ur a nerd hah

What if….

Anyway I went on to say that there are 5 major executive functions of the human brain.  These are the ‘higher functions’ that really distinguish between a human brain and that of any other animal.  We have added intelligence on top of that, but these are the functional abilities our brains have that the rest of the animal kingdom does not have on a a structural level.  There are 5 of them.  ADHD affects all 5.  And none of them are actually ‘attention’ (the closest function to anything that can reasonably be called ‘attention’ is what’s called Working Memory, which is your brain’s ability to hold a specific task in mind to come back to it; distractions are inevitable, but a healthy brain will hear a phone ring, look up, and remember to go back to what it was doing before.  An ADHD brain will hear the phone riBANG ALL MEMORY OF THE CURRENT TASK IS GONE.  ADHD brain looks up, sees the name on the caller id, oh it’s an unknown number, oh it’s probably some political pollster, oh man this year’s election is just awful I can’t believe people are supporting that angry cheeto. Oh cheetos I’m hungry I should go make a snack.  What kind of snacks do we have?  Did I remember to buy cereal at the store the other day?  What about dog food?  Oh my god I forgot to let the dog back in the house this is why I should have gotten a cat.  Oh my friend sent me a great cat video earlier I should watch that.  AND GUESS WHAT YOU NEVER GO BACK TO WHAT YOU WERE DOING BECAUSE THE STRUCTURE IN YOUR BRAIN THAT SUPPORTS RETURNING TO A PARTIALLY COMPETED TASK DOES NOT EXIST THE WAY IT DOES FOR A NORMAL HEALTHY BRAIN.  This is why even if you start a task well before a deadline you can’t keep to it until it’s been completed; the consequences of it being done MUST be more compelling than everything else in the immediate environment for the brain to see it.  No matter how much time you give yourself to complete the task, if you have ADHD it will take you 100% of that time, every time, which is why having ADHD actually TEACHES YOU to put things off, because it’s the only way to shorten the total time actually spent completing the task – the disorder rewards you for self-destructive behavior because it’s the only way you can get things done at all, and you end up living in a permanent state of extreme stress, hopping from one emergency deadline to the next even though you hate yourself for it every single time).  The disorder has been horribly named in a way that trivializes just how serious and life-ruining it actually is.

…

You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Crazy, or Stupid? - One of the oldest books on ADHD/ADD in adults and a classic.

Driven to Distraction - Another classic and a great place to start.

Make sure you pick up the latest editions since our understanding of ADHD/ADD has changed a lot since those were first published.

“They look nothing li—”

baby ducks act a lot like baby chickens so in the beginning it wasn’t so bad

the main problem is that baby ducks  LOVE water, but baby chickens get very very dead from it,

so you can imagine the mother hens surprise and horror the first time they go by the farm pond and ALL THE BABIES RUN TO THE WATER AND JUMP IN

my grandmother had to come out of the house to investigate all the noise the hen was making

The mother hen was clucking and screeching in distress and running circles around the pond while the duckies were having the time of their lives.

This happened a few more times before Momma hen was like FUCK IT YOU WANNA SWIM SEE WHAT I CARE , and would sit a distance away watching them in the pond.