Hobbies & Interests in the neurodivergent brain!
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Hobbies, intense or special interests or sometimes even called obsessions are really common for neurodivergent folk! I started thinking about this because of a temperature blanket that I decided I was going to make in 2024, with my newly acquired skill of crocheting! My youngest daughter is an amazing(!) crocheter. She learned how to crochet from a friend at school at the beginning of last year and she hasn’t stopped since. She is incredible! She makes these beautiful little crochet things! She has made frogs, jelly fish, octopuses, bracelets, hair bands, flowers – you name it, she has probably made it – or it’s on her list of things she wants to make!
I mentioned to her in November last year, that I had always wanted to learn how to crochet. My dad, mum and sister, all tried to teach me when I was younger (and even as a younger adult) but I would just get so frustrated and give up. I don’t know if it was because of the way my daughter taught me (she has the patience of a saint), or that I didn’t want to disappoint her, or that I was newly medicated for ADHD, so my frustration tolerance has grown, but in November last year it just clicked and it became my latest interest and hobby.
So, my daughter and I decided to make a temperature blanket each this year. This is where you crochet one row of a blanket each day and the colour of the yarn for that day reflects the temperature of the day. We made our chart and worked out all of our colours. We started off strong, but about 14 days in, we both got bored and now we are so far behind that we obviously don’t remember what the temperatures were. So I have this multicoloured little ‘strip’ that represents the temperature of the first 14 days of January 2024.
This then got me thinking about my other daughter who has very intense hobbies for a little while, then will get over them really quickly as well. In the last 12 months she has gone through LOL dolls, paper squishy making, dolls, clay bead designing, then skin care and now she is moving into home organisation. I think this is because she woke up in the middle of the night a little while ago and came out to find me watching The Home Edit!
Neurodivergent brains often will get so intensely interested in something, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else. It can be anything! From clay beads, skin care or dolls, to dinosaurs, space, sport or Pokemon! If part of their neurodivergence is ADHD, they will also likely move between interests super quickly too. Like me with my crocheting, I had 2 months of intense crocheting and before that it was making cards and labels with my Cricut and before that it was also organisation.
Why is this the case?
Most people have something they do for enjoyment, stress relief or decompressing after a stressful day. A hobby or an interest is a healthy thing to have! It releases dopamine into our brain, which is one of the brain’s neurotransmitters which makes us feel happy and positive. ADHD brains, dont’ have as much access to dopamine as neurotypical brains, so it makes sense that when we find something that releases dopamine into our brains, we want to do it more and more! Because we all want to feel good.
ADHDers are also really naturally curious and love novelty! When we have done something over and over and it’s no longer novel, fun or curiousity provoking, we like to move on to the next thing that will give us that dopamine hit.
What might it look like?
You will know when an ADHDer has a special interest. You will find us doing it A LOT. You will also probably have the privilege of being ‘infodumped’ on. This is where we talk about our interest area or hobbies ALL the time. I do this all the time! It’s because it gets my brain all lit up with excitement and I want to share all about it! If I love this thing, I want the whole world to know about this too! This can be really frustrating to neurotypical folk who are not really that interested in what our interest is, and as parents, we can get frustrated that we may have spent a whole heap of money or time investing in something that our children or adolescents have now just lost interest in.
Here are 7 tips about hobbies or interests for our neurodivergent kids (and us adults too!)
1. Support our interests!
Support our interests, whatever way they come! Let us try lots of different interests, even if we do change them often! We might find something we are SO amazing at and this can build our self confidence and self esteem!
2. Use our special interest to engage and connect with us!
Let us talk (or infodump) about our interests – this is how alot of Neurodivergent folks connect with you and this is such a great way of connecting! Listen and you might just learn something new -some of us have really unique and interesting interests and hobbies!
Teachers and health professionals – use this in your classrooms or ‘therapy’ (support) sessions! How can you integrate our hobbies or interests into activities. Are you learning your times tables? Get them to crochet a 5 chain length then do 5 rows! What is 5 x 5? They are going to be focused on that interest, instead of maths, so why not use it to support their learning.
3. Set a Budget
Supporting interests doesn’t have to mean spending heaps of money – set a budget and boundaries around what will be spent on their interests (e.g. You can have $10 a month to spend at Spotlight on crochet hooks and yarn.)
AND be creative where you get things from. Go to OP shops, thrift shops or even check out Facebook Marketplace or Gumtree and take someone else’s potentially lost interest resources! Not only will you save money, you will be saving the environment too!
4. Keep what you have bought for the next cycle!
Keep the items you have bought even when you’re not interested in it anymore. Often ADHDers will cycle through our interests! Get a box and store everything in it for each hobby, so that the next time we have that interest or hobby cycle around, we have everything we need for it!
5. Set SMALL goals
Instead of setting a HUGE goal, start small! Help your children and adolescents to break down the steps in large projects so they are able to still achieve goals!! This gives us such a sense of achievement. We then don’t feel like we have failed at yet another project, we have just achieved a step to the bigger goal.
6. Never force interests if we are losing interest!!
You trying to keep us engaged on something isn’t going to get us to stick with it. If anything, it will probably just get us to hate it and not pick it up ever again!! Just put it away and it will still be there for the next time we cycle through our interest or hobby. And if we never return to that hobby you can re-gift, sell or give it away for someone else to use!
7. Use it as an opportunity to spark interest in others!
It might just lead to a whole new friendship!
What are your children or adolescents (or your own) interests and hobbies? Share them with me – you might just spark a new interest for someone else!
Photo by Sarah Brown on Unsplash
