Tag: oppositional defiant disorder

Growing up, food was never neutral. It was moralized, restricted, praised, shamed, and sometimes used as punishment long before I had words for it. By age 8, I was already trapped in a restrict-binge cycle. My family had long told me I wasn’t allowed to have food that would “make me fat.” So I resorted to hiding sweets and sneaking foods in an act of rebellion.

I felt out of control around certain foods and completely uninterested in others. I chased diets, lost and gained hundreds of pounds, and eventually landed in eating disorder treatment as an adult for atypical anorexia and binge-eating disorder. (I can’t be classically diagnosed with anorexia because I live in a large body, even when I am in a calorie deficit)

Convinced I was the problem, I blamed myself for what I now understand was my nervous system desperately trying to regulate itself.

Chasing Dopamine

One day in eating disorder treatment, a clinician noticed that I was adding chips to the inside of my sandwich, something I had been doing for as long as I could remember. When she asked me why I did that, my response was simple: “I like my food to crunch.”

But I didn’t just like the crunch. I needed it. Chips. Crackers. Extra crunchy bacon. Anything with resistance. Anything loud. Anything that gave my brain a sharp sensory hit.

[Read: The ADHD-Eating Disorders Link]

The truth is that crunchy things ground me. The crunch focuses me and cuts through the constant chitchat in my brain in a way soft foods never could.

That’s when it clicked. For the first time, I began to see that my eating behaviors weren’t just about taste or hunger. My “out-of-control eating” wasn’t an issue of willpower; it was partly sensory-seeking behavior, a well-documented ADHD trait.

My Eating Disorder Is About More Than Food

People with ADHD are significantly more likely to develop eating disorders, especially binge eating disorder and anorexia. Dopamine is thought to play a role in that connection. As ADHD brains like mine are chronically low in dopamine — which we all need for motivation, pleasure, and focus — we are wired to seek stimulation. And food just happens to be fast, legal, and always available.

ADHD symptoms explain much more than the sensory-seeking aspect of my eating behaviors. Hyperfocus means I can forget to eat for extended periods. Poor interoceptive awareness means I can’t reliably feel hunger or fullness. Emotional dysregulation means feelings hit hard and fast, and food becomes the farthest thing from my mind.

So it’s not that I lack self-control. I’m chasing dopamine. And I realized that recovery from disordered eating is going to be so much harder for me and my neurospicy brain.

In treatment, I also learned that my eating disorder had very little to do with food and everything to do with coping. Control, dopamine, sensory input, grief, trauma; my brain needed more support than it was ever given.

Traditional eating disorder advice assumes a neurotypical brain: Just eat regularly and plan ahead. Listen to your body. But for someone with ADHD, this advice feels impossible. I know, as I spent decades believing I was failing my body. Shame rushes in when we fail to follow through, which only adds fuel to the eating disorder.

Recovery That Honors My Brain

Recovery, for me, doesn’t come from rigid meal plans or white-knuckling urges. It comes from understanding my ADHD and working with it instead of against it. It comes from building structures without punishment, allowing sensory accommodations without shame, and learning that “healthy” does not always equal small.

If you have ADHD and struggle with food, you are not broken. You are not weak. You are not doing recovery wrong. You are neurodivergent in a world (and in a treatment system) that still doesn’t fully understand how our brains work.

Understanding the connection between ADHD and eating disorders didn’t erase my past, but it gave me language and a framework for my brain and body that finally allowed me to begin healing.

Eating Disorders and ADHD: Next Steps

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Raising not one, but two children with ADHD should be easy for me. I’m a special education teacher and I have ADHD myself. I also have a deep well of strategies, research, and professional experience to draw from.

Sometimes, all of that helps.

Often, it doesn’t.

Having knowledge doesn’t mean that I have endless patience or perfect regulation. Having ADHD means that I struggle with impulse control — like snapping at my children to stop drumming on everything because the noise is overwhelming, even though I know that movement is how they regulate and avoid sensory overload.

It looks like getting frustrated when my child is time blind and late for school for the hundredth time — while I’m also scrambling, overwhelmed, and trying to get myself together in the morning.

When both parent and child are dysregulated, the gap between what you know and what you can do feels enormous. And that gap fills quickly with shame, guilt, and regret —wondering why you can’t be the calm, capable parent your child needs, especially when you “should know better.”

💡 Free Download! A Survival Guide for Parents with ADHD

But parenting a child with ADHD when you have ADHD isn’t about getting it right or having it all figured out. It’s about building a relationship that can hold imperfection, honesty, and repair. Some days will be hard. Some moments will still unravel. But when we name our needs, laugh at our shared quirks, and meet overwhelm with compassion instead of shame, something shifts: ADHD stops being a problem to manage and becomes a natural part of the family dynamic.

Here are four parenting shifts that have made all the difference in my family.

1. Honor your limits. It’s not about trying to be regulated all the time — it’s about learning to notice when I’m not. When I pause, name my limits, and step away before I’m flooded, I’m better able to support my children without shame or reactivity. Taking care of myself first isn’t selfish; it’s preventative.

2. Be transparent. I’ve learned the power of being transparent with my kids in age-appropriate ways. Saying things like, “My brain feels overwhelmed right now, and I need a few minutes to reset” does wonders to de-escalate the moment. It also models something many children with ADHD rarely see — that overwhelm isn’t something to hide, apologize for, or power through. It’s something you can recognize, name, and respond to with care.

💡Read: 4 Rules for Taking a Mom Rage Break

 

Over time, this kind of modeling also reduces stigma. My kids don’t see their overwhelm as strange or wrong, but as a signal. They’re learning that it’s OK to voice their needs and to take steps to meet them. In those moments, the goal isn’t perfect regulation, it’s shared understanding.

3. ADHD is not taboo. We talk about ADHD openly in my family. It’s not something we whisper about when things are hard. It’s part of how we understand ourselves and each other. My daughter and I often laugh about how our brains never seem to slow down — how one word during a conversation can remind us of a lyric from years ago and cause us to break out into song. These moments of connection remind us that our brains work similarly, and that similarity can be joyful.

4. Seek neurodivergent experiences. We’ve also found connection through identity-affirming books — stories that reflect neurodivergent characters, big feelings, and brains that don’t fit neatly into boxes. Reading these together gives us language without pressure. It opens doors to conversations about overwhelm, creativity, and regulation without framing anything as “wrong” or needing fixing. Seeing ourselves reflected in stories builds understanding and closeness and reinforces that ADHD isn’t something to hide.

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A wave of intense shame pours over me as a familiar thought enters my head: What in the name of God am I doing with my life? And how did I end up here?

Let me set the scene for you: I’m sitting at home, wearing a headset, taking calls for a psychic helpline. Yes, at the grand age of 30, I was moonlighting as a fake phone psychic. But I needed a job I could easily do from home, and this one sounded doable. And fun?

I’ve had many different roles throughout my life. I’ve been part of a cabin crew, sold wine over the phone, worked for an international charity, sold suitcases, reported as a freelance journalist, and worked at McDonald’s, a shirt shop, a toothbrush factory, and a garden center.

💡 Read: From Bowling-Alley Bartender to Cleopatra Waitress — My Story of ADHD Job Hopping

 

Now, in my latest incarnation, I’m finally doing something related to my degree. I’m a Ph.D. researcher attempting to understand the link between ADHD, gender, work, and entrepreneurship. Through my research, and for the first time in my life, I’ve met other women with the exact same story as mine. Despite often being labeled as gifted or having above-average intelligence, many women with ADHD seem to flounder and float around in the working world.

A checkered work history like mine seems to be so common among women with ADHD that I’ve come to see it as a shorthand sign of neurodivergence: Have you had 50 different jobs before the age of 30? If you answer yes, have you considered an ADHD evaluation?

A Nagging Sense of Wasted Potential

I make light of it, but it has always been a huge source of shame for me that, despite being told repeatedly how much “potential” I had, I could never distill it down to a traditional, fulfilling career. Not that there’s anything wrong with the odd jobs I had, only that I landed in them because I thought I couldn’t do more. And I couldn’t see myself fitting in anywhere else.

How relieved I was to find I wasn’t alone; research backs up that people with ADHD tend to work in jobs that are below their academic qualifications. Despite scoring higher in intelligence tests, they also have lower self-esteem than their peers.^{1 2}

💡 Read: “You Have So Much Potential. You Just Don’t Apply Yourself.”

 

Women with ADHD who are working in jobs far below their potential and academic credentials are only too familiar with this situation. I remember once while working as cabin crew, I asked a pilot the standard question of “Is your wife crew?” (It’s very common for pilots to marry cabin crew.) He looked at me, laughed, and said, “Oh, no. My wife is intelligent. She has a degree.” It felt like a punch in the gut.

We Deserve Fulfilling Lives

Learning that I had ADHD as an adult changed everything for me. It helped me understand my relationship to work and the fact that I — and many women — are navigating a world that largely wasn’t built for minds like ours. I’ve learned to forgive myself for my perceived failings, and I encourage women who see themselves in my story to do the same.

Unconditional acceptance of your strengths and areas of need, strategic self-advocacy, and out-of-the-box thinking (perhaps even entrepreneurship) are key. But it’s not just on us — workplaces would benefit from learning how to support neurodivergent employees, which may need to come at a public policy level. It’s my hope to help create pathways that support neurodivergent women in reducing shame and building fulfilling and autonomous professional lives that allow them to access their full potential.

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Every January, the world sharpens its pencils and declares:

Be more consistent.
Follow through.
Set firmer boundaries.
Stick to the plan.

But if you are raising a child with ADHD, as I am, you hear these phrases all year long. They come from friends, family members, teachers, neighbors, and strangers who see our children on their hardest days and decide they understand the whole story.

If you were more consistent, your child would behave.
If you enforced consequences, they would learn.
If you just did something different, your child would be fine.

Unsolicited comments about our parenting land like resolutions we never made and quietly turn into failures we carry.

💡 Read: An Unusual New Year’s Guidebook for People Who Think Different

 

ADHD Parenting Resolutions I Never Chose

I have tried the charts and the routines. I have tried the calm voice and the firm voice. I have tried sticker systems, time outs, time ins, early bedtimes, later bedtimes, warnings, countdowns, and consequences that were supposed to fix everything. I have done these things consistently. I have done them desperately. I have done them while questioning myself every step of the way.

None of them changed the reality of what it is like to raise a child with ADHD.

ADHD is not defiance for the sake of defiance. It is not poor discipline or lack of effort. ADHD is emotional dysregulation so intense it hijacks the body. It is rage that comes without warning. It is despair that feels bottomless. It is not choosing chaos but drowning in it. It is a nervous system flooded to the point that logic cannot reach it.

Still, the advice keeps coming.

If you just followed through…
If you just stopped negotiating…
If you just stayed calm…

Most parenting advice assumes a child who can consistently pause, reflect, and comply. ADHD breaks that assumption. Tough moments and inconsistency will always be part of ADHD, and they cannot be stamped out with discipline like a resolution. That is why well-meaning advice hurts and turns into intrusive thoughts: What am I missing? What am I doing wrong? Why is this still so hard?

 Read: 10 Things People Say to You When You’re Raising an Extreme Child

 

A Different Kind of New Year’s Resolution

I am not trying to raise a child who looks well-behaved to strangers. I am trying to raise a child who feels safe in his own body. I am trying to teach him that his emotions do not make him bad. I am trying to help him come back from places many adults never see, let alone understand.

The problem is not that ADHD families need better resolutions. The problem is that the world needs a better understanding of what ADHD actually is.

Until that changes, parents like me will keep standing in the wreckage of well-intentioned advice, trying to explain why it does not work, and wondering why we feel like failures while doing some of the hardest parenting there is.

I am done resolving to fix my child.

Instead, I will work to shift how we collectively see ADHD. It is not a discipline problem. It is not a parenting failure. It is a neurological reality that requires compassion, patience, and support. That is the resolution ADHD families truly need.

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Some mornings, I can tell before he even speaks. The air feels charged, as if the world inside his head has woken early. My son moves fast, talks faster, and forgets things just as quickly. I whisper, “Slow down,” even though I know that phrase has never worked for either of us.

He is my son, but he is also my reflection. The scattered thoughts, the lost shoes, the emotions that rise and fall without warning; I know them all. Parenting a child with ADHD while living with it myself feels like steering two race cars at once. Some days we glide forward. Some days we spin out.

I used to think my job was to calm him. The world rewards quiet children and those who can smoothly transition. He was born in motion. He notices everything — the flicker of lights, the hum of the refrigerator, the way a room changes when people get tense. He cannot filter life, and neither can I.

🏠 Read: I Had No Safe Place. Can I Build One for My Son?

When I was young, teachers told me I had potential — if I would only focus. That word, focus, has followed me ever since. I hear it now when I watch my son trying to finish homework or listen to directions that last too long. His eyes glaze over the same way mine used to. I know exactly where his mind goes when it drifts. Everywhere at once.

Living with ADHD is like carrying a thousand radio stations in your head and trying to tune in to one. Parenting a child on that same frequency means the noise never stops. Some days I am patient. Other days I am not. He melts down, and I feel myself melting, too. I tell him to breathe, forgetting I need to inhale, too.

But there is also an understanding between us that words cannot explain. When he cannot describe what he feels, I already know. When others call him impulsive, I see the effort behind his eyes. When he blurts out something too honest, I hear the truth in it. We do not hide emotion well. That might be our biggest flaw and our biggest gift.

There are days when we spiral together, both of us overstimulated and unsure how to stop. But there are also days when we find our rhythm. We walk the dog and talk about everything that crosses his mind. He asks questions faster than I can answer, but I try anyway. Those are the moments that bring peace. I stop trying to change him and start remembering what it felt like to be him.

❤️ Read: The Blessings (and Trials) of Parenting with ADHD

At night, when he finally falls asleep, I think about how hard he works just to make it through the day. People see a boy who cannot sit still. I see a boy who fights invisible battles from morning to night and still finds ways to laugh.

He has made me see my own mind differently. I used to think ADHD made me disorganized and too much. Now I see creativity and empathy in the same traits I once resented. He feels everything deeply, and so do I. Maybe we are not broken. Maybe we just move through the world differently.

Some days I worry about how others will treat him. Other days I believe he will change the world instead of trying to fit into it. His mind is bright and restless. His curiosity has no limits. His energy wears me out but also keeps me alive.

We are mirrors, he and I. His reflection shows me the parts of myself I used to hide and the parts I am finally learning to love. When I help him find calm, I find it too. When I remind him that being different is not wrong, I believe it a little more for both of us.

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Did you know that you can timebox and even postpone your worry?

I don’t need to tell you that anxiety has a way of hijacking the ADHD brain’s attention and focus. That it shows up unannounced, derailing our plans and schedules. But what if you could turn the tables and put anxiety itself on a schedule?

Giving your worries a scheduled time slot — and pairing them with healthy reframing and other worry-busting skills — isn’t about suppressing or trying to stop anxiety. It’s about staying in control, a form of emotional regulation in action. You’re training your brain to avoid hours of rumination so you can stay more calm, present, and productive.

Worry Time: How to Timebox or Delay Anxiety

1. When anxiety and worry come up — like on your way to a doctor’s appointment, or just before taking a difficult exam, or as you think about a difficult conversation you need to have — immediately set a 15-minute timer. (Or whatever time frame is feasible.)

2. Over the next 15 minutes, write or say aloud all your worrisome thoughts. What if I have a serious disease? What if I make a fool of myself? What if I fail my test? Give your full attention to your thoughts, no matter where they take you.

💭 Read: Why Do I Assume the Worst-Case Scenario?

3. As the minutes pass, you may find that you feel much better just by venting. You may have also challenged some of your thoughts:

• How likely is that to happen?
• What evidence do I have for this supposed outcome?
• Where am I jumping to conclusions?
• Am I doubting my ability to handle the outcome I fear? When have I faced a similar situation?
• Is the problem in my control? What can I do about it if so? Which of my traits and strengths can I use to help me?

If you find yourself devoting your entire session to worrying (or if time blindness is a factor), consider a timer within a timer — one to signal that it’s time to switch to problem-solving and thought-challenging mode.

4. When the timer is up, stop worrying and return to your schedule. Close your notebook and say to yourself, “Worry time is finished.” Follow worry time with a pre-chosen anchor activity, like taking a shower or preparing dinner, to ease your mind off worrying.

😌 Read: 6 Ways to a Worry-Free Mind

5. In lieu of setting a 15-minute timer for worrying as soon as it appears, set a standing 15-minute appointment on your calendar for worrying, like you would for any other activity. When worries come up, jot them down and tell yourself that you’ll get to it later. Go ahead and tell your worry to wait. “I’ve got you on my calendar!”

Linda was studying for the LSAT when the thought, “What if I fail?” kept flashing like a neon sign through her mind. Instead of spiraling and using up her precious study time, she scheduled two standing worry appointments — Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4:15 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Whenever anxiety crept in, she reminded herself, “Not now — it’s on the calendar.” By the time her worry slot arrived, her mind was calmer and ready to problem-solve.

So, the next time your brain insists, “What if I fail?” Try replying, “Great question! I’ll worry about it at 4:15 p.m.”

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Shame — that deep sense of inadequacy and unworthiness — has the unique ability to travel across time, informing our present and our future. While the work of rebuilding self-worth happens in the now, it also often requires a trip to the past.

If shame weighs on you, loosen its grip by incorporating these two short exercises (the same I share with my clients) into your days. Over time, these activities will rewire your mind and shift your focus from perceived inadequacies to self-compassion, growth, and progress.

Anti-Shame Activity: Alternative Endings

Think of an incident that triggered shame. (Start small.) Come up with three different endings for this uncomfortable, even painful, situation that you can feel better about.

⚡ Read: 9 Truths About ADHD and Intense Emotions

Say you felt ashamed recently for talking over an acquaintance. You can imagine an ending where you gently laughed off the interruption and said to them, “Sorry, I got so excited there that I couldn’t hold it in. Please, continue — I really want to hear what you have to say.”

Develop goals based on what you learned from this activity. For example, you may want to come up with mantras to help you stay present and actively listen. You may also want to build a habit of quickly acknowledging, apologizing, and moving on when interruptions happen (which takes practice!).

Imagined endings are not denial or daydreaming. They are therapy-based tools that force you to reckon with shame. They teach your brain a new route, encourage you to forgive yourself, and weaken shame’s hold. Don’t worry if this exercise feels awkward at first — forming new grooves takes time and practice.

Anti-Shame Activity: Hidden Gifts

Think of three people you know well in your life. For each, write down three of their strengths or good qualities. Then, ask them to do the same for you. You can say, “I’m doing an insights exercise. Would you be willing to share three strengths that you see me use when things get hard? One sentence is perfect.”

💡 Read: How to Do a Strengths Inventory

It may feel awkward to do this activity, but the response from my clients is overwhelmingly positive. Many note that it’s a profound experience filled with many surprises.

Don’t think of this activity as your typical strengths and weaknesses list. Its purpose is not necessarily self-improvement, but self-insight and self-appreciation — strong antidotes to shame and feelings of inadequacy.

Set a goal to review the responses regularly. Consider creating a reminder or monthly appointment on your calendar to nudge you to read through the responses.

If your shame is tied to trauma, depression, or thoughts of self-harm, bring these exercises to a licensed clinician to ensure you have support.

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Almost without exception, parents tell me the same story: Meltdowns, yelling, and door-slamming the moment their teen is forced to quit their video game, log off TikTok, or otherwise disengage with their preferred form of “brain rot.” The explosive reactions happen again and again, even after conversations and apologies for past transgressions.

This behavior may look like defiance, but I argue that it’s a sign of dopamine withdrawal. No, that’s not far-fetched. We know that short-form content — think TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels — is carefully engineered to activate the brain’s dopamine centers.¹ We also know that excessive consumption of short-form content is linked to poorer attention, depression, anxiety, stress, and loneliness. Difficulty disengaging and regulating emotions offline is a common result.²

It stands to reason that youth with ADHD, whose brains are wired for novelty and stimulation, and who have difficulty regulating, feel the effects of these digital dopamine hits (and withdrawals) more intensely.

📱 Read: Why Screens Mesmerize Our Teens — and How to Break the Trance

So, what can you do to release the latest brain rot’s hold over your child? Once you understand how dopamine drives your child’s reactions, the next step is to guide that chemistry instead of fight it. The strategies below will help your child regain calm and control and build healthier reward patterns.

1. The Power-Down Countdown

“Five more minutes” doesn’t mean much to ADHD brains. Visuals say a lot more. Try color-changing timers, countdown apps, or lamps that fade from green to red to signal that it’s almost time to switch away from screens. You can even turn it into a challenge: Log off before the light turns red to earn more allowance.

2. Dopamine Down Shift

Abruptly shutting off a heavy stream of dopamine destabilizes ADHD brains. Instead, move your child into a dopamine replacement activity that is short, satisfying, and active. That can be shooting a few baskets, racing around the living room, drawing for five minutes, or solving a short puzzle — anything will do, if it’s a real-world activity that reinforces to kids that stimulation is possible outside of digital realms.

3. Cool Down Bridge

To further help your child’s brain transition, try a cool down bridge — a short sensory ritual — to help soften the landing off devices. Some kids pace while listening to a favorite song, others stretch or splash cold water on their face. It doesn’t matter what the in-between activity is, only that it signals to the brain that it is time to switch gears to a calmer state.

🕹️ Read: An “Ethics Manual” for Your Teen’s Electronics

4. Collaborative Control Plans

Chances are that your teen doesn’t want to have meltdowns, either. When your child is calm, invite them to help you come up with a plan to transition away from screens and devices. Ask, “What would help you stop without becoming too upset?” or “How could we make this easier next time?” Ownership builds cooperation.

5. Dopamine Diversity Days

Make one day each week a screen-break day. Go hiking, cook together, build something, or play music. Try not to frame the day as a loss, but as something your family is gaining. Say, “We’re giving our brains a different kind of fuel today.”

6. Reclaim Dopamine Autonomy

The goal is not to eliminate games, screens, or content from your teen’s life. It is to help them understand what certain forms of content do to their brain, health, and ability to stay in control. You can appeal to your teen’s natural desire for autonomy by talking about digital tactics that are meant to hijack their decision-making:

“That streak is trying to trick your brain into FOMO.”

“That timer wants you to log back in.”

Celebrate when they skip a reward on purpose. Challenge them to see missing a “daily login” as proof of control.

7. Examine Your Own Brain Rot

Teen screen use is directly correlated with parental screen use.³ While you may not consume the same content as your child, it’s likely that your screen time could use some work. Set screen-free zones and times, such as during dinner or while doing homework. Try to keep devices out of bedrooms. Use timers and rituals to transition away from devices, too, (and make sure your child sees you doing so). Encourage ongoing, open conversations about screen use, its pros and cons, and its impact on mental health.

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The following is a personal essay that reflects the opinion of its author.

December 10, 2025

As a director of disability services in higher education, I am deeply troubled by the framing and assumptions of such services in “Accommodation Nation” an article recently in The Atlantic that positions college accommodations as a burden, casts suspicion on students with disabilities, and erodes decades of progress made by disability advocates who have fought for equal access to education.

Accommodations Are Not “Easily Gamed”

It’s true that the number of students seeking accommodations has risen over the years as rates of diagnosed ADHD, anxiety, and other conditions have increased. But this is because diagnostic tools have improved dramatically, leading to increased identification. Increased identification is not a sign of manipulation, as The Atlantic article insinuates. It is the result of better science and long-overdue recognition.

Yet articles like “Accommodation Nation” use these realities to cast doubt on students’ lived experiences. At my institution, students must go through multiple steps before accommodations are considered. They complete a detailed online application, provide documentation from licensed professionals that identify which major life activities are impacted by their condition(s), and outline specific functional limitations. I regularly follow up with providers to better understand the applicant’s diagnosis. Then I meet with the student to explore their needs, discuss barriers, and determine appropriate accommodations.

Free Guide: How to Get Accommodations in College

This is not a casual or “easily gamed” process, as The Atlantic suggests. It is a careful, legally grounded, individualized assessment rooted in education, awareness, and advocacy.

The Right to Education, Not Exploitation

What concerns me most about The Atlantic article is how it reinforces the false narrative that students with disabilities are inflating their needs or receiving unearned advantages. Disability services offices are not handing out “perks.” Rather, we are ensuring that students can access the same educational opportunities as their peers. That is the foundation of civil rights laws.

The disability rights movement began in the 1960s and, before that, many individuals with disabilities were banned from education altogether. Today, that access to education translates to employment, independence, and contributions back to society. Undermining accommodations threatens to send us backward at a moment when the Department of Education itself is being dismantled and national conversations around mental health, ADHD, and neurodivergence are already steeped in stigma.

Students with disabilities are not a burden. They are welcome at the table of higher education.

Read: 4 Hallmarks of ADHD-Supportive Colleges

Accessibility Is Not a Loophole

One in four Americans lives with a disability. At my small college, roughly 25% of students are registered with disability services; I suspect there are another 10% who would qualify, but choose not to come forward because of stigma. Smaller schools often attract students seeking supportive, high-touch environments, and many students come to our offices only after years of struggling without assistance. For some, college is the first time they have access to health insurance, counseling services, and the availability of diagnostic testing.

On that note, the Atlantic article also ignores pressing questions about youth mental health. Beyond increased awareness and better diagnostic tools, why are today’s young people experiencing higher rates of trauma  and mental health challenges? Could it have anything to do with the fact that today’s college students — who have grown up with active-shooter drills, unfettered access to largely unregulated social media platforms, and who are entering adulthood in an economically unstable, politically volatile, and rapidly changing world — have endured circumstances no previous cohort has faced?

Ultimately, “Accommodation Nation” fails to acknowledge that an increase in student support does not signal abuse. It shows that students finally feel safe enough to seek services to bolster their education. It signals progress. At a time when students with disabilities already navigate bias, skepticism, and physical and attitudinal barriers, we do not need narratives that delegitimize their existence or imply their success is suspicious.

We need investment, compassion, and the understanding that accessibility is not a loophole, but a civil right. We should be examining why students need support, not doubting whether they deserve it. We should be investing in and expanding accessibility, not undermining it. And we should be building universities that see disability not as an inconvenience, but as a natural and valuable part of the human experience.

Jillian Lillibridge Heilman, Ph.D., CRC, is a disability expert with more than 20 years of experience in disability education and advocacy. She is the Director of Student Accessibility Services at a small New England college and provides training to other colleges and private organizations that seek to better serve individuals with disabilities.

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I finally got into Stranger Things. Not because of the terror and gore, but because the show, to my surprise, lays out perfect metaphors for ADHD. Like me, its characters know a great deal about what it means to contend with an invisible force, seemingly of another dimension.

The Upside Down Is My Normal

When 12-year-old Will Byers goes missing from the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, in 1983, his family and friends don’t realize that he’s actually right there beside them. He’s just in an alternate dimension called the Upside Down, which parallels the real world. The Upside Down is a colder version of home, a world of intense electrical storms, strange bloodthirsty creatures, and darkness.

Living with ADHD is a lot like being in the Upside Down. I’m amongst people in the real world, but they don’t see what’s in my dimension. While others go smoothly from Point A to Point B, I have fog, toxic quicksand, and squelching monsters that keep me from moving freely.

Stuck in a Loop

“Stuckness” appears throughout the show. Sure, there are the characters who become stuck in the Upside Down. But the Upside Down itself is also stuck. Even as time in the show’s world moves ahead, the Upside Down stays in 1983. Then there’s the mother of Eleven (a young girl with psychokinetic abilities) who is stuck in a catatonic state, caught in a mental loop that replays the events leading to her daughter’s kidnapping.

If my ADHD brain had a dial, “stuck in a loop” would be its default setting. It cycles endlessly through memories of childhood starring young me as a brilliant, shining disappointment. This loop replayed with intensity after I was diagnosed with ADHD in my 20s. I experienced my memories with a fresh set of eyes, mourning all the time I struggled socially and emotionally without understanding why. I become enmeshed in the loop less often these days, but it remains a constant presence.

☁️ Read: Getting Unstuck from the Cloud of ADHD Stuck-ness

The Mind Flayer

The powerful, massive, spider-like monster of the Upside Down — the show’s antagonist for most of its run — can connect to and command surrounding creatures and entities even as they venture outside the alternate dimension.

Sometimes, living with ADHD feels like living with a creature that’s flaying my body and mind. It tears through my brain, causing symptoms and challenges I’d rather bypass. But sometimes my ADHD acts like a living, breathing partner. Like when it drives me into hyperfocus and allows me to be extremely, but selectively, productive.

Vines and Tunnels

When Will becomes possessed by the Mind Flayer, he begins to erratically draw a series of tunnels and vines. His drawings, initially dismissed, are later discovered to be a map of the Upside Down growing beneath the town. The tunnels twist and turn, and the vines have minds of their own.

ADHD thinking patterns can operate like the vines and tunnels of the Upside Down. One thought gives birth to another, growing out of hand, spreading until I burn out. Or, without warning, a thought can stop. A brilliant idea becomes a dead end, abandoned.

💡 Read: The True Value of ADHD Side Quests, Rabbit Holes, and Tangents

Who’s In Your Party?

The teen protagonists of the show call themselves the Party, borrowing from a Dungeons & Dragons term for an allied group of players. The party and the entire town unite to confront the forces besieging their home.

When no one else knows I’m drowning, even those closest to me, I remind myself that the Upside Down is invisible. I need to let them know it’s trapped me. When I do, I have faith they’ll show up and help me fight every scary monster. When we feel broken, we can heal together.

Life is better with a Party.

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We all have childhood memories of upsetting an adult — of knowing we’re in trouble for disappointing a grown-up in one way or another. We remember the weight of our guilt and feeling like we were bad to the core.

As much as we remember the sighs, yells, and criticisms, we also remember the moments we were treated with compassion and understanding. The adults in our lives may not have known it, but in those empathetic moments, they were applying the principles of nonviolent communication with us.

Nonviolent communication (NVC) is an approach that children with ADHD and rejection sensitivity respond especially well to, in my view. As a parent with ADHD raising a child with ADHD, it’s an approach I try to embody every day.

What Is Nonviolent Communication?

NVC, created by Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D., is designed to help people manage conflict (in relationships, work, school, etc.) and express themselves without placing blame, shame, or guilt on others.

NVC centers on four components:

• Observation: focusing on what you see or hear, not on evaluations or labels.
• Feelings: identifying and expressing your actual emotions, not thoughts disguised as feelings.
• Needs: recognizing that feelings arise from needs being met or unmet.
• Requests: asking for clear, specific actions to help meet needs.

[Get This Free Download: How to Respond to Your Child’s Defiance]

There is much more to NVC, but its most important principle is that it requires us to take off our “adult” hats and become equals with our children. As someone who was raised in a household where children were seen, not heard, I know this is easier said than done. But a child cannot learn respect until they experience respect. And children learn to communicate effectively by being communicated with effectively.

5 Ways to Practice Nonviolent Communication with ADHD Kids

Follow these steps to incorporate the principles of NVC into your daily interactions with your child and improve your relationship with them.

1. Use “I” statements.

Instead of: Stop leaving your things everywhere! I tripped over your stuff again! Don’t be so lazy!

Nonviolent reaction: I see your shoes and backpack are on the floor. I feel frustrated when I trip over your things. I also get hurt. Please take the next minute to put your things away.

2. Avoid hyperbole.

Try not to exaggerate your child’s behaviors and avoid absolutes like “always” or “never.” Be mindful of thoughts masquerading as feelings.

Instead of: You always leave the fridge door open and walk away! You never listen to me when I ask you to be more careful. I feel like you just don’t care.

Nonviolent reaction: I came home today and found the fridge door open. I am annoyed that some of our food is now spoiled, and we need to replace it.

[Read: Your Positive Parenting Toolkit Has Arrived]

3. I feel __ because…

Connect your feelings to your needs to help your child see why something matters.

Instead of: Why are you making so much noise? Can’t you see that I’m trying to work?

Nonviolent reaction: I feel tense because I need to focus on my work but keep getting distracted by these noises. Would you lower your voice/tablet volume or move to another room so I can finish?

4. Focus on responsibility, not blame.

Let’s take it back to the open fridge door example of above.

Instead of: The food is all spoiled and it’s all your fault.

Nonviolent reaction: We’ll need to buy fresh food. Can you help by contributing from your allowance?

This principle is absolutely important for our rejection-sensitive children. Shifting from blame to responsibility reduces paralyzing shame and lets children focus on how they can make things better.

5. Let your child speak.

Even if they are whiny or hormonal. Even if they cry and seem irrational. Even if they blame everything else under the sun for their behavior, you must let your child speak. Your job is to listen and validate.

Instead of: It’s not my fault you don’t get your homework done on time! If you can’t speak to me with respect, then I don’t want to speak to you at all.

Nonviolent reaction: I hear you saying you forget about your homework and could use a reminder. I also hear you saying that it’s challenging to focus on more work after school. Let’s come up with a plan so you don’t fall behind or feel overwhelmed.

Paraphrasing your child’s words is extremely important. It calms children when they hear their own words echoed back to them with understanding. It shows them that they are worthy — because they are — of being heard.

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“Nothing activates the brain so extensively as music,” said famed neurologist and musicphile Oliver Sacks, M.D. As an avid music fan with ADHD, I have lived this truth from a young age.

I grew up in a music-obsessed family. I was named after Roberto Carlos, the renowned Brazilian singer. (Another option was “Fernando,” after the ABBA song.) My father was a serious vinyl collector, and rarely was our home silent. My parents instilled in my siblings and me an appreciation for all music, teaching us never to dismiss any artist or song but rather to express, “This music doesn’t speak to me now.”

I’ll never forget the first time I heard “We Got the Beat” by the Go-Go’s. The opening drum line, fast and strong, flipped a switch in my 10-year-old brain. I had never been instantly hooked like that by anything. Their album, Beauty and the Beat, was the first I ever bought, and it helped carve out my own musical identity. (All these decades later, the magic of this album endures.) From The Cure’s moody sounds and Sinéad O’Connor’s raw vocals to Tito Puente’s vibrant rhythms and Linda Ronstadt’s soulful voice, I listened to it all, and I still love discovering new music.

 

Fifth-grade me may have been a little dramatic when I wrote this in a school essay: “Music is my religion, my drug, my validation, and my salvation.” Theatrical, but not wrong. As a kid with undiagnosed ADHD, I innately understood that music was more than enjoyable; it was necessary. I gravitated toward it to manage symptoms I later recognized as ADHD.

I turned facts into songs for better recall. While studying, I drummed on random surfaces, and by test day, I “felt” the rhythm again to recall what I learned. My earliest attempts at writing were supercharged by music. I distinctly remember staring at a blank page, frozen, unable to start my assignment. Something compelled me to play Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” on my tape recorder. The iconic opening bassline unblocked my brain and lifted me out of paralysis. I am forever grateful to my dad, who could have shut off the music, but believed me when I said it was helping. Sure enough, the essay poured out in minutes. Today, I always have music — sometimes soft, but often loud and cacophonous — playing when I need to focus. In fact, I wrote my dissertation to bands like Green Day and Ministry.

Looking back, I admire how my parents used music creatively to support me. To keep me from lingering too long in the shower, my mom put a radio in the bathroom and said, “If you listen to more than four songs, then you’re in the shower too long.” My dad, who liked to listen to music in layers, replayed songs so I could focus on different instruments each time. He didn’t know that this way of appreciating music was a form of mindfulness – just what my ADHD brain needed.

Music has a special place in my life. I firmly believe in its power to connect, heal, and reveal the best in us. I’m passionate about sharing this truth, including with my patients. Whether creating playlists to validate feelings or dancing away social anxiety, I help others lean into music to improve their lives.

My ask: be an open-minded listener. Try a genre you’ve never explored or revisit a song you once dismissed — it might speak differently to you today. Here’s to discovering the next song that lights up your brain.

 

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The following is a personal essay that reflects the opinion of its author.

November 24, 2025

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has never attended medical school. He has no prior experience in formulating public health policy and no training in neurodevelopmental disorders. His opinions on the causes of autism have no basis in science and have drawn widespread criticism from medical and public health experts for their inaccuracies.

And Kennedy was wrong last week to order the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to change its website guidance on autism and vaccines. It now claims, without credible evidence, that “scientific studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines contribute to the development of autism,” an alarming reversal of the CDC’s longstanding position based on decades of research.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, along with 40 other medical, health, and patient advocate groups, responded immediately with a letter chastising the CDC for “promoting the outdated, disproven idea that vaccines cause autism.” For the last 25 years, dozens of rigorous, large-scale studies have found no evidence of an association between childhood vaccines and autism.^{1, 2, 3} These include a large-scale Danish study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which involved more than 537,000 participants (all the children born in Denmark over a seven-year period)⁴ as well as a meta-analysis involving cohort and case-control studies and more than 1.2 million children.⁵

[News: Anti-Vaccine Activist David Geier (Not a Doctor) Heads HHS Study on Vaccines and Autism Despite Past Censure]

“There is no link between autism and vaccines,” wrote the Autism Science Foundation on its website last Thursday. “This is consistent across multiple studies, repeated in different countries around the world, with different individuals, at different ages including infancy, and using different model systems. In addition, we know that some biological features of autism can be found prenatally, before any vaccines are administered.”

We know that autism is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder. More than 100 genes have been associated with the condition, but experts agree that genetics and environmental factors likely both contribute. Controlling for a host of potentially confounding factors — including a high comorbidity rate with ADHD^{6, 7} — is critical in uncovering causes of autism, and it is difficult to accomplish.

Meanwhile, untrained and unqualified individuals continue to mistake association with causality when reviewing research studies on autism. For example, President Donald Trump recently claimed that a mother’s Tylenol use in pregnancy causes autism in her offspring, citing a study, co-authored by a Harvard epidemiologist, that found a small association between use of acetaminophen during pregnancy and risk of autism in children. This association, however, was not shown to be causal, a fact explicitly stated by the lead author of the review, Diddier Prada, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

“We show that acetaminophen is associated with a higher risk, but not causing it. Those are very different things,” Prada said in an interview with The Washington Post.

[Tylenol and Autism Are Not Causally Linked, Researchers Confirm]

These false claims about autism, published on the CDC website and broadcast at White House press conferences, have an immediate and profoundly negative impact on autistic people and their loved ones. The damage being done is not theoretical. It is real, it is measurable, and our readers are telling us about it right now. Here are some of their stories.

“Both my kids, 14 and 16, are autistic. My daughter came home from school crying shortly after the absurd proclamation. She was insistent that I have all references to autism and ADHD stricken from her school and medical records. The more she cried and talked, the clearer the picture became. She was worried that the Trump administration was creating a list of kids with autism, like her and her brother, so they could be rounded up and put into concentration camps. It took a couple of normalizing hours of conversation for her to calm down. As a parent, when you need to hold your 16-year-old until they stop quaking because of something said by the leader of our country, I get closer to the decision that our family needs to leave the U.S. While I consoled my daughter, I went through the gamut of emotions with anger and fear the predominant ones.”

“We live in Ireland, and even here my autistic child was affected. He asked me, as his mother, ‘Did you do this to me? Did you take a drug that caused my autism?’ He was emotionally dysregulated for days, and very angry toward me as everyone in school was discussing it.”

“My 8-year-old autistic son was watching a news story about the Tylenol-autism claims. He looked at me and said, ‘Wait, I’m autistic. Do I have a disease?’ I affirmed him the same way I always do when he struggles with one of his diagnoses, telling him he is a gift from God to us.”

“My son did have questions, as he is 14, and we didn’t get the diagnosis until he was 13. I felt relieved that I didn’t take Tylenol with his pregnancy, and I did with my other two pregnancies. The other two children are not diagnosed with ASD. I don’t think that the statements made by Kennedy and Trump are sound, but that speaks to the fact that mother shaming still exists when children have disabilities. I am a school counselor and I know better, and it is disheartening to think this still goes on. My son was happy I didn’t take Tylenol, however, he was open to me explaining how studies and research works.”

“Our child is a voracious consumer of science and political videos, plus the autistic kids at her school have a loosely connected network for mutual support. They are smart kids. They just laughed at the stupidity of the pronouncement.”

“This is my AuDHD daughter’s course of study, so she understands the flawed conflation of causation and correlation. It has been more difficult to speak with relatives about it, especially those who are taking this information at face value. Mostly, I have given up trying to change their minds, but am more vocal with the younger relatives who may become pregnant or have a significant other who may become pregnant on the importance of treating high fever during pregnancy.”

“We’ve had very animated conversations about this. We are both outraged by this and find it difficult to fathom how someone running a country can say such wildly inaccurate things without any evidence.”

Anni Layne Rodgers is General Manager at ADDitude.

View Article Sources

As an autistic woman with ADHD, the horrific recent narratives around autism have left me bereft. I am exhausted, terrified, overstimulated, and vulnerable. My justice sensitivity is through the roof, and I feel uncertain and unsafe.

When my passion is ignited and my emotions are triggered, writing is my tried-and-true release. Since I first learned about my own ADHD and autism as an adult, I’ve devoted myself to dismantling misinformation about neurodivergence through writing. I share my thoughts on multiple platforms. I amplify other AuDHD voices and spend hours researching and writing, swirling learned information with lived experience. The work has been immensely rewarding, connecting me with community and other AuDHD folks who tell me that my writing has helped them. That, in itself, makes it worth the effort.

But there’s another side to advocacy that I’ve come to experience more and more in this political climate: rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) – the bane of my existence and truly one of the most disabling aspects of my ADHD.

Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and Gut-Punch Advocacy

Fear of rejection and criticism — real or perceived — has always affected me deeply. RSD shows up for me as physical symptoms like nausea and vomiting, sweating, shaking, and extreme restlessness. My nervous system kicks into overdrive. I pace. I obsess. I’m left with little mental capacity for daily tasks. When I’m out of the proverbial woods, I often sob with gratitude, then sleep it off for 24 hours. So, when I say RSD is paralyzing, I am not being hyperbolic.

My writing on neurodivergence is not terribly controversial or polarizing, but it’s been harshly brought to my attention that some people have problems with me. The number of vitriolic comments I’ve deleted on my Substack is astounding. I’ve endured spiteful attacks and criticism simply for sharing my personal experiences and thoughts as an AuDHD woman. Attacked simply for stating the truth, with sources to back it up. I am consistently startled by the fact that many people really, really hate information. Many people are highly opposed to listening and learning.

 

I find myself feeling like two distinct people. One is a leader, a fearless and fierce advocate who will stop at nothing to dismantle and correct harmful narratives. The other is a scared little girl crouched in the corner, shaking like a leaf.

I get dreadful nausea just before hitting the publish button. The fear of criticism from faceless bullies and the very people whose minds I am attempting to change rises in dizzying waves. As reposts and positive comments roll in, the nausea decreases, but one hurtful comment in a sea of praise sends me crawling back to my corner. I cry, I rage. I become consumed with my two selves; the one who insists that I persevere and continue to be a voice for my community, and the one who tells me to run, to hide, to place self-preservation at the top of my list.

We’ll Make It Through, As We Always Do

The reality of being AuDHD is that I burn for justice, am sickened by the lack of it, and become inflamed by fallacies. But inextricably woven into that reality is another one: I fear rejection so intense that a single comment can leave me bedridden.

Friends, I would love to end this post with a solution to quiet RSD so we can advocate tirelessly. Sadly, there is no panacea except to accept these opposing needs. To show myself radical compassion and to honor whatever I’m feeling at any given moment. With this comes the realization that much of the AuDHD community is feeling the same way.

 

To my community, my message is this: Give yourself grace.

Write the post. Engage if it feels right. Speak. Scream if you want to. Delete it if that feels safer. Whisper to the tears on your pillow if that’s what you need. Move in silence if that’s what your heart tells you to do.

It is OK if you need a break from advocacy. It’s OK to block people. As painful as it is to admit, we cannot and will not change the minds of those who are married to their ignorance about neurodivergence. We cannot inspire empathy in people who see no benefit in it. All we can do is speak the truth, be loyal to our own experiences, and give it our best shot. Change isn’t always immediate or quickly visible.

When RSD feels like a gut punch, remember that there are others who know exactly how it feels. I know it feels like your world is being turned upside down and shaken by the hand of a cruel, callous giant.

But RSD is not cause for shame. We’ve made it this far — despite every ounce of rejection, and we will continue to make it through one day at a time.

In dark times, we must remember that there will always be people who uplift and support us. And we always have ourselves, our values, and our non-negotiable truths. We must cling as tightly to this as we can; like-minded community and inner knowing will carry us through.

This too shall pass. I know that’s a tired platitude, but it’s also true. No state is permanent.

I realize that positivity can sometimes feel so irritatingly over-simplified, especially in times like these. But the truth is, we have no choice but to take it one day at a time. Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow will bring a fresh sky.

Tomorrow might just be our North Star.

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The following is a personal essay that reflects the opinions and experiences of its author.

October 16, 2025

This November marks the 50^th anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a landmark law that shapes the educational experiences of more than 7.5 million students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) across the United States.

In exchange for federal funding, states must provide students with disabilities a free and appropriate public education; the IDEA governs this and how an IEP (Individualized Education Program) is structured, built to address a student’s needs, and implemented in the classroom. Central to the IDEA’s effectiveness is federal monitoring of state compliance; however, that enforcement structure is now under serious threat.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration effectively killed the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) — an office within the U.S. Department of Education (ED) responsible for enforcing IDEA provisions and supporting families — by reducing its workforce to fewer than six employees, a 95% cut since the start of 2025.

OSEP ensures schools follow the IDEA by setting policy, monitoring state compliance, investigating violations, and intervening when children with disabilities are not receiving their legally mandated services.

The Trump administration has long threatened to dismantle or drastically reduce the ED. Between layoffs earlier in 2025 and these latest cuts, the office that once held schools accountable is now unable to function.

[Quiz: How Well Do You Know U.S. Education Law?]

Importantly, the IDEA remains in effect. Your child’s IEP (Individualized Education Program) continues to be a legally binding document that must be implemented exactly as written and agreed upon. If you disagree with any aspect of the IEP, whether that’s the content or the procedures followed, you still have the right to challenge the district’s decisions or inaction through the administrative review process.

Additionally, Section 504 Plan protections still exist, and your state education agency is still obligated to ensure compliance. (A Section 504 Plan, which arises under a different federal law that bars discrimination against individuals with disabilities.)

However, without adequate staffing at the federal level, funding disbursements may be delayed, potentially causing states to face budget crises that leave them unable to pay service providers. The cuts may also halt investigations into complaints filed with OSEP and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which handles disability discrimination complaints under Section 504. If these offices lack the personnel to monitor state compliance with federal law, then enforcement becomes impossible, regardless of what the IDEA or Section 504 requires.

Caregiver Advocacy Tips

While these drastic changes and cuts are alarming, there are steps caregivers can take to protect their child’s services and stay informed about changes at the local level.

1. Gather information from your district. Contact your district’s special education office and ask whether it is anticipating any cuts to special education funding or staffing. Do not assume staffers will provide this information unprompted. Find Your Federal, State, and Local Representatives here.
2. Monitor services closely. Watch for personnel cutbacks, including special education teachers, related service providers, and paraprofessionals. Track any reductions in services or scheduling changes. Keep a log of anything that may not appear to be compliant with your child’s IEP or 504 Plan, and save all emails and communications about your child’s services.
3. Be proactive about IEP meetings. Do not wait for an invitation to an annual IEP meeting. Reach out two to three months before it is due to schedule, so that you have time to invite any outside providers or evaluators to the meeting. Remember that you can request an IEP meeting at any time if you have concerns about your child’s progress or services.
4. Build relationships. Federal policy can feel distant and abstract, but the teachers and providers working with your child every day are your partners. Connect with them regularly, not just when problems arise. Network with other parents facing similar challenges. Collective advocacy is powerful, and connecting with other families can provide insight into systemic issues in your district.
5. Learn your rights. Familiarize yourself with the IDEA and your state’s specific education laws. Review the procedural safeguards that your school is required to provide and keep them in a safe place so that you are prepared when you need them.

[Watch: “Are My Students’ ADHD Accommodations in Danger? Fallout from the Department of Education Changes”]

As the IDEA reaches its 50^th anniversary, the responsibility for protecting students’ rights has shifted even more onto the shoulders of parents and state agencies. Staying engaged has never been more crucial.

Department of Education Cuts: Next Steps

The law office of Dominic Buchmiller, Esq., is dedicated to ensuring that every child receives the free and appropriate education to which they are entitled. Our mission is to advocate for students and families, securing the services and programming necessary for each child to hit their necessary milestones.

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In everything from teen rom coms to relationship advice columns, kissing is painted as the litmus test for love, desire, and connection. What’s often overlooked is how complicated kissing can be for neurodivergent people, whose brains and bodies process touch, taste, and proximity differently.

“Why Don’t I Like Kissing?” The ADHD Sensory Block

For many of my clients with ADHD, kissing isn’t always the warm, intimate act it’s “supposed” to be. Instead, it can feel like a sensory storm.

There’s too much saliva and not enough breathing. You can taste hints of what your partner ate for lunch earlier. There’s the irritating texture of stubble on their face. And distractions coming from the TV or a buzzing phone. You notice your hair is stuck to your lip. You’re suddenly hyperaware of how close you are to someone’s face.

ADHD brains are already processing an abundance of sensory input on a good day. Add in an intimate situation with high emotional stakes, and you’ve got a recipe for distraction, discomfort, or shutdown.

But It’s Not Just Sensory: Kissing and Mental Bandwidth

Neurotypical intimacy scripts treat kissing as a baseline requirement for intimacy and for building a relationship. But when kissing is uncomfortable or dysregulating, partners can misinterpret that as rejection, lack of attraction, or emotional disconnection.

Intimacy challenges aren’t always about desire or love, as neurotypical advice would have us believe. Beyond sensory blocks, they are sometimes about the brain’s ability to regulate attention, emotion, and working memory (i.e., executive functions) under real-time, sensory, and social pressure.

• If you’re spending mental bandwidth on managing discomfort instead of enjoying the moment, that can lead to emotional regulation fatigue.
• If you have to remember to initiate kissing to keep your partner happy, that’s pressure on working memory.
• If you’re trying to prevent your partner from feeling rejected, you’re layering in impulse control and social monitoring — hotspots for ADHD burnout.

Ideas to Feel Close: Alternatives to Kissing

Kissing is only one of many ways to connect and it’s not automatically the most intimate or sensual.

Think of intimacy like a playlist: You don’t need to play the same track every time to keep the mood alive. Sometimes you need options.

• Forehead or temple kisses: gentler contact with less sensory overwhelm.
• Playful micro touches: a squeeze of the hand, a brush of the fingers, a tap on the hip while passing by.
• Shared sensory anchors: holding hands under a blanket, sitting with your legs intertwined, leaning shoulder to shoulder during a show.
• Parallel play intimacy: being together in the same space doing different activities (reading, cooking, gaming) while staying connected through the small glances or shared commentary.
• Eye contact: short bursts of focused connection without physical touch can sometimes feel more intimate than kissing ever could.

ADHD and Kissing: Start the Conversation

If kissing feels like a block for you, the first step is honesty with your partner.

1. Name the experience without apologizing for it. (“It’s not that I don’t want to be close to you, it’s that kissing can trigger sensory overload for me.”)
2. Explain what does work for your brain and body.
3. Make it collaborative by inviting your partner(s) to explore new options together.

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The following is a personal essay, and reflects the opinion of its author.

September 30, 2025

The Trump administration continued its attack on autism last week, this time by linking Tylenol (acetaminophen) use in pregnancy to autism and strongly discouraging its use. (“Fight like hell not to take it” and “tough it out,” Trump told expectant moms.)

White House Press Secretary Karolina Levitt said, “The Trump administration does not believe popping more pills is always the answer for better health.”

Hold on: I am healthy. So are my autistic friends — and if they aren’t, their health problems aren’t ASD.

Trump isn’t offering a cure for autism. Instead, he and RFK, Jr., are contributing to the burden of stigma that autistic people deal with every day. Autism is not a disease or a mental health condition. It’s both a disability and a kind of neurodivergence.

“Curing Autism” Is Ableist

First off, blaming autism on pregnant people taking Tylenol isn’t just wrong — it’s potentially dangerous. Since ibuprofen and aspirin are known to harm developing fetuses, acetaminophen remains the only painkiller available and safe for pregnant people, as backed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, the Autism Science Foundation, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

During each of my three pregnancies, round ligament pain left me nearly unable to walk. If I had not been allowed to take Tylenol, I would have been bedridden, which can cause deep vein thrombosis, a loss of bone mass, and injury to the heart and lungs.

It’s true that many parents and children would benefit from a better understanding of autism, as well as improved therapies that emphasize accommodation and communication strategies.

Manifestations of autism, to be sure, can cause difficulty and frustration. Challenges with social communication and interaction, as well as “restrictive and repetitive behaviors,” can lead to friction. And autism is a spectrum condition — some people can “mask” their autism and pass for neurotypical. Others may have difficulty communicating their basic needs. For some parents, the difficulties inherent in caring for so-called “low-functioning” autistic children can be enormous. (Though it’s important to recognize that terms such as “low-functioning” are also inherently ableist; autistic people all function differently.)

Those parents need both support and improved interventions. But their children’s brain differences don’t need to be “cured.” We don’t want a “cure.” We want accommodation and understanding.

Claiming that autistic people need to be cured to fit into everyday society implies that neurodivergent people are a burden. “These are kids who… will never pay taxes,” RFK, Jr. said. “They’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted… and we need to put an end to it.”

As a published poet, I can only assure you that autistic people do indeed write poetry. Beyond that, this language and framing of autism are terrifying — echoing rhetoric that has fueled some of the darkest moments in human history. (That people are linking this administration’s language and policies to eugenics is not an overblown reaction.)

We Don’t Want a Cure for Autism

The vast majority of autistic people don’t want a cure. The idea of curing us pathologizes the way we think, feel, and interact with the world. Instead of a cure, we need help and accommodations from a society structured to favor neurotypical people.

“This administration seems to care a lot about autism as a supposed epidemic,” said Colin Killick, the executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “It does not seem to care much at all about autistic people.”

If this government cared, it would enact comprehensive disability legislation (currently being gutted), fund special education for autistic children (also on the chopping block), and provide adequate workplace accommodations and protections for autistic adults (harder to do with the DEI rollback). Instead, our existence is being called “a family tragedy.”

This rhetoric belies the administration’s claims to care about autistic people. Instead, it tells us that priorities lay with eradicating and demonizing people it misidentifies as a societal burden. But we’re far from a burden. Autistic people have the same rights as any other American: the right to joy, the right to self-determination, and the right to make medical decisions without government interference.

We don’t want a cure. We want our value to be acknowledged.

Understanding Autism: Next Steps

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Do you feel like your attention span is that of a rock? Is TikTok rotting your brain to the point where you hyperventilate if you forget to bring your phone with you to the bathroom? (Shout out to those who had to read the backs of shampoo bottles to pass the time when they were kids!) Here’s a novel (the pun should hit you any second) idea to repair it: the mystical art of… reading.

For people with ADHD, the benefits of reading are many:

1. Reading lets you train your brain to focus on something less stimulating than, say, television, social media, or video games.
2. It can support executive functions like working memory.
3. It lets you escape reality for a bit.
4. Finishing a book does wonders for your self-esteem.

But, as someone with ADHD, I know how absurd it sounds to say, “Just sit down and read!”

Reading isn’t so simple if you’re fighting against the weight of inattention, impulsivity, low boredom tolerance, dyslexia or another learning difference, and have a brain that’s accustomed to the overstimulating content on social media. It can feel like having leg weights on your brain 24/7.

The good news is, reading really can be for everyone. With the right mindset, you can slowly re-introduce reading into your life and reap all its benefits, one of the biggest being strengthening your attention muscles.

1. Read what interests you

In college, I struggled to read because I couldn’t play to my interests. Reading for classes became a chore, so I lost all motivation for it. Unless you’re forced to power through reading assignments, find genres that interest you.

• Ask:
  • What did I like reading/watching as a kid?
  • What books, movies, and TV shows do I enjoy now?
  • What genres (horror, sci-fi, romance, fiction, nonfiction, etc.) do I gravitate to?
• If you know what books you like, use this website to find similar titles: meetnewbooks.com

[Read: What Is Dopamine Fasting?]

2. Find music that gets you in the zone

Some people need complete silence to begin reading, but I find that listening to instrumental music helps get me in the zone for focus. YouTube hosts a library of genre-specific playlists that you can have on while reading. I lean toward video game soundtracks, since they are often composed to maximize engagement.

Here are some of my favorites that promote focus for reading:

3. Read at an easy-for-you level

If you’re not much of a reader, or if it’s been a while since you’ve spent time on a book, don’t be ashamed to read books that are “easy” for you or meant for younger readers.

[Read: How to Channel Your Attention]

For example, I read the Percy Jackson series for the first time recently and had a great time with it. I would have loved the books when I was a kid, but, even as an adult, they were great fun to read. I connected with many of its themes, and, as a bonus, Percy also has ADHD that’s presented as more than just the stereotypical hyperactivity. Yay, representation!

Bonus Book Tip: If anyone gives you a hard time about your reading choice, you have a book you can throw at them.

4. Audiobooks count as reading

Some argue that audiobooks don’t count as reading, and they are entitled to their horribly wrong opinions.

Audiobooks are great for focusing busy minds. When I’m in a cleaning frenzy because people are coming over and the house looks like it was ransacked by a thief, I put a book in my ear and get to work. An engaging story helps kick me into gear for the otherwise mind-numbing work of cleaning.

Bonus Book Tip: Listening to an audiobook while reading is a great way to double-focus on the text. This can be particularly helpful if you’re assigned to read things outside of your interest.

5. It’s OK to stop reading

If a book isn’t clicking with you, move on. Your interest-based brain will tell you when to set down a book; listen to it. If you’re reading the same sentence over and over, or your mind wanders more often than normal, it may be time to try another book.

To mitigate the financial burden of DNFing (Did Not Finish) a lot of books, which may happen while you are trying to get into reading, I recommend either using the “Download Sample” feature for Kindle Books on Amazon or getting a library card. (Most libraries grant access to e-books and audiobooks on top of print versions.)

A Final Word

If your goal with reading is to increase your attention span, great. But I’d encourage you to think about other benefits that come with focusing your attention. I have no doubt that reading has made me a better person and has helped me manage different aspects of my ADHD, most of the time without even realizing it.

ADHD and Attention Span: Next Steps

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SUPPORT ADDITUDE
Thank you for reading ADDitude. To support our mission of providing ADHD education and support, please consider subscribing. Your readership and support help make our content and outreach possible. Thank you.