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My ADHD Brain Sucks at Remembering Things; Here’s How My Parents Tried to Help.
And what I wish they’d known then that I know now.
I can only imagine how frustrated my parents got during parent-teacher conferences.
The teachers would tell them I did well on tests, but I sucked at homework. I was put into gifted and talented programs, but also talked too much in class, sneaked science fiction books under the desk during class, and got bad grades because of late assignments. Nothing felt more draining than a page full of math problems that I had to all solve the same way.
Like most ADHD kids of that time, my life was a constant circle of “*great potential” *and ”just try harder” and ”you could be anything you wanted to be, if you’d just apply yourself.”
##But how can you fix a problem you’re not even aware of?
Nobody - not parents, teachers, certainly not me — thought it was ADHD. We all just assumed I needed to buckle down, get serious, try harder. Develop self-control, more willpower, and improve my memory.
For example, when I was in grade school, my stepmother watched the movie “Kim” (based on the Rudyard Kipling story of the same name). She loved the part of the movie where the young spy-in-training was trained to develop a photographic memory.
In the movie, it took about a minute of actual screen time. It consisted of the boy Kim walking with his trainer through rooms in a museum, casually looking at everything, and then being quizzed on what he saw.
He was then punished if he got anything wrong, and taken through the room again. At the end of training montage, of course, he recites everything perfectly. And the implication is that he’ll be able to do that any time in the future, as well.
It’s not an unusual trope. Remember our introduction to Jason Bourne:
I can tell you the license plate numbers of all six cars outside. I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed and the guy sitting up at the counter weighs two hundred and fifteen pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab of the gray truck outside, and at this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
My stepmom thought that if she could train me to have perfect recall, she would give me an amazing tool that would serve me the rest of my life. Also, she would be able to brag to her friends at church that she had given her son perfect recall.
Unfortunately for both of us, there were two big flaws in her plan: first, “Kim” is fictional. And second, unbeknownst to either of us, I have ADHD.
The memory training did not go well. I’m just relieved that this all happened before The Bourne Identity movie came out.
On the other hand (literally) there was a trick my Dad taught me that did improve my memory.
I was raised in the Mormon church, and part of being a 12 year old boy in that sect is to begin performing the duties of the “priesthood” — at the age of 12, as a “Deacon”, basically that meant handing out the tiny paper cups of water and pieces of bread during the “sacrament” every Sunday (basically communion, but instead of a long line up to the altar you get table service from a bunch of twelve-to-fourteen year old boys).
There was a very definite protocol for this ritual, including one of the few rote prayers in the Mormon church and a very precise set of steps: we Deacons would stand at the little table while slightly older boys said the rote prayer, sanctifying the Wonder bread and tap water into a holy representation of the body of Christ.
That’s not a slam on the Mormon church; I don’t think it’s any better or worse than a bottle of wine and a mass-produced wafer, because I do not share their belief. But I digress.
After the prayers were recited, the older boys would hand each of us deacons a tray to take out amongst the congregation sitting in the pews. And that’s where I had a problem.
A very important part of the ritual was that everyone only touch the items of the sacrament with their right hand. The older boys, the younger boys, even the partaking of the sacrament, all was to be done with the right hand.
Why? Sinister reasons, obviously. Didn’t really matter; that was the Way It Was Done.
You can guess where this is going, right?
I am not right-handed.
And (though none of us knew it at the time) I also had untreated ADHD. Which meant that when twelve-year-old me was sitting there, listening to the same prayers I’d heard my entire life, trying hard to hold still, my brain craved any kind of stimulation. I’d fiddle with my new digital watch, I’d pick at the seat, I’d stare at the pattern in the carpeting and find faces and images there.
Finally I’d hear the final “amen” and the older boys would stand and hand us the trays. At last! I’d try to be reverent as I stood there, ready to finally move and solve the mazelike dance of all of us deacons bringing the sacrament to the congregation.
I’d eagerly reach out for the tray — and most of the time, with my left hand. Sometimes I’d get away with it (until after church, when my parents would point out my mistake). Other times the boy handing me the tray would see the error and just not let go of the handle, until I blushed, realizing what was going on, and changed hands.
It was an ongoing problem. I wanted to remember, I tried to remember, but that’s the thing about ADHD: there are some things it won’t let you remember, at least not when you need them.
My Dad gave me my earliest externalized executive function tool.
One day, after church, on a day when I had once again used the sinister hand to take the tray of holy sustenance, he looked at me thoughtfully. My father was rarely an angry man, at least in front of me. He was also my hero, a cross between James Bond, Jim West, and Clint Eastwood.
So when he said “I think I know what you need to do, son,” I listened.
“Watch your hand,” he continued.
I looked at him blankly. Then I looked down at my hand — the left one.
He shook his head. “No. Watch. Your hand.”
I’d love to write and then I understoood but honestly I don’t think I did, because I have vague memories of him explaining it to me.
Since I am left-handed, I wear my watch on my right wrist. My father, who was also a clever wordsmith, had created this mnemonic to help me remember which was my right hand.
It worked wonderfully. I can’t say I always remembered it, but I do know that the incidents of me using the wrong hand decreased significantly. Not only that, for the next four decades I would use that phrase to remember which direction is right.
Now, if you’re wondering why my brain could remember those three words, and the associated concepts, but couldn’t remember the simple rule that I should use a particular hand — I get it.
I wonder that too.
Welcome to my life.
I have no idea why my brain works that way, any more than I know why my brain can’t multiply “eight times six” without turning it around into “six times eight” because the answer rhymes.
I wish I could say that the concept went further than that.
It didn’t.
I did learn how to memorize things — through brute force repetition, oftentimes relying on the sound of the words rather than actually remembering the texts. And as soon as I found out that there were speakers who didn’t memorize their talks, but instead used outlines of key points that they then extemporized on, I jumped on that mode and never looked back.
But that one mnemonic from my Dad was a glimpse into the strategy of externalizing executive function that I rely on so much now.
I thought that the lesson from that was “Externalize! Externalize everything!” It would be nice if it was that simple.
But I think the true lesson learned from my parents’ attempts to help me is deeper, more frustrating, and ultimately the best way to manage your ADHD.
Use what works for your brain. Don’t waste time on what doesn’t.
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