Lord shoot me now…

Often, those of us with ADHD are told that to realize our full potential we need to find work that we’re passionate about; work that suits our ADHD-ness to a tee.

But how?

I haven’t yet read how to successfully navigate the leap from un- or under-employment to dream job. Surely it’s not as easy as snapping your fingers? If it were, we’d also be able to click our heels three times to cure ADHD.

So how do we make the switch?

Here are 6 tips on how to make the transition to our coveted field (and we all know how much we ADHDers love transitions! Yikes. And this one’s a biggie).

As an adult with ADHD, I’ve never been at a loss for questions and this is especially true when I’ve given someone tacit permission to poke, prod, x-ray, and provide potent chemical substances meant to assist healing or at least mask my symptoms.

With this in mind, I felt even more empowered to ask questions after reading Confessions of a Medical Heretic. It was written in 1979 by Robert Mendelsohn, M.D. (I finally got around to reading it.)

Written by a medical doctor, Confessions describes the dangers of putting blind faith in those to whom we’ve ascribed near-supernatural powers and unquestioned authority over our body, mind, and soul.

Ibrahim Iujaz via Compfight

Life was so messy and topsy-turvy before my ADHD diagnosis, these days I make a conscious effort to notice how (and when) things have changed for the better. Otherwise, I might just notice the places where I’m still messy, still awkward, still completely incapable of assembling small furniture or a batch of cookies in under 15 hours.

And that would just be depressing.

If you’ve been diagnosed with ADHD as an adult – don’t despair! Things do (and will) get better. Just give it some time. And effort. And chocolate.

Here are a few signposts along the way to – perhaps not recovery – but to living better with ADHD.

Lisa Aro and husband Mark

I’m happy to report that our Mother’s Day with ADHD: How to Keep It Happy! webinar went off (almost) without a hitch.

On a personal note, I was terrified before we started. I’d planned to create a visual presentation but only had 3 hours to create it – right before the webinar!

With minimal time, I decided I’d keep it simple, and let the content be the focus of our session. I knew my special guest had great content, having read her excellent blog, Queen of the Distracted, and having had a preliminary phone call to plan what we’d cover in our webinar.

But – what I didn’t count on was for three friends to drop in – all at the same time – and all needing my attention just before the webinar!

t horizontal.integration via Compfight

It appears that my little rant on spanking has struck a mighty chord.

In addition to readers and comments here at my blog, I’ve received a lot of input on my Facebook page and elsewhere from those weighing in on the weighty topic of how the heck do we deal with our ADHD kids?

It’s distressing to see that some of you (and I suspect many more whom I haven’t  heard from) are suffering and agonizing over what the right way to discipline your ADHD children.

The blog comment that tipped the scale was (excerpted here):

“…how in the world do you get an ADHD kid to learn the social skills required to get along in life before their parent finally finally [sic] loses it and spanks them..” [read molbiomom's full Comment here]

How indeed?

  Tambako The Jaguar via Compfight

Don’t panic! I’m not talking about housework.

I’m talking about a Buddhist expression, “polishing your mirror.” It means clearing up your personal inner gunk, so you can shine more brilliantly.

After my ADHD diagnosis, I realized my mirror was more spattered with toothpaste than I thought.

Vinoth Chandar via Compfight

In Spanking Hurts ADHD Kids More Than You Think, Part I, we considered the first 2 of 7 critical factors that suggest that spanking may be especially detrimental to ADHD kids.

Having considered an ADHD child’s heightened sensitivity and their parent(s)’ possible undiagnosed ADHD as two reasons to rule out spanking, let’s move on to the 5 final considerations.

D. Sharon Pruitt via Compfight

Recently, I read Parenting a Child With ADHD – Is Spanking Helpful? by ADHD expert Keath Low. Low does a good job of explaining why it’s difficult to parent a child with ADHD, and offers some general guidelines on how to do so appropriately.

From my perspective, some critical considerations about whether or not to spank a child with ADHD need to be added to the discussion.

Full disclosure

My mom hit me until I was 17.

Jack Wolf via Compfight

Imagine how excited I was when I first learned about the slow food movement. Being as slow in the kitchen as I’ve always been, I’d always thought I had a deficit. When all along, here I was, ahead of the pack.

Fast minds

While a lot of us with ADHD have racing thoughts (thus the title for a new book on ADHD adults, Fast Minds), there are areas where we’re actually slower than others.

Let’s take a few long, deep, slow breaths and explore some under-examined territory: when the hyperactive hare becomes the tedious tortoise.

It’s spring (aka, roofing season). It’s time to tackle the last major job on my new house (I hope).

One contractor suggested it would be cheaper and faster to cover over the old roof tiles.

Then someone explained that if we did it the fast, cheap way, I’d never know if the boards underneath were rotting. I’d just be covering up the problem, which could lead to even more expensive repairs down the road when my roof sprung a leak.

Makes sense, I thought.

It also happens to be a great analogy for dealing with negative feelings.