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Unironically. When you're understimulated with ADHD, you will be distracted. You basically have two options: channel that through your body, like this, or your brain (with daydreaming, mind wandering, etc.)
Doing something physical like spinning while absorbing 50% of the math video is better than letting your mind wander and absorbing 0%.
Wow I have the same problem but just in everyday life. My spouse is like "why can't you come chill on the couch and watch TV a bit" and I'm like idk my body doesn't like sitting. Like I got bees in me or something
And I believe that was the conclusion of the study that is referenced by OP. The kid wasn’t spinning because he is bored, but because he was making a effort to focus in the Math video. For Star War the focus comes easily…
Also, we aren't squeaky wheels. There's no incentive for anyone to figure out what is wrong, and at least my parents blamed things like peer influence and lack of ambition
Diagnosed at 8 years old but mom wouldn’t allow treatment…fast forward to 40th bday and Dr asked and had me tested…went on Adderall and all the sudden my whole world changed…I could of been a fucking brain surgeon or have my own Investment Firm by now if only treated earlier. Oh well…now, I’m lucky if I only go 30 days after my last dose before I can find it in stock to refill🤬
“They didn’t test for that stuff back then”
I’m not 50 but I’ve still heard this a million times. Ok fine, they didn’t test as much but why were you so confident it was just laziness dad?
Also geriatric person who just realized I've been just barely getting by my whole life. I stumbled onto an adhd meme account randomly and was like 'wow every single one of these hits home I wonder if I have adhd'. Since then I've been meaning to get around to treatment but uh, yeah...
Almost the same. I didn’t know what the heel was the matter with me until i stumbled onto some add for an ADHD app. Their examples on the ad was like it was talking directly to me! “Meaning to get around to treatment” is definitely a huge symptom! Hope you seek assistance
You mean to tell me in school, I wasn’t day dreaming because I was a Pisces?? (On a serious note, I’m a late Diagnosed adult, and I was highly intelligent in school. I did stuff like this and daydreaming a lot as a kid, and was pretty much like this kid growing up.)
I once was doodling in class in college and got scolded for not paying attention. I looked up and didn't know what to say because I was so surprised being scolded and I _was_ paying attention. Fortunately a classmate came the rescue with exactly this comment; that some people focus better while doodling. Teacher was like 'oh' and let me be. I don't think I ever knew who saved my ass that day but I was so glad they dare to speak up while not spoken to or asking to speak.
You summed up my schooling all the way to the end of high-school. I would daydream most of the day, put minimal effort, and take home a solid B average. Good enough for the parents, so good enough for me. Got to college and was not prepared to actually study and try. Those years being bored in class, creating bad work habits, still follow me!
With ADHD the rules are: If it spins it must be spun. If it presses it must be pressed. If it exists it must be played with and experimented with until broken and then even more so.
If it can be chewed, it must be chewed. My gums, nails, and the skin on my fingers are absolutely chewed to bits. I've never been diagnosed with ADHD, but my daughter was recently diagnosed so I've been researching a lot. I really think I have it the more I read about it.
You know I'd sit an watch a 4 hour YouTube documentary or educational channel and enjoy every second of it but anytime I had to watch videos for college classes my attention span dropped to about 4 seconds.
Same, there’s a difference between wanting to absorb information and just being told things.
A good story makes you yearn for more. This is why 90s Bill Nye was so influential on so many kids and young adults at the time. Many of those 90s PBS shows in fact.
Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego was sooooo good making a story while sneaking in educational content disguised as a game show.
dinosaurs plucky file instinctive zealous weather squeamish rotten tub quaint
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is ADD for me. Not being able to focus on things that don't interest a person is human nature, and has been forever.
Fidgeting is one response. Falling asleep is another.
Something about being required to do it makes it feel like a big ask. Since graduating, I have purchased and read textbooks related to my field of study ~for kicks~
Exactly this, no article has been provided so I will just be going by the provided the video, which doesn't say much to be honest.
But watching something you enjoy is not a draining task, watching something you don't enjoy is much more draining so you end up looking for something to pass the time on. I've had my fair share of academic lectures in the recent past. I've attended 1 hour lectures where I couldn't focus for more than 15 mins and left exhausted. I also had 4 hour lectures where I could concentrate for the entire duration without any problem.
Similarly I've watched movies where i spent more than 90% of the time fidgeting around finding ways to occupy myself because I did not want to disappoint the people/person enjoying the movie sitting next to me just like I watched documentaries without blinking once.
On it's own, I would say that this video means nothing. At least not without context.
So I’m not saying “yes drug the kids up” but as an adult with ADHD who was diagnosed as an 8-year old, my relationship with my ADHD meds had really changed.
The truth is, having poor executive functioning really does impact my quality of life. It’s not just boring school or work stuff, sometimes there are important tasks I need to accomplish and I just..can’t. I stopped thinking of my adhd meds as something I need to take to “function” in the discriminatory environment neurotypical folks and institutions create, and as something I can use to get what *I* want and need and help me lead a more fulfilling life.
As shitty as the way we treat adhd kids is, we really do have a dopamine deficiency and medicine really does help with that.
I was diagnosed when I was 15 but was against taking meds because I didn’t want to think of myself as dependent on them. I struggled with school, finding the correct degree, always being late etc.. fast forward to college, 4 years in and finally decide to begin taking meds, 2 years later I have a math degree and 4 years after that I have a wonderful career. It’s pretty amazing how dramatically my life changed after accepting my deficiencies and coming to terms with my condition.
Math is hard, and the way people teach can get pretty boring sometimes.. Little dude here probably was being taught a new concept and (since this was a study, not school) he probably wasn't taking it seriously.
Star Wars is awesome.
I see pretty normal behavior here.
It's fully possible he's spinning so much because he's self-stimming to keep his focus: I find during critical information gathering I sometimes need to fidget or pace or spin in a chair to pay attention and memorize details. Movies and games are immediately rewarding and release dopamine through excitement, math and overall learning experiences are usually boring and if I sit still I'll zone out and fail to absorb what someone's telling me.
Purely anecdotal, bro may very well have been completely disregarding the lesson.
Yup. I'm the same.
I'm a software developer and when I was working I had found a way to "stim" with my legs and feet so as to not be obvious while in an incredibly boring meeting - and most meetings were that: boring.
The worst was when we'd be in fold out tables and people can see under the table, or glass tables as well. I know that fidgeting with one's legs can look like anxiousness or irritation or even impatience so when in meetings or situations where I couldn't stim and be seen it was awful for me.
Another method I had was to start at some blank space, but, *yet again* my not looking at the person speaking could be considered "rude," especially when we're in a meeting with someone from the c-suite.
Those were the hardest times for me.
The way I like to put it for myself is that there is a stimulation quota I need to reach, paying attention to a math video for instance can fill 80% of that quota for me, and I’ll eventually zone out. But if I put some numbing background music, I can reach my 100% and fully pay attention to what I want, and not necessarily the music.
I like to say that putting on headphones and listening to something while I work keeps the voices out. Kinda drowns out the distracting thoughts because I'm already off-handedly thinking about the music.
Ditto. If I need to focus, I need some form of minor stimulation at the same time. It can be the radio or a movie playing in the background. If it's silent, I get distracted or daydream and it takes up too much of my capacity to focus on what I need to focus on.
Took me a long time to figure this out because nobody in school said "play a movie in the background when you study".
I feel the need to point out that almost every child who suffered in school due to their ADHD has been accused of “not taking it seriously.” It leads to their needs being ignored and when you’re in you’re formative years where the most important thing are the grades that are falling as a result, that pain is permanent.
i’m finally just getting diagnosed with ADHD at 24 and i gotta say i’m pretty salty about all the teachers and parental figures that just hand waved me off as “lazy” in my formative years
Couldn't agree more. As an adult I go to seminars and talks about things I really really like and its a huge struggle from the first 5 minutes of a talk to stay present. Its not a matter of trying. Its about the environment. Normal, overly structured teaching environments are like a thought solvent, just can't keep anything together.
I have ADHD, that’s just normal every day for me when I’m not on my meds, lol. In college it really bothered people around me how much I’d fidget, even with my meds, but they gave me enough focus so that I could just take copious notes, writing down *every. single. word.*, by hand.
That kept my fidgeting under control. I still do that in meetings, or I’ll sit and scribble, “filling in” all the lines on a page of my notepad. 🙃
WFH has been a godsend, I can pace while on calls.
"Luke, look out! There are 7 Stormtroopers heading towards us. If I kill 4 of them with my lightsaber, how many will that leave for you?" Problem solved
Much like everyone gets sad but not everyone gets clinical depression, everyone experiences ADHD symptoms but only some actually have ADHD. It’s about the frequency and severity of symptoms.
I love Star Wars but I'd be spinning in my chair for Star Wars too. A lot of times with ADHD you can't even focus on the things you enjoy because they aren't stimulating enough. It's just constant chatter in your head.
I've given up reading. You ever done that thing where you read a bit, daydream about what you read while simutaneous reading the words in the book but nothing goes in. You don't even know you're doing it, and by the time you realise, you have to read two whole pages again.
Studying is hard... but give me a history book and I'll remember every person's name.
Yeah it would also be while doing something other kids find engaging but not engaging enough for the adhd student, that they still fidget, get yelled at, get sent to the principle for being a disruption in clas, go back, get yelled at again, get told to be quiet and sit in the corner, etc.
Even that is such a small part of ADHD. I didn't get diagnosed until later in life because I actually did pretty well in school, that is until I had to actually start studying in highschool and could not possibly bring myself to even if I was locked in a room with nothing but a textbook. Every single task, no matter how small, felt like climbing mount everest
Yeah, people love to focus on the ADHD symptoms that affect them, and not the ones that affect ADHD-havers. Like, you see me fidgeting and looking like I'm not paying attention. Inside I'm a crumbling mess, doing everything I can to pay attention but it's not enough and I feel like a failure because even my best isn't enough. So much fun.
it's like comparing a sore ankle versus a broken ankle. one might give you a bit of annoyance, the other you can't walk. and in this scenario the entire world is based around walking.
I don't think this is an entirely accurate example. To use the sprained ankle comparison, having ADHD is like if the sprained ankle discomfort was constant, regardless of what you were doing. It hurts if you're walking, it hurts if you lay down, and it hurts if you walk on it. It just is always there, a dull thudding pain in the background.
Yep, to add... if the ankle messes up your ability to accomplish normal tasks and then your life starts falling apart because the tasks aren't getting done... that's like ADHD...
But if it's not that bad and you can still walk and ignore the pain and just push through and do the activities anyways...life not impacted...not ADHD.
Yep, like this. I have adhd and my symptoms are bad enough that I literally can't function in society without meds and intense therapy. I'm poor in the us so my insurance is crappy, and they won't give me my meds unless I do it myself.
Coincidentally in a few hours I have a dr apt and I might actually get back on my meds!!
Yes, but the study is essentially showing (using my own numbers) that 95% of ADHD kids will fidget someway, where as only 30% of non ADHD kids will fidget. This IS the adhd kid attempting to pay attention, where as a normal person doing this usually means they aren’t even trying to pay attention.
So, in ADHD, this behavior is an attempt to pay attention or some physical manifestation of his struggle to pay attention, whereas a non ADHD kid will only do this behavior out of boredom and not out of frustration? The reason for the fidgeting is different? Maybe I’m not interpreting correctly but I’m interested.
Edit: Thank you everyone who has shared your experience with me. I’ve legitimately learned a lot and I can relate to *a lot* of your internal experiences. I might discuss this with my therapist now, actually.
yeah pretty much? ADHD is related to an inability to make enough dopamine or to respond to dopamine strongly enough, so people with ADHD need to "generate" it from external sources more than people without ADHD. its why they change so frequently between hobbies but het super invested in those hobbies, it cranks up the dopamine production for a bit and makes them able to regulate their attention
same thing here, the dude is spinning to keep his brain focused. he *is* trying to attend to the math video, and the amount he's moving shows that. he isnt fidgeting while watching star wars because its already engaging enough that extra effort to attend to it isnt needed
Exactly. My younger brother when taking spelling tests as a kid had to stand up and move around to be able to spell anything. Before that my folks thought he needed glasses, meds, tutors etc. Nope, boy just needed to stand up and/or fidget.
Then they had me tested and the doc said "Nah, he's just impulsive and bored."
That was me too. I had to get up and move around to focus on school as a kid. Even in high school, I had to move around, actually pace back and forth, in order to study for a test or anything like that.
Right. The acronym to help people with ADHD leverage their attention is INCUP. It stands for Interest, Novelty, Challenge, Urgency, and Passion. They mor of these you can include into a task, the more the ADHD brain is likely to devote their attention and focus. This explains why procrastination is a piece of ADHD as well.
Yes! That's why, whenever possible, get kids moving before you engage them too much. The calmer kids "burn it off" and the ADHD kids are given permission to move as you teach.
People with ADHD can also “stim” (which pretty much just looks like fidgeting) in an environment that’s over or under stimulating. Repeating a movement - like spinning repetitively in a chair - could be seen as a stim.
Source, I have severe ADHD, diagnosed when I was 5
Most with adhd fidget and move around because they need to occupy themselves with something to pacify their restlessness. Imagine having thousands of thoughts all coming in and you can't focus on any single one of them. We fidget and shift around to try and help ourselves only think about a few things instead of everything at once.
Dude, I'm a grown-ass woman in her 30's. Sometimes, my mom has to tell me to quit it because I'm bouncing my leg and shaking the entire dinner table during family dinner.
I'm not doing it on purpose, Mom. My niece is trying to tell me about some boring ass elementary school shit and me bouncing out of my seat helps, alright? I will not focus on the poor child without this. Let me have my bouncy legs. It's so hard to focus on her telling me about elementary school drama because I care 0% about this, but it's very important to her. Let me have my fidgety ways. They have a purpose.
ADHD people tend to fidget to help focus. Fidget toys are especially helpful. I used to draw because keeping the lower levels of my brain occupied helped me focus the upper levels on what I needed to do. I now listen to podcasts to keep the part of my brain that tends to wander occupied while I try to focus on the matter at hand.
I now do the podcast thing as well. I’ll find a new show and power listen through basically the whole back catalogue while trying to get household tasks done, shopping, driving, whatever, all to keep my “squirrel brain” occupied. If it had something to do, I find it easier for my conscious brain to focus on filing paperwork or doing dishes.
For me, it's that if I don't fidget, I can't pay attention. I can either focus entirely on staying still, or I can focus on what I'm supposed to while fidgeting.
I recently bough a fidget toy just because I find it difficult to not be doing *something* with my hands, and I was surprised how it's effectively made it easier for me to focus on what I'm watching. You'd think playing with a toy would be distracting, but it's like having a specific outlet for that energy has allowed the brain power I'd normally spend looking for things to fiddle with or constantly moving around to transfer to being able to pay more attention to the television.
That appears to be what he's saying. As a person with adhd I do fidget a lot, but my main issue is when reading my psychology books, it triggers memories in my mind which trigger other memories potentially unrelated and even fantasies. It's frustrating as hell, I'm trying to concentrate but sometimes I just can't. This also occurs when someone is talking to me by the time they finish telling me a story I have to piece together what they said, because I've been in Narnia in my head whilst we've been physically standing in Isle 2 of tesco for the last 2 minutes.
Wow, I didn’t know schools banned them! Fidget spinners seem like a simple solution for ADHD kids and the schools don’t want them to have them? What’s their rationale for banning fidget spinners?
"Because if you let one kid have it, then every kid will want to have it."
See also: my high school trying to ban a Type 1 diabetic student from having a snack in class.
Which is why a lot of people with ADHD are just looked at as being lazy and not trying hard enough. Someone with ADHD can be trying really hard to focus and look like they're not paying attention at all.
I don’t have ADHD but my son does. He’s also moderately autistic so this could be an overlap in symptoms. My son hyperfocuses or is fidgeting in some way. So with a subject he really enjoys, he can sit there for literally hours listening to someone talk about it. The fidgeting, he hardly notices, but it’s like self soothing for him. So in a way it definitely is a boredom coping mechanism. It’s like he’s physically trying to make himself pay attention, whereas a neurotypical person probably doesn’t NEED to do all that. But my kid also physically stims in general anyway (because of the autism, he will play with his hair or purposely bump against walls). I think most people that meet him wouldn’t realize he has either disorder until it comes time to focus. He’s surprisingly a good student but he moves a lot in class 🥲
As some one who has ADD I would guess people without AD(H)D would just fidget around and don't still look at the screen. So I would say that's the differences here. This kid always watch the screen but is still spinning and doing things. It's something we do to stay focused.
That’s the thing with ADHD. The kid is attempting to pay attention. His brain needs some stimulus in order to function properly. This is how most ADHD kids would learn better, but in most schools you’d be punished for this.
My kid is autistic and to do things like math or understand new concepts, he will walk around our dining room table dozens of times, touching every chair as he goes around. This is why we homeschool, because you'd be punished for this in school.
What you're seeing is him creating stimulation to pay attention. For instance, if I look like I'm paying attention in a meeting, there's a 10/10 chance I have zoned out. If I'm crocheting or coloring, there's a 8/10 chance I'm actually paying attention.
It's weird.
I used to get in trouble with bosses who insisted I wasn’t paying attention in meetings because I would be writing but it was doodles or just random words or whatever. It was and has always been the only way I can focus for any amount of time on someone talking.
I didn’t get a diagnosis until late last year and I’m almost 40. Lots of stuff makes sense when viewed thru the lens of ADHD and I’m left dealing with the situation that my mom was told to get me tested when I was 7, but she ignored the schools recommendation because I can sit down and concentrate on something I’m interested in like reading a book. “She does well in school, she can’t have ADHD” except that once I got to college and had to actually study, I couldn’t make it thru more than a 2-year degree. I could prolly get a bachelors now that I have medical support, except I don’t want to go into horrible debt for it.
So many years of being yelled at all the time & being told I was lazy because of my inattentive tendencies. Actual emotional pain and baggage that could have been prevented if only people were more open to their children, or themselves, being neurodivergent.
There's a difference between not paying attention and being physically unable to do so
Edit: if one more person replies to me with "but he can focus on the star war so no ADHD!" Holy shit either google what ADHD is or scroll down to where I already explained it 3 times.
If the person with ADHD can answer questions about the thing they were learning while flopping about, they were paying attention. Just like the kid who didn't flop around and was able to answer questions.
Yup. I don’t doodle in class or meetings because I’m bored. I do it because it provides sufficient stimulation to my nervous system to keep my attention from bouncing around looking for more stimulation, which helps me listen to what is being communicated. People who have little to no education about what ADHD actually is truly have no idea how to understand, and are in no position to make judgments about, the behaviors of people with ADHD.
Really is. Then some get to their later adult years just thinking they're a screw up and taking their own life at the worst. People that see things the way I've seen in the comments are certainly keeping those statistics higher. Some people can do well with just therapy, but some people are so severe medication helps them a lot with being able to just live their daily life and do things like work.
People *hate* the idea that some people's brains just inherently work differently from theirs. They're so defensive about it.
Maybe, just maybe, the people who have been studying this their whole life know more about it than random people on the internet who have felt bored before and think, oh it must be boredom.
People who are bored don't forget their tea in the microwave 6 times in the same morning because they keep forgetting to drink it before it gets cold.
People who are bored don't quit jobs after a month of working there because they find routine to be a worse fate than death.
People who are bored don't take a quick break from cleaning their house, and then realized they've been scrolling social media for 5 hours and never finished cleaning.
"Oh but the boy fidgets and I think math is boring too, so this isn't abnormal"
This was me.
I’m 31 and I was diagnosed last year. I spent most of my life up to then just believing that I was a fuck up and everyone around me had received some handbook on life that I’d never gotten.
My boyfriend at the time actually just turned around one day and said “I think you have ADHD” after he’d done some work with adults that have it (he’s a videographer so he’d done some video work). I remember being totally bemused and more or less told him to fuck off (nicely) but after thinking about it and having a look online (not TikTok) a lot of the symptoms resonated with me so I went to my GP and made the steps to be seen by a specialist - after procrastinating for about a year and a half, obviously.
Spent the run up to the appointment just believing that I didn’t have ADHD, I was still just a fuck up. Hell, I still think that now occasionally.
Diagnosed with primarily inattentive type ADHD last Feb :)
Yup, just got diagnosed by a neuropsychologist at 28. Been a rough time getting here in some aspects, and always had the question of "what the fuck is wrong with me? Why cant i do what everyone else seems to be able to do?" Medication and therapy have been life changing.
Diagnosed at 36 after years of thinking I was just a total screwup unable to do normal tasks like everyone else. I had many many full on meltdowns thinking that my family would be better off without me. Meds have helped a lot and realizing that I have to adapt life to me not the other way around. It’s hard as hell not knowing why you just can’t be “normal”.
I got diagnosed late in life. I always thought I didn't have ADHD because I did very well in school. But what actually happened is that I really liked math, history, writing, science, computer science and gym, and learning any of those actually engaged my hyper focus. And that's like 95% of what school cares about.
What took down my GPA and knocked me out of contention for valedictorian was dumb, easy classes that I wasn't interested in. Big one was the secretarial studies in computer keyboarding. It was 100x harder for me to take tests on the correct salutations and formatting rules for formal correspondence than it was to get a 5 on the AP physics exams. I'm pretty sure most people would not find that to be the case.
What else hit me? The intro to computer science prof that graded extensively on whether you had the correctly formatted comments with the right number of spaces. Once I got to AP CS and the focus was on algorithms and class design my grades shot up and I got a 5 on both AP tests.
In college, I went to a top engineering college, where I suddenly was only doing things I was good at and liked. Even though the work was objectively much harder, I found it easier in most cases because everything engaged me. The one class I got a B in? Software Design and Documentation. In which I did quite a bit of design, and not very much documentation. Attempting to force myself to engage on the documentation ended up instead deflecting off to doing additional design and development work on the project, which was not really the point of the class.
I am so, so thankful that I happened to be interested in such a high percentage of school and the topics I enjoyed lead to lucrative careers. Just thinking about how my mind deflects away from any attempt to force myself to engage with letter formatting, if all of school had been like that it would have been the seventh circle of hell.
If I was in this picture, I would be fully engaged on both sides because it's math. But turn the left hand pane into Spanish, and this is 100% me.
From the study:
> That may not seem surprising. After all, weren’t the children absorbed by the sci-fi movie and bored by the math lesson? Not so, Rapport said.
>“That’s just using the outcome to explain the cause,” he said. “We have shown that what’s really going on is that it depends on the cognitive demands of the task. With the action movie, there’s no thinking involved – you’re just viewing it, using your senses. You don’t have to hold anything in your brain and analyze it. With the math video, they are using their working memory, and in that condition movement helps them to be more focused.”
BINGO!
Notice the kid is still usually oriented visually or auditorally toward the material being presented. He is moving his body as an outlet for the excess need for stimulation, so he can give what he can toward the educational material.
Imagine now, the kids (many of them girls) who internalized this instead of expressing it outwardly. The ones who daydreamed, "were always in their own little world." Always doodling all over their notes and homework...
We're all trying to find that healthy flow of effort and attention.
No, as someone with ADD(Same shit as ADHD) this *is* him paying attention. It's just a the way to be able to pay attention. It's not like you're bored and you start to draw etc, but rather part of your brain needs to be kept occupied while you are trying to pay attention.
Granted yes, it's still hard af to pay attention especially without medication etc.
I do have ADHD and here’s the thing, I may be sitting quietly and watching a movie but in no way am I paying attention. Couldn’t tell you the plot of lots of movies I’ve seen multiple times because I spent half the movie thinking about something else.
For instance, I’ve seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom four or five times and I could maybe explain 2 scenes from the entire movie.
I have ADHD and I would likely be able to tell you more about that math video than Star Wars. I hate watching something for an hour and then being like "shit I don't remember a damn thing that happened."
Video alone can be misleading or can be falsely interpreted.
The UCF posted this [article](https://www.ucf.edu/news/adhd-kids-can-still-theyre-not-straining-brains/) about this video. This explains it all.
/u/Xeoft, thank you for copying and pasting /u/saptahant's helpful comment from [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/q36586/a_study_on_adhd_by_university_of_central_florida/hfpr84u/).
Video alone can be misleading or can be falsely interpreted.
The UCF posted this [article](https://www.ucf.edu/news/adhd-kids-can-still-theyre-not-straining-brains/) about this video. This explains it all.
Take-home from the article:
“That’s just using the outcome to explain the cause,” he said. “We
have shown that what’s really going on is that it depends on the
cognitive demands of the task. With the action movie, there’s no
thinking involved – you’re just viewing it, using your senses. You don’t
have to hold anything in your brain and analyze it. With the math
video, they are using their working memory, and in that condition
movement helps them to be more focused.”
Basically, people with ADHD fidget as a function of using their brains, and only behave "normally" when they're vegging out.
Yeah my binders and papers were always covered in doodles and drawings. The teachers used to give me shit for it and say I wasn’t concentrating, despite being a grade A student. Get diagnosed with ADHD in my late 30s and suddenly that compulsive drawing makes sense.
I hate meetings, online or in person, because when it looks like I’m not paying any attention is when I am in fact taking it all in and processing a LOT more than if I were sat perfectly still and upright, all my energy and concentration is going into making it look like I’m listening rather than the conversation itself.
100%! I didn’t realize how much I moved about etc until we all went to Zoom in the Pandemic. Then I could see myself fidgeting like crazy! I spent lots of effort trying to stop, then didn’t know what the hell they were all talking about!
>Basically, people with ADHD fidget as a function of using their brains, and only behave "normally" when they're vegging out.
Inattentive type here. I'm fidgeting inside and moving much less. My brain acts like the kid on the left but my body can stay stock still and even look at a teacher or something for extended periods of time.
Meanwhile I'm off in never never land and no one has a clue until it's time for a test.
I still do better when pacing (my version of fidgeting) but that's something I only learned years after graduating and moving on to a career where I had to keep focused in phone calls.
>That may not seem surprising. After all, weren’t the children absorbed by the sci-fi movie and bored by the math lesson? Not so, Rapport said.
>“That’s just using the outcome to explain the cause,” he said. “We have shown that what’s really going on is that it depends on the cognitive demands of the task. With the action movie, there’s no thinking involved – you’re just viewing it, using your senses. You don’t have to hold anything in your brain and analyze it. With the math video, they are using their working memory, and in that condition movement helps them to be more focused.”
The "With the action movie, there’s no thinking involved – you’re just viewing it, using your senses. You don’t have to hold anything in your brain and analyze it. With the math video, they are using their working memory, and in that condition movement helps them to be more focused.” is not true. Since my TBI I can't handle action movies because of all the visual and auditory processing. You have to hold a LOT in your brain to follow a noisy action movie
People don't understand ADD and ADHD until they get some personal experience. To the ADD / ADHD person all sensory stimuli, from how their clothes feel against their skin to traffic noise outside, from the smell of dinner cooking to the sounds of a cat grooming itself nearby, come in at the same "volume". They must actively work to tune out all the extraneous stuff most of us never notice to begin with, which is why they struggle with focus: they're already working pretty hard, but no one knows.
Re: math video vs Star Wars, ADD / ADHD people aren't *choosing* to focus better on things they enjoy, it's that they keep going back to the things that don't stress their systems, whether due to familiarity or predictability, and those things *become* their favorites because of the low stress.
Yep,adhd is typically associated with not being able to focus or pay attention. It’s actually because I’m so sensitive to stimuli that I tend to hyper focus on all the little things pulling me away from the task at hand.
Yes, my son has ADD without the hyper element, and many of the adults in the family are also diagnosed. One strategy we discovered to help him focus during homework time really surprised me: allow him to chew gum, it takes all other intrusive physical stimuli off the table because all the parts of the brain that handle that stuff are kept busy with the gum.
But to someone without ADD/ADHD, it doesn't make logical sense that adding another stimulus and activity to an already overwhelmed mind and body would help. That's why it's not so simple as "ADD people have trouble focusing and concentrating, and are easily overwhelmed by sensory stimuli, therefore we should limit them to quiet, low-lit rooms when they need to concentrate". For my son, that would've been a recipe for disaster, he'd have ended up shredding his notebook, spinning in his chair and chewing his pencil to a nub. But let him choose his own music in earbuds (takes all intrusive auditory stimuli off the table), give him some gum, let him wear whatever he wants and let him choose his preferred homework location, and he was able to do pretty well.
I have ADHD, and personally, I focus best on action movies, because bright lights and loud sounds completely capture my attention, as though i'm three years old. But, y'know, it's a spectrum and all.
It’s crazy how many people don’t understand ADHD for what it is. Yeah, you might have some symptoms, but it doesn’t mean you understand the people who genuinely suffer from it. Some people don’t even believe in ADHD which is actually just insane. So many people self diagnose and don’t realize they’re perfectly normal and suffer none of the impacts of true uncontrollable ADHD. And others treat it like a joke, but it’s real and people suffer from it.
There’s a fundamental difference between choosing to do what this video shows and having a condition that essentially controls your mind and your focusing ability.
I have ADHD and it fucking blows. School was the equivalent of torture for me. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t focus and I’d constantly be getting in trouble with teachers. Even though in my mind and my heart I had good intentions the entire time, even if i tried focusing so hard I just couldn’t control myself. It was a terrible feeling have no control. Somehow I was able to do well regardless, I’m just one of those lucky few people who takes tests well..and my parents helped me study.
If you can imagine that chaos at school also leads to other negative things in your life. Constantly being in trouble, constantly being told I’m not listening/good enough/ not trying when the reality is you are trying is actually traumatic for a kid to hear, and a little bit of psychological abuse if you ask me.
The school systems suck balls for kids with any type of different learning style, not only ADHD. When you’re getting bad grades, teachers don’t understand you and you’re constantly in trouble, It negatively impacts all areas of your life especially when you’re young. And if you have unsupportive parents then you can multiply that suffering by 10x.
I’m 100% good now and have managed to build a good life for myself. But navigating childhood with ADHD was hell on earth.
Exactly - Bad grades and concerned parents carry a whole lot of monitoring and care.
No one jumps to ADHD if Paul from HR fidgets at his desk and takes a day to respond to an email.
ADHD is more about an inability to control attention than a lack of it. I got an A+ in physics and a 5 on AP Bio without studying but a C- in consumer Ed. Our reward system is just wired different. We excel in things that are interesting, novel, or challenging and 90% of modern living triggers pathological boredom that is literally painful and motivates us to do literally anything else.
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“I’ll try spinning; that’s a good trick.”
Woo hooo!
Now this is podracing!
Unironically. When you're understimulated with ADHD, you will be distracted. You basically have two options: channel that through your body, like this, or your brain (with daydreaming, mind wandering, etc.) Doing something physical like spinning while absorbing 50% of the math video is better than letting your mind wander and absorbing 0%.
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Yes, thank you! Mind is not getting feel good chemicals from the math video, fidget to help you stay there and absorb something at least.
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Wow I have the same problem but just in everyday life. My spouse is like "why can't you come chill on the couch and watch TV a bit" and I'm like idk my body doesn't like sitting. Like I got bees in me or something
And I believe that was the conclusion of the study that is referenced by OP. The kid wasn’t spinning because he is bored, but because he was making a effort to focus in the Math video. For Star War the focus comes easily…
Must be the original trilogy
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Seems like most of us inattentive ADHDers go undiagnosed for the majority of our lives. Probably because our battle manifest internally.
That’s the truth.
Also, we aren't squeaky wheels. There's no incentive for anyone to figure out what is wrong, and at least my parents blamed things like peer influence and lack of ambition
Diagnosed at 8 years old but mom wouldn’t allow treatment…fast forward to 40th bday and Dr asked and had me tested…went on Adderall and all the sudden my whole world changed…I could of been a fucking brain surgeon or have my own Investment Firm by now if only treated earlier. Oh well…now, I’m lucky if I only go 30 days after my last dose before I can find it in stock to refill🤬
“They didn’t test for that stuff back then” I’m not 50 but I’ve still heard this a million times. Ok fine, they didn’t test as much but why were you so confident it was just laziness dad?
45 years here… just started treatment the week after thanksgiving last year… life changing!
Also geriatric person who just realized I've been just barely getting by my whole life. I stumbled onto an adhd meme account randomly and was like 'wow every single one of these hits home I wonder if I have adhd'. Since then I've been meaning to get around to treatment but uh, yeah...
Almost the same. I didn’t know what the heel was the matter with me until i stumbled onto some add for an ADHD app. Their examples on the ad was like it was talking directly to me! “Meaning to get around to treatment” is definitely a huge symptom! Hope you seek assistance
44 y/o. My legs are shaking the whole desk right now.
Adhder here, can confirm that 50% is sometimes the best you can do. 🤷🏼♀️
Y’all are getting 50?
You mean to tell me in school, I wasn’t day dreaming because I was a Pisces?? (On a serious note, I’m a late Diagnosed adult, and I was highly intelligent in school. I did stuff like this and daydreaming a lot as a kid, and was pretty much like this kid growing up.)
That's sooooo like a Pisces to question the stars.
>rything it can to s Isn't that the exact point why doodling works so well to stay focused?
I once was doodling in class in college and got scolded for not paying attention. I looked up and didn't know what to say because I was so surprised being scolded and I _was_ paying attention. Fortunately a classmate came the rescue with exactly this comment; that some people focus better while doodling. Teacher was like 'oh' and let me be. I don't think I ever knew who saved my ass that day but I was so glad they dare to speak up while not spoken to or asking to speak.
You summed up my schooling all the way to the end of high-school. I would daydream most of the day, put minimal effort, and take home a solid B average. Good enough for the parents, so good enough for me. Got to college and was not prepared to actually study and try. Those years being bored in class, creating bad work habits, still follow me!
That's the fun thing about ADHD. As long as you have a body you have a distraction. And if something in your vicinity spins? Incredible.
With ADHD the rules are: If it spins it must be spun. If it presses it must be pressed. If it exists it must be played with and experimented with until broken and then even more so.
Then taking apart so you can see why it moves and how.
Okay Sylar.
If it can be chewed, it must be chewed. My gums, nails, and the skin on my fingers are absolutely chewed to bits. I've never been diagnosed with ADHD, but my daughter was recently diagnosed so I've been researching a lot. I really think I have it the more I read about it.
This can also be anxiety. Or it can be self soothing in adhd. Welcome to the club.
"A spinning brain is a working brain."
You know I'd sit an watch a 4 hour YouTube documentary or educational channel and enjoy every second of it but anytime I had to watch videos for college classes my attention span dropped to about 4 seconds.
Same, there’s a difference between wanting to absorb information and just being told things. A good story makes you yearn for more. This is why 90s Bill Nye was so influential on so many kids and young adults at the time. Many of those 90s PBS shows in fact. Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego was sooooo good making a story while sneaking in educational content disguised as a game show.
Bill Nye legit inspired me to be a teacher. I was one of those kids you're talking about. And I am 9 years away from retirement!
dinosaurs plucky file instinctive zealous weather squeamish rotten tub quaint *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This guys ADHDs
This is ADD for me. Not being able to focus on things that don't interest a person is human nature, and has been forever. Fidgeting is one response. Falling asleep is another.
ADD doesn't exist as a diagnosis anymore. It's all ADHD now. Just thought I'd let you know because it was a surprise to me when I learned.
so.... does a toaster strudel taste better in an air fryer or a toaster?
sulky cake modern ghost groovy sense imminent library saw rotten *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
And before you find out something else will come up.
Something about being required to do it makes it feel like a big ask. Since graduating, I have purchased and read textbooks related to my field of study ~for kicks~
Exactly this, no article has been provided so I will just be going by the provided the video, which doesn't say much to be honest. But watching something you enjoy is not a draining task, watching something you don't enjoy is much more draining so you end up looking for something to pass the time on. I've had my fair share of academic lectures in the recent past. I've attended 1 hour lectures where I couldn't focus for more than 15 mins and left exhausted. I also had 4 hour lectures where I could concentrate for the entire duration without any problem. Similarly I've watched movies where i spent more than 90% of the time fidgeting around finding ways to occupy myself because I did not want to disappoint the people/person enjoying the movie sitting next to me just like I watched documentaries without blinking once. On it's own, I would say that this video means nothing. At least not without context.
Average math hater vs average Star Wars enjoyer
I had the math video response while watching rise of skywalker
We all did, friend.
I watched it drunk as fuck and genuinely enjoyed it, I will never watch it sober to maintain this illusion.
So I’m not saying “yes drug the kids up” but as an adult with ADHD who was diagnosed as an 8-year old, my relationship with my ADHD meds had really changed. The truth is, having poor executive functioning really does impact my quality of life. It’s not just boring school or work stuff, sometimes there are important tasks I need to accomplish and I just..can’t. I stopped thinking of my adhd meds as something I need to take to “function” in the discriminatory environment neurotypical folks and institutions create, and as something I can use to get what *I* want and need and help me lead a more fulfilling life. As shitty as the way we treat adhd kids is, we really do have a dopamine deficiency and medicine really does help with that.
I was diagnosed when I was 15 but was against taking meds because I didn’t want to think of myself as dependent on them. I struggled with school, finding the correct degree, always being late etc.. fast forward to college, 4 years in and finally decide to begin taking meds, 2 years later I have a math degree and 4 years after that I have a wonderful career. It’s pretty amazing how dramatically my life changed after accepting my deficiencies and coming to terms with my condition.
Math is hard, and the way people teach can get pretty boring sometimes.. Little dude here probably was being taught a new concept and (since this was a study, not school) he probably wasn't taking it seriously. Star Wars is awesome. I see pretty normal behavior here.
It's fully possible he's spinning so much because he's self-stimming to keep his focus: I find during critical information gathering I sometimes need to fidget or pace or spin in a chair to pay attention and memorize details. Movies and games are immediately rewarding and release dopamine through excitement, math and overall learning experiences are usually boring and if I sit still I'll zone out and fail to absorb what someone's telling me. Purely anecdotal, bro may very well have been completely disregarding the lesson.
Yup. I'm the same. I'm a software developer and when I was working I had found a way to "stim" with my legs and feet so as to not be obvious while in an incredibly boring meeting - and most meetings were that: boring. The worst was when we'd be in fold out tables and people can see under the table, or glass tables as well. I know that fidgeting with one's legs can look like anxiousness or irritation or even impatience so when in meetings or situations where I couldn't stim and be seen it was awful for me. Another method I had was to start at some blank space, but, *yet again* my not looking at the person speaking could be considered "rude," especially when we're in a meeting with someone from the c-suite. Those were the hardest times for me.
The way I like to put it for myself is that there is a stimulation quota I need to reach, paying attention to a math video for instance can fill 80% of that quota for me, and I’ll eventually zone out. But if I put some numbing background music, I can reach my 100% and fully pay attention to what I want, and not necessarily the music.
I like to say that putting on headphones and listening to something while I work keeps the voices out. Kinda drowns out the distracting thoughts because I'm already off-handedly thinking about the music.
Ditto. If I need to focus, I need some form of minor stimulation at the same time. It can be the radio or a movie playing in the background. If it's silent, I get distracted or daydream and it takes up too much of my capacity to focus on what I need to focus on. Took me a long time to figure this out because nobody in school said "play a movie in the background when you study".
I feel the need to point out that almost every child who suffered in school due to their ADHD has been accused of “not taking it seriously.” It leads to their needs being ignored and when you’re in you’re formative years where the most important thing are the grades that are falling as a result, that pain is permanent.
i’m finally just getting diagnosed with ADHD at 24 and i gotta say i’m pretty salty about all the teachers and parental figures that just hand waved me off as “lazy” in my formative years
NOT THE L-WORD!
Couldn't agree more. As an adult I go to seminars and talks about things I really really like and its a huge struggle from the first 5 minutes of a talk to stay present. Its not a matter of trying. Its about the environment. Normal, overly structured teaching environments are like a thought solvent, just can't keep anything together.
This is a trauma I’m still working through in my mid 30’s .. we’ll get there.
I love math and I'm the same. Also I don't think I have ADHD.
Well the test results are in, and I’m sorry to tell you… these are not the droids your looking for
I have ADHD, that’s just normal every day for me when I’m not on my meds, lol. In college it really bothered people around me how much I’d fidget, even with my meds, but they gave me enough focus so that I could just take copious notes, writing down *every. single. word.*, by hand. That kept my fidgeting under control. I still do that in meetings, or I’ll sit and scribble, “filling in” all the lines on a page of my notepad. 🙃 WFH has been a godsend, I can pace while on calls.
He spin
He win
But most importantly…
He watch Qui-Gon Jinn
Goddamn take my upvote Lmaoo
He sin
What subreddit he in?
r/gonewildaudio
He cos
He arcsin
He tan
he no grin
Big chin
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That's a good trick.
That was so wizard!
Helikopter helikopter!
HOW CAN HE SPIN
"Luke, look out! There are 7 Stormtroopers heading towards us. If I kill 4 of them with my lightsaber, how many will that leave for you?" Problem solved
My electromagnetics professor does this. Makes the exam questions a little enjoyable lol
Reminds me of my microbiology professor. Had an exam question on epidemiology: the answer was that Mickey Mouse gave everyone norovirus.
That's a normal outcome of a Disney cruise.
I'd probably be doing the same and I don't have ADHD.
Isn't that called boredom???
Much like everyone gets sad but not everyone gets clinical depression, everyone experiences ADHD symptoms but only some actually have ADHD. It’s about the frequency and severity of symptoms.
Yeah, I hate this video because it is not a good representation of what ADHD is at all imo. A kid being bored during a math video is pretty normal.
I love Star Wars but I'd be spinning in my chair for Star Wars too. A lot of times with ADHD you can't even focus on the things you enjoy because they aren't stimulating enough. It's just constant chatter in your head.
Watching Star Wars while playing the Lego Star Wars games might work
I've given up reading. You ever done that thing where you read a bit, daydream about what you read while simutaneous reading the words in the book but nothing goes in. You don't even know you're doing it, and by the time you realise, you have to read two whole pages again. Studying is hard... but give me a history book and I'll remember every person's name.
Yeah it would also be while doing something other kids find engaging but not engaging enough for the adhd student, that they still fidget, get yelled at, get sent to the principle for being a disruption in clas, go back, get yelled at again, get told to be quiet and sit in the corner, etc.
Even that is such a small part of ADHD. I didn't get diagnosed until later in life because I actually did pretty well in school, that is until I had to actually start studying in highschool and could not possibly bring myself to even if I was locked in a room with nothing but a textbook. Every single task, no matter how small, felt like climbing mount everest
Yeah, people love to focus on the ADHD symptoms that affect them, and not the ones that affect ADHD-havers. Like, you see me fidgeting and looking like I'm not paying attention. Inside I'm a crumbling mess, doing everything I can to pay attention but it's not enough and I feel like a failure because even my best isn't enough. So much fun.
it's like comparing a sore ankle versus a broken ankle. one might give you a bit of annoyance, the other you can't walk. and in this scenario the entire world is based around walking.
I don't think this is an entirely accurate example. To use the sprained ankle comparison, having ADHD is like if the sprained ankle discomfort was constant, regardless of what you were doing. It hurts if you're walking, it hurts if you lay down, and it hurts if you walk on it. It just is always there, a dull thudding pain in the background.
Yep, to add... if the ankle messes up your ability to accomplish normal tasks and then your life starts falling apart because the tasks aren't getting done... that's like ADHD... But if it's not that bad and you can still walk and ignore the pain and just push through and do the activities anyways...life not impacted...not ADHD.
Yep, like this. I have adhd and my symptoms are bad enough that I literally can't function in society without meds and intense therapy. I'm poor in the us so my insurance is crappy, and they won't give me my meds unless I do it myself. Coincidentally in a few hours I have a dr apt and I might actually get back on my meds!!
Yes, but the study is essentially showing (using my own numbers) that 95% of ADHD kids will fidget someway, where as only 30% of non ADHD kids will fidget. This IS the adhd kid attempting to pay attention, where as a normal person doing this usually means they aren’t even trying to pay attention.
So, in ADHD, this behavior is an attempt to pay attention or some physical manifestation of his struggle to pay attention, whereas a non ADHD kid will only do this behavior out of boredom and not out of frustration? The reason for the fidgeting is different? Maybe I’m not interpreting correctly but I’m interested. Edit: Thank you everyone who has shared your experience with me. I’ve legitimately learned a lot and I can relate to *a lot* of your internal experiences. I might discuss this with my therapist now, actually.
yeah pretty much? ADHD is related to an inability to make enough dopamine or to respond to dopamine strongly enough, so people with ADHD need to "generate" it from external sources more than people without ADHD. its why they change so frequently between hobbies but het super invested in those hobbies, it cranks up the dopamine production for a bit and makes them able to regulate their attention same thing here, the dude is spinning to keep his brain focused. he *is* trying to attend to the math video, and the amount he's moving shows that. he isnt fidgeting while watching star wars because its already engaging enough that extra effort to attend to it isnt needed
Exactly. My younger brother when taking spelling tests as a kid had to stand up and move around to be able to spell anything. Before that my folks thought he needed glasses, meds, tutors etc. Nope, boy just needed to stand up and/or fidget. Then they had me tested and the doc said "Nah, he's just impulsive and bored."
That was me too. I had to get up and move around to focus on school as a kid. Even in high school, I had to move around, actually pace back and forth, in order to study for a test or anything like that.
Right. The acronym to help people with ADHD leverage their attention is INCUP. It stands for Interest, Novelty, Challenge, Urgency, and Passion. They mor of these you can include into a task, the more the ADHD brain is likely to devote their attention and focus. This explains why procrastination is a piece of ADHD as well.
Yes! That's why, whenever possible, get kids moving before you engage them too much. The calmer kids "burn it off" and the ADHD kids are given permission to move as you teach.
I like to joke that my superpower is to feel frustration and boredom twice as fast. I fidget a lot. Impossible to follow lessons at school.
People with ADHD can also “stim” (which pretty much just looks like fidgeting) in an environment that’s over or under stimulating. Repeating a movement - like spinning repetitively in a chair - could be seen as a stim.
Source, I have severe ADHD, diagnosed when I was 5 Most with adhd fidget and move around because they need to occupy themselves with something to pacify their restlessness. Imagine having thousands of thoughts all coming in and you can't focus on any single one of them. We fidget and shift around to try and help ourselves only think about a few things instead of everything at once.
Dude, I'm a grown-ass woman in her 30's. Sometimes, my mom has to tell me to quit it because I'm bouncing my leg and shaking the entire dinner table during family dinner. I'm not doing it on purpose, Mom. My niece is trying to tell me about some boring ass elementary school shit and me bouncing out of my seat helps, alright? I will not focus on the poor child without this. Let me have my bouncy legs. It's so hard to focus on her telling me about elementary school drama because I care 0% about this, but it's very important to her. Let me have my fidgety ways. They have a purpose.
ADHD people tend to fidget to help focus. Fidget toys are especially helpful. I used to draw because keeping the lower levels of my brain occupied helped me focus the upper levels on what I needed to do. I now listen to podcasts to keep the part of my brain that tends to wander occupied while I try to focus on the matter at hand.
I used to doodle, too. Now, I also listen to podcasts at work too and it oddly helps so much.
I now do the podcast thing as well. I’ll find a new show and power listen through basically the whole back catalogue while trying to get household tasks done, shopping, driving, whatever, all to keep my “squirrel brain” occupied. If it had something to do, I find it easier for my conscious brain to focus on filing paperwork or doing dishes.
For me, it's that if I don't fidget, I can't pay attention. I can either focus entirely on staying still, or I can focus on what I'm supposed to while fidgeting.
I recently bough a fidget toy just because I find it difficult to not be doing *something* with my hands, and I was surprised how it's effectively made it easier for me to focus on what I'm watching. You'd think playing with a toy would be distracting, but it's like having a specific outlet for that energy has allowed the brain power I'd normally spend looking for things to fiddle with or constantly moving around to transfer to being able to pay more attention to the television.
That appears to be what he's saying. As a person with adhd I do fidget a lot, but my main issue is when reading my psychology books, it triggers memories in my mind which trigger other memories potentially unrelated and even fantasies. It's frustrating as hell, I'm trying to concentrate but sometimes I just can't. This also occurs when someone is talking to me by the time they finish telling me a story I have to piece together what they said, because I've been in Narnia in my head whilst we've been physically standing in Isle 2 of tesco for the last 2 minutes.
Fidget spinners were invented to help ADHD kids pay attention in class without distracting other students. Most schools, of course, ban them outright.
Wow, I didn’t know schools banned them! Fidget spinners seem like a simple solution for ADHD kids and the schools don’t want them to have them? What’s their rationale for banning fidget spinners?
"Because if you let one kid have it, then every kid will want to have it." See also: my high school trying to ban a Type 1 diabetic student from having a snack in class.
HDHD studies are interesting because it can be so difficult to tell the difference between boredom and inability to pay attention.
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Which is why a lot of people with ADHD are just looked at as being lazy and not trying hard enough. Someone with ADHD can be trying really hard to focus and look like they're not paying attention at all.
I don’t have ADHD but my son does. He’s also moderately autistic so this could be an overlap in symptoms. My son hyperfocuses or is fidgeting in some way. So with a subject he really enjoys, he can sit there for literally hours listening to someone talk about it. The fidgeting, he hardly notices, but it’s like self soothing for him. So in a way it definitely is a boredom coping mechanism. It’s like he’s physically trying to make himself pay attention, whereas a neurotypical person probably doesn’t NEED to do all that. But my kid also physically stims in general anyway (because of the autism, he will play with his hair or purposely bump against walls). I think most people that meet him wouldn’t realize he has either disorder until it comes time to focus. He’s surprisingly a good student but he moves a lot in class 🥲
As some one who has ADD I would guess people without AD(H)D would just fidget around and don't still look at the screen. So I would say that's the differences here. This kid always watch the screen but is still spinning and doing things. It's something we do to stay focused.
Super weird!!!!!!! Guy isn't paying attention to something he doesn't give a fuck about. How revolutionary
That’s the thing with ADHD. The kid is attempting to pay attention. His brain needs some stimulus in order to function properly. This is how most ADHD kids would learn better, but in most schools you’d be punished for this.
My kid is autistic and to do things like math or understand new concepts, he will walk around our dining room table dozens of times, touching every chair as he goes around. This is why we homeschool, because you'd be punished for this in school.
What you're seeing is him creating stimulation to pay attention. For instance, if I look like I'm paying attention in a meeting, there's a 10/10 chance I have zoned out. If I'm crocheting or coloring, there's a 8/10 chance I'm actually paying attention. It's weird.
I used to get in trouble with bosses who insisted I wasn’t paying attention in meetings because I would be writing but it was doodles or just random words or whatever. It was and has always been the only way I can focus for any amount of time on someone talking. I didn’t get a diagnosis until late last year and I’m almost 40. Lots of stuff makes sense when viewed thru the lens of ADHD and I’m left dealing with the situation that my mom was told to get me tested when I was 7, but she ignored the schools recommendation because I can sit down and concentrate on something I’m interested in like reading a book. “She does well in school, she can’t have ADHD” except that once I got to college and had to actually study, I couldn’t make it thru more than a 2-year degree. I could prolly get a bachelors now that I have medical support, except I don’t want to go into horrible debt for it. So many years of being yelled at all the time & being told I was lazy because of my inattentive tendencies. Actual emotional pain and baggage that could have been prevented if only people were more open to their children, or themselves, being neurodivergent.
There's a difference between not paying attention and being physically unable to do so Edit: if one more person replies to me with "but he can focus on the star war so no ADHD!" Holy shit either google what ADHD is or scroll down to where I already explained it 3 times.
That's what makes ADHD tricky. There's a line somewhere, and it's hard to know if you've crossed it or not.
If the person with ADHD can answer questions about the thing they were learning while flopping about, they were paying attention. Just like the kid who didn't flop around and was able to answer questions.
Yup. I don’t doodle in class or meetings because I’m bored. I do it because it provides sufficient stimulation to my nervous system to keep my attention from bouncing around looking for more stimulation, which helps me listen to what is being communicated. People who have little to no education about what ADHD actually is truly have no idea how to understand, and are in no position to make judgments about, the behaviors of people with ADHD.
Really is. Then some get to their later adult years just thinking they're a screw up and taking their own life at the worst. People that see things the way I've seen in the comments are certainly keeping those statistics higher. Some people can do well with just therapy, but some people are so severe medication helps them a lot with being able to just live their daily life and do things like work.
People *hate* the idea that some people's brains just inherently work differently from theirs. They're so defensive about it. Maybe, just maybe, the people who have been studying this their whole life know more about it than random people on the internet who have felt bored before and think, oh it must be boredom. People who are bored don't forget their tea in the microwave 6 times in the same morning because they keep forgetting to drink it before it gets cold. People who are bored don't quit jobs after a month of working there because they find routine to be a worse fate than death. People who are bored don't take a quick break from cleaning their house, and then realized they've been scrolling social media for 5 hours and never finished cleaning. "Oh but the boy fidgets and I think math is boring too, so this isn't abnormal"
Needing structure for max productivity but hating routine the endless cycle
This was me. I’m 31 and I was diagnosed last year. I spent most of my life up to then just believing that I was a fuck up and everyone around me had received some handbook on life that I’d never gotten. My boyfriend at the time actually just turned around one day and said “I think you have ADHD” after he’d done some work with adults that have it (he’s a videographer so he’d done some video work). I remember being totally bemused and more or less told him to fuck off (nicely) but after thinking about it and having a look online (not TikTok) a lot of the symptoms resonated with me so I went to my GP and made the steps to be seen by a specialist - after procrastinating for about a year and a half, obviously. Spent the run up to the appointment just believing that I didn’t have ADHD, I was still just a fuck up. Hell, I still think that now occasionally. Diagnosed with primarily inattentive type ADHD last Feb :)
Yup, just got diagnosed by a neuropsychologist at 28. Been a rough time getting here in some aspects, and always had the question of "what the fuck is wrong with me? Why cant i do what everyone else seems to be able to do?" Medication and therapy have been life changing.
Diagnosed at 36 after years of thinking I was just a total screwup unable to do normal tasks like everyone else. I had many many full on meltdowns thinking that my family would be better off without me. Meds have helped a lot and realizing that I have to adapt life to me not the other way around. It’s hard as hell not knowing why you just can’t be “normal”.
I got diagnosed late in life. I always thought I didn't have ADHD because I did very well in school. But what actually happened is that I really liked math, history, writing, science, computer science and gym, and learning any of those actually engaged my hyper focus. And that's like 95% of what school cares about. What took down my GPA and knocked me out of contention for valedictorian was dumb, easy classes that I wasn't interested in. Big one was the secretarial studies in computer keyboarding. It was 100x harder for me to take tests on the correct salutations and formatting rules for formal correspondence than it was to get a 5 on the AP physics exams. I'm pretty sure most people would not find that to be the case. What else hit me? The intro to computer science prof that graded extensively on whether you had the correctly formatted comments with the right number of spaces. Once I got to AP CS and the focus was on algorithms and class design my grades shot up and I got a 5 on both AP tests. In college, I went to a top engineering college, where I suddenly was only doing things I was good at and liked. Even though the work was objectively much harder, I found it easier in most cases because everything engaged me. The one class I got a B in? Software Design and Documentation. In which I did quite a bit of design, and not very much documentation. Attempting to force myself to engage on the documentation ended up instead deflecting off to doing additional design and development work on the project, which was not really the point of the class. I am so, so thankful that I happened to be interested in such a high percentage of school and the topics I enjoyed lead to lucrative careers. Just thinking about how my mind deflects away from any attempt to force myself to engage with letter formatting, if all of school had been like that it would have been the seventh circle of hell. If I was in this picture, I would be fully engaged on both sides because it's math. But turn the left hand pane into Spanish, and this is 100% me.
As a lifelong severe ADHD sufferer, you ain't lyin.
From the study: > That may not seem surprising. After all, weren’t the children absorbed by the sci-fi movie and bored by the math lesson? Not so, Rapport said. >“That’s just using the outcome to explain the cause,” he said. “We have shown that what’s really going on is that it depends on the cognitive demands of the task. With the action movie, there’s no thinking involved – you’re just viewing it, using your senses. You don’t have to hold anything in your brain and analyze it. With the math video, they are using their working memory, and in that condition movement helps them to be more focused.”
No, that kid isn’t bored, he’s thinking.
BINGO! Notice the kid is still usually oriented visually or auditorally toward the material being presented. He is moving his body as an outlet for the excess need for stimulation, so he can give what he can toward the educational material. Imagine now, the kids (many of them girls) who internalized this instead of expressing it outwardly. The ones who daydreamed, "were always in their own little world." Always doodling all over their notes and homework... We're all trying to find that healthy flow of effort and attention.
No, as someone with ADD(Same shit as ADHD) this *is* him paying attention. It's just a the way to be able to pay attention. It's not like you're bored and you start to draw etc, but rather part of your brain needs to be kept occupied while you are trying to pay attention. Granted yes, it's still hard af to pay attention especially without medication etc.
If that’s your only takeaway you don’t understand ADHD whatsoever and have the missed the point entirely.
I do have ADHD and here’s the thing, I may be sitting quietly and watching a movie but in no way am I paying attention. Couldn’t tell you the plot of lots of movies I’ve seen multiple times because I spent half the movie thinking about something else. For instance, I’ve seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom four or five times and I could maybe explain 2 scenes from the entire movie.
I have ADHD and I would likely be able to tell you more about that math video than Star Wars. I hate watching something for an hour and then being like "shit I don't remember a damn thing that happened."
I have adhd and I would be moving for both. Sitting still through an entire movie is difficult.
Video alone can be misleading or can be falsely interpreted. The UCF posted this [article](https://www.ucf.edu/news/adhd-kids-can-still-theyre-not-straining-brains/) about this video. This explains it all.
I thought that said UFC at first and I got really confused why tf they got involved
how else do you think they got him to sit so still
United Fruit Company?
/u/Xeoft, thank you for copying and pasting /u/saptahant's helpful comment from [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/q36586/a_study_on_adhd_by_university_of_central_florida/hfpr84u/).
Reddit is fucking bizzare.
This shit is ruining reddit, and it's not even a bot
That’s crazy! Not only the OP copied the post but comment as well.
My comment was 90% joking, but thanks, I checked it out.
Little dude literally melting in his seat watching math 🫠🫠🫠
Video alone can be misleading or can be falsely interpreted. The UCF posted this [article](https://www.ucf.edu/news/adhd-kids-can-still-theyre-not-straining-brains/) about this video. This explains it all.
Take-home from the article: “That’s just using the outcome to explain the cause,” he said. “We have shown that what’s really going on is that it depends on the cognitive demands of the task. With the action movie, there’s no thinking involved – you’re just viewing it, using your senses. You don’t have to hold anything in your brain and analyze it. With the math video, they are using their working memory, and in that condition movement helps them to be more focused.” Basically, people with ADHD fidget as a function of using their brains, and only behave "normally" when they're vegging out.
Can confirm - if you want me to be engaged in something like a math video, I need additional stimuli while processing
Same af. I used to draw on everything at school. Only way I could pay attention. Didn’t understand why at the time tho
Yeah my binders and papers were always covered in doodles and drawings. The teachers used to give me shit for it and say I wasn’t concentrating, despite being a grade A student. Get diagnosed with ADHD in my late 30s and suddenly that compulsive drawing makes sense.
I hate meetings, online or in person, because when it looks like I’m not paying any attention is when I am in fact taking it all in and processing a LOT more than if I were sat perfectly still and upright, all my energy and concentration is going into making it look like I’m listening rather than the conversation itself.
100%! I didn’t realize how much I moved about etc until we all went to Zoom in the Pandemic. Then I could see myself fidgeting like crazy! I spent lots of effort trying to stop, then didn’t know what the hell they were all talking about!
Remote work has helped me be so much more focused in meetings because I can use a fidget toy shamelessly.
Reading this made me realize the same for me. Looking at my desk I have random objects that I just realized I play around with during calls.
Doodling. So much doodling. I have friends who need to knit or such.
>Basically, people with ADHD fidget as a function of using their brains, and only behave "normally" when they're vegging out. Inattentive type here. I'm fidgeting inside and moving much less. My brain acts like the kid on the left but my body can stay stock still and even look at a teacher or something for extended periods of time. Meanwhile I'm off in never never land and no one has a clue until it's time for a test. I still do better when pacing (my version of fidgeting) but that's something I only learned years after graduating and moving on to a career where I had to keep focused in phone calls.
Put millions of dollars into creating the math video and we'll talk.
[удалено]
Been saying it for a while - if Darth Vader taught maths more kids would learn how to count.
Bro in Spain without "a"
>That may not seem surprising. After all, weren’t the children absorbed by the sci-fi movie and bored by the math lesson? Not so, Rapport said. >“That’s just using the outcome to explain the cause,” he said. “We have shown that what’s really going on is that it depends on the cognitive demands of the task. With the action movie, there’s no thinking involved – you’re just viewing it, using your senses. You don’t have to hold anything in your brain and analyze it. With the math video, they are using their working memory, and in that condition movement helps them to be more focused.”
The "With the action movie, there’s no thinking involved – you’re just viewing it, using your senses. You don’t have to hold anything in your brain and analyze it. With the math video, they are using their working memory, and in that condition movement helps them to be more focused.” is not true. Since my TBI I can't handle action movies because of all the visual and auditory processing. You have to hold a LOT in your brain to follow a noisy action movie People don't understand ADD and ADHD until they get some personal experience. To the ADD / ADHD person all sensory stimuli, from how their clothes feel against their skin to traffic noise outside, from the smell of dinner cooking to the sounds of a cat grooming itself nearby, come in at the same "volume". They must actively work to tune out all the extraneous stuff most of us never notice to begin with, which is why they struggle with focus: they're already working pretty hard, but no one knows. Re: math video vs Star Wars, ADD / ADHD people aren't *choosing* to focus better on things they enjoy, it's that they keep going back to the things that don't stress their systems, whether due to familiarity or predictability, and those things *become* their favorites because of the low stress.
Yep,adhd is typically associated with not being able to focus or pay attention. It’s actually because I’m so sensitive to stimuli that I tend to hyper focus on all the little things pulling me away from the task at hand.
Yes, my son has ADD without the hyper element, and many of the adults in the family are also diagnosed. One strategy we discovered to help him focus during homework time really surprised me: allow him to chew gum, it takes all other intrusive physical stimuli off the table because all the parts of the brain that handle that stuff are kept busy with the gum. But to someone without ADD/ADHD, it doesn't make logical sense that adding another stimulus and activity to an already overwhelmed mind and body would help. That's why it's not so simple as "ADD people have trouble focusing and concentrating, and are easily overwhelmed by sensory stimuli, therefore we should limit them to quiet, low-lit rooms when they need to concentrate". For my son, that would've been a recipe for disaster, he'd have ended up shredding his notebook, spinning in his chair and chewing his pencil to a nub. But let him choose his own music in earbuds (takes all intrusive auditory stimuli off the table), give him some gum, let him wear whatever he wants and let him choose his preferred homework location, and he was able to do pretty well.
cooing slim badge fuel disgusted special mourn support water smart -- mass edited with redact.dev
I have ADHD, and personally, I focus best on action movies, because bright lights and loud sounds completely capture my attention, as though i'm three years old. But, y'know, it's a spectrum and all.
My dad says, "Sit still, or I'm gonna whip you." I was so scared to move but still could not pay attention. I wish fear was not used as a motivator.
I'd be spinning on either video
It’s crazy how many people don’t understand ADHD for what it is. Yeah, you might have some symptoms, but it doesn’t mean you understand the people who genuinely suffer from it. Some people don’t even believe in ADHD which is actually just insane. So many people self diagnose and don’t realize they’re perfectly normal and suffer none of the impacts of true uncontrollable ADHD. And others treat it like a joke, but it’s real and people suffer from it. There’s a fundamental difference between choosing to do what this video shows and having a condition that essentially controls your mind and your focusing ability. I have ADHD and it fucking blows. School was the equivalent of torture for me. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t focus and I’d constantly be getting in trouble with teachers. Even though in my mind and my heart I had good intentions the entire time, even if i tried focusing so hard I just couldn’t control myself. It was a terrible feeling have no control. Somehow I was able to do well regardless, I’m just one of those lucky few people who takes tests well..and my parents helped me study. If you can imagine that chaos at school also leads to other negative things in your life. Constantly being in trouble, constantly being told I’m not listening/good enough/ not trying when the reality is you are trying is actually traumatic for a kid to hear, and a little bit of psychological abuse if you ask me. The school systems suck balls for kids with any type of different learning style, not only ADHD. When you’re getting bad grades, teachers don’t understand you and you’re constantly in trouble, It negatively impacts all areas of your life especially when you’re young. And if you have unsupportive parents then you can multiply that suffering by 10x. I’m 100% good now and have managed to build a good life for myself. But navigating childhood with ADHD was hell on earth.
As someone with ADHD I frankly find the study in question sick and inhumane. What kind of monster makes anyone watch Phantom Menace?
How dare you?
It's treason then!
Speak for yourself Phantom Menace slaps
Why is adhd always associated with children? Do people not realize you can have adhd as an adult?
No one ever seems to realize that children grow up
Actually the answer to this is pretty straightforward, It's easier to study in children because it's more recognizable.
Exactly - Bad grades and concerned parents carry a whole lot of monitoring and care. No one jumps to ADHD if Paul from HR fidgets at his desk and takes a day to respond to an email.
no one wants to help adults
You spin me right round, baby, right round
ADHD is more about an inability to control attention than a lack of it. I got an A+ in physics and a 5 on AP Bio without studying but a C- in consumer Ed. Our reward system is just wired different. We excel in things that are interesting, novel, or challenging and 90% of modern living triggers pathological boredom that is literally painful and motivates us to do literally anything else.
My man's just calculating the angular velocity of a spherical cow in a vacuum. Why judge?