A lifetime of wondering what was wrong with me, the diagnosis that finally answered it — and raising a son with ADHD of his own.
I was the kid who lost everything. Homework, PE kit, permission slips — all of it, gone. Teachers described me as "bright but disorganised" and "capable of so much more if he'd just apply himself." Those words followed me into adulthood and took up permanent residence in the back of my head.
At school I was either fascinated — completely absorbed, almost manic — or completely checked out. Nothing in between. I could write a ten-page story from pure hyperfocus, then completely blank on the times tables five minutes later.
In jobs, I was the person who had brilliant ideas but couldn't file a report on time to save his life. I started things I didn't finish. I interrupted people without meaning to. I felt genuinely bad about all of it — and tried harder each time, only to fall into the same patterns.
It took my son's diagnosis to put the mirror up properly. As the assessment process started for him, I sat across the table from a specialist and found myself nodding along to everything she said. Not nodding along like "yes, that's my son." Nodding along like "yes, that is... me."
I went home that evening and read everything I could find. I came back a week later and asked, a little awkwardly, whether adults could be referred too.
She smiled and said, "You'd be surprised how often that happens."
ADHD in adults is significantly underdiagnosed. Many people only discover it in middle age — often after a child in their family is diagnosed first. If something here is ringing bells for you, that recognition matters.
The assessment process was longer than I expected and more emotional than I was prepared for. Filling in the forms — recounting experiences from childhood, work, relationships — felt like finally being given permission to say out loud all the things I'd quietly blamed myself for.
When the report came through confirming ADHD — combined type — I sat quietly with it for a long time. I wasn't sad. I wasn't relieved exactly. I was... grateful. For the first time, I had an accurate map of my own mind.
"It wasn't that I'd been failing. It was that I'd been navigating without the right tools, without even knowing I needed them."
I want to be honest: a diagnosis doesn't fix everything. I still lose my keys. I still get lost in rabbit holes when I should be doing something else. I still talk too much at parties.
But the way I talk to myself about those things has fundamentally changed. I'm not a person who's failing to be normal. I'm a person with a brain that works a specific way, and I can work with that — or at least stop working against it.
I've learned what environments help me think. I've built systems that account for the fact that my working memory is genuinely not reliable. I've talked to my partner honestly about what I find hard instead of just quietly trying to compensate.
And I've become a much better parent, because I stopped expecting my son to be the neurotypical version of himself that the world seemed to want, and started helping him become the fullest version of who he actually is.
When I was going through the worst of the "what is wrong with me" years, I would have given anything to find an honest, human account of what ADHD in real life actually looked like. Not a clinical leaflet. Not a list of symptoms. Just someone saying: I know how this feels. Here's what helped me.
That's what I'm trying to offer here. I'm not a therapist, a doctor, or a coach. I'm just a dad with ADHD, raising a son with ADHD, writing it down as honestly as I can.
If something here resonates — I'm really glad you found it.
The hardest and most rewarding thing I've ever done — and why understanding my own brain made me a better parent.
My son was about seven when his teacher first mentioned that she'd noticed some things. The word ADHD wasn't used that day — it rarely is, straight away — but I came home and it was bouncing around in my head.
Looking back, the signs had been there for years. The enormous emotions. The difficulty transitioning between activities. The way he could sit completely entranced by Lego for three hours, then be utterly unable to sit still through a fifteen-minute meal. The meltdowns that seemed disproportionate but clearly, to him, weren't.
Getting the diagnosis was a relief — and also, honestly, the beginning of a much harder journey than I expected.
There are some ways that my own ADHD makes me a better parent to him. I understand, viscerally, what it's like to be told to "just focus" and have no idea how to do that. I don't dismiss what he finds hard as laziness. I've never once doubted that he's trying.
But there are ways it makes parenting harder too. When he's dysregulated and I'm dysregulated, the house can get loud very quickly. My own patience has a shorter fuse than I'd like — especially when I'm overwhelmed — and I've had to work hard on recognising when I need to step away before I add fuel to the fire.
We've also had to get very deliberate about the household structures and routines that would frankly never have occurred to me naturally. Morning routines, visual schedules, clear transition warnings — these things feel boring to talk about but have been transformative in practice.
"There's a particular kind of tenderness in watching your child struggle with the exact same thing you struggled with at his age — except this time, you know exactly what it is, and you can help."
Not every ADHD child is the same — which sounds obvious but took me a while to really absorb. My son's experience is his own. He has his own profile, his own strengths, his own particular challenges.
That said, some things have come up again and again that seem to make a real difference for him:
School has been... a mixed experience. We've had teachers who got it — who saw his creativity and his energy and found ways to channel it. And we've had experiences that made me genuinely angry: a child being told off for fidgeting, or having his confidence quietly eroded by expectation.
We learned fairly early to be advocates, not apologists. The system wasn't built for brains like his, but that doesn't mean we accept it without pushing back. We've pushed for assessments, for accommodations, for honest conversations with school about what support looks like.
If you're in the same position: your instincts about your child are worth something. Trust them, document everything, and don't be afraid to ask for what they need.
Parenting a child with ADHD is tiring in ways that are hard to explain to people who haven't done it. Not because the child is bad — he's extraordinary — but because the vigilance is relentless. The emotional regulation support, the homework battles, the social situations to navigate, the constant translating between his world and the world's expectations of him.
I've had moments of genuine grief — not for him, but for the ease he doesn't get to have. And I've had moments of watching him light up over something he loves with an intensity and joy that most people never experience, and thinking: this brain, honestly, is something remarkable.
Both things are true. Hold both of them.