Why I Won’t Be Watching the Channel 4 ADHD Documentary

I’m late to the conversation about Channel 4 ADHD programme — mostly because I haven’t watched it, and I don’t think I can.

I’ve already seen the distress it’s caused people I care about. I can’t sit and watch a programme talking about a condition that has reshaped our family’s life — for better and for worse. Watching that would mean reliving the heartache, the fear, and the tears that came alongside the joy.

From the adverts, it sounds like the programme frames ADHD as a social construct. And in some ways, I understand that argument. Our society has stripped away so many of the practical, hands-on roles that once let different kinds of minds thrive. We expect children to sit still for six hours a day. We expect a child who’s just survived primary school to walk into secondary school and suddenly produce adult-level executive function, as if it simply switches on.

So yes — society plays a part. But that’s not the same as saying ADHD isn’t real.

We have worked so hard to understand our child’s ADHD — their strengths, their learning style, the strategies that help them thrive. And still, some days end with them sobbing, telling us how much they hate having ADHD. That’s not a social construct. That’s a child in real pain.

It has been both heartbreaking and liberating to accept that our child can only really reach their potential with medication. I have complete respect for families who choose a different path, but for us, medication has been life-changing. Life-saving, even.

So if ADHD is “just a myth”, what exactly have we been living through for the last two decades? What is it that has shaped our family so profoundly, that has brought us to situations I never could have imagined, and that has also connected us to a community of people who understand, because they’ve felt it too?

I won’t be watching that programme. I live it every day.