ADHD Awareness Month- Celebrating Squirrel Season

Somehow, I didn’t know until recently that ADHD awareness month is October. I could make a joke about how all the tabs open in my head must’ve made me unaware… but essentially, it’s just a silly way to articulate the reality. 

A lot of people throw around the word ADHD these days as if everyone has it… I’m not here to judge anyone saying that they do or don’t have it but I had a late diagnosis of ADHD, and it was like like a lightbulb went off in my head. Then I found the right medication, that lightbulb got brighter. I’m not saying medication is for everybody but for me, I’m not ashamed to say that it’s something that helps my brain function.

I think a good story about how it would’ve been beneficial sooner is the time I flooded the basement while reading a book…yes you read that correctly- I flooded the basement reading a book. I wish I could say it was the Bible or something of deep significance, but it was just something I was interested in at the time. I was running a bath and laid on my bed to read for a little bit while I waited. I can’t even tell you how long I was reading, but what I can tell you is that it only dawned on me that I left the bath running when I sat up and put my feet on the bedroom floor and felt a sloshing wetness on my feet… a soaked carpet. Genius. 

It certainly was embarrassing trying to tell someone that I needed help because my basement flooded…I still remember the conversation:

“No there is nothing wrong with the water tank, no leak or anything like that, I was just reading a book and forgot.” 

“Are you serious?”

“Yep- but hey I just found a random bucket so now I’m going to start trying to shovel the water back into the bath once it’s drained” (that was supposed to make it easier to digest).

That may be a negative example of how ADHD could show up in life, but there’s actually a lot of really positive ways that it shows up to if it’s channelled and managed appropriately.

Something that someone taught me later on as a good way to explain and make sense of ADHD is using the term, squirrel or squirrelling. When I’m doing 1 million things at once or on a tangent, I can say I’m just squirreling and then recenter. The cool thing about this example is that it actually works really well for kids to help make sense of it too. I loved how I had a student one time tell me completely unapologetically that they couldn’t stand to sit there and listen to me read because they’re ADHD is telling them they got to move. I stopped reading and validated the experience, said that we’re gonna have a movement break and after a little movement break they sat down, just like everybody else, and continued to read.

Ever since learning that little analogy, the squirrel has become one of my favourite animals. Not to go on a total squirrel, but just thinking about it now, if you expand on the idea- some people think of nuts when they think of squirrels “all of your ideas are nuts” but guess what, squirrels love nuts… not only that, but they work incredibly hard to retain those nuts and it helps sustain them through everything. 

Sooo here’s to squirrels, nuts and ADHD awareness. Rather than ADHD awareness month, I think I will refer to it now as The Celebration of Squirrel Season.

Peep the squirrel images (they are not mine, but they made me laugh).