When I was a kid, I was punished excessively. My diagnosis occurred when I was 25. In the 1980s, I got paddled every day at school and was punished constantly. It made me feel rejected, leading to rejection sensitivity dysphoria. By the time I was 9, I decided life was not worth living and have not changed my mind at 45 years old. I would never have a child to suffer the way I did. I still feel like nobody wants me around. My mental health issues have severely impacted my quality of life. I’m just now figuring out that this might be why I have never felt my clock tick, or thought for even a second of my life that I wanted kids.
Has this happened to anyone else? I wonder how many in this forum might have decided against parenthood due to ADHD effects without realizing it.
Update: Here are the results as of June 12, 2025 ( or at least I think I counted decently):
- 7 people do not want kids
- 9 said they have and/or want kids
- 3 responses did not conclude one way or another
Hope this was helpful, even with small sample sizes. This seems to be close to current statistics. Out of 16 who responded definitively, 7 did not want kids, which is 44%, compared to 47% shown in the statistics. This concludes that no evidence has been found from this post to suggest that ADHD has a significant impact on parenting desires. Further research could better validate the results.
And the share of U.S. adults younger than 50 without children who say they are unlikely to ever have kids rose 10 percentage points between 2018 and 2023 (from 37% to 47%), according to a Pew Research Center survey
First of all, I’m truly sorry that you have had this experience. It hurts my soul that you, from the age of 9 have felt that life isn’t worth living. I do hope you have had good moments too and life hasn’t been all misery for you because fuck. That isn’t how it should be for anyone!
As for myself, I will say that I do not have an official diagnosis, but display MANY ADHD symptoms, just in the more inward sort of way.
So for me, growing up, I was pretty good at being sort of invisible in school so i was never really yelled at, but i did get bullied a lot and i was projected to have a very low IQ by a couple of teachers which has stuck with me my whole life. I did experience a lot of rejection too both from peers but also from one of my parents. Later in life I have realized that almost everything about me that was rejected by others had to do with my symptoms.
I did think I would have kids someday, but I didn’t want kids until I had a reasonable income and a house and neither ever happened to me. I also didn’t want kids until I was mentally mature enough for it and that never happened either.
I love children and I’m really good with kids, but I will never be a mother. I cannot do that to them.
I can’t give them a home nor financial stability and I cannot promise that will be a good parent either.
I am extremely scared of the idea of becoming a parent and then turning out to be a monster to my kid.
I don’t want to be selfish. My self worth is in the dumpster when it comes to believing i would ever be good enough to be a parent. People used to not understand it. Sometimes they still don’t.
But it is what it is. I’m not going to fuck up somebody else’s childhood. Instead I can be an aunt to other people’s kids and be useful that way. I think that is better.
You sound like me. My teacher put me in special education for Math. I now have a Math degree and two engineering degrees. I was just bored because I already knew Math and Reading when I went to school because my parents and sister taught me all that beforehand. They put me in a special reading group and were shocked when figuring out how well I could read before moving me to a group of kids with regular abilities.
I was ADHD and extremely unchallenged, and it was torture to sit in a chair bored all day until all the squirming got me beaten. Since I never listened to teachers because they had nothing new for me to hear, I also did not acquire listening skills that people get at that age. This has been a problem my whole life. I go in and out of conversations.
By the time I was in high school, I was doing Math homework in Geometry class while it was still being taught by the teacher and never had homework at night. There was no use in listening to him. It would never work, and so I read books to teach myself. When I got to engineering school, people were amazed that I never came to class and still made the grades I did. I never could figure out why they couldn’t just read the book like me. Learning everything on my own was my only option, so I just did it that way.
Also, my friend is a genius, and he remembers people thinking he was low iq and putting him in special education too. Maybe they just think we’re low iq because we can’t communicate with lower iq adults when we’re kids with those issues. Dang, it makes you wonder how often that happens to gifted or very capable kids who are misunderstood.
I, too, have been rejected by teachers, parents, family, etc. It’s so hurtful. It’s easier to work in a tech field sometimes because I think many of us have these same issues.
Good on you for not wanting to screw up a kid. For what it’s worth, you sound self-aware enough to be a good parent. You’re responsible for refraining from being a parent without the needed stability required. You sound thoughtful and nice. There is nothing wrong with being part of the village it takes to raise a kid rather than a parent. Good luck! Thanks for the reply!
Seriously, good on you and your friend for proving the negative assessments of your skills in childhood wrong! That is awesome!
I totally get what you mean about finding an environment where there are more people with quirky brains for lack of a better word. I’m in the same boat, but a different field. It is staggering just how many people are disordered or mentally ill in my field. So so sooooooo many ADHDers and people with autism. So many. In hindsight I realized that I have always vibed the absolute best with people who were a bit off. Most of my close friends throughout life have later been diagnosed with either adhd or autism. It is actually pretty crazy to think of. Like a friggin magnet, I always ended up in those crowds.
I also won’t consider myself gifted or smart. It would be nice to be that, but I honestly think I’m average or a bit below.
I have my moments where I’m super fucking sharp, but most of the time I feel like a bumbling idiot, tbh. I learned to read and write etc very slowly. I was always a bit behind or just good enough to not be considered completely dumb. I was in an extra math class after school with other kids who were extremely bad at math but ended up being kicked out because I too good at math to be in that class. That doesn’t mean I was good at math, I was just just terrible enough to be in that class.
I only learned things if they interested me. When I realized that reading and writing gave me access to reading and writing stories, I learned to read and write very quickly. When I got into my country’s version of high-school, I went from barely passable grades in math to pretty good grades because some of the math, exponential functions and stuff like that for some reason translated into fun on my brain.
I learned English (my second language) mostly because I became obsessed with a rather advanced novel when I was 17 and it only existed in English so I learned English by reading it. Before that, I had the most basic English skills.
It’s always been like this. I only learn something if something else motivates me. I cannot just sit down and learn stuff if it bores me and most things tend to bore me until my brain randomly pics out one topic and goes “now this is your new oxygen for the next few days weeks or months. I dunno, I don’t have timeline, but until I say otherwise, this is the most interesting thing in the world”.
I have a few skills that are above average but for the most part I’m a very ignorant kinda dumb person. I did get an IQ test when I was a young teen but I don’t trust the results. The only positive that came out of getting tested like that was that my teachers dropped the topic of me being retarded, but I still don’t trust those results. At all.
Thank you for the compliment, btw! I try my best to be a kind person to other people and I definitely see myself as a small part of the village. That is the type of role I feel suits me the best in any community because I tend to pop in and out of existence constantly. Super present and there some days and then hiding in my hole while recovering other days, lol. Social stuff equally sustains and drains me. There’s no middle ground xD
You’re certainly welcomed! Also, what was the book you read in English at 17?
House of Leaves. I was obsessed with that book. Even ended up writing a paper on it and got a pretty good grade.
Haven’t reread it since because I don’t want to risk spoiling the memory by potentially realizing it isn’t as good as I remember it, haha.