A companion to the main ADHD article, written for professors and higher-education professionals.
A student emails you begging for a structured weekly check in, then misses three of them in a row and seems mortified each time. You start to wonder if they even know what they want. They do. Their brain just wants two things at once, and your syllabus was not built to hold both.
What this actually is
AuDHD pairs ADHD's pull toward novelty and stimulation with autism's need for predictability and control, in the same person, often in the same hour. It is not indecision. It is two real, valid neurological demands that do not cancel each other out, they compete, and whichever one loses that round is the one that looks like the problem from the outside.
How it shows up in you and your students
If this is you, you know the pattern, you crave a new project idea and then cannot function without your exact morning routine intact, and colleagues read that as flaky when it is actually two systems negotiating in real time. In your students, it looks like the one who wants a rigid rubric and then submits something wildly outside it, or asks for flexibility and then melts down when a deadline actually moves. That is not manipulation and it is not laziness, it is a brain trying to satisfy two needs your one syllabus policy was not built for, and the student usually cannot articulate the tension any better than you can see it.
What actually helps
Offer structure with built in choice, a firm due date with a menu of acceptable formats, so students get predictability and some control in the same policy instead of having to choose between them. In your own work, protect one fixed routine per day, same start time, same first task, and let everything else flex around it, that single anchor does more for you than any productivity system you have tried and abandoned. For students who seem to contradict their own requests, ask directly, do you want me to hold the line here or build in room, most will tell you plainly if you ask instead of guessing on their behalf. Use Universal Design for Learning basics, multiple ways to demonstrate mastery, so the same course structure serves both the routine seeking and the novelty seeking parts of a brain like this without forcing a choice.
One move this term
Add one structured but flexible format option to your next assignment, a fixed deadline with two acceptable submission formats.
Bottom line
A contradictory request is not a discipline problem, it is two legitimate needs asking to both be met, and good course design can hold both at once.
Go deeper
Read the full piece: Parenting While AUDHD
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Written by ND Hive.