I Was a Girl with ADHD. My Teachers Never Saw Me | The Walrus

"My teacher, a skinny, autumnal Mrs. Claus type named Mrs. V, was old school in that she was super religious and maintained the threat of physical violence decades after it was acceptable to hit children at school. She'd rap a long HB pencil against her twiggy fingers as she patrolled our desks and pop kids on the back of the head for chatting, doodling, nose picking, or having bad posture (among other sins)."

"I did my best to maintain the illusion I was just like the other kids, but it was in Mrs. V's classroom, lined with letters, numbers, and cartoon animals, all competing for my attention with the buzzing fluorescent lights overhead, that I first understood the stakes of becoming overwhelmed by my environment. Like many neurodivergent kids who lack the ability to filter out peripheral sensory input, I took it all in. Since I could only sit, that energy sped through my body without an exit."

"As we recited morning prayers one day in late September, my body betrayed me. During the Hail Mary, I jutted a hand into the air and Mrs. V's all-seeing eyes shot to me, narrowed, and looked away. There was no interrupting prayer time on her watch, and we still had a whole "Our Father" to get through, so I crossed my legs and finished praying with a very specific ask of God: Please make no one notice that I peed my pants."

A second-grade classroom environment combined strict religious discipline and sensory overstimulation. Mrs. V enforced old-school, punitive behavior controls and assigned penance tied to moral judgments. The narrator experienced intense sensory input from classroom visuals and buzzing lights and could not filter peripheral stimuli. Internal energy built without physical release, culminating during morning prayers when the narrator accidentally urinated and silently prayed for invisibility. The narrator completed the prayer despite humiliation. A classmate then pointed out the puddle, resulting in public exposure and intensified shame under the teacher's uncompromising authority.

Read at The Walrus