#ADHD memes are very relatable and I thought maybe I should get tested

[krakenartificer]

I see a lot of people saying "I wonder if I should get tested for ADHD", and ..... yes. You should.

(Obviously not if you're in a bad healthcare situation like uninsured in the US or whatever. Don't go broke to get a diagnosis.)

But if you could go get an assessment? Go do it. It's not like it's a commitment to call yourself ADHD forever. It's not a change of citizenship or a marriage vow. Going to get the screening isn't an eternal promise to take amphetamines for the rest of your life. It's literally just a question. There is no harm or problem or risk in just finding out the answer to a question.

Maybe the result will come back that you don't have ADHD. It's still nice to know that.

Maybe the psychologist will say, "Given your results, I don't think you have ADHD, but I'd like to test you for ________." And then you'll find out what you DO have. Which is nice.

Whether you have ADHD or autism or PTSD or anxiety or something else ... you'll have information on what's going on in your brain, and get ideas and options for making your life easier.

Maybe that's drugs

maybe that's accommodations

maybe that's a special type of notebook/planner

maybe that's just the self-compassion that's possible when you can say "OK, this doesn't mean I'm stupid and it doesn't mean I'm a bad person; I have a brain that's bad at this one particular thing, and that's OK, it just means I have to work around it."

Maybe it's just the relief of language to be able to explain yourself to other people.

(those are all worth it; trust me. Every one of those things can be life-changing)

You know when a company issues a recall, and you go check the serial number on your computer or the expiration date on your chicken nuggets? That all this is. "Hey, some people may be affected by this, and here's how to find out if you're one of them." Not getting screened when you have reason to think you might be in this category would be like deciding not to check for salmonella on your lettuce because .... .... because .... .....????

Look. You are not taking a diagnosis away from other people by getting screened. There's no "must be this executive-dysfunctional to get tested" sign anywhere. You definitely don't need to already be sure that you have it before you take the assessment. "Being sure" is what you aim to be coming out of the assessment, not going into it. * Just go do it. Go forth and learn things about yourself! Return with greater understanding yourself and your relationship to the world!

*This is not to say that there's no time or place for self-diagnosis. See above point about being uninsured in the US, for example. Or when you have insurance/national health care, but there are no good providers in your area. Sometimes self-diagnosis is all you've got, and this post has nothing to do with that. This post is just about the strange reluctance some people have towards finding out that they're not irredeemably incompetent lazy jerks. Maybe you're a perfectly competent and wonderful person who happens to need to do things differently from the rest of the population. Wouldn't it be nice to know that?

[autisticpeterparkerheadcanons]

They say if you can’t find content for something, then make it yourself, so here’s autistic!Peter Parker headcanons that literally no one asked for. I’ve seen some, but they all seem to be very similar, and I need MORE and also I have a different take on it, SO. (My brain that needs Categories for Things doesn’t know what to do with this exactly because it seems that a lot of people think the common labels are too ableist and I don’t disagree, so I’m calling this stealth!autism because it’s Not Obvious And Undiagnosed But Still Relevant, AKA me, lol.)

Under a cut because this monster weighs in at just over 2k words. Oops.

Also, ya know, a little bit AU because I hate that Tony sold the Tower. :P

Tony was the first to realize anything was different about the kid, after he started spending more time actively mentoring him after the Vulture fiasco.

It was small things at first. He didn’t think much about it. The first couple of months, most sarcasm went completely over the kid’s head (which, okay, Tony’s brand of humor isn’t really mainstream anymore, he thinks -- he doesn’t speak meme -- and maybe that was the problem because the kid does slowly catch on to it, and fewer and fewer awkward moments ensue as time passes). He stuttered and didn’t often make eye contact, but he wrote that off as more nerves than anything. He rambled about one topic non-stop sometimes, but he wrote it off as anxiety -- a need to fill the silence. His hands were always busy, if not with anything productive, then a constant fidgeting. Once again, probably just nerves.

But as time passed and Peter became decidedly more comfortable around him, none of those things disappeared. Maybe he stutters a little less, but nothing about his mannerisms changed. And the longer he knows Peter, the more little things come to his attention.

Peter has a hard time taking verbal instructions. It’s not that he’s not listening or focusing. It’s more like he just doesn’t...comprehend? process? It just doesn’t always stick. And that’s okay. Tony can work with that. He makes Peter repeat instructions to make sure he’s got it, or he writes it down if he can’t just show the kid himself. Everybody learns differently, after all. (Tony would know.)

Peter often stayed for dinner when he came to the Tower, and Tony noticed the things he liked to eat and the things he wouldn’t. “You don’t like mushrooms? Uncultured!” -- A shrug. “I don’t mind the taste, but I can’t stand the texture. Same goes for shrimp.”

(He files that information away for safe keeping. Do Not Make Shrimp.)

And, really that was just the start. The seemingly ‘little things’ piled up.

One night, after Peter had left, Tony was puzzling everything over. Trying to figure this oddly eccentric kid out. Pepper offered a listening ear.

“It sounds like he could be on the spectrum? It’s a lot of little things, but they add up. It fits.”

And, oh. That made sense actually. But... “Why would he not tell me that?”

“You’re still his hero. He probably doesn’t want you to think any differently of him.”

So Tony doesn’t say anything. There’s no tactful way to ask something like that, after all. Peter will tell him when he’s ready to -- if he ever is -- Tony figures. But until then, he’ll just keep adjusting. Life is probably hard enough to navigate, no need to make the workshop that way, too.

Peter doesn’t know. He’s always been aware that he’s different, sure, but he has Ned and -- more recently -- MJ as friends and (most of) the Decathlon team, so it’s okay. He doesn’t mind, not really.

(He didn’t present in the ‘normal’ ways when he was little, so, just like Tony, all the adults in his life wrote off the ‘little things’ as something else.)

And then everything happens and suddenly he’s spending a lot of time with the Tony Stark and getting to work in his lab with him, and if the Tony Stark does’t mind that he’s kind of weird and awkward, then he must not be that weird or awkward. Tony doesn’t interrupt his rambles or look annoyed by them. He doesn’t comment on the fidgeting or stuttering. Peter doesn’t know when the hero worship ended, but he thinks it probably had something to do with the sheer amount of patience the man has for him and his oddities.

(And, don’t get him wrong, Tony is still his hero, but it’s different now.)

Besides his aunt and Ned, he thinks Tony might just be the most comfortable person to be around.

Second semester starts, and he finds out he needs to take an elective instead of a free period in order to stay on track to graduate. Unfortunately there’s only one class that’ll fit in his schedule as is and he doesn’t really want to mess around with the placements of his other classes, so he ends up taking some sort of health class, but not the fun home-ec ones where you get to cook and eat the stuff you make. He’s not exactly dreading it, but he’s not looking forward to it either.

Instead of having an exam for midterms, they have a project, the topics assigned at random, things like depression and anxiety and ADHD. Peter’s topic is Autism Spectrum Disorder. Like most people his age, he has a vague idea of what that is, but he thinks it’ll be interesting to learn more about, so he’s at least not dreading doing research.

He starts with the basics, what it is and how it works and the ‘markers’ of how you can tell if someone is. Which leaves him vaguely confused. Because some of these things sound like him? But he’s not, so.

He ends up in forums, because he knows that the strictly medical side of things often doesn’t actually do it justice with how it is to actually live with something. On every forum he slogs though there’s always at least one thread about not being formally diagnosed at all or not until adulthood. And he always reads those because how could something like that get missed? But he quickly finds out it’s really pretty common (or, at least, more common than he thinks it should be).

He goes to blogs, too. Between the two, he finds a million and one things that people on the spectrum deal with that ‘official’ sites don’t tell you. Actual people relate what it’s actually like, and suddenly there’s this seed planted in his mind because holy crap does he identify with this and suddenly a lot of things make more sense.

He’s not sure how he gets there, but he ends up on an online AQ test and he takes it. He doesn’t technically score high enough, but he’s borderline (and the higher end of that, even, barely missing the lowest number, and if he’s honest, a couple questions he wasn’t entirely sure how to answer and that may have made a difference), and the site itself says, “89% of those who fall in the borderline category are diagnosed” and...

He doesn’t really know what to do with this information. He’s almost 16 and he’s old enough to understand this kind of stuff so surely if May knew she would have told him. But how the heck do you even ask about something like this? “Hey, May, am I autistic?” just wasn’t going to cut it. And if she didn’t know, that would be even more awkward. So he doesn’t. He buries the thought and ignores it the best he can.

But Tony notices because of course he does. He asks if Peter is alright and spends an awful lot of time staring at him with that expression no matter how many times he says he’s fine. Eventually, Tony does drop it with a quick “I’m always here to listen if you need to talk -- no judgment” and Peter appreciates that more than he’d like to admit, but just like with May, how the heck do you start a conversation like this one? So he still doesn’t.

For a while after, everything is fine. He turns in his project, gets an A on it, and he puts it out of his mind.

Finals pass, and summer vacation starts, which means he has more time to swing around Queens and more time to spend with Tony in the lab. This is going to be the best summer ever he’s pretty darn sure.

It’s late June, and Peter is staying the weekend because May is out of town and any excuse is a good one. AC/DC is playing over the lab’s speakers, just like normal, and he’s rambling about something when he suddenly becomes very aware that that’s what he’s doing, that he’s actually info-dumping, and -- he cuts off mid-sentence. Because he hasn’t thought about this in months, but it’s back again. What if...?

He zones out, he’s not sure for how long, but the music clicks off and suddenly Tony is sitting directly in front him, obviously concerned. Very concerned, because he’s not even trying to hide it. “Peter? What’s wrong?” No nickname? Tony is definitely on to him, and he’s not going to get away with saying ‘nothing’ this time. He stares down at his hands, and he can’t help but rub his fingers together (he doesn’t really have anything else to fidget with at the current moment so).

He’s very aware of the silence and that Tony is still waiting for an answer. But he doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything.

(To Tony’s credit, he doesn’t so much as shift or sigh. He just...sits and waits. He’s not usually such a patient man, but Peter is different. He can be endlessly patient with Peter. Pepper says it’s because Peter is practically his kid, and he’s not so sure about that, but whatever.)

The silence is uncomfortable and he can feel himself starting to panic, but he forces himself to breathe and try to unscramble his thoughts. Because whatever he says, he’s determined to not say it bluntly. There has to be a subtle way of asking...maybe...right? He’s determined to try, anyway.

In the end, he settles on a mumbled, “Mr Stark? Do you think I’m... different?”

(And Tony has to steel himself because he’s known for more than six months at this point and he’s just been waiting for this conversation so you’d better not mess this up, Stark.) “Maybe. But that’s not a bad thing. Normal people don’t accomplish things worth remembering.”

“You don’t think I’m...weird? or awkward?”

“You’re a teenager. ‘Weird’ and ‘awkward’ are kinda part of the job description.”

Peter almost smiles. He knows Tony is joking with him, but... “No, I mean....” He cuts off. He doesn’t know what he means, really, and trying to figure it out is exhausting. “I don’t know. Never mind. It’s not important.”

“If something is bothering you, that makes it important to me.”

Peter isn’t sure what to think of that, and silence drags on again.

For a hot minute, Tony thinks he blew it. But then Peter speaks up again, and when he finally starts, he rambles it all out and doesn’t even try to sort it out. He just...wants it out. “I just... I don’t fit in, Mr Stark, and I’ve always known that and I’ve been okay with that because I’m just me, ya know? And if other people don’t like me, that’s on them not me, or at least that’s what I’ve always been taught and everything, it’s just I’m weird and I know it, and I’m just...” There’s a pause, and he’s not sure Tony even hears what he ends with, “I think there’s something wrong with me.”

(At this point, Tony realizes that Peter probably didn’t have any idea until a couple of months ago. Oh. Well.)

When Tony replies, it’s not how Peter thinks he will. “Does this have something to do with that mid-term project you had to do?” He finally meets Tony’s gaze again, and Tony adds with a smile, “You were acting kinda like this then, too, kid.”

He looks back down at his hands and mumbles. “Autism. That’s what my project was on.”

“And you think you are?”

Peter can’t even find it in him to nod. He just...keeps staring at his hands and waits for the other shoe to drop because surely this is it, this’ll be the thing that’s too much on top of everything else, and Tony will boot him out because he doesn’t want to deal with it.

It’s only quiet for a moment before Tony says casually, “You wanna know who else is on the spectrum? Einstein. Or, I guess I should say was, but that’s irrelevant.”

Peter is looking at him again, because What???

Tony smiles at the look on Peter’s face. “I’m serious. People who know far more about it than I do say he probably was.” He shrugs. “So your brain works a little differently. So what? It just means that you’ll see answers no one else will. So the way I see it, that just means you’re gonna change the world, kid.”

Peter decides maybe he can live with this after all.

(They go back to work, the music clicks back on, and it’s a solid ten minutes before it dawns on Peter. His head snaps up and over to where Tony is working a few feet away, and says, “You already knew, didn’t you?”

Tony just laughs and says, “Pep guessed before I did really, but I guess you could say that. I’ve had a hunch since around Christmastime.”

And that puts him more at ease than anything yet. Tony knew and still treated him exactly the same as before. He decides maybe this is okay.)

(Not a week later, when Peter shows up at the Tower to work on stuff, he finds a box on his workbench. Inside are various fidget toys. All he can do is stare as Tony comes up beside him.

“Try ‘em out. Let me know what you like. That way I can have a stash because God knows you lose things like no one I’ve ever known.” It’s all said with a fond smile, and Peter knows it’s true -- he does lose things like crazy.

Peter decides he likes the cubes, and Tony is true to his word. “This one stays here, on your table. Here’s another one that stays on your desk at home. This one is a spare for your backpack, and this one is to carry around wherever. I also have three more in the drawer over there for when you inevitably lose one.”

They’re all superhero-themed, and he’s pretty sure Tony commissioned the designs especially for him, though he can’t prove it.

At some point a weighted blanket appears in his room in the Tower after a movie night where Tony pulls out his and Peter comments how AMAZING it is. He gets another one for home for his birthday. Both are also custom-made superhero-themed colors.)