I Bought Myself a Lite-Brite and Celebrated My Inner Child

Because she deserves to have a do over. We all should get a do over.

In one of my previous essays, I mentioned the sense of loss I have felt in looking back at parts of my life where I recognized that time of my life was deeply affected by having no idea that my brain worked differently than everyone else.

That difference wasn’t just confusing for me, it was absolutely frustrating for my parents and teachers.

I don’t blame them for their frustration. the research was so new, and none of that research was focused on little girls and the fact that they may suffer from ADHD, which may be the root of all the things that drove adults around us crazy.

I was a well-behaved kid, but I couldn’t focus and never remembered things wreaked havoc on my life. My masking started early. Because I was so young, I didn’t have much skill in creating elaborate schemes to hide the chaos in my head.

My go-to was lying. I lied. A lot.

I very firmly remember being in 5th grade and getting caught by my math teacher, Mrs. Kennon, lying to my parents about my missing homework. I’m pretty sure I blamed her for it and she was not having that!

She screamed at me in front of all of my classmates that I lied to my parents and dragged me to the principal’s office by my ear. By. My. Ear.

High school didn’t get any better. I could not verbalize to anyone why I could never do my homework but my ass could be saved at the last minute by cramming for my finals. I am pretty sure I spent 75% of my high school career grounded for my grades.

Suffice it to say, I feel like I missed out on a good portion of being a kid.

I have a sneaking suspicion that my fellow ADHDers are no strangers to any of the following things:

• Having to sit quietly in class while our classmates that could remember basic things got to claim things from the “treasure box” because we didn’t because we could never seem to collect enough reward stars.

• Having our toys or favorite things confiscated until we could do better in school or actually keep our room clean.

• Really cool stuff was offered to us as incentives to “do better,” but we could never actually master the doing better to get the thing.

Yeah. Same, friends. Same.

Photo by Veronica García on Unsplash

Last week, I had a weird thought, and I have no idea where it came from other than my brain is nothing but random thoughts. I thought about one of my favorite toys as a kid, and the reason I loved it made me laugh. There was a sudden realization I filed into the overflowing bins of “Signs I Have ADHD I Had No Idea Was ADHD.”

My favorite toy was my Lite-Brite. Of course, stabbing colored pegs into that black paper was super fun, but what I really loved was organizing and color-coding the pegs before starting a sheet.

In a fit of frivolity and part of my endless seeking of dopamine, I went to Amazon and bought myself a damn Lite-Brite. Why? Because I missed out on things as a kid because no one, especially me, understood my brain.

I’ve decided I’m giving myself a childhood do-over. I’m wading right into reclaiming my childhood and leaning way into doing fun things I loved as a kid simply because I can, and no one is going to take a Lite-Bright away from a 48-year-old grown-ass woman.

I am inviting you to join me in this. Go deep. Go buy yourself some Legos. Remember that one thing you wanted you never earned? Buy that too. Create your own sticker reward chart as an adult. Nurture that child no one understood. Make her favorite meal. Let her stay up way too late. Let her have cake for breakfast. We all deserve that.

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