I think it's fair to say that schoolwork just outpaces attention span and focus at some point. Many people do well in their first years, and the struggles often only manifest themselves when more and more subjects get added, each with higher workloads than before.
Makes a lot of sense, but some people just cling to the but you did so well in elementary school thing
You're normally expected to have lifelong symptoms, but that doesn't mean you had to do badly in school.
You can constantly daydream, lose stuff and turn up late for everything and still ace tests, at least early on. It gets harder to get away with this later in life.
Whether they're directly caused by an ADHD neurotype or not, all those things are associated with ADHD
To pick one at random, Rejection Sensitive Disphoria (RSD) is often found with people who have ADHD. People dealing with RSD often imagine rejection where none was intended. That includes reading negative feelings into text messages, conversations, etc.
(CAVEAT: I am not an expert. This is not my professional field. This is speculation from someone who has ADHD and is around ADHD kids)
I don't know if there's good research out there or not about RSD+ ADHD, but I suspect RSD is conditioned. Growing up with ADHD, you get a lot of negative feedback from people. You aren't paying attention well enough, you're often clumsy, you often say the wrong things at the wrong time, etc. With enough of that sort of feedback, developing negative self talk which turns into full RSD sounds like a natural outcome.
While I have never defaulted to wondering if friends hated me, I do overthink every vague response from someone. Not in a negative way, just all the possibilities and implications that there could be.
Asking for clarification from non-friends does frequently end in them being annoyed by me. No Susan, I don't know what you are implying by pointing out someone's is wearing a green shirt.
Missing social cues is adhd related. Not understanding implied social cues is more autism related. Many people with one have the other so it can be hard to separate them.
Social cues primarily require prior knowledge of the person and the context to have meaning. Stating that something is a color with no additional context as to why that color has a meaning is confusing.
"Thst shirt is blue!"
Ok. I wonder if it is just a bold color, a team color, doesn't go with some other color they are wearing, or something else. A neurotypiczl person would probably just assume their first assumpton is correct but answer with a vague "It sure is!" they can both go on with their day whether they are on the same page or not.
The reason that this is my example is after having a lot of technical discussions that require shared understanding of details, it is apparent that the vast majority of people just assume they are on the same page when they are not. But they communicate in vsgue ways that don't cause issues as long as nobody checks to see if they really are on the same page.
It's a bit of a shame that ADD isn't a thing anymore, just dropping the H makes it a lot less misleading. The attention deficit part is broadly descriptive of my issues
I do find it odd that it settled into ADHD-I, ADHD-H and ADHD-C; the one that is primarily expressed through hyperactivity literally is called "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - Hyperactive".
Removing the H and using the subtypes would add clarity for sure.