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

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.

This is something that has been studied in both ADHD and autism. It often leads to a crash between the start of middle school and college, when the demands on the person start increasing rapidly and the amount of independence expected increases as well.

From a practical standpoint having our needs dismissed because we are perceived as smart enough means we never learn the skills to need in order to transition into the workplace, where we continue to do great work when we do work, and continue to fail miserably as a whole because of the expectations put on us.