Kara S. Anderson

Homeschool connection, not perfection.

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ADHD: There’s just one kind now, but not really

by Kara S. Anderson Leave a Comment

I mentioned in the first post of this series (yes – I’ve decided to write a whole series and maybe even a book about ADHD and homeschooling! I’m back, baby!), that I was initially operating under some kind of outdated info about ADHD.

For one thing, when I first started trying to find a doctor to diagnose ADHD, I kept referring to it as “ADD or ADHD.”

I would then add a high pitched question mark to the end.

“Hi, um, I’m just wondering if you have a list of doctors you recommend who treat ADD or ADHD or … um …” I would trail off, asking folks at the college where my son was taking dual enrollment classes for help, with all the confidence of a featherless, newborn sparrow.

He was doing really well, but he suspected ADHD, and so our thought was it would be good to find out for sure sooner rather than later in case he could benefit from some accommodations*.

Surprise – There’s Just One Kind of ADHD Now – Kind Of!

ADHD History in Brief: Part I

So I was surprised to learn that the term ADD – Attention Deficit Disorder – is dead.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (known as the DSM), first listed what we know now as ADHD in 1968, but details have changed a few times.

If you’re my age, you may remember people throwing around the term “ADD,” to describe children, primarily boys, who had a hard time focusing in school.

As early as 1980, an updated DSM included a listing for ADHD – Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder – and ooh controversy – those goofballs decided to drop plain ol’ ADD.

But you know how these things go. We all still threw around “ADD” to mean not only kids who had high energy, but people who forgot things or had had too much Jolt Cola.

“Ugh Becky, she is SO ADD.”

“I know, Becky. Ugh.”

(This is a from a short play I wrote called Beckies. This is a scene where two Beckies use the term ADD to describe how another Becky had the nerve to forget in which locker at the roller rink she had stored her Liz Claiborne purse.)

(It’s better live. Like Hamilton.)

ADHD History in Brief: Part II

Then, in 1994 – the year of the Lillehammer Winter Olympics and the year the World Wide Web was born, those DSM jokesters were like: Wait.

(Fun fact: Actually, 1,000 people worked on the DSM 4 for 6 years!)

Anyhoo, they said – WAIT. OK, we’ve got it.

We shall call it ADHD.

BUT … there are different flavors!

(They called them “sub-types.”)

  • Predominantly Inattentive
  • Predominantly Hyperactive-Impulsive
  • And Combined

OK. Good work, team.

ADHD History in Brief: Part III

And then, the DSM 5 came out in 2013, and they were like – can you believe those tools who worked on the DSM 4 called kinds of ADHD “types?” Punks!

Let’s call them “presentations!,” said Dr. Carol Carolson, and the crowd went wild.

They just collectively lost their shit.

Everyone on the ADHD team bought Dr. Carol shots that night, and Carol will forever be remembered for her presentation on presentations.

(She used Power Point, mainly Helvetica font.)

So … wait? Huh?

So the take-aways here are:

  1. There is no ADD anymore. It doesn’t exist. It left right around the time that Post-It Notes** became a thing!
  2. There is just ADHD, but there are three ways it PRESENTS – #thanksCarol

The three presentations are:

  • Predominantly Inattentive
  • Predominantly Hyperactive-Impulsive
  • And Combined

So no – you DO NOT HAVE ADD.

But you very well could have ADHD even if you … I don’t know …

  • Were a good student
  • Are a great employee
  • Are a generally ‘successful’ person
  • Want to go to bed at 4 p.m.

OK, Well … Then How Come No One Has Ever Brought This Up?

First, a lot of ADHD goes undiagnosed for a long time.

Second, I want to talk about girls and women and how ADHD tends to present differently in us.

So for background:

I was diagnosed at 45 years old, and before I found out I had ADHD, I thought maybe I was dealing with Long Covid or early dementia or really scary peri-menopause symptoms or something else, because suddenly, I could no longer remember which key went into which lock at our house.

I was a little terrified.

In fact as I sat across from the doctor to go over my test results, I said, “I’m actually really hoping it’s ADHD because I’m scared of what else it could be,” and she kindly said, “OK, then I’m not going to make you wait – it’s ADHD.”

And I started crying because I had been holding a lot in for months/45 years.

And for now, that’s where I’m going to step away again, because I want to talk about how a person (statistically more frequently a female person) could go undiagnosed with ADHD for decades.

It’s both fascinating and some hot B.S., I’ll tell you that much.

See you soon.


ADHD Series

Post 1: So … We All Have ADHD

NOTES:

*Accommodations – the more we talk about ADHD, the more I’ll use this word. Don’t stress about accommodations for now if you suspect your child has ADHD. I’ll explain more soon.

** Post-It Notes: I was recently on a call where we talked about how important it is to buy quality sticky notes, and why Post-Its really are better because they stick the perfect amount.

But, I do want these.

Also, I will tell you soon about my obsession with transparent sticky notes, and how I’ve been using them to maintain a version of a kanban board on my office door because I am being treated for ADHD and I have so many new tools!

I have so much to tell you!!!!

Back soon! 😘

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

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So … We all have AHDH

by Kara S. Anderson 10 Comments

It’s been a while, so let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room: I cut my hair.

That was a year ago now, right after my son’s graduation party, and around the time that I closed down my blog and ran away from social media. Still, I see people and the first thing they say is, “You cut your hair,” and I want to respond: “Yup, and that’s just what you can see, sister.”

This past year has been full of more change than my car ashtray. 

Where Are They Now?

To keep this brief – my oldest, 19, went away to college. My youngest, now 16, started dual enrollment at community college. That sort of marked my retirement as a homeschool mom, but only like 85-87 percent.

I have stayed off of social media, and I don’t miss it. I do miss YOU terribly. All of you who let me spew my feelings into this space for years, and each of you who made me feel like maybe my goof-ups and insecurities had some meaning.

I would tell you about what I thought was some great homeschool failing, and you were there, saying, “YUP. It’s OK.”

And then I grew a little and I was telling you, “Yup. It’s OK,” and then before I knew it, my oldest was moving into an apartment.

He owns a microwave and 50 percent of a rug that he bought with his roommate.

He was accepted into his major of choice (it’s a thing at his school – they are a little fancy-pants 🎩 about some things, but I will tell you that his dorm bathroom last year was DISGUSTING), and so one more time for the folks in the back:

Yes, messy, imperfect homeschooling works, if your goal is to make sure your kids can keep going, even when they are 180 miles away. 

(This is the furthest I have personally been able to test this, but I know A LOT of homeschoolers, and their kids are growing beards and becoming people who SAVE LIVES, and traveling to Argentina and otherwise #followingtheirdreams.)

And I know their mamas, and I know they were scared too. Frequently. 

Just like us!

Loving Learning – That Worked Out Well 👍

I’ll also tell you about some feedback my daughter got from her professors after her first semester. They both commented on her enthusiasm for learning.

So this amazing person who used to insist on wearing rainbow dresses and tights and 14 barrettes and 3 ponytails and often went to the grocery store with me dressed as a cheetah with eyeliner drawn-on whiskers, nose and “cat freckles,” was learning not just philosophy and history – she was learning note-taking and how to write papers and how to take tests and about 800 other life skills, and still, both of her professors noted that she seemed to be enjoying it.

You would have thought that THAT finally would be enough for me to walk away like a blackjack dealer, flipping my hands, effectively saying, “Look how done I am with The Worrying.”

Except for one pesky thing.

Last year we found out that all three of us have ADHD.

Yup, All Three of Us (and probably one of our cats) Have ADHD

It went like this:

My son suspected he had ADHD. He is the boy who wouldn’t sit on the line. And when he started dual enrollment classes in person (he initially took classes remotely when the school was shut-down early-pandemic) he started to notice a few things.

Sometimes, it felt hard to focus. Sometimes, the ticking clock made him a little antsy.

He was 17 by this point, and he could sit still, but sometimes his brain was filled with possible song lyrics or the teacher seemed to be talking … very … slowly …

There were other things, and so I talked to the college department that handles accommodations for stuff like ADHD.

(Younger me flipped out that even our local community college has a whole DEPARTMENT set up for kids with learning differences, anxiety, depression, physical limitations, etc.)

>>If I would have known this earlier, it would have made a lot of difference, so I’m telling you now.<<

Getting Diagnosed

The person I spoke with at the college gave me a list of names of doctors who diagnose ADHD. We found one covered by our insurance!

It was meant to be! We made an appointment, and my son met with the doctor, and came out an hour later. 

“Yes, it seems like ADHD,” Dr. Schmoctor said.

Huh, I thought. I feel like there should be a way to know …

So I called the school and explained that the doctor said “it seemed like ADHD,” and they dug a little and found out he was a doctor of ministry. Maybe the Focus on the Family magazines in the waiting room should have alerted me to this, but I’d brought a book.

“Our list may be a little outdated,” the nice person from the school said.

My son explained that the doctor (of ministry) had given him his “seems like” diagnosis by asking my son a series of 7 questions in a book including, “do you ever misplace things?” and “do you ever have a hard time keeping things tidy?”

I joked then that by those standards, all of us had ADHD, especially our cat Pablo.

(Don’t buy that book it’s crap, is what I’m saying.)

Still Getting Diagnosed

And so we began an exhaustive search for someone who could actually diagnose ADHD, and who was covered by insurance or at least affordable. We found a nearby university that does testing starting at $1,200, and I made the appointment.

But I continued searching, (this was my summer), and eventually found someone local, more affordable, and with medical degrees and testing practices that are acknowledged by the AMA and therefore schools.

(I respect the man with the degree in ministry. I feel a little skeptical about the book he uses to diagnose “Seems-Like ADHD.” If anything, I think he was still operating under the early 2000s stereotypes of ADHD – just like I was. [More on that in this second post in this series.])

The point is my son ended up taking a number of tests, including the Tova, and was officially diagnosed with ADHD.

And all this time, I was getting my learn on.

Researching Like a Library Ninja

If you’ve seen that meme about worried moms being able to research like they’re in the CIA, worried homeschool moms are the same, except they know how to use the library super well, and have been learning about, collecting, processing and distilling random information for so long, we’re like if James Bond, Sherlock Holmes and Adrian Monk had a kid and that kid had a COLLECTION of clipboards, notebooks, colorful pens, sticky notes and rolly carts.

So ping, ping, ping – of course my daughter probably had ADHD, and we should get her tested too.

And then when she was diagnosed, the doctor looked at me, folding her little hands together – serious, but kind – and said:

“Well. This all comes from somewhere.”

And that is where I will leave you for now, friend. The three of us have ADHD, and I have a lot I finally want to share about that.

Soon …

Next up:

ADHD – There’s just one kind now, but not really

Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay

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I’m Kara – writer, tea drinker, yoga-doer and girl with the overdue books.

 

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