My 7-year-old, 5-year-old, and I have ADHD, and we are always forgetting my oldest’s backpack. Sometimes we don’t manage to get it out of the house. Other times we don’t manage to make it out of the car. Then there are the days where his battered Star Wars backpack — the stuffing is coming out and I haven’t gotten around to replacing it — actually gets to the classroom. When he’s finished, he stuffs his work in there. Then he leaves it on the floor and trots out.

I know this annoys most of the mothers in our homeschool co-op. They have their shit together. Blaise and I are square wheels clunking in an otherwise well-run machine. ADHD can do that.

It’s isolating to be the only person who can’t seem to get their kid to class with his backpack, and I’d imagine, isolating to be the kid who’s always leaving his backpack somewhere. And if it isn’t today, it will be one day, when the kids around him start to snicker  “That’s Blaise.”  But that tic isn’t Blaise. That’s Blaise’s disease, not him — and he deserves the grace of people knowing the difference.

Blaise doesn’t have many friends from his class. I don’t know what goes on there, but I’ve come in to find him sitting in the chair while all the other kids do an activity because he was talking too much or moving too much or distracting other people. He’s always having to borrow books or pens or crayons because of that aforementioned backpack-forgetting. Then he finishes his work quickly, so he can get to his favorite part: the drawing afterwards. Not really the type of kid others want to be friends with, especially when you add that he’s small, he’s loud, he speaks out of turn, and he’s very, very smart. ...... for more