About Kendall Delamont

I remember my first exposure to ADHD very clearly.

My parents and I were meeting with my grade 7 teacher when she suggested I might be struggling with a condition called “ADHD.” I remember feeling deeply offended by that suggestion. 

It was only about a year later, when my sister was in grade 5, that she was diagnosed. And so, while I didn’t identify with it myself, I grew up generally understanding ADHD, what it meant, and the struggles that came with it. 

During my psychology degree, I started researching ADHD in a more meaningful way. I dove into it as a topic for several research projects, figuring I already had some pretty good foundational knowledge around the topic. But the deeper I got, the more I realized my grade 7 teacher may have been onto something.

Finally, I became a teacher. In an effort to better support my students with ADHD, I got to know the disorder even more intimately. The more I learned, the more I saw symptoms in my own life. 

In a conversation with our learning support teacher, I casually mentioned that I thought I might have ADHD. She answered, "You think?" in what may have been the most sarcastic tone I’d ever heard.

Two distinct moments stand out as my tipping points when I decided I needed to do something.

First, I really struggled to get through marking students' writing assignments. It took 45 minutes per writing assignment, which just wasn’t a sustainable pace for my career.

Secondly, I vividly recall talking with a coworker after school hours when she said, "I'm sorry, I've got to get to work," and she simply started working. I realized that I’d never been able to choose work and just get started. I decided I’d had enough and started pursuing my diagnosis.

In both my personal journey and professional work with ADHD, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. The materials available to parents and teachers primarily focus on ‘fixing’ an ADHD brain. They look exclusively at the deficits, making the ADHD brain out to be some sad and broken thing.

There are so few materials focusing on the beauty and power of the ADHD brain. I want to change that.

In developing compassion for and understanding of my ADHD, I’ve come to embrace it as part of me. And while, yes, ADHD comes with profound challenges, there are wonderful parts of ADHD that we need to highlight.

Through teaching kids with ADHD, coaching parents, and my own experience, I’ve come to a conclusion: people with ADHD are not broken and do not need to be fixed. We simply need tools, resources, and supports that empower us to thrive in a neurotypical world.