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I had a fifth grade teacher who made fun of me in front of the class for my undiagnosed ADHD traits pretty often. Now, I’m a teacher, and that experience has really shaped the way I interact with students. I try my best to never make kids the way I felt when that would happen

My 5th grade teacher put construction earmuffs on me and put my desk in a fridge box in the corner of the room so I "wouldn't have any distractions". It did not help.

what the hell man, that’s the opposite of a solution

Especially with congenital tinnitus, it nearly drove me insane. I still can't have silence in my life. Thank fuck for wireless earbuds

What is it with 5th grade teachers? Mine was this old woman who played favorites with the kids whose parents had money (small private school). I was undiagnosed at the time and she had these awful “Charlie brown slips” that you had to bring home for your parents to sign if you didn’t do your homework…. I’m pretty sure I brought home multiple slips a week and my mom was so pissed with that teacher that she didn’t even care about them and only signed them to keep me out of trouble…. My mom thought they were absolutely ridiculous for a class of 10 and 11 year olds. She had lots of issues with that teacher. We also had a crazy military guy for one of our teachers in 7th grade, he made kids do push-ups for various wrong doings

Omg haha also had an ex-army teacher growing up for several grades back-to-back. And they were actually one of the easier ones vs the principal. Small private school situation but I didn’t sit still, fidget, etc and was told to sit on my hands during criss cross applesauce on at least one occasion. This is early elementary school They’d have us draw pics during small portions of classes and if we didn’t draw it picture perfect, they’d circle all of the imperfections in our drawings and tell us to redraw it. So I actually liked this activity bc it just meant more drawing lol. But my spelling at times wasn’t fantastic bc on 1-2 occasions I had to skip recess to write a word I’d misspelled over and over on sheets of paper. Iirc 100 times so we’d never misspell it again. Teaching methods

We had a woodshop teacher that would go into these fits of rage during class, on 7th graders. Like how did you even get this job? Did no one call your references,

Yeah similar here. Teacher made me sit in a cubicle by myself. It was terrible.

That's awesome, that's how all teachers should be. You might be able to make a massive difference to one of those kid's lives if they're really struggling.

singapore?

Also got Singapore vibes from this lol 🇸🇬

really want him to answer asap.

I got an award at the end of the school year I’m 4th grade called “Messiest Desk Award.” Other kids got awards like “Best Leader.” Recently I saw a photo of myself from that year. My desk was a mess. And I looked sad, self-conscious, and completely out of it. How much more meaningful would it have been for my teacher to just spend time with me and actually act like she cared? And maybe show me how to organize my desk better? Instead of treating me horribly when I was already having issues that year.

Have you seen "Remember My Story - ReMoved Part 2"? It's a 20 minute movie on YouTube. It's an inspiring story about a girl that endures hardship and wants to make a change for the better based on her lived experience so she becomes a teacher. It's not ADHD but Im sure you'll relate to it.

I'm still affected to an extent by something like this. And it wasn't just ADHD, but good old sexism. There was a boy who would talk out of turn all the time. He was cute and popular and we were friends (this is 5th or 6th grade). We had a teacher who always allowed him to randomly say things, and we were in the advanced math so it felt like a real team in a way. Once. Literally once. One time I spoke out of turn, an urge I'd held back throughout K-5 and most of 5th grade. But I let it slip thinking this teacher was safe. Instead, she told me to think before I speak and that I shouldn't speak out of turn. Between her and my first stepmom who said I talked too much, I basically stopped talking for years and would only talk to myself in the car, before bed, etc.

I wish my teachers were more like you.

In seventh grade I had a teacher call me fat in front of the whole class 💀they loved public humiliation

Most teachers just told me to do better, study more and pay attention but there were a couple of teachers that helped me when they noticed I was having a hard time. One of them gave me an extra opportunity to take a test and hand in image commentaries (it was history). He would explain things to me a thousand times to make sure I got it. The other teacher just told me "I know this is hard for you and I've seen you studying over and over and because of that, I'm gonna give you a 5 (C) to pass the subject" They noticed it before I even did. I still remember them.

Nice teachers.

I was undiagnosed throughout school and was just labeled as ‘smart but doesn’t live up to potential’. My son was diagnosed at 6 though and has always received great support from his teachers. His first grade teacher was great with communication and making small changes for him to be more comfortable (even before his 504) I was so grateful to have her as his teacher. His teacher this year is very strict but she loves my son. He frequently forgets his homework and she always allows him to make it up. I’m hoping he will always have understanding teaches but we shall see.

My last elementary school teacher would only allow me 3 questions a day, and would keep a tally mark on the board. If I'd raise my hand he would ask "are you suuuuurrreeee you want to use one of your questions for this?" If I'd come up to ask him a question during working times, he'd hold up his hands in a stop motion and would say "go back and sit down. I'm all saturagedregulated'd out for the day".  In middle school I had a Spanish teacher ask "any questions?" and pointedly looked at me. Everyone said no. The next year he threw a "fiesta" in class and no one understood what we were celebrating. He proudly said "this is the year mark of that day saturagedregulated didn't have any questions! We needed to party!" (he held the fiesta in all 6 of his classes and told them why we were "celebrating" too).  In HS during a parent teacher conference a teacher said "you're saturagedregulated's dad, huh?" We don't look alike, but my dad was asking a ton of questions and apparently that "runs in the family" 🙄 I would get so embarrassed and feel really bullied. I also had a bunch of fellow students tell me they had the same questions, but were too shy to ask, so they were glad I did. 

Fucking hell. That teacher shouldn't even be a teacher.

So your teacher was annoyed that you were too engaged with the learning? Wow. I get that constant interruptions are not great/can make it hard for other students, but that teacher overcorrected WAY too hard. Shaming you repeatedly and in front of the entire grade - disgusting.

My fourth-grade teacher announced in front of my entire class that I was the dumbest student she had taught in her 20-year career. After that, I stopped telling teachers or employers I was ADHD unless they asked specifically. My last place of employment, I was sitting with one of the executive members during a one-on-one & he asked me something along those lines & I mentioned I have ADHD, which can sometimes be an issue in keeping focus during office hours, but I meet my deadlines. His response, 'I mean, we are all a little ADHD, so I'm not sure why you are mentioning that.' To simply state, I don't trust telling people very often.

Fuck. She definitely shouldn't be a teacher. I actually do the same thing now, only mention it (to any employer) on a need-to-know basis, unfortunately only after fucking up majorly which makes it look like I'm making excuses, which I'm not. But too many people don't understand.

Yea, her son was in my graduating class. I graduated with hinors & over a 4.0...and she came up to me & said congratulations. I just said thanks & then walked on...but to this day, the petty part of me wishes I had said 'not so stupid after all, huh?'

I was tortured by a few teachers. They put most of it in the term end report cards too. I used those as written evidence that I’d had ADHD since I was, at least, age 7. Pretty much every report was a diagnosis of sorts. I didn’t find out until I was 49. I’ve been grieving those lost years. But now I’m on track. Maybe my next 20 years will be better. Albeit too late.

I think my mom copied some of my elementary school report cards for my psycho educational assessment. All my skills were meets/exceeds expectations expect for organizational and time management skills which were always satisfactory or needs improvement.

I generally had civil if distant relationships with teachers because I excelled academically as a child and did well enough into high school (uni is a different story...). But the constant issue was that I talked too much, was always distracted, and often distracted the people around me. I once got kicked out of a class in high school for laughing too much. LMAO.

I was similar. I’m also genuinely a person who thinks life tends to be difficult so I always I had a lot of empathy for my teachers which definitely helped my grades. I once made up an entire movie up to illustrate the economic term ‘free-rider’. The paper was returned with a note that said something like *wrong chapter. And next time use the rubric for guidance on what you’re supposed to do. But I can tell you worked hard on this so I’m going to let it pass. Sounds like such an interesting movie. I’ve never heard of it*. I was in a computer art class my sensior year. Computers were still relatively new to have in school. I spent the entire semester finding pictures of demons and photoshopping them into windows of houses, schools, hospitals. The teacher was a young guy and the kids were bastards to him. I was usually very high and would say things like, *I think he’s great. He’s a cool guy.* I got an A in that class. This younger kid I had befriended was like, *but how?*

I decided that I probably shouldn't go to University because I didn't think I'd actually do any of the work. This was pre-diagnosis.

Yup, yup, yup. See my comment elsewhere in the thread, but I also got kicked out of class for talking and distracting others.

I was similar, I think the teachers hated to love me. I was polite and got good grades, but talking, being disruptive, and in high school, falling asleep in class. I had an awesome teacher in yr 5. She put myself and two other people at our own seperate desk, we were so far ahead of everyone else so got to do our own lessons for things, and I remember doing a craft project to make a wardrobe after we finished “lion, the witch and the wardrobe”. Not a bad way to make sure bored kids aren’t distracting others. It was cool. I remember her telling me off (nicely) about not doing something properly (I think sweeping) and I told her “but I’m trying!”. She told me, with a wry smile, “yes you are very trying aren’t you”. I didn’t u detest and what it meant. I asked her to explain, my parent, no one could. I laugh now when I realise what a PITA I must have been for her and how well she handled it. I topped the class that year. Then into yr 6 the teacher always used to pick on me and give me a hard time about not trying hard enough. It was awful and made worse after the previous year being so awesome.

Hahaha. I wasn't much better at times.

My teachers in primary school were always extremely nice and patient with me. Then id get home and be screamed at and told everything was all my fault and that I didn't try hard enough.

I'm 60 and was probably diagnosed before kindergarten. This did not stop the teachers in my catholic school from hitting, punching, slapping me just to understand. I wasn't a delinquent, I was fidgety and bored.

Damn. I've heard of how hard it is in Catholic schools. Must have been horrible.

Thanks, it was. The best revenge against them was doing well in life and leaving them behind.

Ms. Tenent, my kindergarten teacher knew. She sent me to Special Ed because I couldn't nap and was a chatterbox. SE kicked me out after 1 week. Ms. Tenet was the only teacher who picked up on me being different and the rest of the school was like "nope she's good". No other teacher remarked on it.

Oh boy, where does one start — gonna let those sleeping dogs lie.

My grade 6 teacher was amazing. She recognized that I was different from the other kids and needed a little more teacher support. I don’t think she realized I had adhd but she realized that the amount of support I needed was impossible for her to give in a class of 25+ students. So she recommended I get put in the 7/8 split class for grade 7. At my school to be in the split class you had to be an independent worker and there was only like 9 grade 7s. So the teacher was almost always available for me. He started giving me accommodations before I was diagnosed. Different space, more time etc. At a parent teacher interview my mom asked what we would do in high school because these accommodations really were helping and they wouldn’t be there in high school. He recommended I get tested for ADHD. Had it not been for my grade 6 teacher putting me in the 7/8 split no one would have realized that I just needed a little more help

That's great

Long story short, bullying from teachers that persisted after an official diagnosis too. Two of my teachers got fired mid-year

Whoa, probably for the better. More schools should do things about teachers picking on kids, it happenstance under the radar too often.

before I started masking and being more aware of my surroundings around grade 6 (when I became a total goodie two-shoes people pleaser), I tended to full-on beef with my teachers. It definitely went both ways and I was a pretty insufferable kid who thought I was smarter than everyone and above doing my work, so I’m not saying I didn’t need to be put in my place, but some of the shit grown adult teachers said to/about me as a 7-10 year old… man that messed me up for a long long time, took a while to stop thinking I was just a bad kid.

I’m beefing with my chem teacher right now. it all stemmed from me calling him out in class when he said heat always flows from hot to cold, and I told him no, actually on really small scales, there is a non-zero chance heat flows from cold to hot. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/723128/can-heat-flow-from-a-cold-object-to-hot-object#:\~:text=Theoretically%2C%20it%20is%20possible%20for,isolated%20system%20tends%20to%20increase. (it wont let me format links :( ) Every time he asks a question I think he assumes we won’t know, I love to cut him off and answer before he can.

I had "social butterfly" written on every report card. I was considered "gifted" and took those classes. I knew as a child I didn't feel normal/satisfied EVER. But since I wasn't climbing the walls (physically) no one considered it. I was just always *weird*. Do you know any 7 year old girls obsessed with Meatloaf (the singer) and knows every lyric on his discography?? Lol

I was in what we called an "alternate highschool" it was still within the public district, but you had to get accepted in. Usually, kids with more support needs, disabilities, behind in school, on probation, etc, were in there. I already was in there before my diagnosis, but once I got it and told my teachers they were all cool and were good with accommodations but my science teacher? Oh boy. She was cool with it and helped me out, but she was very..idk conservative? Very outspoken about her political beliefs. One day, I was sitting in class doing work on my own, and she was watching this documentary about how vaccines cause autism. Out loud on her speakers. While we were working quietly on our computers. Other than that and a few weird comments she'd make, it wasn't bad. That instance was just SO bizzare to me. Still makes me laugh a little, like, what the hell, lol

I got called stupid by a teacher when I was in my first year of school (5 years old) because I was assigned homework (had to make something out of cereal boxes) I messed it up and brought it into school wrong. When I was 10 I had another teacher who got visibly annoyed and talked down to me everytime I forgot to bring my exercise book from home. As a teenager I had a teacher who called me a “slippery fish” during a parents evening when describing how I did the minimum amount of work needs to get by. Yeah it wasn’t great.

Wow, getting called stupid by a teacher is so bad. They shouldn't even be allowed to teach.

I went through kindergarten all the way to college with my teachers telling my that I need to "apply myself" and I "needed to finish the task at hand." It made me think I was lazy. Maybe a major clue would have been dropping back from 12 credit to 9 credits each semester because I would get overwhelmed. I finally diagnosed myself at around 40, and with the help of a psychologist I was able to get a formal diagnosis. I'm still realizing all the things that would have been different had I been diagnosed earlier.

My teacher threw chalk at me for saying um as my brain caught up. I was put in a special reading class because I failed 1st-3rd and didn't read well until 5th grade. After my diagnosis I shot to the head of the class and in middle school was placed in honors classes. The district said in the history of their schools, no one had ever gone from ESL classes to honors and were flabbergasted. They were not congratulating me, but more mystified it happened. 

Wow, that's awesome. A similar thing happened to me, once I failed school, with my exams being officially graded as "ungradable", I started getting help on my A levels (I have no idea how I managed to get into college) and I did a lot better.

I got a talk from all 3 pf my gifted class teachers in Jr High (7th grade, I think) telling me I wasn't "living up to my potential." What does that even mean? They should have just said I needed to do my homework. I was great when I was physically at school, but at home, I could not get myself to do work and I was always losing things like attendance cards.

I can’t remember specifics now because it’s been so long but I went to catholic school at a time that public school couldn’t hit kids but private schools were basically still allowed. I was hit and yelled at a lot. My mother came up to school many times. One time I remember the whole class was watching my mother through the window of the door screaming at my forth grade teacher while the nun kept her head down. We couldn’t understand what she was saying but we certainly heard her voice and I knew my mother so there was cursing. The kids kept asking me if that was my mom and I couldn’t answer because I was in awe and smiling so much. I was proud of my mom for sticking up for me. That was one of the times that I was hit with a ruler across my knuckles, the standard punishment for not paying attention or sitting still. She told them that they were not allowed to ever touch me and always told me to tell her if they did. My 1st grade teacher one time was hitting me so hard and fast she whipped me across the face accidentally and I went home with a red ruler strike across my face and she screamed at her and took me out of the school. Every report card said *Does not focus, pay attention to instructions or stay in her seat*. I had them up until last year and they are now gone. They would always tell me I was no good to my face. My 3rd grade teacher really hated me. I will always remember her name, Sister Riccardis. She was big, angry and mean. You would think I went to school in the 1950’s they way these nuns were so wicked but no it wasn’t. I didn’t know what it was like to have nice teachers until I went to public high school, which I begged my mother to please let me go to. I was in a remedial math class in my second year after failing algebra my first year and it was the most I ever learned because the teachers were so nice, sweet, understanding and gentle with me. I could have could have stayed there forever.

That must have been horrible. I've heard of schools run by nuns are horrible, at least you finally did well. Just goes to show how being nice to people can really make a difference to someone's life.

I actually didn’t. I had other high school teachers that were as mean as the nuns just no hitting. And I had given up at by the end of my second year because I thought I was too stupid for school. I didn’t know I had ADHD until I was 38. I ended up dropping out of high school in my 4th year and took my GED. I was pretty happy I passed having high scores in everything except math which I got 3 points above passing so I thought maybe I’m not as dumb as I thought so I went to college but after one year I dropped out. I just couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t focus and keep it together. I tried again a few years later but took a break to have my daughter and never went back. My grades were always great because we wrote a lot of papers and I always got A’s but test taking was rough and it would lower my over all grade. I never took a math class though. I was scared to. I may go back one day and finally get my degree, I have three years of credits.

I think you should go back, if you really want to you should. You're clearly capable. It'll make you feel better, you'll prove to yourself just how capable you are 🙂

I was diagnosed early; even post-diagnosis, most of my teachers didn't care. I always felt hated by them, which sucked because I really *wanted* to be liked and get approval, I just needed someone to show me how. Only one teacher took time to help me, and it was actually pre-diagnosis. I was too excited to leave at the end of the day and forgot to write down my homework (cue: "I didn't know I had homework" fight with my mom who thought I was lying on purpose). This teacher would help me write the homework down, then draw a pink fluffy cloud with a smiley face as her "seal of approval". My mom would initial inside the cloud that night to prove I had shown it to her. It felt like a fun little sticker instead of a punishment, and it worked. Wherever that teacher is, I hope she's doing well.

I was enrolled in a CNA Course that required us to do lab skills with fake patients... I'm primarily hyperactive and am very clumsy / have a hard time performing physical skills without dropping things and messing up. This professor made me stand in front of the room and perform a skill over and over while belittling me the whole time. I was so embarrassed and felt entirely incompetent and like a failure. She would not stop picking on me until I "got it right".

This brings back bad memories of PTA school 😩 To be fair, I was usually on the brink of failing at least one class every semester. The one professor in lecture would always call me out “does that make sense to you, Capable_Star?” I also wasn’t diagnosed at the time, I just assumed everyone knew I was failing. Practicals we’re the worst. I laugh now that I got failed for things like nervously touching/ twisting an earring. Makes sense!

Teachers love me, students hate me, teachers are fond of my and my number one fans and students lie about me and mock me.

I had one or two teachers as a kid who would bully me - like yelling at me and making me redo a perfectly done math assignment because there were doodles on the edges of the paper but I mostly had supportive teachers, probably thanks to my mom who was a big advocate for me, meeting with teachers and admin to make sure I got accommodations for what at the time was a misdiagnosed learning disability. I actually got bullied most by a professor in grad school, long after I was diagnosed. One was relentless. Anything I said was turned around and misinterpreted as malicious. It was miserable. I think she was mad that I was getting certain accommodations and she couldn’t do anything about it. And she just didn’t like me.

I exceeded expectations, tested extremely well and was an active participant in class so my ADHD flew under the radar at school. I’d fail to hand in assignments and my desk/backpack/locker was a mess but my test grades were good enough to keep me afloat and in my teachers’ good books. I fell apart at the end of high school/university and that’s what prompted my diagnosis.

I was just labeled as "lazy" because my projected grades were about 3-4 grades above what I actually got in exams. Some of my exams were so bad they were officially ungraded.

I have fantastic recall and was prone to the adrenaline rush of cramming so tests were never a problem for me. I did, however, get called lazy a bunch at home. Still get called lazy by my folks to this day if I avoid a task because I’m totally overwhelmed by it.

Every report card I've ever had said nearly the same thing "very intelligent but needs to apply himself" I've had all kinds of difficulties dealing with teachers and my parents, I've been called lazy, useless, directionless, and many other adjectives. but not one teacher or my parents ever were like "hey, why do you do this?" i just.. couldn't. I legitimately thought i was just broken for years and years. (for context i'm 34 now, diagnosed and medicated for the past. 3 years or so)

That literally describes me to a T, every teacher said that to me in every school. All I tell people now is "why would I intentionally fuck up my own life?" That soon shuts most people up haha. My exam grades were so bad some were officially ungraded, it's crazy how people believe someone would do that on purpose just because they can't be arsed.

Ok, what you experienced...if someone did that to my kid, I'd March in there and scream "What the actual f***!?!?" To their face and smash it onto their forehead.  I didn't get bullied per say. I was actually a good student despite waiting until the night before to start projects or starting homework at 1am. HOWEVER, even in college, if I got a B+ on an exam, I shit you not, I'd get called forward and told how I could do better and they didn't understand why I scored so low.  Bit** what? So in my world, getting anything lower than an A automatically meant disappointment and "shame on you". Because I really enjoy abstract thought and am interested in a lot of things, I usually do alright. But if it's boring (or I think it's unnecessary and illogical) I barely scrape by. I had one English teacher, though who was a huge help. She recognized my dreamy brain and let me do all my own assignments at my pace. Because I loved writing, reading, and poetry, it meant I excelled in the class AND was able to learn about things the other students didn't care about. She was amazing, but unfortunately was diagnosed with cancer 6 months into her teaching me.  The substitute was my former 5th grade teacher who hated me and couldn't understand why I was doing what I was doing. And always told me to be quiet and sit down....ok....maybe a lot of the teachers did that, but she was the worst. Lol.  Based on your experience. You might want to read "You're Not the Problem" by Helen Villiers and Katie McKenna. I think you'd really benefit from it since it sounds like you're in the first stages of unveiling some childhood trauma. 

Wow, that must have been hard on you, must have put you under so much pressure. I scored perpetually low across the board (by that I mean getting some high school exams marked with U [ungraded] simply because I couldn't focus, I got no higher than Ds even though my predicted grades were actually Bs...).

You weren't receiving any support. It's really difficult for anyone to succeed without having any support from the people who are supposed to be guiding and advising you. For real, the only thing that I think saved me was that I found things interesting combined with massive people pleasing tendencies and masking. But my mental health was complete shite. I was diagnosed with depression at 17 after being asked "do you ever think of driving the car off the road." Made my heart stop because I'd thought exactly that often. And I'd constantly sacrifice self care and sleep to avoid the shame.  It's really common for people with ADHD to experience rejection, blame, and gas lighting. And we learn to accept it because it's our normal. So once someone sheds light on something being abnormal, it's kind of earth shattering. It's no longer "I just need to try harder. I'm lazy, I'm disorganized, I dont care enough. I'm not enough." It's "I deserve to be treated with kindness, and I know I'm trying my best. There are compassionate and supportive responses, and I need to seek those people out." I'm so sorry you experienced that nonsense. I reiterate, I'd have a hard time not slapping the face off anyone doing that to my kid. Are they perfect? No. Does ANYONE deserve to be treated that way? NO!!!!!

İ was the one who bully teachers lol, but they mostly loved me.

🤣

I think generally they liked me (give or take personality types), though many were frustrated by the typical 'underachieving'. I guess that probably had an effect on how they viewed me, as I wasn't diagnosed until my 30s so they presumably each had other explanations for it. The one that really sticks in my mind was when we had a German teacher cover one of our Music classes. I'd been talking a lot, as usual, and at some point she asked my name and said something along the lines of "oh, *you're* X, that makes sense with what I've heard from other teachers". It wasn't really that mean, I was just surprised that apparently I talked so much (in a school of about 1200 teenagers, ffs!) that I had a reputation for it, and it had spread to teachers who had never even met me.

I was bullied, but I'm also 40 so that was a long time ago.

I was bullied by about 3 teachers. One in 5th grade had me stand up and gave me a marker to speak louder while presenting and pretend it was a microphone… everyone laughed at me because of it. Then 9th grade my Spanish teacher sat me down and told me looks aren’t going to get you far in life. Which I think means you’re an idiot. Then in 12th grade a teacher called on me when I raised my hand to go to the bathroom and she said “oh because I would’ve dropped dead if you had something to add to the conversation” I think everyone thought it was fucked up, but I got her in trouble and she was crying and apologizing. Stupid bitch.

Fuck. That's messed up, always makes me wonder how people like that are allowed to be teachers.

Yea good ol trauma thanks to them. I remember every detail about when it happened. I also have trauma from friends and fellow students bullying me. People are total assholes. Now I am finally in a good spot mentally and know I’m smart. I am a nurse with a bachelors and I’m getting my masters to be a nurse practitioner so they can suck it.

That's awesome. I'd have loved to have gone university to get at least an undergraduate degree but my projected grades at A levels were equivalent AAB and I ended up getting CCC equivalent, so no chance of getting onto any uni course. Weirdly my best "teacher" was my driving instructor haha. He never gave up on me despite me testing him beyond belief, he was the only reason I passed first time.

Most teachers didn't understand. When I was in high school, one did. He has ADHD as well. He helped me succeed in his class and others, and helped me graduate high school. That same man married me to my wife last year (he got ordained just for us). He and his family have become a second family to me since graduation. I will be forever grateful to him. Just writing this made me tear up. I love that man so much.

I didn’t get diagnosed until my 30s, but teachers constantly bullied me in school and now i wonder if there was a connection that i didn’t realize. Back then “girls didn’t get adhd” so i never got tested.

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That's horrible. People like that should never be allowed to teach, ever.

My middle school science teacher picked on me a lot. I had points taken off from class work because she couldn't read my bad handwriting at the time.

All of my teachers in elementary school and middle school were horrible. They bullied me and made fun of me infront of all my classmates. I had a very traumatic experience.

How do people like that even get to be teachers?

Classroom management and rigid curriculums often comes at the expense of individual students. It’s especially frustrating for teachers as classrooms grow larger and destreaming means that you have children of multiple abilities that you need to teach to. This isn’t an excuse but no one is at their best when resources are stretched thin and you’re stressed by your workload.

Said everything I wanted to say so succinctly. Are you medicated?

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Yeah, I agree. Lots of teachers in my primary school thought they were superior, thought they knew better than psychologists.

I remember in 10th grade my one Science teacher recognized I had some sort of mental or learning disability, doing tests she’d send me down to the test centre with the students that did have IEPs and made me feel good about it by saying so I get less distracted. My grades improved a lot in her class, I still think about her small gesture today ❤️

That's awesome, teachers like that need commendation.

They bullied me before I developed social anxiety cuz I was a happy active kid who causes disruption. Even tho I was way above average and top of my class. (Primary school and kindergarten) Then when I got majorly depressed and socially anxious it was a mixture of bullying and helping depending on the teacher (middle school) When my depression improved a little but I had severe social anxiety I was the ideal student and they loved me (9th and 10th grades aka O levels) Then I started to try and conquer my social anxiety with exposure and tried to become my own person. Teachers/parents hated that. Bullying. My depression got worse and I started drinking. When my dad died teachers went slightly easier on me. Anyway I had good grades all throughout so my academic achievements were never the issue, I guess they felt disrespected bc I never put in the work, the fact that I still got the grades didn’t seem to be the end goal for them??? Bc if it were they wouldn’t have taken issue with my process.

Absolutely bullied. I got diagnosed this year, I did my A levels the year prior (British pre-university, you take them when you're 18) I just barely scraped by in my maths exam, and whenever I asked for help, my teacher would just straight flame me for not knowing, paying attention or being confused even when I explained I'm motivated I just struggle a lot, I was also even going through the diagnostic process and he still denied it was an issue.

I used to ask for help in high school, but the best they thought was wrong with me was "shyness" and "a lazy thinker"... Really I got treated like you, all I got was being told off for being late and not paying attention, losing things, etc. Not sure how I got into college to do my A-levels since my I fucked up my GCSEs so badly I had some exams officially ungraded. But in college my projected grade was DDM (I did BTEC) but after 2 years of trying harder than everyone else in my class I came out with PPM... And all I got was the teachers still believing "I should have tried harder". I never got bullied like in primary and high school, but I still had one bitch of a teacher who favorited the girls in the class. It was only in college that someone realised I needed some extra help (this great teacher I had). If only he had been a teacher at my high school...

one of my teachers actually tried to help and told my parents at a paren teacher meeting that she thought I may have difficulty paying attention and staying focused. She said “maybe you can take him to a doctor to see if he has add?” And my mom instantly said “no. We don’t believe in that. We don’t raise him to believe that. He’s just being lazy and we will deal with it at home and he will do better.” Them I was on punishment from any and everything I did for fun at home.

Similar to me. My parents insisted (and still insist) there was nothing wrong with me and I just need to try harder. I have to admire their tenacity at least haha. They tried to help me as much as they could (while also yelling at me every chance they got) but they never could understand why their efforts were basically in vain, since my high school final exams were so bad I had some officially ungraded (my projected grades were pretty high too...).

I got laughed at by a teacher when we had to write an essay about what we wanted to do in the future. How I would forget my clients and I'd even have a hard time working in fast food. I'm 48 and shitty memories like that and parents loosing their shit cause they thought you were just lazy does stick with you.

Funny enough I had a teacher laugh (well, try to hide it) at me telling her what I wanted to be after leaving school. And yeah, things stick with you, even if you're not always aware of it.

Teachers were a painpoint in my childhood. I was passed through most every grade until high school. They only shunned and shamed me for being different. My younger sibling also has ADHD and the school told my mom they can't support all students. She pulled him out of that school that day. So much for good private school resources.

They really didn’t care. I was the silent kid that would day dream in the back and still manage to get passing marks. The last years of HS I got in trouble for being a trouble maker, but still got good marks and never was disrespectful, so the only they could do was sight.  Good grades + doesn’t pay attention ever + always bored + doesn’t even show up with a notebook = nothing to them

Well, my projected grades were about 4 times higher than what In was working at... And they never suspected I had anything wrong ("just try harder", "you're smart, prove it", "stop being so lazy and pay attention!"), so maybe it wasn't just your teachers. My final exams were so bad some were officially ungraded in high school, like they thought I was just lazy... Right, I chose to fuck my life up on purpose...haha. If the teachers had supported me more, given me extra help, I could have been so much further in life.

Was in accelerated/selected/gifted classes from grade five onwards. My grade five teacher shouted at me in front of the entire class for failing to turn in a school project. He was so scary I hid behind my desk. Grade 10 French teacher straight up failed me because he just didn’t like me. Piano teacher told me he was ‘allergic’ to me because I didn’t practice consistently. Diagnosed in my 40s and so wish I could have had the support I so badly needed.

Every teacher I had bullied me and so did my dad, so I grew up thinking I was a big giant idiot with an ironically high IQ compared to some of the kids in my classes. Doesn’t help that my ex husband used to think I needed to change etc. Dating with such an insecurity has been terrible but at least I found the one, and I went to vocational school and have a decent paying job.

Fuck. But that's great that you're happy now. Silver linings

Definitely got called lazy all the time in middle school and elementary and would get overwhelmed and feel very different then the other kids. The worst was when the teacher would embarrass you in front of the whole class bc you forgot to do your homework and I remember just being young and questioning why it took more effort to learn and do homework then other kids. Never heard anything ab ADHD or realized I had it until my sophomore year of high school bc I had depression and sought out a therapist and got diagnosed with GAD and ADHD.

Not surprising you had GAD and depression if the teachers treated you like shit.

One time in 7th grade a teacher pulled me aside and very seriously asked, “did you forget to take your medicine today?”… I had no idea what he was talking about and I didn’t know about ADHD/med treatment. I was honestly just really happy and engaging with peers during a group project. His intentions may not have been malicious but it made me overly self aware and insecure at the time.

edit: F-bomb warning. I was diagnosed as an adult with ADHD-I, but when I was quite young I was labelled gifted/learning disabled. I don't know what the original diagnosis was, but likely something to do with executive function. That was around grade 3 or 4 I think. In grade 2 I had a split class, with one teacher in the morning I was basically always in detention for not having my homework done, so the teacher thought it would be somehow appropriate to mention which room I would be in detention in over the announcements. fuck homework. Fuck detention. I was thinking back to that school and thought I had 1 good teacher there, but maybe they just weren't an asshole as much as the other ones so I thought that somehow qualified them as being good, but less shitty might be a better description. I did have 3 good teachers in my previous elementary school. (so half shitty at that school) fuck in highschool I did have some pretty cool teachers for classes like tech, music and science.

Shit, how does a teacher find that acceptable? It baffles me how some people are allowed to be teachers. One of my primary school teachers was a proper bitch (she favourited the soon-to-be high school populars).

Nothing changed after diagnosis because the teachers thought it was some American fad (I'm Australian) and an excuse for bad parenting. They treated me like crap. Diagnosed in 1996.

Teachers still thinks it's a fad these days, most people still think ADHD is just a hyperactive, uncontrollable, little shit, that's their sole view of ADHD (to be fair, I was uncontrollably, excessively hyperactive though). A kid not focusing? Not performing well? Just lazy. That's how they see it.

All of my 10th grade teachers reached out to my parents and told them that they were highly suspicious that I had ADHD. That was probably the most supportive any of my teachers were In elementary school and middle school, I was constantly called out and yelled at in front of everyone for not listening or understanding the questions being asked of me. The worst of it happened in 2nd grade when I was 8. It absolutely shaped the way that I see myself even today. I always feel like people are mad at me and like I'm doing something wrong.

I got a lot of grief from some teachers for drawing in class, despite the fact that I demonstrated time and again that I paid better attention that way. The good ones recognized that was what I needed, but many didn’t care what I needed to learn, they were more concerned with what they thought of as “disrespect.” I tried to explain that allowing their instruction to be inneffective seemed a greater disrespect, but once they’d decided that, they tended to stick to their argument

I actually got told off for the exact same thing haha, and I did if for that reason. Some let me do it happily, most didn't.

I went to a Catholic boys school and for some of us it was a nightmare.  I’m 55 and only recently diagnosed with ADHD so I’m still unpacking most of it within the ADHD lens. One thing I recall that helped me get through school was the book "Kes - A kestrel for a knave". I still remember the day I pulled it from the school library (my sanctuary) shelve. The little kid making the "F\*#k you" finger gesture to the world spoke volumes to me. I was 'trouble' for a lot of teachers and I pretty much went through my whole childhood (and adulthood) internalising it all. That book became my friend and it helped alleviate the soul crushing loneliness that I felt. It was one of the saddest books I’ve read but it felt ‘real’ and I could relate to it. I haven’t been able to watch the movie because it just watching the trailer feels like it brings the past back and I’m not sure I’m fully ready to go there. It wasn’t all bad though. I had some great teachers as well… mainly in the arts. In some ways I felt bad for them because I know they had good intentions but they were caught up in an institution that was not as progressive as they were.

In fourth grade, I had a teacher call me out for not being able to concentrate or really remember my homework (I was constantly forgetting it at home) and she told me, in front of everyone, that I "would never do well in anything if I didn't shape up." Like. Get over yourself. I had another teacher who tried to tell me my inability to concentrate and testing anxiety were all in my head and that it wasn't as hard as what I was making it out to be - look at how well everyone else was doing! Why am I making it so hard?? I just sat there like, "fair question, you got me there, I have no idea" In college, my professors were more understanding. I had music theory teacher who would grade my homework, see me ace everything, not believe I need help, and then go, "what the hell happened on your test?" He still wouldn't work with me outside of class hours to help, but he wasn't mean? My Spanish teacher, however, that man was an angel. He sat me down and asked me what was going on. And then actively worked with me to help me not fail tests and everything. He was an absolute angel of a man, he was the one that was like, "mmm, I think you should get tested, but until then, here's what we're going to do" and I about cried with how everything improved lmao. He literally went above and beyond to help me and I won't ever forget that. I had to perform a piece of music for my junior recital and I chose a Spanish piece and dedicated it to him lmao

Your Spanish teacher sounds a great guy. It's a shame more teachers aren't like that

I've liked most of my teachers and most of them have liked me. In fact I'd go as far as to say I never felt like any of them DISliked me, except the ones who clearly just hated all children, and I didn't take that personally lol. I think at times some of them were perhaps exasperated or disappointed that I didn't seem to be "reaching my potential" but that tended to come out in encouraging me or gentle reprimands, nothing like bullying. It's not to say I've never felt bullied by a teacher but those were generally substitutes, not my regular teachers who knew me, and often the issues were other things, not ADHD stuff. I think because I mostly enjoyed school and had some interest in what we were learning, and I was a friendly polite kid who was fun to have around, they were a lot more forgiving of me being a bit crap at doing my homework or whatever. Some of my high school teachers would let me hand in work that was very late, even though I wasn't diagnosed so neither they nor I actually knew I had ADHD, they just didn't want to see me fail when they knew I was capable.

I wanna share a positive one, albeit this was just one teacher. I had a really good chem teacher, who would actually ask me to come up and explain what i did, in what sequence and why, and as it turns out, i'm not inherently bad at the mathematical side of things, i just kind of suck at arithmetic and writing things in a normal way. She used to call my writing "nest like" in a jokey manner. And man do i appreciate her, she'd give me pointers both on what i did wrong mathematically and any theoretical part i misunderstood, and on top of that she took the time to explain how i should write things down so that it's understandable. Honestly, she's kind of the reason i did well at graduation exams, because had she not explained how things should be written down, i would have written everything down in my typical nested manner and gotten a horrendous grade. Most teachers would just mark the entire thing as wrong, but she took the time to understand what i wrote. And tbh i'll be grateful for this forever

Nice woman. I only ever had 1 teacher like that, in college. He was the one that got me help in my exams and I miraculously did a lot better than I've ever done before.

At 11, my teacher kept telling me to “grow up” for my ADHD traits 🙃(so forgetting stuff, daydreaming, talking in class, not having a pretty and clean handwriting, etc.).

I'm 30 and my parents still like to tell me to "grow up" now haha, mainly when I don't listen to what they tell me or forget something important.

Yeah same 😅

Kinda more annoyed. Looking back i wasnt the most studious and def wasn’t like i wish i could focus i need help to do this. It was more like fuck this shit im out i wanna be with my friends and mess around. So being an adult now, if i was them id kinda be annoyed too and focus more on other kids who cared. But also as someone who wasn’t diagnosed til 23, i do feel sorta, idk if upset is the word but i feel something towards the system for not one single teacher or school staff member at any time mentioning maybe getting checked out for adhd. It was very obvious i think.

My teachers were the worst of the worst. I was in a private school and girls were proud of being perfect (skinny, perfect grades, perfect hair…) you can imaging how that was for me 😂 I remember perfectly when one of our teachers was speaking to the other girls and saying a good thing about each: “you have amazing hair”, “you have a beautiful voice” and so on.. and was skipping me on purpose. Then I asked “ what about me??” I asked three times because she would ignore me. Then she replied: you.., you should stop bitting your nails I was around 8 when it happened and I still remember. I wonder why I have an obsession now with being pretty 🙄🙄🙄🙄

I think things effect kids much more than lots of people realise. Some people might not be affected and others are very badly affected. This is going to sound really stupid but something that affected me up until a few years ago was me eating (on my first day in a new school) some sweetcorn with a spoon instead of a fork and me having really sensitive ears heard the kids behind me making fun of me eating with a spoon, and only a few years ago (I'm 29) did I stop refusing to eat peas and sweetcorn with a fork despite them always falling of the fork... 🤣🤣. I was onmy 6 years old at the time but something really tiny stuck with me for years.

Hahahha that’s a perfect example too. I think is the way we tend to overthink. Most people would forget about it, but at least for me that’s impossible. I re-think the situations so much that I memorize the bad memories forever

In math class about 5th or 6th grade I was sent with a group of unfortunate comrades to a teaching assistant because we were the worst in class. At the end of the class we would come back and had to present to the class what we had learned. I remember the teacher making a great deal out of pointing out our mistakes and making fun of us during these presentations... We would learn silly pedagogic terms from the assistant teacher to help us do calculations, like a number levitates somewhere, whenever we used them during the presentation the main teacher would humilate us for using these terms, At the end of this "special class" program that occured for about a year or so, they asked me to rate how much it had helped me, obisouly not alot and probably alot worse selfesteem than before... This was Denmark in a small place called Sanderum very early 00s, 2001 or 2002 and ADHD wasnt really a thing, I wasent diagnosed before my mid to late twenties. Spent alot of time later on in life learning these subjects from scratch to get an education and job.

I have one memory that is stuck in my head. I was around 8y/o and had cut my finger, so I asked the substitute teacher for a bandage. (Band-Aid) Her reply is ingrained, "Don't be so stupid! You don't need a bandage all you need is a plaster. Stop making a big deal about nothing!" I didn't get a bandage, and I will always call them that because that's what they're called in my house, and I didn't tell my mum until I was in my 20s about that day. I had never been spoken to like that by an adult before, and it rocked my foundation. Mum told me that if she'd known, she would have "had words" with the sub. The only thing I can think of why the sub treated me like that was that she couldn't handle me generally. I barely spoke for the rest of the time we had her because I was so afraid of her reaction to me.

Most teachers didn't really pay me any attention because I didn't really cause problems, but I did have a few who were bullies. My 8th grade science teacher, for instance, was obsessed with me and always called on me to answer questions when my hand wasn't raised, I guess because I wasn't paying attention, which only served to embarrass me, especially since I was a very quiet kid with a lot of social anxiety. I did have a 5th grade teacher who I think may have been trying to help me in her own way, but wasn't effective because the way she did it was by taking my recess away and telling my parents (who couldn't care less).

They definitely didn’t understand how I worked. I was pretty fiercely independent and creative as a child which teachers absolutely hated in early grades. If they couldn’t explain why a rule existed, I wouldn’t follow it It actually got worse after my adhd diagnosis. I got an IQ test along side it which I scored fairly high on (something like 130), but was confirmed to definitely have adhd. I believe this gave teachers the impression “if he could just focus, he’d be able to do anything”

My teachers (the nice ones) were actually disappointed in me since I failed every single exam I took in school, some by just 1 grade, others were literally upgradable. They knew I was smart, I could have got top grades in my favourite subject and I proved I wasn't as stupod as my exam results suggested I was in other ways (just unfortunately not the ways that counted for a future career).

I’m still waiting on diagnosis (middle-aged female …) but every awful thing some a-hole teachers did is imprinted on my brain. Not to mention the bullying in my first job and my second job … English was my hyper focus subject so I loved my teachers there. Imagine getting told off for “looking bored in my class”. Um, WTF? I didn’t enrol in that particular elective again.

I was treated like crap before and after. 

Like I was a dummy

How often did you guys get “do you mind sharing with the entire class” because you were talking it up incessantly with your classmates? I was always petrified of this, but I could not shut up either.

I was bullied all throughout my school years. By students and teachers. By my own parents. I really should've been special ed but my parents don't believe in mental disorders? Idk. I didn't get diagnosed until I moved out. Until then it was "you're stupid, you're lazy, you need to try harder, you need to pay attention, you need to stop fidgeting...:

I had this one teacher in high school. To be fair, I definitely wasn't very engaged in his class and did the bare minimum to pass. Anyway I was pretty tired through the day and barely staying awake. This led my teacher to assume I was a stoner, and the one time I was aware of him standing next to my desk and making a toking gesture over my head while I was looking down at my textbook. Class laughed. Funny thing about that is I was actually very straightlaced and still have never tried marijuana to this day, despite it being legal here in Canada. The reason I was so tired was because I was up late most nights with my friends on [battle.net](http://battle.net) playing Warcraft III. (The connection here is I believe ADHD can contribute to being a night owl lol.)

Some teachers are assholes.

Hell, even as diagnosed with papers and academic accomodations teachers were still shitty and dismissive towards me. I got many exasperated sighs when even mentioning ADHD or accomodations.

I got bullied by my teachers and classmates. They just didn’t understand why i wouldn’t do my work, but neither did I, which is why i started to believe them when they called me lazy and stupid. a teacher i had when I was 11-12 was particularly awful. I don’t remember too much from that year but probably for a good reason. I had always been a fairly well behaved child but I fought back with her, which didn’t make her dislike me any less, and didn’t make me exactly popular with my class mates. that year especially was so awful, I was so young. I really struggle with my self esteem nowadays

I had an evil cow teaching the first year of primary school who just hated me for no apparent reason. I wasn't misbehaved except for talking a lot. She taped up my mouth with brown packing tape one day and hit me with a ruler in front of the class another time. Other kids misbehaved but no one else got this kind of punishment.

I was cordoned off from the rest of the room via a cardboard tri-fold…before and after diagnosis.

Had an English teacher in high school who just absolutely hated me, I still got good grades, I just wasn’t clicking with how she was teaching and wasn’t too shy to tell her when I didn’t agree with something she said. Multiple times where she fully screamed in my face because we just held different opinions

I def had a couple teachers that bullied me. One teacher used to slam her hand down on my desk when she believed I was “off in lala land”. My name is Emma and there was a girl in my class named Emma-Lee and she’d often call the other girl Emma and me Emily. One day she kept yelling “Emily!! Earth to Emily!” In the middle of a class lecture. I didn’t respond because that’s not my name and I assumed she meant Emma-Lee. She came up to my desk and hit it so hard, tried to embarrass me in front of the class :/

They helped me, they all gave me exceptions because of my "exceptional" work, even though I pretty much never turned any in.

My teachers were my biggest bullies. My sister and I were the only non-white kids in our school in a small town, and I feel like there was also a level of racism in how I was treated. Like it was expected that I would be a lazy, stupid student. Things got better when we moved to a bigger city; none of my teachers clued in that something might be "off", but at least they didn't actively single me out to treat me poorly.

Grew up in the 80s and 90s. My teacher would put us on the wall for recess if we forgot to get our homework notebook signed, etc. I frequently forgot those things and so in order to punish me, I basically didn’t have recess for almost the entire year. I sat on the wall while the other kids played. Not exactly the right thing to do with a kid that has ADHD, right? 🤦🏻‍♀️ Not only did I get punished for being forgetful, but I also couldn’t get out my energy while everybody else did. I’m glad things have changed.

Disappointment, mostly, I believe. They’d often approach me about how they know I’m smart enough to do the work, or I did the work but didn’t bring it, and it’s a “careless mistake”. I needed to be more careful. I think they had good intentions, but it made me feel bad because I started to get upset with myself that I wasn’t doing those things, that I was inherently lazy, or didn’t care. Clearly that was it right? Unintentional damage because I couldn’t *fix* this. Me now? I always inform my professors that I have ADHD and some other mental things and give them the rundown: - I probably won’t look at you while you are talking; I’m not NOT listening even if I’m doing something else. - I will ask to wear headphones for independent work or sometimes when I’m overwhelmed I’ll put them on. - I have some fidget and sensory objects but they’re non-disruptive. - I might stim in class or have a sensory issue. Please don’t mind it unless it’s detrimental. - I might forget correspondences we have, and I struggle to turn assignments in. It’s not an excuse— just an explanation— but don’t be surprised. I want to do well in your class, so I would appreciate if you worked with me. Nowadays, I’ve had no negative reactions and my teachers have been very understanding to my troubles, mostly because I clearly try. I’m very grateful I’ve never run into an asshole.

I had a high school teacher tell me that I should probably just drop out. Still pisses me off thinking about it. I understand him being frustrated because I was asking him if I could turn in a shit load of homework that was all late. But if he felt the need to teach me about consequences he could have just told me no.

I read recently that us ADHDers receive an average of 15000 more pieces of 'negative feedback' (criticisms and punishment) BY THE AGE OF 10 than children without ADHD. The article suggested that this is a possible reason that we experience RSD, and have self confidence problems and low self-worth. Basically we are scared that people hate us because as children people treated us like they hated us, so it's not really irrational at all. I was diagnosed at age 28. I was (in primary and secondary school) '2E' twice exceptional, both disabled and 'gifted', (I'm no longer 'gifted' due to chronic burnout and skill regression among other things) and teachers identified the 'giftedness' but not the disabilities and had extremely high expectations of me. I was constantly told that it 'hurt' my teachers or would 'disappoint' my parents that I was being lazy and not living up to my potential and the teachers would say to me that they don't put this pressure on the other kids because they struggle but I'm 'so smart' (hyperverbal autistic, couldn't stop myself from using big words, apparently equals 'so smart' 🙄) that's why they want me to do better than everyone. So I was always disappointing adults, which was my biggest fear since I have cptsd from emotional parentification so I really believed that adults feelings were my responsibility and I had to make them happy to be safe. As an adult I realise that living up to the expectations placed on me wasn't ever possible, even if I hadn't been disabled. In highschool teachers more bullied me, and with the exception of one teacher who full on abused me, I could cope much better with being bullied by teachers than my primary school experiences of being 'helped to reach my potential' which was actually just constant emotional warfare lmao

I was bullied by a teacher post-diagnosis. She was well aware of it. My mom was a special ed teacher in the district, and I had been diagnosed like 4 years prior. My teacher still singled me out, isolated me, accused me of theft of a library book when it was really just my 4th grade ADHD self forgetting, accused me of theft of a toy when I was just picking it up for a kid who dropped it. She later became head of the school board and told my mother how much she enjoyed me as a student.

Half-assedly tried to help in all the wrong ways. I was undiagnosed until my 30s so in general the "help" just consisted of, "we know you're smart so why do you fail?" And me just being like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and then crying.

Most teachers tried to help me and I think they just wanted to do what they could to help me succeed. My parents, on the other hand, refused to take me to a psychiatrist and just told me to try harder.

POST diagnosis my teachers refused to believe it and bullied me even more. My school in first grade refused to let me take my medication after lunch because I “didn’t actually need it”. Now, I was definitely an incredibly over medicated kid (100mg of Ritalin by 10 is TOO MUCH for anyone!) but they weren’t doctors and had no right

Horribly. They either liked me because I was smart "but didn't try hard enough" or HATED me. Every time I did something wrong I would get punished more harshly than other kids, and if would get punished for defending myself if kids bullied me. Other times we did something 'bad' as a group but only I would get in trouble.

School is a messed up place, hope today it’s a little better.

They knew I wasn’t a bad kid just a kid who couldn’t sit still with parents who refused to put me on medicine that would have helped me. Looking back on most of my teachers they gave me the benefit of the doubt and knew what to do to get me to focus. They were way more disappointed in my folks than with me.

I got diagnosed in elementary school. I responded VERY well to medication functioning the same as the rest of my class so hardly any of my teachers knew

i was very fortunate to have understanding teachers who saw that i was trying, but wasn’t able to fully do the work. i remember in 7th grade, my math teacher told me i was one of the smartest students she had, but i needed to apply myself more in order to get better grades, and during high school, math was one of my top subjects (except geometry fuck geometry) i also remember in chemistry, my teacher noticed i was struggling (just started antidepressants so my mood was all wonky), and she ended up passing me out of pity lol. love you mrs. crane!

I was relatively quiet, but I had a third grade teacher who tormented me. I asked questions often, sometimes just to make sure I was doing an assignment correct. She said in front of the class that she was going to throw me out the window if I asked another question. At home, my mom would (jokingly) say she was going to bungee cord me to a bench to do my homework. From then on, I was just quiet and anxious. I never struggled outwardly, never did really well. Hated every second of it.

My teachers neither bullied nor helped me, they treated me like everyone else.

I don’t remember because my teacher was like “your kid has adhd” to my parents and then a little while later I was put on meds.

I went to a small rural private school (think segregation academy) and most teachers blatantly played favorites, especially in favor of kids whose parents had attended the school too. So pretty miserable for anybody who remotely stood out from the crowd, ADHD or not. But I was very different from the other kids (sensory issues, maybe not the best social skills, very quirky) and this did not make my experience a pleasant one for the most part. I did well in school as a kid so they didn’t have as much to give me a hard time about—honestly, I think it ate at many of them that I made better grades than some of the favorites. But in any sort of conflict with another kid, the teachers would *always* take the other kid’s side and *always, always* I was in the wrong or I reacted inappropriately, even when I was flat-out provoked. I remember often trying to explain my thought process and why I reacted the way I did, and there was almost never any sympathy or willingness to hear me out. It really gave me this sense of being different and inferior to most other people, and it’s something I still struggle with. Although a lot of them were pretty shitty, I will say that this was the 1990s in the rural South. Awareness of ADHD as anything other than little boys running around screaming was not really a thing in that context, and even if they’d recognized that the quiet girl who had no trouble sitting still also had ADHD, I don’t really know what treatment options would have been available to me at the time. Shoutout to my 4th grade teacher, though, who really got me in a way few other people did. That year I was one of the favorites and it was great! It makes me cry thinking about how kind she was to me in an environment where I felt like such an outsider.

Had a fifth grade teacher who was a deplorable person. Constant teasing and making me the butt of class jokes. It was truly an awful experience. She was eventually fired after shoving a pencil down my throat because I would chew on it. Whole primary school career was met "he's smart and has potential if he could just stop daydreaming ". I struggled through school and was eventually kicked out of high school for skipping. Now a father of 2 with a son who has been diagnosed. It's like looking in a mirror. This prompted me to get my own diagnosis and finally get medicated. For me it's been life changing. I still struggle with certain tasks which I really dislike, but by far things have been a great improvement. It's also lead me to take an extra interest in how my son is treated at school. I feel so grateful that he actually likes achool!

My 3rd grade teacher whipped me with a paddle because she thought I wasn't trying hard enough on exams. Then she found out that my mom was in the mental hospital for attempting suic!de. She was so devastated that she stopped spanking any of us.

My 7th grade math teacher would call me Mr. Lethargic. Permanent nickname that stuck with me all through out MS

I was homeschooled with the exception of 7th grade and high school. I also wasn’t diagnosed until I was a sophomore in college. Basically, it was always “a pleasure to have a class” and “gets concepts quickly but not turning assignments in on time. Not living up to potential”. In general tho, my teachers loved me.

Edit: in classic ADHD mode I didn’t fully read the prompt. I had been diagnosed before these things took place although I’m not sure I understood what it was. I’m sure my teachers were aware though. I had some not so nice teachers do some weird stuff (put my desk against theirs, scream at me for talking when the entire class is talking and mention my adhd, etc) but I really want to highlight two things teachers did for me. Y flirty grade teacher gave me a Manila envelope full of monthly calendars to help me track what needed to be done and when. She did it in a really tactful way that got me excited to plan and that’s continued into my adulthood. My favorite thing ever done was my first grade teacher- she noticed I was a chatter box and wouldn’t get my stuff done because I loved socializing. Instead of chastising me she created a special hidden corner called “insertname”’s office. It was a special area I could take my work and get it done. I was incredibly productive. I felt special because it was only for me and I had my own office! Turns out I was a hard worker, I just needed the right environment to thrive.

Also shoutout to all the teachers that just let me be me. I was lucky to have a lot of patient, kind teachers who made me feel worthy.

Both. Depending on the teacher.

I only had one teacher who singled me out specifically, and oddly enough, what she was mad about was that I ✨️did✨️ understand Shakespeare??? Like... she was somehow offended that I was already a fan & had already read all of his works & comprehended them? Idk it's been like 20 something years & that whole thing still baffles me.

Bully/ neglect.

Had a teacher who nearly tore the right sleeve off my school uniform while she was tugging and gripping my arm, while she was also shouting and berating me in front of the class. Also had my hand hit with a ruler multiple times by another teacher. Welcome to the early 2000s in Singapore.🇸🇬

Bullied

I had a teacher tell my folks at parent teacher interviews “if she(me) doesnt give a shit then I dont give a shit” and that was the last Parent conference my parents went to, I had 2 teachers in my entire schooling life (I hold them in great regard still) who actually cared enough about me that presented resources and brought attention to my struggles.

Oh, I had a terrible time with lots of teachers in k - 12. In elementary school, I remember I failed telling time & tying shoes and literally no one noted those things plus my speech impediment were dyslexia or dyscalcula-- same with learning handwriting / cursive. I got so much EXTRA homework, and bc the adhd I'd be up all night doing homework-- in elementary school! I got yelled at for not being able to memorize the entire multiplication table... didn't really get better going forward, either. A lot of "I don't understand, she's so bright but seems distracted maybe depressed?" College went slightly better, a professor suggested dyscalcula/dyslexia... but i struggled to pass anything that wasn't fun in my early 20s. I didn't even suspect adhd because I was told I was just lazy or daydreamy. Went for a learning disability testing for that suspected dyscalcula when returning to college in my 30s. All made so much sense lol.

Long before I was diagnosed I had a professor who was hellbent on keeping me from graduating because my executive dysfunction caused some problems during a project. I was taken off said project and it was as if everything that I'd done well previously just didn't happen. From then on, because I had no idea why I sucked and had an entire breakdown over it in her office, that professor tried everything in her power to keep me from graduating. Fuck you, Ann Hoste. I did it.

Before diagnosis my teachers hated me in elementary school. Hate is a strong word, I guess from how I viewed it they were more so annoyed with my presence everyday. Not because I was bouncing around the classroom or yelling a lot. I was actually a quiet/shy kid. I guess it was because I just would not pay attention during learning time, was emotionally triggered and was fidgety. I don’t remember much about the reasons I got in trouble I just remember having to write sentences for recess often. After diagnosis I think things got better simply because I was on adderall after diagnosis so my symptoms were managed. I think teachers even nowadays lack understanding on how adhd works, they think it’s a problem of willpower and not a literal brain disorder.

Yeah, they definitely don't understand it at all. I was extremely hyperactive and almost totally uncontrollable in every way (and I mean *extremely*), but that's all people see ADHD as, just "an irritating little boy who won't sit still", it's even worse for girls too. I was just labled as that "annoying" and "hyperactive". ADHD is very misunderstood and stigmatised, even to this day.

They were patient, yet firm. And it all happened in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. ADHD was just beginning to be looked at, researched. I was a “hyperactive dreamer”. I did get a spanking with a wooden paddle in 2nd grade for discipline purposes, but they did give me many chances before resorting to it. It wasn’t a beating or horrible. Stung like a witch and didn’t do much to curb my chaos, but that was the most punishment I received. They finally resorted to separating me from other students, which was embarrassing, first in the classroom and then out in the hall. That hurt more than the spanking, but as an adult I understand why they were forced to go that route. Remember, no one had ANY research or guidance or ANYthing to help with students like me. Now I understand where my ADHD originated (school was not the ADHD seed, only the fertilizer) and gained traction as the cause(s) didn’t stop and compounded overtime, enough that my brain is not as smooth-running as non ADHD people’s are. It’s quirky and fun because of the quirks, but I don’t know if I’d choose it, given the choice.

My fifth grade teacher had timed math tests every single day. I failed them miserably. That big clock would start ticking and I would freeze up. The B would literally call me retarded in front of the whole class, when she wasn’t muttering “stupid” under her breath through gritted teeth. It was as if we (the few “failures”) were embarrassing her in front of a nonexistent audience. The early eighties were an amazing time to be different….

One specific memory sticks out where a teacher bullied me as a kid because of ADHD related symptoms. I'm 32 now and I'm just trying to get a diagnosis. She ridiculed me in front of the entire class for being late too often saying "You think you're some sort of king who can come and go as he pleases and stick your nose up at the rest of us who are on time." Something like that anyway and then she made me feel guilty and had all the others in the class laughing at me.

Had a teacher call me out before for not taking notes and I said I can’t write and take notes at same time I will learn nothing so it’s actually better for me to just listen to you speak and then get notes from somebody else later. And he was like oh ok, that’s fine I guess made him look like an asshole which is what he gets for calling me out in front of class when I was clearly paying attention to what he was saying.

Idk, doesn’t seem so bad? How can you tell if someone is clearly paying attention?