Like most people with ADHD, there are times when I get completely absorbed into whatever it is I am doing. As long as it is something I am completely invested in and enjoy, I will hyperfocus on that task so hard that I will become blind and deaf to all else. I have missed conversations with people that I care about because they could not get my attention, as I was currently in the depths of my mind. For this reason, although the hyperfocus can come in handy, I sometimes wish I did not have it, or at the very least, could figure out how to control it somehow, because it is heartbreaking to me when I miss things happening on the outside because I’m stuck in a feedback loop on the inside.

When I was young, the thing that would most often cause me to hyperfocus was our television. My parents would be standing right in front of me and I could clearly perceive them at some level because I would move my head so that they were not blocking my view of the television. This would cause my parents to get very angry, and in the end, one of them (exclusively my mother) would end up yelling at me to get my attention. As you can imagine, this would end in everyone getting upset at each other. They did not seem to understand that I had no control over when the hyperfocus happened or that I was not trying to ignore them.

These days, I am the parent and sometimes my son gets hyperfocused while watching television and I’ll stand in front of him, trying to get his attention, only to have him tilt his head around me, trying to see the television and being completely unaware that he is doing so. But, remembering my own experiences as a child, I have found another way to get his attention, one that doesn’t involve anyone getting upset.

I lean toward him and gently, I press my forehead to his forehead. “Xander,” I say quietly. “I need your attention for a moment.” Touching him helps him to break out of hyperfocus. My forehead to his forehead means that I am blocking out his whole view. Sometimes I even put my hands to the outer side of either eye to act as blinders. And then whatever I need from him, I try to make it short and sweet because lectures do not work for children. Especially children who have ‘more important things’ to attend to. This has been working for us. It isn’t a perfect system, but it far surpasses getting yelled at for something you have no control over.