What´s your earliest adhd memory?

[sunnydaysahead]

Originally Posted by Verile

I don't see how someone can give their child a time out. I know people can give a psychological punishment without scarring their kids, but I just don't see how it can help. Essentially, they are telling me they would mentally abuse a child by robbing him of his freedom and letting him cry alone and uncomforted in a corner or locked room.

at my house, when the reward system fails, and the 'choice' system fails, (like you can go color or watch cartoons) then we do time out. . .
my son is almost four, and he is just as defiant as I was. But just like someone else said, I remember every hit,slap,spank, etc. it made me feel like LESS of a person. I think you 'break a childs spirit' when you spank them.
So, back to my point,
Time out at OUR house, is sitting in the corner of the room, where you cant see the TV, but Im right there. He's not alone, or banished. he's just having some time to 'reboot'
sometimes he just throws a tantrum, but thats okay, when he's done and his 3 and half mins are up, he's 'rebooted' and able to 'deal' again.

Its frustrating having a child just like you were. Only I remember all the screaming and hitting from my house, and I vowed long ago, to not repeat it.
The reward system, works MOST of the time, giving toys, taking them away, ETC. if you dont do this, you'll lose this. If your good at preschool all week, we'll get a toy friday.
But, he throws everything outta the shelf next to the window, out onto the front lawn?
timeout, works best.

My earliest memory of adhd, was I couldnt understand how everyone could SIT AND LISTEN in class. I was like looking around the room, thinking WHY can't we just go play????
it musta been kindergarten.
a close second, was I was ALWAYS in trouble for interupting. ALWAYS.
it seemed like FOREVER Id be waiting to talk, trying to not FORGET what I HAD to say...............
wait, that still happens, LOL

[Verile]

Interesting that you said 'him.'

Eh. I wouldn't look too deeply into it. I'm a male using male pronouns because there isn't a gender neutral pronoun. If I were a male who used female pronouns like "her", that would be more interesting. "They" is grammatically incorrect when referring to 1 person.

at my house, when the reward system fails, and the 'choice' system fails, (like you can go color or watch cartoons) then we do time out. . .
my son is almost four, and he is just as defiant as I was. But just like someone else said, I remember every hit,slap,spank, etc. it made me feel like LESS of a person. I think you 'break a childs spirit' when you spank them.

Perhaps personal perception plays a strong role here. I don't remember all my spankings and I certainly don't carry around trauma from it. It never came close to breaking my spirit.

I guess I just don't see the qualitative difference in cruelty of a physical punishment to a psychological punishment. Corporal punishment certainly has more flair with its dramatic visuals and contact but robbing children of their possessions, imprisoning them for any length of time, and essentially treating them as inferior beings who have to abide by your laws or face the consequences....That's the kinder approach?

Any form of discipline seems cruel to me. I won't argue it's not necessary for helping to mold a person to better tolerate society but I don't see how spanking is worse than treating your home like a prison.

You could argue physical punishments are worse because hitting and fighting in modern society is unacceptable so it teaches bad habits in a society where imprisonment and fines for any offense is the accepted method for deterrence of rule breaking. If I put it that way, I think I can understand why so many people carry a stigma for one versus the other. One form of punishment is more "civilized".

Bear in mind, I distinguish spanking from hitting just as much as I distinguish time-out from locking your child in a box. There's certainly degrees of cruelty here. I'd rather see a child spanked than locked in a small space and I'd rather see a time out than a child beat.

[SquarePeg]

Originally Posted by Verile

Any form of discipline seems cruel to me.

It´s essential for kids to have rules, limits and boundaries and discipline. These gives children a solid foundation and a sense of security in the world to develop and grow. THe big wide world can be a scary place otherwise. Kids will try to push those boundaries, that´s normal but if those boundaries are fixed and you discipline the child when he/she crosses them, it actually reinforces their sense of security. i.e if I to X then my mum will do Y, repeatedly, they need to know the same thing will happen and that all is safe in the world.

Inconsistency in these rules, limitations and discipline are hard for kids to deal with so if you let a child jump on the sofa one day but not the next this can be confusing and cause them to act up even more.

That´s why kids love to watch the same films and hear the same stories over and over and over again, it´s a form of reassurance and security.

[Verile]

Originally Posted by SquarePeg

It´s essential for kids to have rules, limits and boundaries and discipline. These gives children a solid foundation and a sense of security in the world to develop and grow. THe big wide world can be a scary place otherwise. Kids will try to push those boundaries, that´s normal but if those boundaries are fixed and you discipline the child when he/she crosses them, it actually reinforces their sense of security. i.e if I to X then my mum will do Y, repeatedly, they need to know the same thing will happen and that all is safe in the world.

Inconsistency in these rules, limitations and discipline are hard for kids to deal with so if you let a child jump on the sofa one day but not the next this can be confusing and cause them to act up even more.

That´s why kids love to watch the same films and hear the same stories over and over and over again, it´s a form of reassurance and security.

I realize you're ADHD but you completely took that sentence out of context. I don't disagree with you.

[PookDo]

I was a weird child to say the least. I remember one time in grade school maybe 2nd grade it was the early to mid 70's and the tv show Good Times was popular. I remember walking up the stairs from lunch and doing that thing where the one guy claps his hands and says dynamite.

[SquarePeg]

Apologies Verile, it was 2.00 in the morning, I do this all the time, don´t read and consider thing properly and just type impulsively (or speak). Sorry

[Verile]

No worries, it's not like I don't understand.

[Tony Stark]

When I was a kid, I started to daydreaming and having images in my mind. every thought has an associated image. Besides, the hyperactivity.

[Geno]

Originally Posted by Tony Stark

When I was a kid, I started to daydreaming and having images in my mind. every thought has an associated image.

That's not at all abnormal.

[IOCharles]

Even as a young kid I could sit and people watch for hours. I also daydreamed for hours, always crammed every assignment, was never organized, and I would get obsessed with becoming good at something and would only do that until I was the best at it. I was an adept writer, even in the 2nd grade, because I would read on my own time, but I only wrote about what interested me. I hyper-focused on hobbies and collecting Garbage Pail Kids cards, and finding ways to accrue more of them, until I had more than every kid at my elementary school. With baseball cards I collected Ken Griffey Jr. cards, ended up with over 300 within a couple years, despite being poor. I knew the values of all of them, but paid no attention to learning anything else unless it was interesting. I would be loud in class, not pay attention, would cause trouble on the playground, was super-aggressive in sports, and I could never sit still. I became the best in my school at Chess and Monopoly and didn't lose from 4th grade until high school.

My earliest memory was being really young in church, and only caring about the pretty girls in their Sunday dresses. That was all I paid attention to.

[upagumtree]

Reaching in the aquarium to catch the tadpoles. The teacher grabbed my arm and pulled me to what ever naughty corner she had going on. I went right back and did it again.

[Phoenix Ash]

Oh, so many memories...

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Always hated naptime. Never understood the point -- I was never tired.

The more I think about it, the more grateful I am that I spent most of my childhood living way out in the country where I could run around and climb trees and explore to my heart's content allllll day.

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In first grade I accidentally spilled my entire milk carton at lunch in the school cafeteria pretty much every single day. They were always really nice in letting me get a new one, until one day I did it three times in a row and they said no to carton #4. Can't imagine why.

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I was always a tomboy who ran around in as little clothing as possible. So when it was dinnertime, my mother would yell upstairs for me to put some clothes on and come down to eat. Once I finally heard her, I would grab whatever shirt was handy from my tornado pit of a room and race downstairs while at the same time trying to put my shirt on over my head as I went.

I'm sure you can picture it. Head stuck half-way through an arm hole, arms confusedly trapped in the mysterious and ineffable confines of a half-inside-out-upside-down-backwards garment of death... running, blind, down 13 stairs, at top speed.

Yeah. I did this every day. I have no explanation for how I am still alive.

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How did I get diagnosed PI again??? I'm really starting to wonder...

[Phoenix Ash]

On the inattentive side...

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When I was 4 or 5 I remember getting yelled at in Sunday school for absently poking around in my ear with the sharp end of my pencil. Don't really know why I did that but I remember doing it a lot.

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In second grade my lift-top desk was so messy, so continuously, and so irretrievably, that my teacher just gave up and gave me a second one. Naturally that one ended up as bad as the first. I had to stay late on the last day of school to clean them both out, which took me forever cos I had no idea how to proceed.

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Once when I was about 5 or so, I got in an enormous amount of trouble with my mother for something I had no memory of doing. The particularly ADD-ish part was that while my mother was screaming, "Look at what you did!" I literally could not for the life of me see what I had done. She kept yelling and pointing at the wall near where I was crouched and I kept trying to figure out what she was talking about, but not only did I have zero memory of having been naughty, I seriously didn't see anything strange around me at all. Totally bewildered.

After what felt like an eternity (likely only 5 minutes), bam, out of nowhere, I suddenly saw what she was talking about. It was like it just popped into my field of vision and I felt indescribably stupid and embarrassed for not seeing it before. To this day it still mystifies me.

So what was it? Turns out I had been drawing black stars on the wall with a Sharpie. Lots of them.

I remembered doing it once I finally saw the evidence. But how did I miss seeing it all that time?

[Tony Stark]

Originally Posted by Geno

That's not at all abnormal.

Not normal when you fail school because you can't focus on books nd homework.

[Subtract81]

I got sent out of class all the time as i wasn't paying attention, i was always laughing at things that nobody else noticed, i was considered disruptive, people thought i was just bored as i seemed to be ahead of the other kids so got moved to more "challenging" schools, also as i had hearing issues when i was younger when i wasn't listening people assumed it was my hearing that was the problem as opposed to my distraction, anyway long story short ended up at a boarding school, less said about that the better.