Our eldest is no longer a child, he is a young adult who is trying to find his way in the world, and yet the problem and issues he has had in education over the last 21 years since he started at a day nursery still plague him, affect him and make any kind of learning miserable.

We now find ourselves back to a point where going to college (day release) has triggered the biggest panic attack for years, and he really can’t face going back on this course. He is looking at other courses, and doesn’t want education to ‘beat’ him, but bad memories have been made on this course, and he can’t see a way back.

In many ways, this is similar to my previous blog, talking about the Intense World Syndrome and a heightened fear response and lowered fear extinction in people with ASD, and as there is a lot of consensus out there that there are overlaps between many of the neurodiverse conditions, this is definitely a possibility, or a contributing factor.

What is compounding this, however, is a fear of what might happen that is driven by real, traumatic memories and experiences rather than heightened fear as discussed before. There is a school of thought that children with learning barriers, especially ADHD, which also increases the risk of depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions, actually develop a form of PTSD (good link here) which means than any small repeat of any of the bad experiences from their past could trigger an unexpectedly acute reaction. This would then lead to memories of failure, sadness, things being out of control and just unhappiness being brought to the surface. Even when the current trigger has been resolved, there are years of bad experiences that also need resolving.

I need to research this more, and look at ways to help our skware pegs move on – would the therapies they use for PTSD help here, or would other things be better? I have worked with ex-service people with PTSD, and ecotherapy and animal therapies have helped – and this is something that I instinctively do with my children and with myself. If I find anything, I will report back.

As with my previous post, I am sharing this so if parents, carers, tutors or friends of anyone with ADHD think that there has been an over-reaction (and I am guilty of thoughts like this), maybe we need to take a step back, reflect and see if we can see a reason why.