I’ve seen this happen to again and again to friends and people in my support group.

ADHD wasn’t an excuse to “not try”.

At school I got told I could do these things and just needed to “believe in myself” and I wasn’t trying to do that either.

Doing homework is not necessary to get good grades - I personally took a lot of pride in optimizing for the smallest amount of homework I could do while still getting good grades - but it is necessary to do homework in order to be working hard at school. (I think not getting in trouble is important but orthogonal to this conversation about whether to value work or outcomes.)

I don't see how valuing hard work is an excuse to "not try" due to ADHD. I think it's the opposite? Trying is the requirement.

I think maybe I don't understand your comment at all. Sorry about that.

Edit: For instance, is it the case that it is prohibitively difficult for people with ADHD to work hard in the skilled trades? That isn't how I usually think of it, but perhaps I'm wrong.

> For instance, is it the case that it is prohibitively difficult for people with ADHD to work hard in the skilled trades? That isn't how I usually think of it, but perhaps I'm wrong.

If it isn't interesting/exciting they wont work hard at it without medication. Think of ADHD as people with more of a cat personality while normal humans are more like dogs. Cats gets distracted easily but hyper focus when they find something fun, while dogs can be taught to behave. Cats don't act that way because they hate you, they are just wired differently than dogs. Same with ADHD people.

Another point about ADHD is that they can work hard at school etc with medication, it isn't an unfixable problem. I grew up never studying, everyone being angry that I didn't do the work I should, teachers being disappointed etc. Then I got a diagnose as an adult and got medication and then suddenly I could work as hard as everyone else and life became 100 times easier. So I went from smart and lazy to smart and hard working, suddenly working hard to learn to code, practice algorithms, get into Google etc became possible while before medication I didn't even believe I could hold a job. So to me ADHD is 100% real, there is no way it can't be.

However it might be a bit over diagnosed, I don't support giving kids pills to stay quiet in a classroom. It isn't like not studying in high school or early college hurt me at all (Except that parents and teachers got angry of course, avoiding that would be the main reason to study harder...).

> The biggest hurdle for kids to work hard at is school

You are focusing on school-work, and that is not the primary thing I'm thinking of. I think there are lots of other kinds of hard work kids can, and ideally should be given the opportunity to, practice. Things like sports and music and community participation and outdoor activities (for instance, backpacking/camping and rock climbing are things that are popular where I live and require hard work) and other non-school activities along these lines that require effort. Even something like getting really good at a difficult video game requires hard work. Watching TV and YouTube videos and such doesn't.

As is obvious from this thread, I don't have much expertise in what kinds of things are particularly hard with ADHD, but I suspect there are some kinds of hard work which are compatible and can be encouraged, and I'm definitely not focused solely, or even primarily, on school.

Edit: By the way, I have really appreciated your comments and patience in this thread. I certainly hope I haven't implied I don't think ADHD is "100% real".

Of course, you could argue my parents didn’t teach me right. I’m pretty comfortable with where I’m at, but if you don’t want your kid to be like me, my outcome might be something to keep in mind :)

I think that for me (and I suspect for you as well though I wouldn't presume to say for sure), while my outcomes have been good without having internalized a high value for hard work, it could have only been better if I had. It's true that I can get quite far on the power of privilege and intellect alone, but I'm convinced I would get much farther still with a better work ethic. And that's what I'd prefer for my children.

That's fair. For me personally, I feel that even better outcomes are meaningless when my outcomes have been more than good enough already. I wouldn't disparage hard work in the right contexts, but would you say hard work is still valuable and important even when the results of said hard work are not valuable or important?

> I do think hard work is valuable ... because building a hard work habit ... is likely to lead to hard work with high value results later in life.

It sounds like you still value hard work because it increases the expectation value of future outcomes, and not entirely “just because” you value hard work. And so, maybe we agree somewhat on the philosophical level too, after all :)