What I wish my parents knew before I was diagnosed with ADHD

Is ADHD a death sentence? This was the morbid question posed to me by a parent whose child had recently been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

- Teo Kai Xiang

Since sharing my story about being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult in May, I have received e-mails and messages from parents who described feeling disappointed, confused or heartbroken by their child's learning difference.

They worried if their child would be able to cope with the stress of university. If they had somehow failed as parents. If their nature or nurture was to blame. Or more practically, how they could stop their child from cutting class.

As someone whose executive dysfunction has been a bane throughout my life, I can empathise with their worries because I have lived it from the other side.

When I was 15, I could not sit still in class for hours on end and frequently played truant. Much of my secondary school years was spent listlessly riding the MRT from end to end. I dreaded school. Eventually, I dropped out at Secondary 3.

During this time, my parents sought psychiatric help for me (I was prescribed antidepressants) and even spiritual help spending thousands on idols they hoped would ward off the negative energy they were convinced was to blame.

The arguments we had during this time were brutal, ending in tears on both sides, as my parents watched their previously "quiet and meticulous" child spiral, losing 10kg of weight over the course of a year while I was homeschooled by tutors to take the O Levels as a private candidate.

Our relationship recovered when I went to polytechnic and, later, university abroad in the Netherlands, eventually clinching a scholarship to complete my master's degree at the University of Cambridge.

In case this is of help to others, here are the three things I wish my parents knew before I was diagnosed with ADHD only at the age of 28, which made everything that came before make sense.

1. It is not your fault