I heard the refrains throughout my childhood: If you?d just try a little harder, you?d be first in the class. Why do you keep making careless mistakes" You have no common sense. Can?t you keep quiet" Stop daydreaming. 
No one ever considered that I might have ADHD. Those hyper, unfocused, overactive boys who punched each other outside the principal?s office had ADHD. Girls who couldn?t keep our desks clean or proofread their own papers" We were lazy.
My ADHD flew below the radar. I might have all but flunked out of my doctoral program (I was too scared to take my exams, and couldn?t read high-level philosophy, no matter how hard I tried), and I might have turned in every paper with spelling errors, but I chugged along.
That is, until I had kids. No matter how hard I tried, life seemed like a string of small disasters. My diaper bag always lacked something: wipes, Band-Aids, actual diapers. I couldn?t keep one kid, then two, on a consistent nap schedule (instead, I wrapped them on my back and let them sleep when they wanted. Luckily, that worked for us). I fed them on demand?until they started solids, and then mealtimes would sometimes slip my mind. Their resulting crying jags mystified me. Finally, I?d recall, ?Oh yeah, they haven?t eaten.?
Laundry lived in piles. Toys overtook our floor and dishes commandeered our sink. I lost pacifiers, sippy cups, favoured stuffies. If I needed it, I couldn?t find it.
Finally, I collapsed in my psychiatrist?s office and c...