @heatherercse on social media site, Threads.
On Threads, author Haley DeRoche, @officialsadbeige, said someone should write a book about having ADHD while parenting a child who also has ADHD. Another woman, Rosemarie Relic, @rosemarierelic, said it would be a bonus if the mom is going through perimenopause. Well, I don’t write books, but I thought I’d do my best to relate the experience. It’s not bad necessarily, but it’s definitely not easy. You’re more or less parenting your younger self, with an overlay of their own personality. Parenting yourself is hilarious and stressful, because you’ve got no one to blame but yourself when they’re sarcastic (wait, is that just a me characteristic?!) I’ve got a 9 year old daughter with ADHD, I’ve got ADHD, and non-ADHD husband and 15 year old daughter. Emotions are often high. The primary feeling is… intense.
The Past
Ok. Where do I start? Well, I’ll start with a little background. I was 27 when I was diagnosed with ADHD. Many women my age will tell you their parents ignored the signs, but mine didn’t. They got the ADHD questionnaires when I was about 12. They talked to psychologists. We just didn’t know then what we know now so most of my symptoms were shrugged off as gifted but lazy. In college, when I made terrific grades in classes I loved and barely passed the ones I didn’t, I called it being an “intellectual asshole” who just did the stuff I liked and wasn’t living up to my aptitude. Thing was, I wanted to do the work for the other classes. I knew it was going to cause problems when I didn’t. I just literally couldn’t make myself I didn’t know why. I ashamed of myself most of the time. That shame sticks with you, doesn’t it?
Now, 20-odd years later, we have more information and a better understanding of what ADHD looks like in women and girls which is how my daughter got diagnosed earlier than most girls do, even now. We did spend two long years fighting doctors who said maybe it’s ADHD, but it was probably just anxiety from having spent a year and a half in online school because of COVID. Moreover, medical misogyny is very real, and knowing that women weren’t included in medical testing or clinical trials until 1993 explains a lot.
The Present
The reality of being an ADHD perimenopausal mother while parenting a daughter with ADHD can’t be distilled down to a pithy 280 characters or one minute video. It varies wildly between wanting to throttle her and wanting to hug her because you see the struggle, and the hard work. Both my daughter and I are medicated and it has made a massive difference in both our lives. It has transformed her school experience in ways my husband and I couldn’t have imagined and it’s wonderful to see. Both her reading and math scores, as well as her emotional regulation, have improved dramatically. Our school has a great team in place and they’ve incorporated time with the school counselor and a learning specialist to help move her forward.
In the mornings, before school and before, either of our medication has taken effect, are often the most fraught. I’m trying to get her to prioritize getting dressed, making her bed, etc. before she plays with her stuffed animals or goes downstairs to find something she wants. I give her several verbal instructions and when she doesn’t do them all without distraction, I get irritated. Then, she cries and says she can’t ever do anything right. I immediately feel terrible, apologize, and we try to understand each other. I’ve noticed the pattern and I’ve been making a concerted effort to give her one instruction at a time, while also letting her know there will be time to play if she doesn’t does the things that need to be done first. It’s gotten better, but neither of us are perfect.
On the other hand, we get each other. When she makes silly faces or silly sounds, I usually respond. She sticks her tongue out, I do too. We’ll make a game out of funny faces or moving our bodies goofily. When I’m overwhelmed, but don’t know how to articulate it I can say to her, “I’m just like bleh, you know? I just need to… humph,” flop dramatically on the couch, and she’s just like, “Yeah, I do.”
As an ADHD parent, I know that I am always worried that I’m projecting my own issues onto my ADHD daughter. Do other ADHD parents worry about this too? Here’s a recent example. The other night, we were all playing Yahtzee and the younger one mentioned that she was going to sleep well because she’d played her first soccer game of the season earlier in the day. My husband responded with something like, “Oh you’re fine. It wasn’t that bad.” I waited until later to tell my husband that his response might not have been the best one. She was just making conversation, not trying to be dramatic, and ADHD teaches girls early on that they’re “too much” and with that comes shame. Feelings are too big, caring too much, too excited about things, just too… much. I told him I want her to feel supported and know that she can be exactly who and what she is at home, without feeling judged. Now, did it poke at that little sensitive part of her or was that just me projecting my own insecurities onto that moment? I don’t know.
Evenings, especially with homework, are hard. Doing math gets her hackles up. Every time we have to stop because something isn’t right or she doesn’t get it ratchets up the tension. She’s not bad at math. It just sometimes takes her a little longer to catch onto a concept. But, it’s where the “I know” comes the quickest. Y’all know the one I mean. That “I know” when you’re explaining something. That moment when they’re braced for impact because they didn’t get it right for the second (or third time.) When they know they’re still struggling, but they don’t want it to be pointed out to them, again. It’s the same moment that, as a parent, you want to scream! They don’t know and hearing that “I know” is so annoying you feel like you’re losing your mind. It’s the perfect storm of two ADHD people and the added bonus of perimenopausal rage coming together. It sometimes takes my entire being to keep calm. It’s when my years of dealing handling unmedicated, undiagnosed ADHD take over. Internally, I’m a mix of my own mother who fussed at me when I didn’t get it and the exhausted parent who just wants to be done. Externally, I say, “Why don’t we take a break for a minute. I’m not trying to upset you and I know you aren’t trying to upset me either. Let’s just take a break from this and calm ourselves down so we can look at it again.” It helps and it soothes us both. But, there’s a fine line between understanding when a kid is overwhelmed and when they’re just trying to get out of doing a hard task. Figuring that out, and how to discipline appropriately, takes work and discernment (I think that’s the kindest way to put it.) Sometimes we just need a hug.
The Perimenopause Chronicles
I want to touch on perimenopause and ADHD before I finish this. It took me at least two years, with two female doctors, for them to believe my symptoms, at my age, was perimenopause. It took an additional year for me to work up the courage to talk to a doctor about, and begin, hormone replacement therapy (HRT.) Before the HRT I was irritated with everyone about everything at the drop of a hat. I could feel myself being irrational and it almost made my irritation worse. I knew it didn’t make sense and that upset me even more. Good lord. Perimenopause is really just second puberty with more wrinkles and more health concerns to worry about. I wasn’t sleeping well what with the night sweats and the 3:00 a.m. wake-up calls so that didn’t help with anything. HRT has changed several things. I’m way less irritated than I used to be (that definitely doesn’t mean never irritated,) though the state of the world right now doesn’t help things. The progesterone at night made my night sweats disappear and lets me sleep all night long. Despite the combined estrogen patch and progesterone pill, I still can’t fall asleep very quickly. I’m also more scattered than I used to be, like earlier when I turned in two full circles in the kitchen trying to remember what I was doing and/or looking for or when I have to go back into the bathroom multiple times before I remember to put on deodorant in the morning.
The Future
Both my daughters and my husband are amazing. They’re thoughtful, smart, contemplative people who genuinely care about each other and about the world around them. My husband has given me so much insight into my own concerns about our daughter’s ADHD, whether to medicate her, and handling her emotions. He’s the calming force to my whirlwind. He’s the steady, patient one and I am not. My older daughter is one of the best people I know. She handles her crazy mama and daughter with an easy understanding and I feel very lucky.
I’ve written this essay mostly in regards to my younger one. I can write a second one that speaks more to an ADHD mom parenting a neurotypical teen daughter if there’s interest in that. Y’all let me know.
I think all boil down to something I said earlier. Sometimes we just need a hug. We just need to know that we are seen and cared for and to feel safe, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Parenting is a tumultuous journey no matter who you are. Navigating it while neurodivergent can sometimes feel like an impossible task, but we’re all in this together.
* The following (in italics) was removed from the body of the essay. My husband said the writing felt a little rushed, and he was right. But, in the interest of ADHD transparency I’m including as a postscript because writing is never easy and I want people to see that it sometimes looks like this, especially before you hit that hyperfixation flow state. It took me a few hours to write this. I kept getting distracted and anxious. I’m wasn’t getting it right. This was supposed to be funny, light-hearted writing, but it’s not. I kept trying to figure out how to make it that way, but all that came out was intensity and feeling. Dammit. I couldn’t seem to do it any other way. I’ve got a few examples that I want to tell y’all about, but they’re not connected. I hope y’all don’t mind.
katyferrywrites.com 