Telling parents that their child's self-management is running behind their age usually brings relief rather than alarm. It names something they had already noticed and had been blaming somebody for.

Much of what matters most in an assessment never comes up unless you ask for it directly. Unplanned pregnancies, money trouble, sackings, near misses in the car: people very rarely volunteer these.

Plenty of adults with ADHD keep tripping over rules nobody ever stated: how long a turn in a conversation lasts, when a story has gone on too long, when a joke reads differently than you meant it.

When you meet a confident claim about ADHD, look it up before passing it on. A search of recent papers, limited to the last few years, takes a couple of minutes and often changes the picture.