Obnoxious

My childhood best friend's mother called me "obnoxious" too many times to recall. I came to believe it was just who I was. 

adjective 1.highly objectionable or offensive; odious:
obnoxious behavior.2.annoying or objectionable due to being a showoff or attracting undue attention to oneself

this is all the directions my brain is going at one time

As an adult, I recognized my behaviors of talking loud, talking a lot, and not being quiet were different from what she thought a child should act like and gave it a hurtful name.  My friend's parents were quiet and came from Portugal, and to them, I was the opposite of all that they thought a good girl was. I remember telling my friend that I couldn't imagine getting in trouble for "talking back" like she did.  I would never not have been in trouble if that was a big deal in my house.



Now, I am faced with children that are very intelligent but yet have struggles. I love my daughter to death, but my husband and I agree that she was born to irritate.  She is very hyperactive and completely rebellious, and she is 6.  I get it, I hated and still do to an extent to be told what to do.  But she does great in class and is a model student.  But when I ask her if she has trouble concentrating or sitting still, she tells me that she can't sit in the seat because she moves too much and has to sit on the floor. 

And I have a son that might have dyslexia (waiting for results), and we also might need to test him for "attentiveness, executive functioning, impulsivity" his teacher said to me.  I looked that up and realized, "Oh, so we need to test him for ADD or ADHD."  And being the very impatient mother that I am, I started looking into it myself because I can't wait for the results, I need to know now and start doing things to help him.   (Yeah, I gave him a dyslexia assessment the night I found out that was a concern and he is highly likely to have it).

So I start going through the questions, and they are asking stuff like:

Do you make small mistakes in your work? Do you skim read? Rush things?

Do you mess up dates or get numbers wrong? Fail to notice typos?  Often overlook details in filling out forms, or forget to add attachments to emails?

Do you make simple errors because you weren’t paying attention?

this is my brain trying to focus...

And my son was confused because he doesn't know what a typo is or filling out forms or attachments to emails are, but I do.  

And I started running through my head about all the questions I get wrong during the practice multiple choice tests because I completely forget that two seconds ago I read that I am looking for the wrong answer, not the right answer, or I missed that one word that made the answer completely wrong.

Or how embarrassed I was when I was helping my son with his 3rd-grade math, and I didn't have the answer key, so I did all 10 problems myself first before talking with him about what he got wrong.  Then I realized I had done the first 4 problems wrong because of one minor detail I didn't read carefully or forgot that 6 x 25 doesn't equal 125 but 150. I mean it was so simple but yet I got them wrong because of simple mistakes.

I have a college degree from the best public university in our state, and I finished in 3.5 years!  And I finished my J.D. in 3 years even though I was on the 4-year plan.  And I finished well.  I'm fairly intelligent.   But I fricking can't answer 3rd-grade math problems right....I know why "Are you smarter than a 3rd grader" was so popular now.

By this time I had lost my son's interest (yeah, he probably does have attention problems) and I started taking the test for myself.  I answer yes to 9 out of 9 on inattentiveness. Then on the hyperactivity and impulsivity, I answered 6 out of 9.  Anything over 5 on each indicates that there is a high probability that the test taker has a problem in these areas.
If you want to take this same test, here is the link:  http://totallyadd.com/adhd-quiz-start/

But I needed more proof because although answering those questions made complete sense to me, I had to be sure.  So I took an Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale which means once complete I take it my doctor for a diagnosis.  There are 18 questions, and it says answering 4 or more in the dark shaded area indicates the patient has symptoms highly consistent with ADHD in adults.  I have 10 in the shaded areas.  Here is the link to that too: http://www.addadult.com/getting-help/for-you/online-screening-test/


So needless to say, I started crying.  Buckets.  Then I called my mom who said "who cares" look what I've done and been able to cope with and got so much accomplished.  I felt a little better, but I still needed to process these feelings.  Obviously, this is not a diagnosis, and of course, I am calling my doctor first thing on Monday to schedule an appointment because I'm that impatient for results.  But it explains so much.  So many things in my past make sense, it is like finding a puzzle piece that you never knew you were looking for but now the picture is complete, and it looks great (yeah, right).

All those times that I've felt bad about my forgetfulness, my rude interrupting, my habit of not finishing things I start, my need to have an alarm on my phone to do daily tasks like picking my children up from school, and a host of other faults I have, I feel a little vindicated that I'm not just lazy and selfish and a daydreamer.  I do really well considering how scattered my brain is.

So that was my afternoon. Now I need to focus on the 15 tasks I have to do.  Thanks for letting me share! And I'd love to hear if you can relate or have some other disorder that I can google and learn more about ;-).

Isabelle