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.