ADHD

Welcome to the Explainer Section of our website! Here, you’ll find a collection of short and engaging explanations designed to help people with disabilities reduce the emotional labor of self-advocacy.

Person First Language (PFL)

The ADHD community prefers PFL, “Person First Language.” Notice how the personhood of the individual is emphasized, while the condition is secondary, one of many descriptors.

Identity First Language (IDL) Person First Language (PFL)
ADHDer Person with ADHD

Person first language is used for many conditions. Communities prefer PFL because it emphasizes that the person is more than just their diagnosis. PFL just sounds… better.

PFL is more respectful for ADHD
Identity First Language (IDL) Person First Language (PFL)
Cancerous person Person with cancer

Understand ADHD

Less well-known experiences, often found in girls and women

Communication

Sadly not everyone can recognize and accept neurodivergent communication styles. It is important to be supportive of someone’s differences.

ADHD In Women

Because of biases in medicine, women with ADHD are often misdiagnosed.

The consequences:

  • Growing up “being dismissed, judged, and rejected by peers.”
  • Distractable and easily overwhelmed without the proper tools to support themselves or framework to improve sustainably.
  • Saying things they regret without the supports needed to take control of their lives, which can damage relationships.

As we can see, women with ADHD deserve far more credit than we give them for managing their condition. We also have a large role to play in their quality of life by learning how to undermine harmful stereotypes about ADHD traits, providing women with what they need to succeed.

Western Society:

Being more individualistic, Western Society offers less supports for people with disabilities, “In the Indian milieu, strong social networks, particularly for girls and women, provide a protective scaffolding.”

These supports also extend to executive functioning where families who can afford it often benefit from hiring staff to cook, clean, and tend to housework which would otherwise be shared by the family, but even this runs out as responsibilities in adulthood increase with age and ADHD traits begin to emerge.

It is clear that Western society is particularly inhospitable to people with disabilities because we reward individuals who can thrive as lone wolves. As a society, we have preferences built into the DNA to disfavour certain superstrengths, while hyper-focusing on weaknesses related to things like executive functioning.

By being aware of our biases from a cultural standpoint, we can learn valuable lessons from other societies which may already have useful adaptive mechanisms baked into their way of life.

Burnout

  • See our role in the bigger picture of their lived experience.
    • Purple: Our part in the cycle.
    • Yellow: Pick up on developmentally appropriate red flags.
    • Orange: Encourage them when they are being responsible in the way that is developmentally appropriate for them.

Recognize the privilege in how different our reality with work and school is from theirs, even if we share the same space and title.

Microagressions

Actions do not speak louder than words when we have executive dysfunction and experience dysregulation.

Ignorant Comments

The following comments are not appropriate for a professional environment and demonstrate a clear lack of awareness of ADHD, or how to include someone who has it so that they can perform their best.

  • “Space cadet”
  • “Unreliable”
  • “Difficult”
  • “Disengaged”
  • “Neurotic”
  • “Unpredictable” 1

It would help if neurotypical people knew how to recognize fidgets that we use as self regulation aids in order to avoid saying something hurtful and inappropriate.

Hurtful Assumptions

These are not character traits, they are symptoms of ADHD not being accepted and properly supported. When we use harmful language like this, we are describing and focusing on their medical condition subject to the environment they are in, not their character responding to it, nor their capacity when they have the basics they need to function.

While we may apologize for not getting a task done, certain requests can be physically impossible for us to complete. Pretending the experience is not relevant simply is not how we include and encourage success.

Executive Functioning

Learning Differently

Getting Distracted

Harmful Advice

Footnotes

  1. The cycle above is as predictable as clockwork. It has a structure and everything! We have not taken the time to recognize what it looks like when we see it.↩︎