Climbing the Wall of Awful

I was recently listening to the Being Unnormal Podcast. It is a podcast where a different type of "unnormal" is highlighted in each episode, to help people learn about various issues and situations, and to allow people to see the world through someone else's eyes. If you haven't listened to it before, you should check it out. Anyways, I listened to the ADHD episode, in which ADHD coach Brendan Mahan, of ADHD Essentials, talks with the podcast creator.

One of the things he talks about in the episode is the "Wall of Awful." While you may not have heard this term before, many people, especially those with ADHD, are likely to relate to it. The Wall of Awful is an emotional wall that is built little by little, every time you fail at something. Here is an example some adults may have experienced. You decide you are going to join a gym and start exercising. But each day, you procrastinate and don't go. Then, you feel guilty and defeated because you haven't gone to the gym yet. Because you feel so awful about it, you don't feel like you will go the next day or the next day. You continue not going to the gym. Soon going to the gym feels like a huge hurdle that you will never manage to get over.

Children and adults feel like this a lot of the time. Often, instead of failing at something because they procrastinated, they fail at something because they didn't have the executive functioning skills to accomplish it. So their feeling of awfulness becomes very personal to them. Others may contribute to this feeling of despair by telling the child or adult that they are just lazy or stubborn, or by punishing them for it.

(Brendan Mehan mentions something he sometimes does when he talks to groups about ADHD. He has asthma, and sometimes needs to use his inhaler. When he does, he apologizes to the group for being too lazy and unmotivated to breathe. This always makes everyone laugh, because of course his asthma is not a result of his being lazy or unmotivated. Yet, that is how many people view those with ADHD.)

Everyone can climb their Wall of Awful. But it is not a matter of just standing up and doing it. Getting started can be the hardest part. Demanding that the person get started right now, getting angry at them, or beginning to take away privileges when a child does not begin in a timely manner, is likely to have the opposite result and cause the person to be more stuck than ever at the bottom of the wall.  Often, what we need is a boost to get started.

Mehan explains how he sometimes helps his children to get over their Walls of Awful homework assignments. He agrees to do one part of the homework assignment for them. He does not do the learning part for them, but he may do some of the work for them. If the child is supposed to write spelling sentences, he might have them dictate the sentence and the spelling while he writes it for them. This gets the child over the Wall of Awful. They build up their confidence by seeing that they can climb that Wall of Awful... they can come up with spelling sentences, and they can figure out how to spell the words.

After a few times of writing the sentences that the child dictates, the parent might agree to write all of the sentence dictated by the child, except for the actual spelling word. So the child climbs the Wall of Awful again, this time with a little less help, and learns how to do it.

Eventually, the parent may agree to help with every other sentence. And soon, the child is scampering over their Wall of Awful on their own.

Some parents and teachers are very reluctant to help children with their work. They feel that the child should be doing all of the work on their own, or that the child may be manipulating the adult in order to get out of doing work that they are capable of doing. It is important for parents and teachers to see that they are supporting a child and helping them to gain the strength and skills to get over their Wall of Awful on their own.

What is your Wall of Awful? What help do you need in order to get over it?