An ADHD family tree

Did your black sheep of the family great-uncle have ADHD?

The Paps-Pope family in Johannesburg around 1919

Years ago before I knew about ADHD (that’s a recurring phrase because I think we all know about ADHD before we know about ADHD) I used to wonder sometimes about whether my family contained people like me in the past. The reason for this was that I was always looking at myself as something a bit alien, something a bit out of order, without really knowing what it was. After half a lifetime of thinking about myself (now I’d call it self-awareness) I had worked out a pretty good idea of what drove me and how I was in the world. But I didn’t know anyone else like me (well, of course I did, but it hadn’t occurred to me yet that people with ADHD tend to live in ADHD clusters that they assemble around themselves, more on that later).

Once my dad told me about his uncle. He never talked much about his family and to this day I don’t know much about them, about who was around him when he was growing up. I do know that his parents were slightly nutty entrepreneurial types just from the fact that when he was born they were running a hotel in the middle of nowhere and later they owned a piano salon in Johannesburg. He told me that his uncle had had a terrible falling out with his father and he also told me that his uncle owned a shop in Johannesburg but he didn’t seem interested in it, that he never really worked at the shop. At the time I just thought it was a funny anecdote but after learning a lot about ADHD I realised that this is exactly my sort of behaviour - to start a project full of enthusiasm and then to try and abandon it after it starts because I lose interest. I think I discovered a genetic connection to my father’s family via ADHD, which does get passed down family lines. Then I started wondering whether one of his parents also had ADHD because, well, they seemed to be adventurous and creative and also not terribly successful at it. Of course, as none of them are still around (except for my aunt who I guess I should ask about them) so I can’t pursue any details like, did they tend to do things impulsively, how long did they own the shop/hotel/piano salon for, what other projects did they start and then abandon.

So I could work out a possible ADHD connection to my grandfather or grandmother and to my great uncle. I also have suspicions about my other grandfather who spent his entire life galivanting around Asia and starting businesses, all of which failed to thrive. I’d like to know what my father was like as a boy, at school. I know almost nothing except that he left school without going on to university and he joined the army. Did he do this on impulse? Did he get thrown out of school? I’d like to push it further back but there’s nobody to ask.

What I do believe is that if you could go back in time you’d find a few people in each generation of an ADHD family who displayed all the traits of ADHD. Their lives would be chaotic with a bent towards something creative or a creative way of doing things, they may have been outsiders who didn’t stay near to where they started, who constantly moved around. Maybe they ended up in prison or did impulsive things like bigamy or running away to join the circus. Often they’ll be known in the family as the black sheep, as the one who went crazy, who disappeared, who lived life on their own terms, who was a bohemian. None of these things are proof of ADHD of course, but if you have ADHD in your family it might be interesting to try and construct a family tree of ADHD. And if you do, please tell me about it.

All in the Family? The Genetics of AD/HD