Noit

It's been about eighteen months since I first spoke to a doctor about getting referred for an adult ADHD diagnosis. The doc said basically "I'll refer you but don't expect anything because you're holding down a job and a family so you must be doing alright". I had my screening interview back in June, and that was followed up by two web-based questionnaires, one for me, and one for an adult who was about when I was young. My mum filled this role. And it's off the back of this questionnaire that the NHS has discharged me, stating "ADHD is a life-long condition and we would expect differences to have been evident from an early age" and "[my] difficulties are not best explained by a diagnosis such as ADHD".

Unqualified as I am, I do still feel like based on my own research, ADHD is probably the best explanation for a bunch of stuff in my life. A guy I've spoken to a lot who has some experience says my lived experience sounds fairly textbook ADHD/autism as taking effect from my mid to late teens (when my mum wasn't about so much), but the NHS seem to have focused in on my early childhood in discharging me.

Has anyone here been discharged by the NHS before a diagnosis, and what did you do afterwards? Did you carry on and get diagnosed elsewhere? If that happens, do you have to cover the entire cost of prescriptions forever? Did you get diagnosed with something else? ngl this feels like a real blow and I don't really know what to do next.

I bought a Thule Crossover eight years ago and the zip on it has finally gone. Short of getting a local seamstress to fit a new zip, I think it's time for a new one, and am a bit tempted by the Thule Crossover 2 30l. Are Thule still good? Is there anything else of the same sort of size that I should be considering?

I’m looking for a lightweight waterproof jacket with a hood, ideally available in the UK. I don’t buy jackets very often so I don’t know what I should be looking for asides from that broad category. Suggestions welcome!

My daughter is approaching 3 and my wife has suggested a tablet either as a birthday or Christmas present, and I’m a bit hesitant. It’d be great for long trips, but I think as a day-to-day thing it might be a distraction. It’d get Spidey and Friends off the telly though. How and when did you handle this?

I buy a few kilos of dog biscuits at a time and at the moment we keep them in the bag in the garage, and decant enough for a week into a plastic kitchen tub. I’m worried about rats attacking what’s in the garage, so I suspect I want some kind of hard plastic tub, but I’m concerned about it being too big and awkward to easily get out the week’s food. Has anyone else got this solved?

A few months ago I bought some Amazon knock-off fingears to see if I vibed with the concept on the cheap. I liked the idea but the execution was dreadful, magnets were weak, plastic was incredibly cheap and rattly.

So I splashed out thirty quid on the official fingears. They’re definitely much better, the gearing is much smoother and the plastic is much better quality. But the whole thing still doesn’t quite cut the mustard, the magnets still feel a little weak and the sound is still a bit rattly. Does anyone know of anything that’s a step up in quality? I know they’ve got a wood and metal version for £90 but that’s quite a jump up and I’m concerned about spending that much on something that flies out of my hands so frequently.

Does anyone have any experience with the wooden fingears, are they significantly more satisfying and ideally a bit more sticky, magnet-wise? Or are there any other similar products that bridge the gap between £30 and £90?

Series 16 starts on September 21st, 9pm on Channel 4.

Watching The Fashion Badge, Duggee is described as ahead of the times in his homemade fashion and is clearly shown wearing 1950s/1960s gear as part of a decade on decade montage that also covers the 1980s. Given the lifespan of most dogs I’m splitting the difference been seventy years old and functionally immortal.

I’ve set up a play money prediction market, see if you can predict who will win the next series.

My eldest is two and a half and she goes to nursery three days a week. There’s another girl at the nursery, around the same age as her, who seems to have some issues with hitting. Let’s call her Amy (not real name). We know Amy hit my daughter a few months back. Nursery were spoken to, they said they’d monitor and teach kind hands etc. Since then we’ve heard grumbling at the nursery gate about Amy that suggest she’s still causing trouble, but nothing that affected my daughter.

Yesterday my daughter told us “Amy hit me” in a heartbreaking little voice, but we got no more useful information out of her. My wife raised it with the nursery this morning, and was told that Amy had hit another child, and they were continuing to work on her. And yeah, fair enough, my toddler (and many others, I suspect) doesn’t have the consistency of language to differentiate between “I was hit” and “I saw someone else hit”, so maybe it’s communication thing. But this Amy obviously has some issues.

I’m a bit lost as to what to do. We’ve told our daughter to loudly say “no” and tell an adult if someone is mean to her. And I know that kids who hit are likely to have problems at home and so I don’t want to teach my daughter to be a mean girl in return. But this behaviour is obviously getting to her, and I just want my little girl to feel safe and happy.

I don’t know if we can ask the nursery to do much more, the staff are aware and keep an eye out, but they can’t be omniscient. And she has friends there, so I don’t really want to move nurseries. Does anyone have any ideas?