I don’t look forward to having the AuDHD talk with my mom. She’d always been terrified at the idea that her kids aren’t nOrMaL. When I was diagnosed ADHD as a teen, she outright dismissed it. I haven’t even mentioned the word “autism” around her because I know exactly how she would react.

Yet, my dad is just like me. Our conversations regularly veer into such niche topics that go completely over my mom’s head. Neither of us “officially” studied these topics (dad went to trade school, not college), we just have the same curiosity and overlapping special interests. Add my siblings to the mix (2 of whom also are likely on the spectrum, with one more sibling who IS diagnosed ADHD), and my mom becomes “the odd one out.”

I don’t think she’d handle that well.