I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I have ADHD. And it informs the way I think about and look at everything in my life, especially when thinking about educational philosophies like Charlotte Mason. I also spend a lot of time learning more about ADHD, though much less than I did in the crazy year after I was diagnosed (about two years ago). No joke, my diagnosis changed my life. For the first time, everything, and I mean everything made sense: my work history, my romantic history, my major life decisions, my major failings, my great successes. ADHD is the thread that runs through everything in my life; it is the source of my best traits as much as my worst.
Recently, I was listening to the Chutzpah podcast and heard an episode with Peter Shankman about ADHD. Through that, I found his podcast Faster than Normal, “where we recognize that ADHD is a gift, not a curse.” That’s exactly my philosophy on ADHD, so I began binge-listening episodes here and there as topics struck me.
Eventually, an episode mentioned he has a new book by the same name: Faster than Normal. I immediately checked it out from the library.
It was decent. Everything there is good, but I think the coverage was limited, focusing primarily on what can make us more productive and better workers. There was one chapter on relationships with non-ADHD people, your partners and children. But there was little about the wider aspects of life. For instance, balancing the comorbid issues – other than addiction, which had a lot of attention – that tend to come with ADHD like learning disabilities, auditory processing issues, depression, anxiety, sexual disfunction from distraction or hypersensitivity, etc. And what if you’re not an entrepreneur? Most (all?) of this productivity/worker advice applied to knowledge workers in an office setting. The biggest problem I remember being discussed with a boss was a boss who refused to set deadlines! Who has that boss?! How do I choose a field when my ADHD makes me curious about far-flung topics? A jack of all trades and master of many has a really hard time picking a job, especially when you constantly fear that a topic might suddenly stop being so interesting. No wonder I’m drawn to writing!
And what was there for me, as a stay-at-home parent? Someone who doesn’t fit society’s “good person” criteria of being the Ideal Worker? While Shankman is a single dad who seems to have his daughter a significant amount of time, he seems less than interested in tips for parenting with ADHD and especially the emotional labor that comes with being the primary parent. Instead, this book seems written for “how to work 60+ hours a week with ADHD.” No mention of how family emotional labor is the thing my brain is least made to do: keep track of who needs to go for a checkup when and with which kind of doctor, when the air conditioner filter was last replaced, what’s the name of our plumber, how do we get a copy of the birth certificate, what’s her social security number?
An ADHD brain is barely able to take care of my own brain needs, much less be the external brain for another adult, two children, and two pets. Yay for having intense social pressure and shaming to make me keep trying and feeling horrible when I inevitably am not “perfect.” On the other hand, the intense pressure for perfection in motherhood has made the women around me understand ADHD a little better. No one brain is designed to do what we ask women to do today, though an ADHD brain is spectacularly not made for it no matter how amazing it is in other ways. But this is a double-edged sword; either they understand me better and sympathize or they’re likely to diminish or even entirely negate my struggles with “we’re all a little ADHD.”
All I got really was improve my sleep, eat good food, exercise (outside whenever possible), and eliminate choice. Good rules, but almost all the specific tips in the book don’t really apply to someone with literally zero forced structure to a day, which is when my ADHD finally broke me and I ended up diagnosed after a couple of years of absolutely floundering mental health-wise. I could go to law school, get great grades, lead student organizations, have three jobs, write for the Law Review, edit on the Law Review, have a social life, and convert to Judaism. All at the same time. Yet I couldn’t structure a life alone in a house with a baby. Combined with our society’s demand for motherhood perfection and you’re-always-doing-it-wrong-no-matter-what-you-choose, no wonder I succumbed to depression and anxiety and a total loss of my self-esteem (certainly a process begun by being laid off before children).
Further, as a more general problem, the book doesn’t really address the issues specific to women and people of color with ADHD. I knew things weren’t going to go well with the “here are famous people with ADHD who did amazing things” that is supposed to cheer you up and remind you that you too can do great things! But every person on that list is a white man. And the list pulls from history, not just people officially diagnosed today with ADHD. If that list can include Leonardo DaVinci, surely a single female and/or person of color could have been found. And how inspirational is a list like that for someone who has no aspiration to be a Richard Branson?
Writing from that millionaire-entrepreneur white male perspective, the book misses very big factors that affect the lives of people with ADHD who are not white men. And especially those who don’t aspire to the Ideal Worker model of constant work and socially-approved achievement measured in dollars and cents. A model that ignores workers are born persons, as Charlotte Mason would say, with families, friends, and interests beyond their work. People who don’t want to be “on” 24/7 and don’t aspire to the C-suite (or even if they do, recognize that they are very unlikely to get there for whatever reason).
People of color with ADHD suffer significantly more because of their ADHD. Because of subconscious racist stereotypes, hyperactivity even today is labeled being a bad kid rather than someone to refer for testing. Children of color with ADHD are more likely to be suspended than tested. Shankman writes and speaks frequently of being “three bad decisions from jail,” yet especially for children of color with ADHD, those decisions are being made for them and drastically changing their life trajectory than if they’d been tested and treated as white (particularly male) children are. Undiagnosed ADHD is almost certainly a major factor in the school-to-prison pipeline, as multiple studies have found that undiagnosed ADHD is pervasive among long-term prison inmates, just as studies have found people with undiagnosed ADHD are pervasive among addicts of all kinds. When we aren’t helped with our problems (that are made worse by a society somehow designed precisely to rub up against how our brains work), it’s no surprise when we suffer as adults from depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and are overrepresented in prison populations and addiction centers. For more, here’s a study on a prison population that found 40% of long-term inmates had ADHD and a recent expose on Georgia’s almost entirely black “separate but equal” special education school system, on top of the normal special ed classes in their mainstream schools.
Females of all races are significantly underdiagnosed and ADHD often presents differently in girls and women. He mentions that women have been underdiagnosed and that many of us get diagnosed only after our children get diagnosed, but nothing about how symptoms can present differently or be changed through gendered “discipline.” Like me, girls with ADHD often feel intense pressure to be “good girls” and avoid becoming like the “troublesome” boys with ADHD who overturn desks in class. We talk too much because of our hyperactivity, we run too much, and we get shamed for it rather than getting in “trouble.” We put our heads down, bury our hyperactivity as best we can, and think we must be lazy, crazy, or stupid (like an ADHD book of a similar name). Shame is a lot more effective than time-out, let me tell you.
Because of all these factors, I would theorize that black women are the most underdiagnosed of all groups with ADHD.
Overall, yes, I recommend Faster than Normal. Highly even. But I want you to remember that it is a limited book and you will need more sources of information and advice than this, and some of you may even find this book demoralizing because it completely ignores the issues you most face from ADHD.
Further Reading:
The Faster than Normal podcast
Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder by Dr. Edward M. Hallowell. This is a classic text on ADHD and he runs the Hallowell ADHD Centers in various cities, including Manhattan. I would love to go there, but commuting into the city is hard enough without also figuring out what to do with two children 2 and under (either bring them with you for Hell #1 or Hell #2, trying to hire a babysitter when you might be away for anywhere from 4-8 hours, even before you consider the breastfeeding angle). And they don’t take insurance.
I don’t know how people with ADHD are supposed to get treatment when every specialist I’ve found, in the suburbs of NYC no less, doesn’t take insurance. I can’t imagine what it’s like back in my hometown in TN, much less a rural or low-income urban area. More examples of how socio-economics affect the treatment of ADHD. So I continue reading books and self-medicating with caffeine as best I can. Insurance should really cover my Diet Dr. Pete Soda Stream habit. I still remember the horror on my midwife’s face when she found out someone “who eats so healthy” could drink so much soda. Only later did I learn caffeine is a very common unconscious way to self-medicate ADHD. Suddenly I understood why I drank 5-6 Red Bulls a day for much of law school.
The Queen of Distraction: How Women with ADHD Can Conquer Chaos, Find Focus, and Get More Done by Terry Matlen. This is the best female-specific ADHD book I’ve read so far and was one of the first ADHD books I read. Highly recommend. It’s also the only book I’ve seen discuss how ADHD can significantly affect women’s ability to orgasm. Sexual issues are rarely discussed in ADHD books and I wonder whether the authors even know they exist. Since the medical establishment has been so gung ho on learning about how women’s bodies work, especially in sexual issues. For more on that, check out Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenberry.
Well, this was sure a cheery book review. What’s your favorite ADHD or ADHD-adjacent read?
Leave a Reply