Understanding My ADHD Changed Everything, Especially How I Parent

I come from a family where everyone had ADHD and knew it. Somehow, I was the only one who was never medicated. I’ve lived my whole life navigating ADHD without fully understanding what it meant, only knowing I had this title of "ADHD". Then I married someone who definitely has ADHD, but was never diagnosed.

My husband spent years wondering why he never finished projects, why he jumped between hobbies, or how he could focus so deeply on one thing, but be totally scattered the next. When we got married, I shared the little knowledge I had gathered through my own experience, what helped me, what didn’t, and why it wasn’t his fault. For him, just hearing that he wasn’t "crazy" or "broken" was healing.

But everything shifted when our second child was born.

My ADHD got so much worse after my daughter. Suddenly I couldn’t get anything done. At the same time, we started noticing ADHD red flags in our oldest child, my son. The kind of things that typically get brushed off as "normal" toddler behavior but felt familiar to us in a deeper way.

My husband, having grown up without any understanding of why he struggled, said something that really hit me:
“I don’t want our son to grow up not understanding why he does certain things.”

So, we dove in. Research. Articles. Podcasts. Books. Conversations. We didn’t want to wait for a diagnosis or a crisis. We wanted understanding, now. And I'm so glad we did.

Roughly 50–75% of people with ADHD are believed to go undiagnosed. And that’s not just a statistic, it’s a warning. Compared to the general population, people with ADHD are twice as likely to develop a substance abuse disorder. About 43% develop alcohol-related disorders, 35% experience major depressive episodes, and 33% have had suicidal thoughts. Those numbers are heartbreaking and terrifying.

Then we learned about Dopamine!

Researchers have found a strong link between ADHD and low dopamine levels. Dopamine plays a key role in motivation, attention, memory, emotional regulation, and mood. And when your brain doesn’t produce enough of it, you look for it elsewhere. You start “dopamine searching.”

And suddenly… everything made sense.

All those nights I stayed up late as a kid and rearranged my bedroom furniture, feeling like it “fixed my life” - that was dopamine.
Every time my husband or I started a new hobby and declared this was our new identity - dopamine.
Those moments of feeling completely "stale," like we needed to do something, anything new - dopamine.

Before, we didn’t have the words for it. My husband and I just said, “I feel stale.”
Now, we say, “I think I’m dopamine searching.” And in our house, that means something. It means we check in with each other. We listen. We help.

Obviously, we can’t move furniture or start a new business every day. So we’ve been working on leveling out our dopamine in healthy, sustainable ways: be it exercising, eating well, doing small things we enjoy, or building routines that feel flexible but grounding.

Once we had that framework, we couldn’t unsee it in ourselves, and especially in our son.

He’s constantly in motion. Twitching, running, or jumping on furniture even after being told to stop. Not to be naughty, but like he genuinely can’t help it. He interrupts, acts silly for attention, and always seems to need the next thing.

Now, yes, that can all be normal for a young child. But when both parents have ADHD, the chance of a child inheriting it is between 70–90%. Plus, knowing those numbers and statistics I mentioned earlier. I’m choosing to be proactive. I'm giving him the tools I wish I had when I was his age. We’re watching closely, and starting early.

We have started teaching him the things we wish we had known.

Right now, we call it his “sillies.”
If he’s bouncing off the walls or acting out, we talk about how he’s feeling. If he says he needs to “get his sillies out,” we stop what we’re doing and go outside, swing, or jump on the trampoline. It’s not just play - it’s regulation.

One of my proudest moments came on a day when I had been getting on to him more than usual. Looking back, I should have seen it, he was dopamine searching. Maybe I was too preoccupied. But after getting into some trouble again, he looked at me and said:
“I think I need to get my sillies out. Can I go outside?”

It might sound small, but the emotional maturity in that moment floored me. I’ve made a point not to mentioned the word “ADHD” to him, not because I think it's a bad thing but because I don’t think the label matters right now. What matters is that he understands himself. I want him to understand his feelings, his needs, and how to manage them in a healthy way.

As a mom, and as someone who taught for years, I’ve seen how different families respond to signs of ADHD. Some ignore it, believing kids should behave “the right way” no matter what. Others receive a diagnosis and swing to the other extreme, excusing everything. I don’t want either of those paths for my son.

And honestly? I’m scared.

Not because I’m afraid he’ll have ADHD, but because of how the world might treat him if he does.
Will his teachers understand him?
Will others see him as difficult instead of brilliant?

I can’t expect everyone else to know what I know. But I can help him know himself.

Because ADHD isn’t a curse. It’s not a crutch. It’s a superpower, once you learn to harness it.

ADHD minds are hungry for stimulation. We thrive in our passions. When we lock into something we love, we can enter a state of hyperfocus that fuels hours of creativity, innovation, or deep problem-solving.

Our brains don’t follow typical paths.
We build new ones.

That’s not a disorder. That’s a different kind of brilliance.

I see it in my husband.

I see it in myself.

And I see it our son.

While I originally sat down to write this blog as a way to promote some of my ADHD-focused products in my Etsy shop, it quickly became something more. This topic means so much to me, and I didn’t feel right turning such a personal story into a product pitch. That said—if you’d like to check out the items I’ve created through this journey, you can find them 👉 HERE 👈. Every bit of support means the world to us.