Due to me having adhd and corresponding anxiety with a healthy mix of trauma I'm not sure I should speak on this. Sorta biased towards that fear response.

Anyway, almost universally, people with ADHD overreact initially to mistakes they make. This is for a number of reasons, including and not limited to, well...childhood trauma and an education system and culture that severely diminishes their accomplishments while setting inappropriate expectations. Because of all of this (and more besides) people like me feel an exhaustive level of fear when entering new social and professional situations.

The small, inescapable mistakes many people make are magnified in our own heads. So while we often learn quickly, if we've learned to cope, we don't really understand until later. Because of this it can make us feel as if we are incompetent because we display a rapid understanding of complex information and yet have this incessant need to ask questions, even if we could figure out the answer with time and patience.

All because we fear we just don't understand something in the way we know others expect us to.

Hey though! I'm speaking for a lot of people here. Anybody else with ADHD have a different experience?

I think there's more to it than that - sometimes when you get too comfortable you can likewise become resistant to teaching. Probably reality needs to find a balance between those concepts.

That’s why you probably should ask an open question like “How did it happen?” And maybe follow up with “What did we learn from it?” or something.

But I’m neither a parent nor an expert so what do I know?

Probably still a teachable moment... somehow!? :-P

The most unforgivable sin, really.

Idk, any more, my one kid(15) is too often telling me stuff he and others did wrong together that his mother and I have to stop him mid-sentence to ask "in what world would we want you to tell us about this unless you or others got hurt or need an alibi? Why would you tell us this in front of your little sister?"

We should have been so much harsher with his earlier mistakes, like our parents were with us, I tell you.

You get them after parents have already had their way with them, so yeah it's difficult for them to unlearn a lifetime's worth of instruction, to now do the correct thing.

Yup. And we are all human, but what if it were a choice to be angry or to be effective? I'm not proposing anything like not disciplining your kids, as some people choose, just... to be mindful of a teachable moment.

Also, being told/shown something vs. truly knowing it are different things - some people receive more readily visual or auditory or tactile cues.

Anyway, it's your life to do as you please. But there are ways that are easier, and more fulfilling in the long run.

Practically 90% of parents.

It's for brevity, one assumes, though you can always poke holes into any such generalized pattern that is being recognized in such manner - e.g. "people tend to eat food when they are hungry", except people hooked up to an IV line, or those who eat on a schedule, or those who lack a proper hunger response pattern, etc. The presence of exceptions does not, generally, disapprove the "rule" (of thumb).

Does it? Are there people where anger is the best teacher? There are people it can be effective for, but it's unlikely that it's the most effective strategy for them. Seems like a lot of work to find out who those people are too. I'd rather find a teaching strategy that I can hone that is more universal.