The good, bad and stereotypes of being homeschooled with ADHD? Part II

Something Shiny: ADHD!

David and Isabelle welcome Ren, a fellow therapist with ADHD, who digs into what was rough and unique about being homeschooled as a neurodivergent person. From the spaghettification-like transition to college, to the stereotypes of homeschooling as being for white Jesus-Jumper-wearing Christians (Duggar style), what it means to face things like frustrating and nonsensical busy work, a lack of structure, and learning how to study from television. Tackling questions about confidence, self-image, and Dickensonian skull-caps. Part II of a series.

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David wonders what different versions of homeschooling Ren was exposed to growing up—they describe a number of different structures, and that their family lived more on the structured side. Studies were more experiential, going to plays or museums or reading books on your own versus just listening to lectures. You’d do things based on your own pace, and it was almost entirely moms—a lot of it was birth order, the eldest kids had different experience because mom’s had more practice, and got a little more tired. Ren doesn’t want to pain too rosy a picture, it was a big struggle for many when they left the system and hit college—maybe more help with the big transition? Ren spent a lot of their first year of college depressed, going from being the ‘best’ by being a class of 1, do what I want when I want, to suddenly “you expect me to sit in this class multiple hours, multiple times a week, listening to you talk…and then do more stuff later?” Ren never had their time wasted by an authority figure, or the concept of busy work. Isabelle pictures this as a froyo shop model of education, where you get to try so many different things and combinations—a sense of autonomy and a sense of reassurance. In order to feel confident, you need to trust your experience, stealing from Good Inside with Dr. Becky. As caregivers we cut off emotional states, you can’t trust your own assessment of your own experience, and we’re coming in with a counter of “you don’t have to have that feeling,” because you don’t get a gauge for validation. Also offering empathy for Freshman-year Ren, like they saw through the Matrix and had already seen through it. Isabelle feels like the opposite of Ren—she went to school 6 days every week, she had a really old school Polish lessons on Saturdays based on the Polish school system. Isabelle is like the tame bird, while Ren feels like they were free and then were being told to go into a cage. David is realizing he would not have survived if he was Ren—the hardest thing was everything they just described, he was oppositional, he’d drag his feet at everything. David almost saw this as spaghettification, like if you’re in two places of different pressures you’ll turn into spaghetti (see below, yikes, we edited out a more detailed and graphic description, be warned if you go down this rabbit hole). Ren walked into places with no defenses, which Ren relates to colonization, "oh hi, it's the Pilgrims again." They were touch-starved because as the eldest of 6, they hadn’t gone a day without someone in their space, but they were also failing at the thing they were good at, and they were supposed to learn how to study. They learned about how people do school on tv—they’d gather up their textbooks and just sit at the library for 7 hours because that’s what studying ‘looks like.’ They dealt with it by doing the closest thing to being a home schooler, which was being a theater major. An on-ramp would’ve been nice. Isabelle wants to mention that the part they edited out about spaghettification, if you went down the rabbit hole and it's a lot and you're not alone, and maybe we just trauma bonded and yikes. There was a developmental trajectory that moved more and more into a ‘feeling more free' direction—the more BS David could do, the more autonomy he got, and so he got rewarded for doing the BS which helped him later on down the line. Isabelle wonders if Ren was learning more intrinsically v. extrinsically, because you want your own self-reference for building pride and capacity v. approval—where did this anxiety start, if for 18 years they had themselves as their own self-reference? How it can take just one awful educational experience to challenge your sense of self. Up until college, all of Ren’s anxiety was about going to Hell—after college, it switched to everything else—they are getting things wrong in a way that is invisible to me, and everybody else feels like what's going on. Everyone else has seen the same things, but they are outside the bubble, was like an alien trying to blend in. What is a Jesus jumper, you may wonder? A long denim skirt that goes to the ankle, if you think of a potato sack with a sleeplessness. On the other end of the spectrum from Ren's mom, they did not wear Jesus jumpers and let their girls go to the college, but a lot of people think of this. The home school reference for people is white and Duggar style, Jesus jumper. So Ren's identity before college was good at running the household, not being difficult, being good at school and after college they needed to find a new thing, because nobody needs them to run a household anymore and school is requiring tasks that are stupid. So they became a stage manager because that was as close to running a household, and the validation of people needing you and the structure of rehearsals and it became their new thing. David keeps hearing that there are so many people that normalize their life based on TV—it's so real, like the Norman Rockwell version of studying with a feather pen and books on a table in a library, that’s really studying. If it looks right, I'm doing it. Isabelle wonders if this is Norman Rockwell or Dickens—and the reason she suspects this, is because she was really into historical fiction, adoring the American Girl books and she was the kid that actually asked for a quill pen for her birthday, she wanted a candle, melted wax stamps, she’s into everything David is saying. It’s possible that for her for her studying that looked like this Dickensonian image may actually have been an accommodation.

Good Inside with Dr. Becky - talking about confidence

Spaghettification

Homeschool representation tends to be white and fundamentalist and wearing a Jesus Jumper (like the Duggars)

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Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez

Technical Support by: Bobby Richards

Special Thanks to Ren for sharing their brilliance with us!