Love this story because this has been my experience as well when teaching youth. Children in a classroom scarcely need a teacher explaining things to them. Give them the materials and leave the room for an hour. I guarantee you they'll know what to do and how to to do it when you return. However, they won't have any particular depth of knowledge of the topic. And thats because they usually move onto their own ideas of how to use the new knowledge. They're not interested in how I use that knowledge. So different approaches for youth vs adults has always been something I needed to train either. One approach doesn't really work for the other.

As an adult with ADHD, these descriptions sound very similar to how I study and learn too, and perhaps explain the difficulties I've had.