this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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Thanks to ADHD part. School was kinda useless, due to 2 quirks and how school is set up.
First, the sitting still and listening to the teacher. If i sit still too long i will doze off, there isn't anything i can do about it. It's completely out of my control, best i can say is be more stimulating. Yes it happens to this day. Most lessons in school involve sitting still and listening to someone just talk, you can imagine how regularly i dozed off. It doesn't matter how much i tried or wanted to pay attention and stay awake, it wasn't under my control. Majority of people cant even comprehend it. intrusive sleep
Second, school was set up to just pass a test, way too many teachers just gave a long list to memorize for the test. My memory and recall ability aren't under my control. It's ran by RNG(random number generator). Whatever i pass a test or not was completely up to chance, pretty much 50:50 every single time and 50% of correct answers was needed to pass. Most of the tests i passed and if i didn't, i just did it again and oftentimes odds were in my favor.
There were few lessons i did much better in. Like PE or woodworking or cooking, mostly because it was hand on active approach with those and no actual tests.
Luckily ASD side and lack of social awareness protected me from the worst of the social effects.
Omg I did not know bout intrusive sleep and it explains so much about my school experience. I didn't mean to fall asleep in lectures and I didn't mean it as an insult to the instructor. I felt a lot of shame for it.
Yeah i remember the shame due to it, eventually i just gave up and accepted my faith as a public fleshlight in prison or suicide through drugs.
Your first part is precisely why I sometimes let kids keep toys at their desks when doing work with them. I make it clear, "As long as you answer the questions/do your work, I don't mind if you keep the toy." Sometimes a stim toy makes the difference. As long as it's not distracting them away from what we've got to do, it's fine by me.
Besides, when I went to training for my current workplace, we were encouraged to bring our own stim toys. I used a spinner pretty much the entire time. Another coworker brought a bag of various squishies and pop-it toys to share as well. If it's acknowledged as useful for us as adults, it should be acknowledged as useful for the kids.
Honestly that's a good idea and i pretty much let my daughter do the same. Seems to be working, she gets the school work done and doesn't disrupt the class either, of course there are some bad days, but we just brush those away. No point to make her feel even worse over those one offs. Luckily nowadays most teachers acknowledge mental differences as well and actually allow kids some fidgeting toys or plushies or even listen to music when doing some independent exercise.