A mother from Kitchener is trying to use her personal experience with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) to create more inclusive spaces for children. Amanda Amaral wrote a book called, My Invisible Friend ADHD. “I wrote this book because I have ADHD and, as a kid, I kind of struggled to understand what was happening,” she said. Amaral, like many other women, was diagnosed later in life, when she was 30-years-old. “Because I grew up not knowing I had ADHD, it came with a lot of self-doubt and self-criticism.” Once she was diagnosed, Amaral said she would remind herself that she was “built in a different way” and used strategies that were tailored to her own needs. Her book explores the struggles some children with ADHD face, but also highlights the positives. “When I was a kid, there was a lot of misplaced pencils and bouncing off the walls. I had a lot of ideas and I was a super creative kid,” she said. “Like being very charismatic, adventurous, daring, loving new things - these are things that are strengths that we should make sure that kids understand about themselves so that they can really lean into those things.” Amaral recently won the K-W Oktoberfest Women of the Year award for arts and culture and received a sponsorship from the Bank of Montreal (BMO). “The book itself, it’s made a difference for so many kids,” said Jacqueline Hewson, the vice president and market leader for BMO Private Wealth Waterloo. “Reading it, I see my son in there. So, I’m like, yeah, this is pretty cool. You can relate as a parent to those experiences as well.” BMO purchased hundreds of copies of Amaral’s book and donated them to school libraries across the region. “It will not only help our students to see themselves in the book, but also for our educators to be able to identify when students are struggling or experiencing some of these things that she had experienced,” said Annalisa Varano, the Waterloo Catholic District School Board’s director of education. Amaral read her book to a room full of students at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Catholic Elementary School in November, and called it a full circle moment. “Seeing them see me with ADHD, winning awards, writing books, they hopefully see themselves in me and can get a little bit more inspired by that,” she said. Just as a line in Amaral’s colourfully illustrated book reads, “It’s each of our differences that makes us unique.”
