Wanted: Your ADHD Stories

It’s funny how far this site has come.

Back when I was in Grade 7, I had just been diagnosed with ADHD and couldn’t find anything kid-friendly online.

Right away I decided I would make a forum for kids with ADHD — and that is how this whole ADHDKidsRock project started.

Well… kinda.

The First Attempt at Building ADHDKidsRock.com

I wish you could have seen the first ADHD Kids Rock website I built when I was 11 years old. You would have laughed. I uploaded a picture of a toaster and a bunch of squirrels with the word DERP spelled forward and backward.

Lel.

I turns out learning WordPress took more patience than I had to give — there was a lot to learn. So I dropped the project but never forgot about it.

Connecting kids with ADHD was always on my mind.  Like when I saw teachers being mean to other kids in my class and I knew those kids were going through the same things that I was.

Fast forward three years. I took a chance and told my story to the WDS Foundation application committee and won a Scholarship for Real Life.  I won money from them to help make my idea happen.

It’s been an awesome experience to build what I had been dreaming about.

One thing I’m aware of is that I’m not going to be a kid for much longer.

It’s important to me that this site helps kids find their voices, instead of becoming one of those adult blogs I didn’t relate to when I was 11. When I first started this, I was a just an 11-year-old kid. Now, I need to find more 11-year-old kids to add their stories.

When I was in Portland this summer for the World Domination Summit 2015 conference, a teacher from Bridges Middle School drove into town to meet me and talk about how the kids at their school could get involved in my site. She’s going to get her students to contribute their stories — stay tuned to read them. This amazing school works mainly with kids that have #ADHD and other learning differences and is totally geared for kids to feel safe and do good in school for once.

I’d love to get more stories from kids who have ADHD.

I’ll leave you today with a quote.  This one is from a younger me — it’s part of what I wrote when I applied for money from the WDS Foundation to make this website. I hope it might inspire you to send me your stories about how ADHD has affected your life — the bad and the good.

My project will be a success when ONE kid my age realizes that he is not stupid or lazy that instead he or she just has a different brain style and that they can use their ADHD super powers to make the world a better place instead of being destroyed by it.

Just one kid, feeling better knowing that there is a whole lot of us with ADHD and that we are not bad, we are actually mostly smarter and more caring than people who don’t have ADHD.

My project will be a success when one mom or dad stops being angry at their kid for being messy or late or for not being able to do the dishes on time, instead knows what that kid needs to be successful and happy.

My project will be a success if one kid finds a cool job or a different path to finish school instead of being a drop out and a drug head.

My project will be a success if even one teacher reads a blog and for the first time “gets it” that punishment, humiliation and intimidation or sending a kid to the office for not doing their work is the worst thing they could do to help that kid.

(- Written by me, Jeff, in the WDS Scholarship Application that lead to starting this ADHDKidsRock.com website.)

I hope you get inspired to write me your stories.  Send them to my team at jeff@adhdkidsrock.com.  They don’t have to be perfect, and they can even be anonymous.

~ Jeff