Since sharing my story about being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult in May 2025, I have received e-mails and messages from parents who described feeling disappointed, confused or heartbroken by their child’s learning difference.
They worried if their child would be able to cope with the stress of university. If they had somehow failed as parents. If their nature or nurture was to blame. Or more practically, how they could stop their child from cutting class.
As someone whose executive dysfunction has been a bane throughout my life, I can empathise with their worries because I have lived it from the other side.
When I was 15, I could not sit still in class for hours on end and frequently played truant. Much of my secondary school years was spent listlessly riding the MRT from end to end. I dreaded school. Eventually, I dropped out at Secondary 3.
During this time, my parents sought psychiatric help for me (I was prescribed antidepressants) and even spiritual help – spending thousands on idols they hoped would ward off the negative energy they were convinced was to blame.
The arguments we had during this time were brutal, ending in tears on both sides, as my parents watched their previously “quiet and meticulous” child spiral – losing 10kg of weight over the course of a year while I was homeschooled by tutors to take the O levels as a private candidate.
Our relationship recovered when I went to polytechnic and, later, university abroad in the Netherlands, eventually clinching a scholarship to complete my master’s degree at the University of Cambridge.
In case this is of help to others, here are the three things I wish my parents knew before I was diagnosed with ADHD only at the age of 28, which made everything that came before make sense.
1. It is not your fault
In Singapore, where tiger parenting is a norm – and some parents even go on extended leave to help their children study for major examinations – many parents take personal responsibility for their child’s shortcomings.
A child struggling in school is often experienced as a parent’s moral failure, with the accompanying shame and loss of face.
Ms Theresa Pong, founder of The Relationship Room counselling centre, and whose daughter was recently diagnosed with ADHD, tells me: “When she entered the Normal (Academic) stream, I wrestled with guilt and self-blame. I had unknowingly used her Primary School Leaving Examination score as a measure of how well I had done as a parent.”
This line of thought is understandable but not helpful, as it raises the temperature of what many experience as a “pressure cooker” education system.
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A 2017 study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that 76 per cent of Singapore students reported feeling very anxious for a test even if they were well prepared, compared with the OECD average of 55 per cent.
Nearly a third of young people aged 15 to 35 reported very poor mental health, according to a 2024 study by the Institute of Mental Health.
For Ms Pong, her daughter’s diagnosis brought clarity and much-needed support.
“My daughter will be sitting her N levels next year,” she says. “And while some may still think she’s not ‘smart enough’ for the Express stream, I now see how resilient, capable and uniquely gifted she is.”
Leaving behind the language of blame and moral failure – “Why are you like this? What am I doing wrong?” – is an important step towards having a healthier and shame-free conversation about how your child’s needs are not being met and how you can better meet them.
2. Stop forcing a square peg into a round hole
Neurodivergence is not a death sentence. Neither is it a superpower.
What it really translates into is a different way of experiencing and understanding the world, plus struggling to pay attention for prolonged periods, feeling constantly restless or expending greater effort on tasks that seem effortless to others.
Not all of these symptoms are experienced by those who have ADHD. While some struggle with inattentiveness, others wrestle with hyperactivity, and some deal with both.
The friction stems from how much of the world is not built with this in mind, such as white-collar jobs that involve long hours at a desk or classroom environments that heap shame on “disruptive” students.
Ms Alleyah, an 18-year-old student diagnosed with ADHD a year ago who declined to share her last name, wishes her parents could have understood earlier that she could not help being different.
“Growing up, I was made to feel like there was something fundamentally wrong with me,” she says. “I grew up feeling like I could never tell my parents anything because they wouldn’t understand – they would yell at me, saying I wasn’t putting in enough effort even though I had ‘potential’.”
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This often leads to “masking” – where people with ADHD consciously or unconsciously suppress or compensate for their ADHD symptoms to appear neurotypical.
Masking can involve forcing oneself to sit still, copying others’ social behaviours, avoiding situations that spotlight their difficulties or working harder to achieve the same results.
American neuropsychologist Russell Barkley suggests that up to one-third of people with ADHD do this. While it can sometimes be useful, doing so chronically often leads to burnout, anxiety and delays in diagnosis.
Some researchers posit that masking is also the reason that fewer women are diagnosed with ADHD.
Ms Alleyah recounts: “I didn’t fit the stereotype of a 12-year-old hyperactive boy. I was a quiet, inattentive girl instead.”
In her view, chronic masking meant that her ADHD was brushed off as depression and anxiety.
Post-diagnosis, her parents have become more understanding. Her father, who was himself diagnosed with ADHD as a young adult, now has a better relationship with her because he, too, grew up forcing himself to abide by neurotypical norms.
Ms Alleyah’s experiences are echoed by many of those living with ADHD I have interviewed, as well as a commonly held wish that their parents could have looked further into their struggle beyond accepting the “lazy” label.
Ms Moonlake Lee, who founded the non-profit Unlocking ADHD, says the most common concerns she hears from parents are whether ADHD might close doors for their child, and whether their child can keep up academically.
She notes that while parents might vex over how and when to discuss ADHD and their concerns with their children, their kids are often already aware of these unspoken fears and differences.
“That’s why we encourage parents to talk about ADHD early and openly – in a way that’s age-appropriate and strengths-based,” she says. “When the diagnosis is framed to better understand how their brain works, it can actually empower the child.”
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3. Life is not a race
What complicates things is that we live in a society built for early bloomers.
All these 30-under-30 lists, scholarships reserved for star students under 18 and high-stakes school-leaving exams shape one’s university and career trajectory from as early as age 12. This breeds a “life is a race” mentality where everyone is either ahead of the pack or falling behind.
But reality is perhaps more nuanced.
Ms Gladys Yeo, 25, dropped out of her International Baccalaureate programme at 17 and decided to go to beauty school instead. Working as a freelance make-up artist, she met people from different ages and walks of life – such as Institute of Technical Education graduates and older homemakers – who were “all so happy and warm”.
“It made me realise there was more than one way to be happy,” says the now magazine writer, who was diagnosed with ADHD at 21.
Moving to Australia to pursue her university degree in media and arts also opened her eyes to “how narrow the average Singaporean view of success is”, because Australian society did not look askance at those engaged in “blue-collar” work.
She discovered that the rat race to prestigious universities and white-collar professions was more a condition of Singaporean life than a universal state of humanity.
Of course, there is no disputing that good-class degrees correlate with higher starting incomes and entry into highly competitive and grade-dependent careers like law, medicine and computing.
But as Singapore increasingly moves to recognise more varied forms of success, adopt education policies that reduce pressure and promote different kinds of intelligence, one crucial role that parents play is not to stand in the way.
Looking back at my stressful schooling years, I can see now that my fraught arguments with my parents were just manifestations of deeply held social anxieties.
We knew nobody my age who had dropped out of school. They were deeply concerned that stepping outside the norm would irreversibly damage my life prospects. I, too, lacked the wherewithal to ignore the naysayers or allay their worries.
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If I could turn back time, it would be to drop out from a system that sapped me, not in defeat, but with optimism that things would turn out all right, in the end.
“We need to shift our expectations, adjust how we (as parents) support them, and advocate for their needs – especially when others don’t see the hidden challenges,” reflects Ms Lee, who has a daughter with ADHD and was diagnosed with it herself at age 50.
“Our role isn’t just to push them towards success, but to walk alongside them so they build the skills and self-belief to thrive.
“The ADHD brain is wired for interest, novelty and urgency. If we understand this and create environments where their strengths can shine, we open the door for them not just to keep up, but also to soar.”
It is an incredibly scary thing for a child to forge his or her own path or to have this reality thrust upon him or her because of neurodivergence. What would make all this a little less frightening are brave parents who will take the child’s hand and journey along with him or her without judgment.
Hear Me Out is a new series where young journalists (over)share on topics ranging from navigating friendships to self-loathing, and the occasional intrusive thought.
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