I’ve always been a person who strongly values peoples right to be individuals with their own strengths and their own journeys, but parenting is a whole different kettle of fish. As parents, we always feel like our children are a reflection of how we’ve raised them or what we’ve done. For example, if they start playing up or running around the supermarket, we feel people are judging us and our parenting skills. Unfortunately, as a foster parent this feeling can be quite false as we don’t raise our kids from birth and sometimes aren’t responsible for elements of their behaviour, yet we blame ourselves anyway.
This whole thing actually comes from society’s expectations of how our children should behave or conform, not how they actually need or want to behave. Don’t get me wrong, there are times when they do need to behave a certain way so they don’t hurt themselves, objects or people around them, but as parents we can take it too far.
Children with ADHD can’t conform as much as other people can, even as an adult I still struggle. Though, I’d go as far to say that in adults individuality is valued a lot more than when you’re a child. Why? Well, the biggest reason is our very confirmative and prescriptive education system. Anyway, if I struggle to conform as an adult, how much more do children with ADHD drown under the weight of our expectations?
So what if they embarrass us in the supermarket? So what if they get people giving you dirty looks? At the end of the day nobody knows what you have to go through as a parent or what your child has to go through just to fit in with the social norm even a little bit?
My challenge to you, whether you have ADHD, or you are raising a child with ADHD, don’t let yourself or your child drown under the weight of other people’s expectations that are unnecessary or unwarranted. Nobody can possibly live your life for you so will never understand all the little complexities that contribute to who you are or who your child is. As long as your child is happy, let them be who they are, just teach them how to survive situations where who they are may not be completely appreciated or may put them in danger.
