My Life with ADHD

ADHD gave me no end of trouble at school, but it took me on many adventures too.

Chris Packham has a wonderful documentary on the telly at the moment. Each episode of Inside Our Minds introduces a different neurodivergent condition, and two or three adults who live with it. They each talk to Chris about how their lives are different from regular people.

The theme of the series is that no one really understands what it is like to be neurodivergent, so they have to put on an act to make it through life. At the end of each episode, they each make a very personal movie to tell how their life is different to others’, and how they deal with that.

Inside Our Minds on the BBC.

The ADHD stories could have been mine. Henry and Jo told us how they deal with their ADHD and how little other people understand — even their families.

Henry’s and Jo’s stories hit a nerve, so I thought I’d tell mine, too.

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There was no such thing as ADHD when I was young, and I didn’t even know what it was until my son was diagnosed when he was eight.

The headteacher called us in.

“I think your son has ADHD. He is super-smart, but he can’t focus. He goes from As to Fs and back again. You should take him to see a doctor.”

We took him to a psychologist who confirmed his ADHD and put him on ritalin. When I told the psychologist, “My son is just like me”, he put me on ritalin too. The ritalin did nothing for me, but my ADHD was not really a problem at that point in my life, so I just stopped it and got on with living.

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When I was my son’s age, I was just as smart as him, and I was just as wild. Wilder.

I snuck off to the river when I was nine. I got the bus to London when I was 10. I was always jumping from high places. And I was always in trouble at school. At primary school, the teacher made the naughty children stand outside the staff room door at playtime, and I spent all my playtimes there.

No playtime for me again.

We didn’t have the ‘gifted children’ thing they have in America, but they pulled a group of about six of us out of class and into the Panda Club. The Panda Club took us on a tour of the local police station and entered us in a quiz that was like University Challenge for little kids. We were reading grown-up books while everyone else was reading Peter and Jane. We were doing long division while everyone else was learning their times tables. School was more fun when there was a challenge to enjoy.

I was always fighting, though. I can’t tell you how many times I came home with a black eye. And I was always in trouble.

Peter and Jane like to write

Everyone in Panda Club passed the 11+ and went to grammar school, but my behaviour there was even worse. I broke the record for the number of detentions and was given the cane multiple times. The everyday punishment was to ‘write 100 lines’. Or 200. Or 500.

“I will not talk in class”
“Le silence aide le travail”

I was always writing lines.

At least I was just writing lines, though.

My best friend Paul went to prison for raiding the chemistry lab and throwing stolen phosphorus at another kid. I think Paul had ADHD, too. After Paul was taken away, and after I had just been beaten around the head, over and over, by our biology teacher, our Form Teacher, Mr Gooden gave a lecture to the rest of the class saying that if they did not buckle down, they would end up like Paul and Kevin.

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Julie and I took it in turns to come bottom of our class, and we got Cs for effort in every subject, in every term. We were both put on ‘homework report’ and had to go into school half an hour early every day and show our work to Mr Durbin. Mr Durbin told me,

“You are a smart kid, but you have to apply yourself.”

I always loved academic work; I just didn’t like doing it at school. It was so slow and so boring. I always read all my textbooks in the first week of school and never opened them again. I read my own books under the desk and taught myself programming, instead.

I always came first in all the end-of-year exams, though, but I still got Cs for effort.

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In all those years of school, I never had a teacher tell me I was doing a good job or that I was clever or whatever. Except that one time in French class.

My friends used to tease me that Miss Mills fancied me because she was so nice to me. I certainly fancied her! She was kind and beautiful. I still did no work, but she noticed I was good at French and told me so in front of the whole class.

“You have such a linguistic brain!”

My parents never helped me with schoolwork, except my Dad once told me I should write bigger. They never paid attention to my grades either, and I stopped doing homework entirely when I was fourteen. I never took a book home again.

After about six months, Mr Lewis noticed that I had never handed in any chemistry homework, and he asked to see my workbooks. They were empty. I came top in chemistry, though. And physics. And biology. And English (almost).

I was good at maths, too. My maths teacher never spoke to me once in two years, but he entered me for a national maths competition. Looking back, I don’t know why my teachers disliked me so much. Apart from being a little too naughty and a little too exuberant, I think I was quite likeable. I was clever. I had lots of friends. Maybe I would have been less naughty if they’d given me something interesting to do.

At the end of the fifth form (age 16), we did our O Levels (the exams that determined whether you would be allowed to continue at school). I didn’t revise (except Latin), but I came equal first with Roger, Corinne and Alison, and we all won prizes. They all went to Oxbridge, but no one told me that was an option — so I left school at 16 and joined the Navy instead.

You’re in the Navy now.

The Navy was fun. Lots of adventures. Gibraltar. Santander. West Palm Beach. A trip to the Falklands. It was fun until they put me on a nuclear submarine. I had five more years to go until I could get out, but the prospect of being under the sea with nothing to do for months at a time — it horrified me. To my good fortune, I found a loophole where, if you got promoted to officer, you effectively left the Navy and rejoined. So I got promoted and left but didn’t come back.

After the Navy, adventure called. I backpacked around the world and hitchhiked across Australia. When I got home, I was entirely broke, so I got a job as a programmer in London. That turned out to be a lucky choice for me, because I was pretty good at it, and have had a successful career in software engineering. I still find it fun and my adventurous spirit took me to live in four countries and thirteen cities.

ADHD never gave me much trouble after the Navy, but it took me on many more adventures. I loved the excitement of the City of London and Wall Street, and then a series of tech startups in Silicon Valley, but now it’s time to sit in my armchair with my philosophy books and put my feet up until the siren song of adventure tempts me away once more.