[thrav]

Just to be clear, your diagnosis may change, but you’re not any less ADHD (assuming you actually were in the first place). ADHD is a product of the brain developing in a different way. It’s not contextual, even if it’s most obvious symptoms might be.

[owens99]

I’m sure there is disagreement among some doctors over this, but ADHD in the current medical literature is not defined by brain function, it is defined by sustained dysfunction in life situations.

[thrav]

The brain forms differently in ADHD individuals. Certain regions have slower or stunted growth. If you’d like to know more, it’s explained in the beginning of this lecture: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-rkIfo

[fatnoah]

>Just to be clear, your diagnosis may change, but you’re not any less ADHD (assuming you actually were in the first place). ADHD is a product of the brain developing in a different way. It’s not contextual, even if it’s most obvious symptoms might be.

My son had fairly extensive two day evaluation for ADHD. The test itself was not even close to finding out how things worked in everyday life. It was activities and exercises designed to understand how his brain worked. It was super-enlightening to me to get an idea of what challenges he was facing. Simply having the evaluation and having the results shown and explained did wonders for our ability to support him in school and beyond.

In any cases, this is a really long-winded way to agree with you. It's about how your brain works, not about functioning in life situations. That said, some situations will make it more or less apparent that your brain works in a certain way.

[thrav]

Check out Dr. Barkley’s 30 essential ideas for ADHD parents, and know that either you or your spouse are also ADHD, even if you’ve long since learned to cope and overcome.

[fatnoah]

Absolutely. Going through the process made it clear to my wife that she'd been coping with ADHD for a long time. It also made me realize that I was outnumbered. ;)