It depends on my mood
My workplace is a bunch of ND engineers who keep interrupting each other. We’ve adopted it as a part of our culture and discussions move very quickly.
It was a bit of a wake-up call for me as an older white man because I didn’t realize how much I had been interrupting everyone else. But I’d rather swallow my pride than keep explaining the point you already get.
ADHD-to-ADHD interruption: Keeps a conversation flowing, completely natural
ADHD-to-non-ADHD interruption: Can be jarring, usually slows the conversation down, and can be unwelcome.
I find it mostly depends if it’s on topic or not. If I interrupt and it adds to or illucidates a point people like it, if I’m dragging them on a journey to some side thought only I understand the connection to, they don’t. So my rule is to keep it on topic and have generally good success
I can listen and wait, or I can contribute to the conversation in a meaningful way. It’s rare that I’m able to do both; holding onto those thoughts while also listening to what someone says is just too much.
It’s a balance of being able to capture a normies attention enough so that they stick around to listen to your hyper-focus.
I use to have a good drinking friend that enjoyed listening to my, usually different, perspective on topics. I realized later that it was because I was just looking at everything through the lense of dialectical materialism. Not entirely. I didn’t even know what that meant back then. But, I think it’s a very natural way I think.
Yes, there are people that have ideas and social interactions, I noticed that, but I’m more interested in how those ideas and social interactions effect the way people act and what those actions result in changing materially. How do ideas influence reality and how does reality shape who someone becomes and what ideas they have?
If you can capture the normies with that perspective. They’ll usually be too interested to notice how much you’re interrupting. It’s like a “hook” of interest. Always enjoyable on the rare occasion.
I remember during one of my therapy sessions my therapist was talking about something and noticed something in my body language. He said it looked like my anxiety was popping up due to whatever we were talking about and I told him “No I just really have something I want to share and I’m doing my best to wait till I can”.
My kid is diagnosed with ADHD, and this sounds like his kind of take. Sadly for me getting interrupted has been the main way to put me in a sour mood, ever since I was a kid. I strongly suspect I might lean more towards autism than ADHD.
I’m someone with pretty bad ADHD and with no kids, so take this how you will.
In my opinion, it is still very important to teach your kid about interrupting and how it can bother others. What I’m going to call “interruption culture” between ADHD individuals (at least in my experience) isn’t just us interrupting each other whenever we feel like it, but it’s a bit of a song and dance.
At least amongst every ADHD person I’ve met, our speech patterns account for others interruptions (giving a sort of on ramp for the other person to interject, or swiftly continuing to your next sentence so as to say “not yet”), we’ll always describe exactly why the interruption is occurring (what train of thought led us to this point, even if it is really roundabout), and is always in a way constructive to the current conversation (if I start talking about Point B after interrupting your Point A, it’s because I believe that the two are in some way related and will explain why during my interruption).
The point of the post (in my opinion, I’m not OP) is an indicator that if a person with ADHD interrupts you, it means that they trust and respect you enough to understand why you’re interrupting. But that sense of trust and respect comes from the fact that a lot of people do not appreciate interruptions and people with ADHD have to learn to accommodate that. (This is not to say that everyone else should just accept it when an ADHD person interrupts them, but just a fact that people with ADHD don’t inherently understand this).
If your child is constantly interrupting, depending on how old they are it might be worth trying to mold the interruptions constructively? Again, I’m not a parent but I was a child with undiagnosed ADHD and can remember what I was like. Maybe it’s teaching them that they can’t interrupt people mid sentence or mid thought, but intentionally giving them a space to say what they need before returning to their point. Maybe it’s getting them to raise their hand before speaking (a sort of “talking stick” approach) to teach them that they need to announce their intent to speak beforehand in some way.
I’m not sure the best methods, but having a constructive outlet definitely helped me as a kid in terms of learning not to just blurt things out. My mother, who similarly to you hates being interrupted, would always stop me if I tried to interrupt once I was in middle school and then tell me when I could start the thought again once she was done. Because of this, I’m pretty good for not interrupting people nowadays (unless they unintentionally use some of the ADHD interruption cues mentioned earlier) and it’s definitely made it a lot easier to talk with people because it no longer feels adversarial when talking to me.
It’s a work in progress. 😑
In polite company I wait my turn, and they wait for me.
With my family, I used to wait my turn, constantly get interrupted and visibly go silent in the hopes that someone noticed (they never did, and I would retreat further inside my head).
Now with my family, I just interrupt. I know they never meant it personally, and so the most normal thing I can do is interrupt, keep the flow going, and let the waterfall of a conversation steer itself by our contributed paddling
It depends on the circumstances how I act when being interrupted. But I have experienced more times than I can count being interrupted or ignored when talking to people at social events. That’s okay and they only have to do that once and I’ll shut up mid sentence, take up my phone and let them be. A couple of times someone implied I was rude and anti social for being on my phone. I don’t give a shit. If you can ignore my while I’m talking directly to you, I don’t understand why you can’t do the same when I’m not.
I generally don’t expect the other person to stop talking just because I start - that was the way I communicated with my siblings and best friend (talk and listen at the same time) and it was jarring at first to have people interpret that as rude, and/or to stop talking so I could.
I don’t have anyone left in my life to talk like that with, and I CAN listen without talking, it’s a skill worth developing I think, was always necessary for deeper conversations, but listening carefully is, I don’t have the right word but somewhere between polite and caring. Not listening with everything you want to respond top of mind.
People often trust me with sensitive personal information so in those moments I keep quiet. And I honestly don’t mind waiting either, I’ll probably forget about it either way unless it’s important. And I speak so quickly that if you give me 2 seconds of silence, in the next 8 I’ll have spoken for 30, lol. The main exception is my wife, who gets my full Tasmanian Devil ADHD energy (and if she can’t she will politely let me know!), but she did sign up for it so 🤷♂️😅.
Me to my daughter: we have to wait it’s their turn, we’re next.
My daughter: looks for a moment, runs around like a chicken with her head cutoff; playing some internal game in her head…
Tries to do ‘the waiting turn thing’ without waiting again
Me: You lost your spot. We have to go back to the end of the line.
My daughter: You gotta be fucking kidding me…
Me: I’m sorry you’re just like me.
Edit: the “take a number” system of waiting needs to be everywhere. Why the fuck I gotta stand here?
Usually (with the occasional exception), I don’t interrupt. Quite frequently unless I’m given the opportunity to, I find I struggle to find a way to break in to a conversation which means I’m normally the ‘quiet’ one, even if I do have something to say. It generally doesn’t help that it takes me time to figure out a response if the subject is something I’m less familiar with which means frequently by the time I’ve come up with something I can contribute, the conversation has moved on.
Speaking can be difficult or awkward when my energy levels are running low 😑
I’m good at waiting my turn. But God help you if you try to cut in line while I am there.
I don’t mind waiting my turn. I’ve interrupted with words that haven’t been well received before, so I usually have to filter it a bit anyway.
Sometimes I forget what I was about to interject with, but that’s okay. I do remember the important stuff, and my friends are good at asking for my opinion too, so I’ll often get a turn to talk anyway
I’m fine with keeping quiet since the person may ask me a question, or would want to hear my opinion. That, and what I say may not gel with the rest of what they need to say.
Listen in the longer now for where the most powerful idea is coming from…
… is a conversational strategy (offered by the Celestine Philosophy novel), that I entertain.
Then I realise those people waiting for turns are brashly pushing the powerful ideas down out of their rigid way. Let the ideas come as they come. Let us evolve.
