How an ADHD Teacher Brings in Groceries

My Experiences Help Me Understand Students Struggling With Multistep Processing

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I sit in the car for fifteen minutes. I’ve completed a full workout in the gym and successfully obtained a week’s worth of groceries. I’m organized. Clear-minded. Yet for whatever reason, I cannot get out of the car.

I’m stuck, I text my roommate.

It’s only when they reply that they are coming outside to help that I snap out of my stupor. The spell has been broken, it seems, by a new sensation: the anticipation of someone else coming.

When I was in high school, I had a difficult time explaining why I struggled to begin homework.

It was often suggested to me that I struggled with a lack of motivation. I never felt that to be particularly true; I was an anxious kid who wanted sorely to obtain good grades and the praise of adults. Although I fancied myself to be a punk at heart, I desired success in the more conventional sense. This, as I was painfully aware, would require some effort in academics.

Nor was it true that my problem was self-confidence. I was and am not immune to my share of insecurities and self-doubt, but I knew that I understood the vast…