June 28.2025

Like many of my friends and family, you would probably get a good laugh out of this. If you were a lazy thinker, you might call me stupid or at least think that I was. I’m not stupid, though I’m actually pretty darn smart. When I’m focused on something, I can solve puzzles like no one else. 

You see, I have students who fail at this sort of test all the time. It’s one of the things teachers get most annoyed at:

You just finished giving directions and repeated them two or three times, most of the students start working, and one student raises their hand to ask: Mr. Brown, what are we doing again? I look around and see that there are at least two or three others who are clueless but are afraid to ask. 

The most common response from the teacher is to say, “Really!, I just gave the directions. If you were paying attention, you would know.”

This is the best way to shut down an ADHDer, by the way. They will never ask you again, and likely just not do the assignments. This leads to teachers who don’t look deeper to think that these kids are airheads (do people say that anymore?) or stupid. (Check out my videos below on why this is)

This is one of those puzzles that fascinates me as an autistic people watcher. If you look deeper, you can see that they are often really intelligent. You can watch them figure things out in a creative way. This is especially true if something really engages their interest.

This becomes a puzzle for me as I try to figure out what things engage high-level thought and what things sneak under the radar to trip things up. It really has to do with attention. Again, this takes some puzzle-solving skills because lazy thinkers will think that kids just need to choose to pay attention. They think that kids who miss the directions are just making bad choices. 

My curiosity for humans doesn’t allow me to leave it at this, though, because I know these kids aren’t making bad choices. As a Child Development and Psychology teacher, I have seen the research that ADHD kids' brains are under-stimulated due to a lack of functioning dopamine transporters. The stereotype is that they are overstimulated. This leads to an ADHD brain bouncing around, trying to overcome painful, low-level stimulation in the brain. 

Watching the kids and doing research has helped me see them for who they really are. Really smart kids who are often working twice as hard as everyone else, while at the same time being thought of as stupid. 

Being able to see them in this way has made it easier to like them, which is often surprising for an ADHD student. 

The bonus to all of this is that it has helped me see myself as one of these kids also. I’ve been working twice as hard as most people to get results that people still laugh at, and I’m still going to fail the test in the picture. 

You can comment on my social media post on this here: