This probably won't win me any popularity contest but it really bothers me how people describes people with ADHD as children and babies and not adults. We have a disability but we are adults. It hurts, it bugs me. It's bigoted. I know it comes from a place of pain but I don't like it at all. It's demeaning and disrespectful. If someone had a physical disability and needed help would it be okay to call them a manchild? One lady here has bad knees and needs extra help and can't do some things. Can I call her a little girl? It's just wrong and I don't like it. How can you expect someone to want to love you and be married to you and make themselves better if that's the sort of names you call them? It's abusive. Plain and simple. If I treated the kids at my work, at the special needs daycare with that attitude I'd get fired. If my boyfriend ever called me a grown baby or something I'd break up with him. It's not okay. It's just not.
/vent
Summerwine, you sure pay attention to US
Submitted by Sueann on
I'm the one with the bad knees, so I know you read my posts.
In spite of that, I support my husband financially and do the "executive functions" of maintaining the house, the "honey, the laundry is piling up. Can you do a couple of loads tonight" sort of things. I have given over control of making dinner to him. We discuss what to make but he does it all. But he can't figure out that he should put the wrappers in the trash. He'll ask me if I want a cup of hot chocolate, sometimes I tell him no, not because I don't want hot chocolate but because I don't want to look at the empty package on the kitchen counter and it's my job to throw it away.
How can a person not KNOW that they should contribute to the house? He doesn't work, he doesn't apply for jobs. He can't remember his therapy appointments. So that feels like being married to a 6-year old. Like I have to tell him what to do or he'll just sit and stare at the ceiling all day.
Of course I know that my 50-year old, bearded husband isn't a child. But sometimes it does feel like it.
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It just bugs me so I notice
Submitted by summerwine on
It just bugs me so I notice it. Maybe its because I am still healing from the horrible things my husband used to say. I just read that stuff and think What if that was my son when he is all grown up and this was his wife saying stuff like that? I'm not perfect I can let a house get really filthy if I'm not careful. But that doesn't make it okay to call me names and compare me to a child. It doesn't feel like living with a 6 year old it feels like living with someone with a neurobiological disorder. Its not healthy you know? There was someone who posted on the Women with ADHD forum that said something like: To infantile me is to dehumanize me. It was ages ago but it stuck with me. Can you husband get disability? I don't know how it works in the states?
Disability for ADD?
Submitted by Sueann on
To get disability in the US is pretty hard. He doesn't have regular communication with a doctor because we don't have insurance. The US is the only first-world country where the medical care you get is linked to your job. That makes employers less likely to hire someone like me. They think "walking insurance claim" when they see me and never let themselves see the fine capable employee I would be at a job that doesn't require walking.
What really frosts me is that he was hired as a "peer specialist" which is a member of a mental health team that is overcoming a mental illness. But it's not perfect (you've admitted to not being perfect either) and they fired him for acting like, well, a person with ADD. He couldn't find his keys so he was an hour late one day, he lost his debit card so he asked a co-worker if he could borrow $10 for gas and she told their boss, and his notes were not perfect. But yet, they told him he reached clients no one else could, he started some successful programs at his job, and he loved it way more than he loves me. I think he wants to get to managing those kinds of issues before he tries again, but he's never going to be exactly like a person without ADD, so I don't know what the answer is.
So it feels like I have a teenager living in my house; dependent, not contributing to household support or maintenance, needing me to tell him what to do. He would never think of doing the dishes so we have a way to eat the next meal, or doing laundry unless I tell him to. If I don't ask him do a specific task he just sits staring into space. If I do ask him to do something specific, I get it about 10% of the time. I once cleaned off the whole space between the door and the bed so I wouldn't fall when I come to bed hours after him, and he left his shoes there so I fell anyway! Neurological issue or not, it feels like I need to parent him in order to survive! I do understand your point, but I have no idea what the answer is.