When I was a kid, I was punished excessively. My diagnosis occurred when I was 25. In the 1980s, I got paddled every day at school and was punished constantly. It made me feel rejected, leading to rejection sensitivity dysphoria. By the time I was 9, I decided life was not worth living and have not changed my mind at 45 years old. I would never have a child to suffer the way I did. I still feel like nobody wants me around. My mental health issues have severely impacted my quality of life. I’m just now figuring out that this might be why I have never felt my clock tick, or thought for even a second of my life that I wanted kids.
Has this happened to anyone else? I wonder how many in this forum might have decided against parenthood due to ADHD effects without realizing it.
I was rarely if ever punished, at most they took away my PS2 for an hour or so despite my fledgling shit grades at best, and me stopping all homework from grade 5. I had a pretty happy childhood as a single child of a happy, loving, married family, my parents were relatively well off. The only dark note was being beaten frequently in primary school, but I made up with the bullies later.
I have no mental health issues and have never really had any, despite suffering plenty in my mid to late teens from gender dysphoria and being thus rejected by those parents later and suffering to stay afloat in a foreign country, including a brief stint as a poly-drug addict to fight panic attacks over being fired by a bigoted boss on whom my visa depended after she tried to fire me on my day off for having a migraine.
I still don’t want kids.