An Open Letter From the Mom of the Kid Who Is Trying Harder Than You Think

To the coaches, teachers, parents, and every other adult who will have a kid like mine cross their path:

I am tired.

Not tired of advocating for my son. I will do that every single day for as long as he needs me to.

I’m tired of having to.

I’m tired of watching him get the short end of the stick because he’s a little different. I’m tired of watching adults misunderstand him. And I’m really tired of hearing some version of the same advice over and over again.

He needs to pay attention.

He needs to focus.

He needs to sit still.

He needs to listen better.

He needs to work harder.

Do you have any idea how hard he is already working?

My son has ADHD.

He is smart. He is funny. He is kind. He is capable. He is also easily distracted, forgetful, impulsive, wiggly, and sometimes you can give him three instructions and somewhere between instruction number two and actually doing them, at least one has completely left the building.

That’s ADHD.

It’s not disrespect.

It’s not laziness.

And it’s not because he doesn’t care.

Things that happen almost automatically for some kids require actual mental effort for him.

Filtering out everything happening around him so he can hear what you’re saying takes effort.

Holding multiple instructions in his head long enough to actually do them takes effort.

Sitting still and staying mentally engaged while absolutely nothing is happening takes effort.

Regulating his attention, his body, his impulses, and his emotions takes effort.

And sometimes, despite all of that effort, he’s still going to miss something.

That’s usually the moment an adult sees.

You see the missed instruction, not how hard he was trying to remember it.

You see him staring off into space, not the twenty other things his brain is trying to process at the same time.

You see a kid who isn’t paying attention.

You decide he needs to work harder.

And that’s where I have a problem.

Because a child struggling to meet your expectations and a child refusing to meet your expectations are not the same thing.

If a kid keeps struggling in the exact same situation over and over again, maybe at some point we should stop telling the kid to try harder and ask whether the adults could try something different too.

Give him one direction at a time. Have him repeat it back to you. If he’s going to be sitting for a while, give him something to do. Move him around. Keep him engaged. Give him opportunities to learn something new.

Redirect him when his attention wanders instead of embarrassing him for it.

Figure out what actually works for the kid standing in front of you.

This isn’t lowering expectations.

And I think that’s where people get hung up.

I don’t want lower expectations for my son. I don’t want excuses made for him.

If he’s being a turd, tell him he’s being a turd. If he needs to practice more, we’ll practice more. If he hasn’t earned something, then he hasn’t earned it.

Hold him accountable. Correct him. Challenge him. Teach him. Coach him.

But don’t repeatedly put him in situations that play directly into the things he struggles with and then blame him when he struggles.

That’s not teaching him anything.

And please don’t tell him he just needs to work harder.

Because here’s the part that hits especially close to home for me:

I have ADHD too.

I’ve been called lazy more times than I can count.

I’ve been told I needed to pay attention. Try harder. Stop procrastinating. Get organized. Remember things. Follow through.

All of the things people love to tell someone with ADHD as if we somehow just never thought of trying that.

For a long time, I believed them.

Maybe I was lazy.

Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough.

Maybe everyone else had figured out some basic part of being a functional human being that I somehow missed.

Except I wasn’t lazy.

I was trying really damn hard.

My brain just didn’t work the way everyone kept expecting it to.

And here’s the funny thing.

I’m an adult now.

I have a successful career. I have a family. I have a home. I have responsibilities coming out of my ears. I manage work and kids and schedules and a farm and approximately 900 other things at any given time.

Clearly, ADHD did not make me incapable of being successful.

But I didn’t get here because somebody finally told me to “work harder” enough times.

I didn’t magically learn how to “just pay attention.”

I got here because I learned how my brain works.

I learned that if something isn’t written down, there’s a pretty good chance it doesn’t exist.

I learned that I need systems for things other people can just remember. Systems built for my brain, not for a normal one.

I learned that sometimes I need written instructions instead of something mentioned to me once in passing.

I learned which environments allow me to focus and which ones make my brain feel like it has 47 browser tabs open and one of them is playing music but I can’t figure out which one.

I learned how to work with my brain instead of spending all of my energy fighting against it. And I learned that some days my brain is just not going to brain and that is ok.

Honestly, I wish someone had taught me that a whole lot sooner.

Because when you’re a kid and you hear “try harder” enough times while you’re already trying as hard as you know how, eventually you start to wonder what is wrong with you.

When people constantly tell you to pay attention, you start believing you’re careless.

When you’re repeatedly told how much potential you have “if you would just apply yourself,” eventually you start wondering why you can’t seem to be the person everyone thinks you should be.

Those things stick with you.

And now I get to watch my son navigate some of the exact same things.

Maybe that’s why I’m so tired.

Because I know where that road goes.

I don’t want him traveling it for the next twenty years before he finally realizes there was never anything wrong with him in the first place.

I can’t make every teacher understand him or every coach take the time to figure him out. I can’t protect him from every person who is going to mistake distraction for disrespect or struggle for laziness.

But I can make damn sure he knows better.

I can teach him how his brain works. I can help him figure out what tools work for him. I can teach him to advocate for himself and hold him accountable without making him ashamed of something he can’t simply will away.

Because someday he’s going to be an adult too.

Maybe he’ll have a career he loves. Maybe he’ll run a business. Maybe he’ll farm. Maybe he’ll do something none of us have even thought of yet.

Whatever he does, I don’t want him getting there after spending half his life trying to prove to everyone that he isn’t lazy.

I want him to get there already knowing what took me years to figure out.

You can be incredibly capable and still need help with things other people find easy.

You can be successful and still forget things.

You can be intelligent and still struggle to follow a string of directions.

You can need accommodations and still be held accountable.

You can do something differently and still do it really damn well.

And sometimes the kid who looks like he isn’t trying hard enough is actually working twice as hard just to keep up.

So before you tell a kid like mine to focus, ask yourself whether you’ve given him the tools to focus.

Before you decide he doesn’t care, make sure you’re not mistaking difficulty for indifference.

Before you write him off as the distracted kid, the difficult kid, the kid who isn’t ready, or the kid who can sit this one out, take a minute and actually get to know him.

And before you tell him to “work harder,” please make damn sure you understand how hard he’s already working.

I don’t need the world to rearrange itself for my son.

I don’t need everyone to make things easy for him.

I just need the adults in his life to stop assuming that treating kids fairly means treating every kid exactly the same.

Sometimes a kid needs you to explain it differently. Sometimes he needs you to show him instead of tell him. Sometimes he needs movement or structure or another chance.

And sometimes the adult needs to adjust too.

That’s not coddling him.

That’s teaching him.

So no, I won’t tell my son to “work harder.”

I’ll teach him to understand himself.

I’ll expect him to work, learn, practice, grow, take responsibility, and keep trying.

And I’ll keep asking the adults in his life to meet him somewhere in the middle.

Because my job isn’t to teach my son how to pretend he doesn’t have ADHD.

My job is to help him grow into an adult who knows exactly who he is, knows what he needs, and never mistakes being different for being less.

And if I can save him from spending years believing he’s lazy when he’s actually been working his ass off the entire time?

I’ll be the exhausted, annoying mom advocating for him every single time.