Othersidhe

Here’s something that happens to ADHD children a lot:  Getting pushed beyond their limits by accident. Here’s how it works and why it’s so bad.

Child says, “I can’t do this.”

Adult (teacher or parent) does not believe it, because Adult has seen Child do things that Adult considers more difficult, and Child is too young to properly articulate why the task is difficult.

Adult decides that the problem is something other than true inability, like laziness, lack of self-confidence, stubbornness, or lack of motivation.

Adult applies motivation in the form of harsher and harsher scoldings and punishments. Child becomes horribly distressed by these punishments. Finally, the negative emotions produce a wave of adrenaline that temporarily repairs the neurotransmitter deficits caused by ADHD, and Child manages to do the task, nearly dropping from relief when it’s finally done.

The lesson Adult takes away is that Child was able to do it all along, the task was quite reasonable, and Child just wasn’t trying hard enough. Now, surely Child has mastered the task and learned the value of simply following instructions the first time.

The lessons Child takes away? Well, it varies, but it might be:

-How to do the task while in a state of extreme panic, which does NOT easily translate into doing the task when calm.

-Using emergency fight-or-flight overdrive to deal with normal daily problems is reasonable and even expected.

-It’s not acceptable to refuse tasks, no matter how difficult or potentially harmful.

-Asking for help does not result in getting useful help.

I’m now in my 30’s, trying to overcome chronic depression, and one major barrier is that, thanks to the constant unreasonable demands placed on me as a child, I never had the chance to develop actual healthy techniques for getting stuff done. At 19, I finally learned to write without panic, but I still need to rely on my adrenaline addiction for simple things like making phone calls, tidying the house, and paying bills. Sometimes, I do mean things to myself to generate the adrenaline rush, because there’s no one else around to punish me.

And I’m not going to say that that mode of operation doesn’t have its uses.  But it is a really, really counterproductive way to teach kids how to take the time and focus to learn to do something well and sustainably.

“(sadly it DOES for me so that advice didn’t help.)“

For now.

The panic button gets worn out. Panic mode activates a little bit later and later every time, and the quality of even hyperfocused work starts to suffer more and more. You begin to compromise with yourself, and you begin to accept those compromises.

These days, deadline panic doesn’t make me focused or energised, it only makes me tired and wishing everything would stop.

One of the characteristics of complex trauma is being in a long-term traumatic situation and not having any way to leave or make it stop. In the big picture, that’s being forced to go through the public school system and having these problems recur again and again. In the smaller situation, this is telling someone that you need help and them refusing to believe or help you. It instills in the survivor a sense of helplessness and hopelessness that causes intense anxiety, depression, and distorted/pessimistic thinking.

#this is a children’s movie

And old people use ellipses simply to indicate a pause, or for some other incomprehensible reason I’m not aware of. But young people use ellipses to indicate passive-aggression.

So an old person could type something like:

how are things going with your “boyfriend”….

and what they mean is

How are things going with your boyfriend? [Im so excited for you, sweetie, and I wanna hear about it]

But a young person would interpret that sentence as

Cats go berserk at movement, pretty sure its hardwired beyond their conscious intent.

Mine will occasionally attack his own tail reflexively, as well as lash out at water when I turn on the faucet for him to drink out of.

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My cat has recently taken to attacking my spacebar while sitting in my lap.

This has thankfully not gotten me killed in vidya yet, but its a matter of time

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You have to teach your cat something useful.

I had a buddy whose cat was his spotter in online gaming. Back in the day in Planetside 1, his cat would spazz out and bat at the screen while he was playing. At first he just got annoyed that the cat was getting in the way, but after a little while he realised that the cat could SEE the predator-esque ripple outline of cloaks moving around and was batting at them.

Give more money to bezos & co and they’ll just tuck it away in a tax haven or do stock buybacks. 

http://www.oddsquad.org/2014/12/half-prince-chapter-72.html