A relative told me that he thought his ADHD was "caused" by his parents' divorce, until I told him that I have it too.

The average neurodivergent child hears 20,000 more negative messages than their neurotypical peers by the age of 12 ("sit still! Pay attention! Ugh, why are you so weird?") and so we develop shame.

My child heard those messages too, but not from me.

I too had postpartum depression following a difficult birth and infancy. Birth difficulties are strongly correlated to ADHD/autism and I strongly suspect that it's because ADHD and autism cause impaired interoception.

It's not much of a stretch to imagine that the body which cannot tell if it is hungry or thirsty also has no idea when it is time for its uterus to contract or how and when to produce milk.

We heap shame upon the mothers who cannot breastfeed their babies and heap on more when they get depressed about their shitty lives.

So my child was shamed at school and I was shamed for being an inadequate mother (I tearfully thanked the nurse who "let" me finally use a bottle) after being shamed at school for talking too much and my mother was shamed at school, too, for being "weird" and daydreaming and not finishing things.

And her father, too, left behind vast swathes of unfinished art products. He was "creative" and "eccentric" and would fall asleep in strange places after sleepwalking and other sleep disorders which - my what a coincidence! - are linked to dopamine deficiency.

According to Nature, 50,000 years ago, ADHD was the dominant neurotype. I wonder what our lives were like before they shamed us.