He's trying to show him where his bootstraps are.
From my perspective it's a positive message, not finger wagging at the impaired.
When the vast, vast majority of people are capable of a baseline far above yours, they hold you to their standards mercilessly.
The number of times I've been reduced to tears by this conversation. I'm telling you. This is by far the worst part of it all.
There's also an awful lot of people, as the parent said, who don't have ADHD but still struggle with {focus, attention, willpower} from just not having used it. Those people should definitely be trying to focus harder and shouldn't be led down the path of "focus is innate/unchangeable".
Unless you're living with ADHD, you really have no business handing out such directives. I was a hardcore meditator for years, arguably the crucible of mind training -- spent months of silent, directed attention in monasteries -- and despite blowing open the doors to some peak states, complete equanimity with all phenomena, and insight into some of the fundamental mechanics of desire and resistance, I was unable to hold any kind of job at all before I bit the bullet and medicated.
The decades of suffering I experienced because everyone around me was pushing this toxic narrative that ADHD was overdiagnosed and most likely a schema of my own failures could have been avoided if my parents just took a hard look at me and took me to a psychiatrist.
Armchair psychiatrists of Hacker News: please stop this irresponsible and dangerous public criticism of your interpretation of mental illness or the state of psychiatry.
