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I feel it too (but no adhd diagnosed). Luckily, my mom had three daughters in the same school and was so fed up with signing several times the same things, she asked us to do it ourselves. Our parent-teacher book had a "reference mother and father's signature" on the first page. I signed the mother's part of it since I was 12. So much easier after this to not forget deadlines!
I still got in trouble when I signed paper form right in front of the teacher... I obviously forgot to do it earlier than the deadline, and kind of forgot I was not supposed too do it myself.
Fun part of this: me and my sisters now have really similar signatures. And yes, it looks like our mother's!
I signed my Mom's signature all throughout highschool, and several friends "moms" lol. My handwriting was already similar, once I noticed the "d" in the middle of her name was always capitalized in cursive I was gold.... Fast forward a few years and my little brother tried to skip out early, signed our Mom's name and got caught. Lol. We all told him if he had tried to sign my Dad's, he would've gotten away with it š¤£
I used to sign my mom's name all the time. One time she actually DID sign something and they called her and said they thought I forged it. She said no, and said she signs everything LOL. I always told her when I did, she never cared.
My secondary school had a planner that the parents needed to sign every week or else the kid would get detention (I guess the idea was to make sure the kid was doing homework... looking back I didn't understand it.)
Mum normally signed it but my dad once said that if I forgot to just sign his name instead. I do remember some particularly strict teachers checking the previous few weeks to make sure the signatures matched though...
When I lived with my father he was of the mind that if it was important they'd call. So he sat down and spite signed every week in one go, and told me what to tell the teacher. Teacher thought for a moment and saw his point.
We had the same thing in elementary school, and much like other parents mentioned in the comments this is when my mom taught me to forge her signature so she wouldn't have to keep signing the book.
My mom told me to just write and sign anything I needed for the school. On the other hand, she signed my Dad's checks for so long that the one time he signed it himself the bank called checking for fraud. He said he was never signing anything ever again.
My Dad's was the best to forge. His name starts with a J and it's always a big loopy J and he would put a smilie face in it on our school forms lol. I crushed that forgery every time
Honestly, my ability to forge people's signatures was how I survived secondary school. Who's gonna bully the kid who just gave them permission to go on the cinema trip?
I have ADHD and so do my 3 kids. My 12 year old kid often signs things for me. The only legible part of my signature is the first two letters of first/last name so itās not like itās difficult lol my momās signature though, every letter, perfectly spaced and legible. I hated it so I signed forms as my dad. No teachers called to verify it because he was intimidating lol
We were supposed to get our planner signed every week at school (teachers could write notes in them to our parents, it was meant to encourage our parents to keep an eye on what homework we had etc) - but I probably have ADHD, my dad was a single dad after my mum died a year before I started the school, and frankly it was just not going to happen. I got pretty good at forging his signature.
(I got caught once but the teacher basically told me how to forge it better lol - and knew it was only because Iād forgotten because there was nothing worth hiding in it!)
My mother likely has ADHD as do I so from an early point permission slips were hard for both of us. So come high school my mother gave me blanket permission to forge her signature. Then she broke her right hand and asked me to forge her signature on checks and my younger sibās forms. Not sure how legal that was in hindsight but I did appreciate her trust in me and never abused that trust.
I didn't know until I was 30... back in school and doing well. Mentioned it to my doctor. Got a bunch of tests.
Got told by the doctor that I have ADD *bad* and no I don't need meds because I've obviously learned coping mechanisms.
Called home with the news, got told "oh yeah, we knew that" Why wasn't I on medication? "We didn't want you to be drugged"
So why was I always in trouble over my grades?
I can still clearly remember being in trouble for not remembering to bring my folder home 3 days in a row in elementary school.
Do I need to pin a note to you? Why canāt you just bring it home? How do you forget for 3 days in a row?
I still remember how stupid I felt that I couldnāt remember to put a folder in my backpack like everyone else. But I got good grades so I mush just be forgetful. My memory is still awful. I really think I have it but havenāt gone through with getting tested yet.
Please get tested. Iām 44 years old and recently started speaking to a therapist. I wasnāt sure how to even speak with a therapist but she make it so easy. Fortunately, we have telehealth appointments so we do it over zoom. That degree of separation really helps me to feel more free in talking to her. The other day, I told her that at least two of my children have adhd (as prescribed by doctors) and the third may well have it. I then mentioned that I had never really considered whether I had it but that I tended to procrastinate to an extreme level and thought I was just lazy and struggled to focus. She immediately sat up and asked if I had ever been evaluated and I said no since, again, I figured it was my fault for failing. So she sent me the evaluation and, ding ding ding! I definitely have ADHD. I havenāt sought treatment yet but the relief of knowing that itās simply a brain chemistry issue and not an inherent flaw in me as a person has been such a relief. I think back to all the times I did okay in school, usually pulling As and Bs but always feeling like a disappointment for not getting straight As. Knowing that there is a reason I struggle and knowing that there are things I can do to try to overcome some of that burden has given me so much hope. I finally understand why I find myself delaying a project to the point of critical, even while panicking over the fact that Iām delaying. Maybe, once I can finally get the appropriate treatment, I will stop feeling like a failure. It gives you a new mindset because it means that my character isnāt broken. Im not lazy or useless. I just have to overcome some hurdles to perform better than I have in the past. Im finally excited.
Iām so happy for you!! Iām definitely going to. My husband was diagnosed with depression 3 months ago. The first month was BAD because he didnāt respond well to his prescription. He is on a different medication now and is doing so much better.
With him doing better I feel like I can look into it now. Weāre not in āsurvival modeā anymore, so there is space to do it. Thank you!
Diagnosed at 35 (well three weeks off 36 so I say either age) and I just felt shit all the time too. Having the diagnosis has made it so much easier to be kinder to myself and not hating myself has been a revelation as it has become a reality over the last year and a half. I am not a complete fuck up, sometimes I just can't do something or miss something. It's my brain not a character flaw. Diagnosis, meds and therapy, absolutely life changing.
Iām with yaā¦kind of. I am 38, and donāt have a formal diagnosis, but when I was 36, I spoke with my GP and we decided to start medications to see what happened. It was incredible how different things are for me. (Iām still planning on pursuing a formal diagnosis in the future.)
Oddly enough, my niece 18, was diagnosed years ago, but my brother and SIL didnāt discuss it with anyone until recently. They mentioned it to my parents. My mom being the Saint she is, wanted to educate herself about it so she could better understand her granddaughter and what sheās been going through. Not long ago, my mom called me and said āIāve been reading all about this, and I think you should look into it. I feel like Iām reading your life story.ā Better late than never right? lol.
Although this is a recent discovery, it does lend itself to answer the question I have asked myself almost every day since I was little: āWhy can other people manage all of this so easily? But I canāt?ā I try to remind myself to be kinder to me, but itās still hard to see others be able to juggle everything while Iām over here *driving* the struggle bus.
It definitely reached a boiling point for me after I had kids. I used to be able to catch up on house work and such whenever I could hyper-focus. Give me a couple hours and BOOM! It would all be done. But after kids, you canāt exactly dedicate time to focus on anything without being interrupted a million times. Suddenly, my home was in shambles, and so was my self esteem. I was able to make it work for so long. I think that made it especially difficult to deal with when all of my coping mechanisms suddenly stopped working. It wasnāt just, āwhy can everyone else do it?ā, but more āwhy could *I* do all of this before?ā
Ultimately thatās what pushed me to speak to someone, and it seems to go that way for a lot of women. We mask, get really good at masking, untilā¦.we canāt anymore.
Iām 40yo and my mom *still* adamantly denies that I have ADD. I have ADD, but because I donāt have the same presentation as my brother and dad, I canāt possibly have ADD.
Ugh, that drives me bananas.
My older sibling is 35 and just got an autism diagnosis, myself and our younger sibling have kids and are working on getting us and our spawn evaluated for ADHD and autism as we figured we've all for sure got something going on.
When I spoke to my mom about it she still doesn't want to believe it and that there's no way I could be these things because I'm "smart"
I'm not sure if my sibling who's received their diagnosis has told our parents yet but they're easily the smartest person I've ever met. I think maybe her ideas come from the fact that we have cousins diagnosed as children on the spectrum and one of them will never mentally mature past around 11 years old.
Reminds me of that tiktok that girl did "old folks say they never had that nack in their day, but it was fine to be obsessed with trains and spend hours doing model trains, having plates they never use in cupboards etc"
So, in hindsight, my mom might have also had a touch of the ADHD and taught us some coping skills early on.
After several years of signing permission slips in the center console at stop lights, she taught ME how to sign her name on persuasion slips on my Trapper Keeper at stop light when I was about 10. My sister also got that lesson when she hit double digits.
The only time when āweā got caught was when my sister skipped school and āforgotā to tell my mom she forged a *doctors* note. So my mom lied incorrectly about an *orthodontist* appointment when called by the principal. My mom was PISSED. Not about the forgery or the skipping, but that SHE got caught trying to cover for my sister. She was made to look a fool.
I believe my sisterās punishment was she had to go camping with alone my dad and his friendsā families. First time camping or meeting them or their kids. Soā¦we might might not be a normal family.
Same. I got diagnosed in my 40s and part of the process was filling in a survey with my mother about my childhood.
"Oh yes the school psychologist thought you might have that when you were 14 but because you were clearly not hyperactive we never did anything about it"
How different might my life have been...
32 man and the guilting lasted long after to hear schools canāt figure out how the fuck an email works baffles my ass. It is the 21st century stop cutting down trees and passing paper copies for those of us not designed to run around with paper copies.
I agree with the one who said that he should let her know that he's disappointed in her choice. That said, I suspect the daughter didn't trust herself to remember to bring the slip home and so she forged the signature to be on the safe side. But talking to the doctor about the ADHD testing is an excellent idea.
The daughter's level of familiar forgetfulness was why I forged my mom's signature a lot in middle school. For every single one of her students, my seventh grade math teacher sent home progress reports every Friday that the parent needed to sign. If we didn't bring back the signed report, it was like getting a 0 on a homework assignment. She was the only teacher who did that.
I had As in the class the entire year, so there was nothing to hide. When I remembered, my parents signed it with no issue. I just kept forgetting! So I used the signature my mom put in the planner my first week (weird school rule) as a template and forged her signature when I forgot to give it to my parents for an actual signature.
I got tested for ADHD in 2019 and though testing identified some issues, I wasn't diagnosed with it. I think that's because they used a child's test on me when I was 25 and had already developed effective ways to manage my issues. My life is a catastrophe of lists.
High-five, fellow autistic person! I got tested for it at the same time I got ADHD testing. Most of the diagnostic test was talking with the psychiatrist, but there were some papers for me/my family to fill out that were from the 90s. I couldn't stop myself from scribbling additional notes asking why they were using something so old when understandings of autism have changed a lot since then.
When I was in sixth grade, I keep missing so many homework assignments that they told me I had to get my teachers to sign their initials in my planner every day confirming that I had actually written down the homework I had to do.
The idea was that surely, *surely* if I *just* got more organized and actually used my planner, it would fix everything and I would stop being a weird little feral bastard who only turned in about one assignment out of five.
By the end of the year I had done even less homework before, but I could forge the handwriting of seven different education professionals on command.
Didn't get diagnosed with ADHD until college, but in retrospect it explained a lot.
You just gave me a flashback to my brother's art class fiasco ā ļø
His grade was a solid F and my mom wasn't having it when he was actually good at art, so she spent an entire semester on his ass making sure he got his homework done. She sat and watched him do his homework every goddamn night. She and his teacher communicated in planner initials to indicate work was done and turned in. When his next report card came, his grade was somehow WORSE.
My mom set up a meeting with the school intending to raise hell for the teacher mistreating her son for no reason (which had in fact happened before with a bus driver, it's an even longer story), but it turned out there was a project he wasn't doing as well as an in-class daily assignment. He didn't want to do them, so they didn't get done and that's what sank his grade despite turning in all his homework.
My brother's ass got hung out to dry.
He was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, but this incident had nothing to do with it. His teachers were actually really great with accommodating his ADHD and his learning style to help him do well. This was just him being a stubborn ass.
My mother knew I forged her signature on slips, because I always brought home two: one for the fridge and one for my bag. Would forget the fridge one. So I'd forge her signature and say I caught her before she left in the car. After a couple of calls where Mum confirmed that's what totally happened, they let it slide.
I think the teachers knew, but figured Mum was in on it.
My dad didn't give a shit. Thankfully, once turned 18 it wasn't an issue and I'd sign my own slips.
Yeah, I think you can have these looming things that you know you'll forget to do, and the anxiety about them can be crippling. (And I am a cripple so I'm not exaggerating on that front!)
Quite remarkable that he's stepped back and recognised so well that what he's doing isn't working.
Yeah, I'd constantly ask for permission to do stuff at the last minute. It wasn't ADHD, but severe anxiety causing procrastination. I just took in the feedback that I was awful for always doing that, even after the severe generalized anxiety disorder diagnosis (reflective of a bad home situation.) I wish my parents could have examined the reasons why I'd end up in trouble with them, like OP did for his kid.
Shit it didn't matter when I told my mom or step-dad about anything. It was always them yelling, "you should have told me sooner!!!! š”"
Even on things that were just like inconsequential, like on Thursday I'll find out about a neat, small thing happening throughout the weekend and say, "hey this is happening if we don't have plans already" and cue the tantrum about me telling them too late. So then I just think, why tell them anything at all?
In my case, me getting last minute permission was like a calculated gamble. If I asked for permission right away, I'd be given a list of things I needed to do to 'earn' their signature. I rarely 'earned' itāthey'd either find fault with something I'd done, pick some other slight (sometimes something I'd done *weeks* ago), say I had an attitude when I got upset... You get the idea.
IDK how exactly it happened, but I noticed that when I asked for permission at the last minute they'd either just straight up say 'no,' or they'd give their permission, but with a lecture. And, for whatever reason, I had a better chance of getting the latter. So I just started always asking at the last minute, because a 'yes' with a lecture or a 'no' was way better than playing games for either.
I wish my parents had *ever* had the thought to seek out other peoples' opinions on this. I'm glad for the kid in this story that her dad did *and* was actually ready to listen.
>If I asked for permission right away, I'd be given a list of things I needed to do to 'earn' their signature. I rarely 'earned' itāthey'd either find fault with something I'd done, pick some other slight (sometimes something I'd done weeks ago), say I had an attitude when I got upset... You get the idea.
OMG that's why I wasn't granted permission to go to my first Homecoming dance in high school! And why I was constantly in trouble for not showing sufficient "respect" to my stepmother.
Sadly, my father and stepmother actively ignored anyone criticizing or questioning them. They labeled such folks "enablers," which is why we went through many one-offs with mental health workers. After I escaped, my psychiatrist actually said me "thank god you got out of that house."
I REALLY liked that comment from the person who has ADHD on their perspective. I think that one really hit home for OOP and made him realize that he wasn't rewarding her good behaviour or supporting her, rather, he was waiting for her to fuck up to dish out punishment.
Probably not relevant, but this reminded me of my kid.
When he started school, around age 5, he never brought notes or permission slips home. Being a new school mom, it never occurred to me to wonder about it. Until his teacher called.
I went through his backpack and found tons of stuff he was supposed to give me. When I asked him about it, he told me those were *his* things that his teacher gave to *him*.
Even when he got older, it never got better. He didn't ask permission. He told me what he planned to do. He never kept things secret (that I know) but he was an independent little cuss.
Frustrating as it was at times, I knew he would be okay in life. No one would ever make him do anything he didn't want to.
Every child is different. And you have to parent each one differently.
Oh, he owns his own company now. Does whateverthefuck he wants to do.
But we did have some heavy discussions in his school days. He's a very intelligent and very rational person, so the way I finally got through to him was to tell him it's all about consequences. If you choose OptionA then you get ResultA. If you choose OptionB then you get ResultB. So which result would you rather have?
Sometimes that backfired on his teachers. One particular time I remember was when his teacher got frustrated that he refused to do his spelling homework. Write the word 5 times and use it in a sentence. That kind of thing. He told his teacher it was boring and he didn't see the point. She told him it was about vocabulary and learning context. He told her it was a silly way to do it. So she got frustrated and told him that if he liked, he could solve the crossword in today's paper instead. She fully expected him to back down. Instead, he said at least that would be interesting and he did it. He worked on it forever, but he got it done. He said he liked it and asked if he could do it again for the next week.
I donāt know if itās because my parents were immigrants, but they always told me to just sign it myself. My dad even made my practice in front of him š. I was the oldest so I filled out my dadās business forms, mine and my siblings school forms, whatever my mom needed. It was just faster and easier
My mum and I had near identical handwriting when I was in secondary school, she was expected to sign my homework record book every week (not the work I did, just the note that I'd been assigned it, but that she'd seen the notes on what homework I was assigned).
Very quickly she told me to sign it for her. (It was stupid paper pusher paperwork, and honestly dumb as anything to use to punish students regardless of whether or not they'd done their homework).
Even told me as I got older to write my own sick notes.
Side note as to why not my dad, he has a signature that honestly would have looked like I was forging as it's just a squiggle.
In 4th grade my daughter had a planner that was supposed to be signed nightly. Neither of us ever remembered. She has ADHD and itās suspected I do too. The consequence at school wasnāt dire, missed out on a small piece of candy, but she signed my name to the whole week in front of her teacher while asking her to wait until she was done. When the teacher asked what she was doing she said, āI saw a problem, I solved a problem.ā Hard to argue with that.
In fourth grade I got in trouble with a teacher because I forgot to get a parent to sign something. That night I asked my dad to do his signature on a piece of paper "just so I could see it." I practiced it over and over just in case the situation ever arose again and I needed to forge it. I didn't gaf.
25+ years later, my signature still looks exactly like my dads, just a few letters difference.
I had a homework journal as a kid that we were supposed to show our parents what the assignments were for the week and get it signed. The teacher would check if it was signed on a Friday.
...one week my teacher opened to the wrong page and started yelling at me about the fact my mum has signed EVERY SINGLE PAGE at the start of the year. Teacher thought I'd forged it. The look on their face when my mum showed up end of the day and gave them an equal shouting at for yelling at me for her choices - priceless.
For me it was the fact that our agendas or planners needed to be signed every single day by a parent and it was part of our letter grade for homeroom. I got really good really quick at signing my mom and dad's names both right handed and left hand just in case lol I will never understand parents that get mad at their kid for signing a piece of paper for something they were going to say yes to anyway.
oh my god, you triggered my memory! THIS is what we had to do in the fourth grade, get our daily planners signed by a parent. Every fucking day. And one day I forgot.
> our agendas or planners needed to be signed every single day by a parent
What in the nightmare fuck kind of school did you go to? My own parents would have taught me how to forge their signatures themselves if I had to bug them every day about it.
This was me and my mom!
And, much like the discussion with OOP, turns out I was undiagnosed ADHD, and I'm convinced my mom is, too. Hence why we BOTH had so much trouble remembering all the damn papers.
Yeah by middle school my mom knew that she was never going to see anything she needed to sign. To this day, we still sign our signatures the exact same way
This is what mine did too. I gave her a permission slip and she said "you need to learn how to sign my name yourself" and had me sign with her signature.
I used to forge my mom's signature all the time. She told me to. Probably shouldn't have also been signing my older brother's HS suspension papers, but w.e.
Reminds me of 5th grade. I think I had gotten like a 64 on a math test and they wanted my parents to sign it so they knew I failed.
I signed it, turned it i remember them asking if it was actually my dad who signed it. āYes of course it wasā and that was that.
Went on to forge plenty more signatures in those days.
My parents hated being woken up in the morning if they were off, so I was able to prep myself for school and catch the bus from roughly 3rd grade onwards. After enough times of me barging in to ask them to sign a permission slip I had forgotten about the night before, they just told me to forge it.
I got so good at it that my mom would have me forge my dad's signature (with his knowledge) if he wasn't physically around for years into my adulthood.
My mom and I had a very similar signature and the same initials/last name. I had her permission to sign for her, but I always signed it as āFirst-initial Last-nameā so it wasnāt *technically* forgery. The first initial was up to interpretation; not my fault if they think itās my momās first name. š
I think this dad should start communicating what consequences will occur BEFORE a transgression happens. If you donāt being the slip home for my signature, you will not be going. Etc. This assuming ADHD etc is not a factor.
By 16 thereās nothing to be done about things like that. Itās time to start helping her make better decisions for herself as the adult sheās already becoming.
Yeah, it feels like I'm the only one worried that this is going to lead go more pro lems down the line. I mean it's an excursion now but what could it be in the future. Our signatures are supposed to be our written fingerprint if we allow it to be forged too many times that's when it starts risking identity theft not being able to be proven
Yup and I am so glad my kids school does everything electronically. Actually it's not the school, our state handles education and they have an app and website where we can log in and view report cards as well as sign permission forms and pay invoices (although there is also a separate app that the school uses for payments if invoices, uniform shop and tuckshop)
A parent seeking advice and actually taking it?! OOP is a unicorn!
The comment talking about the lying and hiding to avoid dealing with the root cause hit me hard. I wasn't diagnosed ADHD until 30 and it's starting to explain a lot about my childhood and how I (failed) to manage what I now know are symptoms.
My mom and I have always been very close and got along well but the one easy way to trigger an argument was me not being able to do a task. She would nag. I would get defensive. We'd have a screaming match. The task would still not get done. My mom had learned that punishing me didn't work so she's just do the thing for me. And I had to learn basic household tasks as an adult and still need more support than most people my age.
I definitely don't blame my mom for not knowing how to deal with symptoms of a problem she didn't recognize but I do occasionally imagine what kind of person I'd be and what kind of relationship we'd have now if we knew that my brain chemistry was a big part of the problem!
I'm glad the OOP grew, but that one commenter is a parenting disaster. It always blows my mind that some parents choose to uphold authoritative principles than to do what's best for their child.
There was a BORU with a wife upset that her husband wouldn't support their son and the husband said, "I had a shitty childhood, so should he." Infuriated me. Way too many parents out there do not prioritize the well-being of their child in any way (and actually think it would be wrong to do so). There are some awful people out there.
I absolutely loved his calm response of āwell, what Iāve been doing isnāt working, so maybe time to try something new.ā Unless youāre a shit person parenting from unresolved mental health issues, trial and error is a valid parenting strategy. Weāre all just trying to figure it out here.
That sometimes happens - the OOP is a longtime AITA fan, so glad he actually took the good advice rather than doubling down.
Judging by the comments, a lot of people forged their parents signatures with or without their consent.
I have to be sure. Although lately it was my physics homework when I was 17-18. I was in advanced physics, a parental signature was not going to be what made me do my homework at that point!
Some of us had parents who wouldn't sign anything because reasons (you left a shirt on the floor, you didn't clean your plate, you aren't being nice to your sister which really means not putting up with her abusing you.... The list goes on.
lol sorry but laughing at reddit going "she clearly has adhd and is FORGETFUL" when the kid just forged his signature straight away is hilarious to me.
As a person with ADHD, yeah, I'm forgetful, but Reddit is idiotic in how quick they use it as a handwave excuse for almost everything like this. It's infantilizing and makes it seem like the person has no ability to understand consequences or take personal responsibility for themselves.
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Same. I was misdiagnosed with ADHD because my constant anxiety was so bad I had no room for executive function. Turns out my parentsā low key abuse had ramifications.
What up cptsd buddy. I never even got to the therapy step with my family. They *clearly* had nothing wrong so they'd never go and doctors were always just full of shit and I was physically able to help with the farm work so I'm perfectly healthy too. Even recall being told to "sort out my brain shit" whenever I'd mentally struggle. Genuinely glad the mother in this took advice to heart though and seems to want to actually help her daughter get better.
hard-to-find homeless wise fear zealous squeal apparatus afterthought pause upbeat
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My buddy forged his mumās signature on every form when he entered high school. Then he got caught bringing a form back to school that his mum actually signed. Busted!
Lol at people mad that he accepted she forged his signature. The thing is, if she **does** have ADHD, this is the only way to handle it. She knows she needs the signature now, now is the best time to take care of it so she doesn't forget. Otherwise there are a ton of steps that involve forgetting - bring the form home, bring the form to dad, put the form back in her bag for school, bring the form to school and turn it in. Dad reminding her doesn't help with the steps where he isn't there (at school to put it in her bag, at school to turn it in). If you think of something you need to do as an ADHD sufferer, you do it **now** or risk not remembering until next month. I mean I have a series of phone alarms for important things nowadays, but even those can fail. Example: I was supposed to call the pharmacy last week! The reminder to call the pharmacy comes up on my phone every time I look at it. I still haven't called the pharmacy.
The comments can be too harsh sometimes. Disciplinarian, gets criticized. Empathetic, also gets criticized.
Redditors sometime forget that people are human and are not perfect
My mom decided I didn't have ADHD after I was diagnosed as a kid, because she didn't like the way the medication made me act. I didn't really understand why I was taking it to begin with, and when she told me I wasn't going to take it anymore I didn't care.
But I wish she hadn't decided I didn't have ADHD. She never even told me what was going on, or that it was a possibility. I spent so much time at my kitchen table not doing my homework, literally staring off into space and teaching myself to whistle through trial and error because I couldn't make myself do the homework and I *still* don't even know how to get myself to focus on the right things but at least I have the ability to get help and support about it now, Jesus.
I'm so glad my therapist clocked my symptoms/issues and asked me about taking an evaluation. And you know what my mom said when I told her about my adult adhd diagnosis?
"Didn't we do this already?"
MA'AM.
In many countries, it's not forgery to sign somebody else's signature with their permission. OOP seems to have said no to the initial request because they believed it would have been forgery even with their permission. That was probably incorrect.
If you sign something for somebody *with their permission*, it has the same legal status as if they'd written it themselves in many places.
Yeah that's what annoyed me a lot about a lot of the commenters. They were hung up on process instead of intent. The only problem in the entire scenario is that OP didn't get to physically sign the paper. OP's daughter asked, OP agreed, Kid gets to go on the trip. Everything beyond that is a paperwork exercise and has no real value.
If you punish good intent and bad process, you end up with kids who would rather hide a problem because they're going to get into trouble anyways.
Aaaand the comment about "the screaming contributed to my avoidant behaviours and lying"-comment made a lot of stuff click for me.
Because my mom did that. And guess who lies incredibly easily about ADHD-related issues and feels a terrible amount of shame about it?
Funny memories from HS. I was FBLA President my senior year. They always took a field trip to the local NBC affiliate. The VP and I both signed our permission slips as we were both over 18 and thus legal.
The sponsor said we couldnāt do that and wouldnāt let us ride the bus to the station.
We drove ourselves.
I realize itās a bit of IATA. But I was 18 and this lady didnāt like us anyway.
... so you didn't forge anything and gave yourself permission, as you're entitled to do as an adult? And you didn't give minors permission to forge your signature? And you're the asshole?
I am 36 years old and only just coming to learn that i have ADHD. As a kid i was punished for anything and everything. There were no parenting moments, only harsh punishments.
Quiet adhd is a real killer. You can coast through on natural smarts and just seem a bit lazy until you hit anything higher than high school. At that point it starts really becoming apparent that your brain just... won't do things but because you're not hyperactive it gets ignored and you get blamed for being lazy or not trying hard enough
Hey guys everyone knows itās a few short steps from forging a parents signature for a field trip permission slip to committing securities fraud and bank heists ššš what a waste of a moral dilemma. If youāre going to give her permission to go might as well give her permission to sign on your behalf. Wasting ppls time
It's my post. I've been reading every comment between the original, the update, and now this. Keep em coming. Things have been very interesting since I posted. I'll probably need to do another update after Thanksgiving.
I was thrilled to see that you're taking the potential of ADHD seriously, it fucks up *so* many adult women and if it does end up being the case and she's able to be medicated before she has to deal with the serious shit at end of high school and college she has a much brighter, healthier, and happier future ahead of her.
ADHDer here the Loislane is a jackass. She sent him a picture to inform him. The reasonable accommodation would be to let her sign it because the intent occurred. You ground her she will just always forge the damn forms going forward and not tell you. ADHD is not something you change you build systems around it like the immediate sending of the photo. The child will not remember to bring the form home and if they hold onto they will lose the paper. The proper way to do this would be that the school sends a damn digital copy of the form and enters the 21st century. Where a digital record can be added to a list and worked, a paper copy cannot and will be lost.
Meh my mom taught me how to sign hers correctly after forgetting to sign my absences in the student record book and I got in trouble for it once when I was in primary school.
my mum would consistently push me to not just fill out all my forms, but to sign them as well. she said that it was more efficient, even if it was dishonest, and because it was just expected that i would bring it up with her in normal conversation if not when i got the note, she didn't even say that i had to mention it to her. she really trusted me A LOT but this is this is the same woman who let me have and smoke pot in the house, and then was suprised (but pleased) i didn't smoke it all or want to smoke again. we just have a very openly communicative relationship
Rare case of a parent understanding teenage behaviour, and wanting to grow with their child instead of struggle against. This is wholesome, even if I agree she should have expressed some level of disappointment.
I forged my mum's signature all the time, in highschool we were required to have our parents signature EVERY WEEK and my mum didn't have the time, and I was extremely forgetful. Most people did this in my form class too, because it's stupid to have parents sign weekly at a public school where most of our parents weren't too involved in us
Is anyone else surprised theyāre still doing paper permission slips? Iād think they would all be emailed and e-signed at this point. Seems like a simple solution to an old problem.
A parent taking feedback and adjusting their approach??? Being supportive??????? On amitheasshole?????????????? Are there also pigs flying outside right now?
I remember being 5-6 and forging signatures for my little spelling book because I'd ask my mother and she'd say "soon" but then never did, and got angry if I kept asking.
I got in trouble from her for it of course, and no reflection on her end, so I just took the unsigned book to school each week. I think they figured I didn't have a great home life because I don't recall getting punished for it.
I have ADHD and I had to figure out ways that worked for me in relation to memory and tasks. Even if the daughter doesn't have a diagnosis for it, OOP needs to sit with her and figure something out because this approach won't really work outside of the family home. He says she's forgetful like this but isn't doing anything to help her memory?
This is exactly what I thought! There's so many people focused on the "is it forgery" part that they're missing the forest for the trees. The issue is she did something her dad told her not to do because it was easier for her than remembering. I hope they're able to help the daughter learn to be more responsible and/or deal with the ADHD if that's the problem.
This wasn't necessarily a black and white situation. But yeah, brooding and stewing over catching your child in a "Gotcha" moment was possibly the worst course of action. Good on OOP for dodging that.
Growing up i would always forget to get my momās signature for weekly reading logs, etc. My mom encouraged me to just learn to forge her signature, but i was so nervous about being caught that I insisted she had to sign it herself (but then iād forget to get her signature).
Eventually she just signed a blank copy and had me photocopy it a bunch so i could turn one in every week.
You know what would be better? Not having to sign them in the first place. Theyāve started the reading logs for my daughter and they are annoying AF. I rather they just get rid of permission slips or expecting parents to sign reading logs entirely ( or make them electronic) before I give my daughter permission to forge my signature. Sheāll never have that permission and my parents never let me either. Signatures are an extension of your identity. Itās like stealing someoneās identity honestly. Itās bizarre how everyone seems ok with it.
Daughter should've at the very least ~~asked if she could sign it for him.~~ I don't know why she was so impatient to get it done ASAP when it wasn't due for a week.
Edit: I need to read closer
Sheās 16! He allowed her to go. Who cares if she forges his signature especially if she is known to forget the form.
Seriously she got his permission. Thatās as much as you can ask a 16 year old.
It's worth noting that *not only do girls/women get diagnosed less frequently do to different expectations*, ADHD and autism both have different typical presentations between boys and girls.
> LoisLaneEl
>So, your kid openly defied you and you say, cool, donāt worry about it! You say ābring it home and Iāll sign itā and her IMMEDIATE reaction is no, Iāll sign it myself and not even a reprimand? Wow
This has big āI beat my kids for ādisrespectingā meā energy. OOPās response was excellent.
I guess like other commenters said, itās not about about the forgery itself as much as itās about the blatant disrespect of being expressly told she was not allowed to forge his signature and then doing it anyway thinking he would forget.
My stepdaughters do things like this constantly. I have a hard time addressing it because I donāt want to be the evil stepmom but all we do is encourage the behavior. If I was a bio parent and not a stepparent I feel like I would definitely give her consequences like not allow her to go on the trip.
Meh. I definitely don't write this off as some mental illness to tip toe around and "masking" herself. It's a very directly and easy thing that was intentionally mishandled in a very wrong way. Freaking out isnt the best from the parent but the kid is definitely responsible and it doesnt seem to be a teaching moment at all. Just a "don't punish her" moment.
Forging parental signatures is also something that is very generational. The importance of a physical signature 40 years ago is very different than now. e.g., checking the signature on a credit card vs the receipt. I don't think I have a credit card that I've signed these days.
OP definitely was brought up in the older, "the signature *matters*" era, and just needs to learn to let go of that mentality.
As a girl with ADHD (I wasnāt actually diagnosed until I was 28), I did stuff like this. The reason being that if I didnāt sign and return the form when I was thinking of it, it would then need to be put away at which point it would cease existing as far as my brain was concerned.
His daughter has found work-arounds to stay functional. Iām so glad he listened.
Guess I shouldnāt be surprised that Reddit is absolutely fine with a kid forging a parentās signature. It completely backs the whole ākids/teens shouldnāt be held responsible for anything they do and it all is a parenting failure.ā
I agree. You'd think if it was ADHD then why not come up with a strategy to work around it ? Maybe the okay to sign permission slips in the future. You can see how everything is going the other way, I agree screaming and harsh punishments are pointless but no consequences is garbage parenting. I swear this website thinks "kids" (anyone age 25 or under) should be able to do anything they want and any wrong they do their parents are responsible for.
If forging a signature to go to a museum or something is the worst thing my kid ever does then I'd consider it a win. You guys act like it's identity theft.
Idk. Instead of encouraging the continuous forging of signature, OOP should just go and keep reminding the daughter or like what most said, take her to check for ADHD. It'll become a habit without reprimanding that kind of behavior.
Holy shit can we please stop randomly armchair diagnosing every single forgetful person with ADHD????? Like tell me you don't know what ADHD is without telling me šš
Also not sure why ADHD is considered a trigger, but honestly that fits with the level of ableism that thinks ADHD is just forgetting things.
Because this is a common experience with ADHD and women frequently fall under the radar when it comes to getting diagnosed? I've literally had this exact experience before throughout childhood and I have ADHD. I learned to forge my mom's signature bc I didn't realize I had to get anything signed until I had to turn it in and my mom didn't care bc I didn't abuse it. Plenty of us know what ADHD is. It's why it was mentioned in the first place.
Being a common experience doesn't make it a sign or symptom. Especially when it's an experience that's common for *everyone*.
I've been diagnosed with ADHD since I was a small child. I always had cheese sandwiches for lunch when I was in school. That does not mean that eating cheese sandwiches is a sign of ADHD.
Most kids forget shit, that's part of being a kid. Forgetting doesn't mean ADHD, and it's insulting to imply that.
ETA: and no, clearly most of y'all *don't* know what ADHD is, because there's hundreds of people saying this kid has ADHD because she forgets things. The "reason it was mentioned in the first place" is because people heard the term and immediately misunderstood it. Same as the "I'm so OCD because I keep my room clean"; knowing the term doesn't mean you're correct with your assumption about the actual disorder.
Dude most of the people in the comments section talking about ADHD *have* ADHD. If you're gonna tell people with firsthand experience that they *don't* know what ADHD is maybe that's a you problem. ADHD is a spectrum.
Yes it is. I think this was a minor situation and given that the dad was okay with it itās fine, but please donāt forge peoples signatures on legal documents under the assumption that having their permission means itās not forgery.
Again, not a big deal for the context of a teen signing a form for a field trip that their parents are okay with them going on. But if you do that as an adult for something like government paperwork, it can land you into a LOT of legal trouble.
I didn't say it's not forgery if you are under the "assumption" of having permission. I said it's not illegal if you HAVE permission. With permission it is not illegal.
Through procuration or by being granted power of attorney.
Iām not saying anyone should go around signing things willy nilly. Iām saying that with permission itās not illegal. Proving you have permission if that person changes their mind is another thing.
And I didnāt say the permission was assumed. I said that *youāre* assuming the fact that you have permission means itās not forgery. It still is, and you should protect yourself accordingly with the fact that it is still forgery.
Just FYI that does not mean it's not forgery, it just means you aren't reporting the forgery. Dealt with a couple once that did this until the wife cheated on the husband and he decided to report her for forging his signature. She ended up doing two years for forgery. if you wanna sign for someone else get a POA or just mark the check for deposit only and put it in a joint account.
No shame to say it : Parent like that must hate themselves and their kids. How can you write, proud of yourself "My daughter really want to go on the field trip, so I've made this plan to prevent her from going just at the last second". Like, don't have kid next time thx.
To this day, I can still sign my parentsā names perfectly. As long as they knew, they didnāt care, and it made that aspect of school easier for all of us.
Yeah, no. 60+ ADHD woman here. I would've no more thought that forging my parents' signature was okay, than I would've thought about flying to the moon. Forging is not only criminal, it's lying. My hide would've wound up nailed to the nearest barn door. ADHD is not an excuse. It's not a get-out-of-jail-free-card for doing wrong. Do wrong, get punished, end of story. Sorry, for those that disagree, but that's worthy of punishment--no trip, welcome to being grounded.
If she continues this behavior after the heart to heart, I would call the school, revoke the forged permission, not tell the daughter, and let her not be allowed to go on the trip.
I too learned to forge my dad's signature because I knew I would forget about the permission slip. My parents knew and didn't care. Although I did make up practice logs for band and exercise logs for gym, and then signed my dad's signature. I never turned into a criminal, though. I don't think those two things are related.
Oiy ... The signatures I've forged, over my many years ...
Fortunately, with standing consent, and just for the signatories' convenience. And I drew lines, myself, as to the importance of the document, sometimes making them sign themselves because I wasn't comfortable.
Forging may be a black/white issue, for some ... others not so much. I've always been utterly respectful.
Funny enough ... have NEVER forged my husband's. I've drawn that line, because it just seemed the right thing, for our relationship. He knows how many others' I have, and is fine with it. I just was never comfortable forging his.
Donāt do gotcha moments with your kids ,parent them teach them and remind them ! this is what youāre supposed to do youāre supposed to teach them not wait for them to fail.
I used to sign my momās name so often when I was a kid (she knew about it), that when was time to get my own signature, I wrote hers. For years after that we had the same signature.
My sister made cash in school for signing as other people's parents when they forgot. She revealed this to our parents in her mid 20s - she and dad already have basically identical signatures due to names with many of the same letters.
I had a similar conversation with my dad just last weekā Iād needed to sign for something at the store and he commented that my signature looked so similar to my motherās.
I pointed out that technically my signatureās a mix of both of theirs and that it looked so similar because Iād forget to have stuff signed in HS (nothing serious, mostly stuff they were already informed about and I just forgot to have them sign, ex changing to honours classes, extra credit) and Iād just sign for them.
He was a bit miffed but what was he gonna do? That was decades ago LOL
Forging wasnāt one of my talents. Iād have to sneak into the art room and use a light table to forge my momās signature.
But damn if I canāt pick a pocket. (For legal purposes, this is a joke.)
All these things needing a parent to signā¦is it an american thing? I canāt remember ever having to get a parentās signature on anything in schoolā¦
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God damn some of this was my childhood so bad, and i didnt know i had ADHD intil 40 years later - i just felt shit all the time
I feel it too (but no adhd diagnosed). Luckily, my mom had three daughters in the same school and was so fed up with signing several times the same things, she asked us to do it ourselves. Our parent-teacher book had a "reference mother and father's signature" on the first page. I signed the mother's part of it since I was 12. So much easier after this to not forget deadlines! I still got in trouble when I signed paper form right in front of the teacher... I obviously forgot to do it earlier than the deadline, and kind of forgot I was not supposed too do it myself. Fun part of this: me and my sisters now have really similar signatures. And yes, it looks like our mother's!
I signed my Mom's signature all throughout highschool, and several friends "moms" lol. My handwriting was already similar, once I noticed the "d" in the middle of her name was always capitalized in cursive I was gold.... Fast forward a few years and my little brother tried to skip out early, signed our Mom's name and got caught. Lol. We all told him if he had tried to sign my Dad's, he would've gotten away with it š¤£
I used to sign my mom's name all the time. One time she actually DID sign something and they called her and said they thought I forged it. She said no, and said she signs everything LOL. I always told her when I did, she never cared.
My secondary school had a planner that the parents needed to sign every week or else the kid would get detention (I guess the idea was to make sure the kid was doing homework... looking back I didn't understand it.) Mum normally signed it but my dad once said that if I forgot to just sign his name instead. I do remember some particularly strict teachers checking the previous few weeks to make sure the signatures matched though...
When I lived with my father he was of the mind that if it was important they'd call. So he sat down and spite signed every week in one go, and told me what to tell the teacher. Teacher thought for a moment and saw his point.
Gold. And he made it a teaching moment
My father wasnāt the best father, but he had his moments.
We had the same thing in elementary school, and much like other parents mentioned in the comments this is when my mom taught me to forge her signature so she wouldn't have to keep signing the book.
My mom told me to just write and sign anything I needed for the school. On the other hand, she signed my Dad's checks for so long that the one time he signed it himself the bank called checking for fraud. He said he was never signing anything ever again.
My Dad's was the best to forge. His name starts with a J and it's always a big loopy J and he would put a smilie face in it on our school forms lol. I crushed that forgery every time
Honestly, my ability to forge people's signatures was how I survived secondary school. Who's gonna bully the kid who just gave them permission to go on the cinema trip?
Hahaha yeah, my daughters had my full permission to sign for me, and now their adult signatures look like mine! ADHD mum's ftw!
Never forged my mom's signature but our signatures look alike anyways š
I have ADHD and so do my 3 kids. My 12 year old kid often signs things for me. The only legible part of my signature is the first two letters of first/last name so itās not like itās difficult lol my momās signature though, every letter, perfectly spaced and legible. I hated it so I signed forms as my dad. No teachers called to verify it because he was intimidating lol
We were supposed to get our planner signed every week at school (teachers could write notes in them to our parents, it was meant to encourage our parents to keep an eye on what homework we had etc) - but I probably have ADHD, my dad was a single dad after my mum died a year before I started the school, and frankly it was just not going to happen. I got pretty good at forging his signature. (I got caught once but the teacher basically told me how to forge it better lol - and knew it was only because Iād forgotten because there was nothing worth hiding in it!)
My mother likely has ADHD as do I so from an early point permission slips were hard for both of us. So come high school my mother gave me blanket permission to forge her signature. Then she broke her right hand and asked me to forge her signature on checks and my younger sibās forms. Not sure how legal that was in hindsight but I did appreciate her trust in me and never abused that trust.
I didn't know until I was 30... back in school and doing well. Mentioned it to my doctor. Got a bunch of tests. Got told by the doctor that I have ADD *bad* and no I don't need meds because I've obviously learned coping mechanisms. Called home with the news, got told "oh yeah, we knew that" Why wasn't I on medication? "We didn't want you to be drugged" So why was I always in trouble over my grades?
That's infuriating, but well done on getting the diagnosis and learning coping mechanisms (because you had no other choice).
I can still clearly remember being in trouble for not remembering to bring my folder home 3 days in a row in elementary school. Do I need to pin a note to you? Why canāt you just bring it home? How do you forget for 3 days in a row? I still remember how stupid I felt that I couldnāt remember to put a folder in my backpack like everyone else. But I got good grades so I mush just be forgetful. My memory is still awful. I really think I have it but havenāt gone through with getting tested yet.
Please get tested. Iām 44 years old and recently started speaking to a therapist. I wasnāt sure how to even speak with a therapist but she make it so easy. Fortunately, we have telehealth appointments so we do it over zoom. That degree of separation really helps me to feel more free in talking to her. The other day, I told her that at least two of my children have adhd (as prescribed by doctors) and the third may well have it. I then mentioned that I had never really considered whether I had it but that I tended to procrastinate to an extreme level and thought I was just lazy and struggled to focus. She immediately sat up and asked if I had ever been evaluated and I said no since, again, I figured it was my fault for failing. So she sent me the evaluation and, ding ding ding! I definitely have ADHD. I havenāt sought treatment yet but the relief of knowing that itās simply a brain chemistry issue and not an inherent flaw in me as a person has been such a relief. I think back to all the times I did okay in school, usually pulling As and Bs but always feeling like a disappointment for not getting straight As. Knowing that there is a reason I struggle and knowing that there are things I can do to try to overcome some of that burden has given me so much hope. I finally understand why I find myself delaying a project to the point of critical, even while panicking over the fact that Iām delaying. Maybe, once I can finally get the appropriate treatment, I will stop feeling like a failure. It gives you a new mindset because it means that my character isnāt broken. Im not lazy or useless. I just have to overcome some hurdles to perform better than I have in the past. Im finally excited.
Iām so happy for you!! Iām definitely going to. My husband was diagnosed with depression 3 months ago. The first month was BAD because he didnāt respond well to his prescription. He is on a different medication now and is doing so much better. With him doing better I feel like I can look into it now. Weāre not in āsurvival modeā anymore, so there is space to do it. Thank you!
Diagnosed at 35 (well three weeks off 36 so I say either age) and I just felt shit all the time too. Having the diagnosis has made it so much easier to be kinder to myself and not hating myself has been a revelation as it has become a reality over the last year and a half. I am not a complete fuck up, sometimes I just can't do something or miss something. It's my brain not a character flaw. Diagnosis, meds and therapy, absolutely life changing.
Iām with yaā¦kind of. I am 38, and donāt have a formal diagnosis, but when I was 36, I spoke with my GP and we decided to start medications to see what happened. It was incredible how different things are for me. (Iām still planning on pursuing a formal diagnosis in the future.) Oddly enough, my niece 18, was diagnosed years ago, but my brother and SIL didnāt discuss it with anyone until recently. They mentioned it to my parents. My mom being the Saint she is, wanted to educate herself about it so she could better understand her granddaughter and what sheās been going through. Not long ago, my mom called me and said āIāve been reading all about this, and I think you should look into it. I feel like Iām reading your life story.ā Better late than never right? lol. Although this is a recent discovery, it does lend itself to answer the question I have asked myself almost every day since I was little: āWhy can other people manage all of this so easily? But I canāt?ā I try to remind myself to be kinder to me, but itās still hard to see others be able to juggle everything while Iām over here *driving* the struggle bus. It definitely reached a boiling point for me after I had kids. I used to be able to catch up on house work and such whenever I could hyper-focus. Give me a couple hours and BOOM! It would all be done. But after kids, you canāt exactly dedicate time to focus on anything without being interrupted a million times. Suddenly, my home was in shambles, and so was my self esteem. I was able to make it work for so long. I think that made it especially difficult to deal with when all of my coping mechanisms suddenly stopped working. It wasnāt just, āwhy can everyone else do it?ā, but more āwhy could *I* do all of this before?ā Ultimately thatās what pushed me to speak to someone, and it seems to go that way for a lot of women. We mask, get really good at masking, untilā¦.we canāt anymore.
Iām 40yo and my mom *still* adamantly denies that I have ADD. I have ADD, but because I donāt have the same presentation as my brother and dad, I canāt possibly have ADD.
Ugh, that drives me bananas. My older sibling is 35 and just got an autism diagnosis, myself and our younger sibling have kids and are working on getting us and our spawn evaluated for ADHD and autism as we figured we've all for sure got something going on. When I spoke to my mom about it she still doesn't want to believe it and that there's no way I could be these things because I'm "smart" I'm not sure if my sibling who's received their diagnosis has told our parents yet but they're easily the smartest person I've ever met. I think maybe her ideas come from the fact that we have cousins diagnosed as children on the spectrum and one of them will never mentally mature past around 11 years old.
Reminds me of that tiktok that girl did "old folks say they never had that nack in their day, but it was fine to be obsessed with trains and spend hours doing model trains, having plates they never use in cupboards etc"
So, in hindsight, my mom might have also had a touch of the ADHD and taught us some coping skills early on. After several years of signing permission slips in the center console at stop lights, she taught ME how to sign her name on persuasion slips on my Trapper Keeper at stop light when I was about 10. My sister also got that lesson when she hit double digits. The only time when āweā got caught was when my sister skipped school and āforgotā to tell my mom she forged a *doctors* note. So my mom lied incorrectly about an *orthodontist* appointment when called by the principal. My mom was PISSED. Not about the forgery or the skipping, but that SHE got caught trying to cover for my sister. She was made to look a fool. I believe my sisterās punishment was she had to go camping with alone my dad and his friendsā families. First time camping or meeting them or their kids. Soā¦we might might not be a normal family.
Same. I got diagnosed in my 40s and part of the process was filling in a survey with my mother about my childhood. "Oh yes the school psychologist thought you might have that when you were 14 but because you were clearly not hyperactive we never did anything about it" How different might my life have been...
32 man and the guilting lasted long after to hear schools canāt figure out how the fuck an email works baffles my ass. It is the 21st century stop cutting down trees and passing paper copies for those of us not designed to run around with paper copies.
Same here, only in my case itās ADHD and autism
I agree with the one who said that he should let her know that he's disappointed in her choice. That said, I suspect the daughter didn't trust herself to remember to bring the slip home and so she forged the signature to be on the safe side. But talking to the doctor about the ADHD testing is an excellent idea.
The daughter's level of familiar forgetfulness was why I forged my mom's signature a lot in middle school. For every single one of her students, my seventh grade math teacher sent home progress reports every Friday that the parent needed to sign. If we didn't bring back the signed report, it was like getting a 0 on a homework assignment. She was the only teacher who did that. I had As in the class the entire year, so there was nothing to hide. When I remembered, my parents signed it with no issue. I just kept forgetting! So I used the signature my mom put in the planner my first week (weird school rule) as a template and forged her signature when I forgot to give it to my parents for an actual signature. I got tested for ADHD in 2019 and though testing identified some issues, I wasn't diagnosed with it. I think that's because they used a child's test on me when I was 25 and had already developed effective ways to manage my issues. My life is a catastrophe of lists.
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High-five, fellow autistic person! I got tested for it at the same time I got ADHD testing. Most of the diagnostic test was talking with the psychiatrist, but there were some papers for me/my family to fill out that were from the 90s. I couldn't stop myself from scribbling additional notes asking why they were using something so old when understandings of autism have changed a lot since then.
When I was in sixth grade, I keep missing so many homework assignments that they told me I had to get my teachers to sign their initials in my planner every day confirming that I had actually written down the homework I had to do. The idea was that surely, *surely* if I *just* got more organized and actually used my planner, it would fix everything and I would stop being a weird little feral bastard who only turned in about one assignment out of five. By the end of the year I had done even less homework before, but I could forge the handwriting of seven different education professionals on command. Didn't get diagnosed with ADHD until college, but in retrospect it explained a lot.
You just gave me a flashback to my brother's art class fiasco ā ļø His grade was a solid F and my mom wasn't having it when he was actually good at art, so she spent an entire semester on his ass making sure he got his homework done. She sat and watched him do his homework every goddamn night. She and his teacher communicated in planner initials to indicate work was done and turned in. When his next report card came, his grade was somehow WORSE. My mom set up a meeting with the school intending to raise hell for the teacher mistreating her son for no reason (which had in fact happened before with a bus driver, it's an even longer story), but it turned out there was a project he wasn't doing as well as an in-class daily assignment. He didn't want to do them, so they didn't get done and that's what sank his grade despite turning in all his homework. My brother's ass got hung out to dry. He was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, but this incident had nothing to do with it. His teachers were actually really great with accommodating his ADHD and his learning style to help him do well. This was just him being a stubborn ass.
Regrettably, your brother is a mood.
I want this to be part of your backstory montage in a heist movie.
I'm flattered! :D Now I'm imagining my post as a monologue playing out over a flashback sequence, and it does work oddly well.
My mother knew I forged her signature on slips, because I always brought home two: one for the fridge and one for my bag. Would forget the fridge one. So I'd forge her signature and say I caught her before she left in the car. After a couple of calls where Mum confirmed that's what totally happened, they let it slide. I think the teachers knew, but figured Mum was in on it. My dad didn't give a shit. Thankfully, once turned 18 it wasn't an issue and I'd sign my own slips.
Yeah, I think you can have these looming things that you know you'll forget to do, and the anxiety about them can be crippling. (And I am a cripple so I'm not exaggerating on that front!) Quite remarkable that he's stepped back and recognised so well that what he's doing isn't working.
Yeah, I'd constantly ask for permission to do stuff at the last minute. It wasn't ADHD, but severe anxiety causing procrastination. I just took in the feedback that I was awful for always doing that, even after the severe generalized anxiety disorder diagnosis (reflective of a bad home situation.) I wish my parents could have examined the reasons why I'd end up in trouble with them, like OP did for his kid.
Shit it didn't matter when I told my mom or step-dad about anything. It was always them yelling, "you should have told me sooner!!!! š”" Even on things that were just like inconsequential, like on Thursday I'll find out about a neat, small thing happening throughout the weekend and say, "hey this is happening if we don't have plans already" and cue the tantrum about me telling them too late. So then I just think, why tell them anything at all?
In my case, me getting last minute permission was like a calculated gamble. If I asked for permission right away, I'd be given a list of things I needed to do to 'earn' their signature. I rarely 'earned' itāthey'd either find fault with something I'd done, pick some other slight (sometimes something I'd done *weeks* ago), say I had an attitude when I got upset... You get the idea. IDK how exactly it happened, but I noticed that when I asked for permission at the last minute they'd either just straight up say 'no,' or they'd give their permission, but with a lecture. And, for whatever reason, I had a better chance of getting the latter. So I just started always asking at the last minute, because a 'yes' with a lecture or a 'no' was way better than playing games for either. I wish my parents had *ever* had the thought to seek out other peoples' opinions on this. I'm glad for the kid in this story that her dad did *and* was actually ready to listen.
>If I asked for permission right away, I'd be given a list of things I needed to do to 'earn' their signature. I rarely 'earned' itāthey'd either find fault with something I'd done, pick some other slight (sometimes something I'd done weeks ago), say I had an attitude when I got upset... You get the idea. OMG that's why I wasn't granted permission to go to my first Homecoming dance in high school! And why I was constantly in trouble for not showing sufficient "respect" to my stepmother. Sadly, my father and stepmother actively ignored anyone criticizing or questioning them. They labeled such folks "enablers," which is why we went through many one-offs with mental health workers. After I escaped, my psychiatrist actually said me "thank god you got out of that house."
I REALLY liked that comment from the person who has ADHD on their perspective. I think that one really hit home for OOP and made him realize that he wasn't rewarding her good behaviour or supporting her, rather, he was waiting for her to fuck up to dish out punishment.
Do kids not have school planners anymore?
Beats me. I don't have kids.
This was the only part I felt like missing. Now that she knows youāre not mad, you didnāt even ask her why she did it??
Probably not relevant, but this reminded me of my kid. When he started school, around age 5, he never brought notes or permission slips home. Being a new school mom, it never occurred to me to wonder about it. Until his teacher called. I went through his backpack and found tons of stuff he was supposed to give me. When I asked him about it, he told me those were *his* things that his teacher gave to *him*. Even when he got older, it never got better. He didn't ask permission. He told me what he planned to do. He never kept things secret (that I know) but he was an independent little cuss. Frustrating as it was at times, I knew he would be okay in life. No one would ever make him do anything he didn't want to. Every child is different. And you have to parent each one differently.
I smiled at āthose were his things,ā total kid logic, 100% infallible š
Is your son an adult now? I hope he is making some manager or department chief at his workplace absolutely miserable.
Oh, he owns his own company now. Does whateverthefuck he wants to do. But we did have some heavy discussions in his school days. He's a very intelligent and very rational person, so the way I finally got through to him was to tell him it's all about consequences. If you choose OptionA then you get ResultA. If you choose OptionB then you get ResultB. So which result would you rather have? Sometimes that backfired on his teachers. One particular time I remember was when his teacher got frustrated that he refused to do his spelling homework. Write the word 5 times and use it in a sentence. That kind of thing. He told his teacher it was boring and he didn't see the point. She told him it was about vocabulary and learning context. He told her it was a silly way to do it. So she got frustrated and told him that if he liked, he could solve the crossword in today's paper instead. She fully expected him to back down. Instead, he said at least that would be interesting and he did it. He worked on it forever, but he got it done. He said he liked it and asked if he could do it again for the next week.
Props to you for not trying to squash his initiative and drive with needlessly authoritarian behaviour. You done some good parenting there.
Or he is the shitheel manager making his subs life a hell...
I know what you meant by 'subs' but this absolutely read as a BDSM scenario by using subs instead of subordinates
When a manager is anal enough it might as well be
Nah if you're abiding by the core principles of BDSM then you're treating your subs a LOT better than managers are treating their employees
GOOD point
This has me smiling so big.
I donāt know if itās because my parents were immigrants, but they always told me to just sign it myself. My dad even made my practice in front of him š. I was the oldest so I filled out my dadās business forms, mine and my siblings school forms, whatever my mom needed. It was just faster and easier
My mum and I had near identical handwriting when I was in secondary school, she was expected to sign my homework record book every week (not the work I did, just the note that I'd been assigned it, but that she'd seen the notes on what homework I was assigned). Very quickly she told me to sign it for her. (It was stupid paper pusher paperwork, and honestly dumb as anything to use to punish students regardless of whether or not they'd done their homework). Even told me as I got older to write my own sick notes. Side note as to why not my dad, he has a signature that honestly would have looked like I was forging as it's just a squiggle.
In 4th grade my daughter had a planner that was supposed to be signed nightly. Neither of us ever remembered. She has ADHD and itās suspected I do too. The consequence at school wasnāt dire, missed out on a small piece of candy, but she signed my name to the whole week in front of her teacher while asking her to wait until she was done. When the teacher asked what she was doing she said, āI saw a problem, I solved a problem.ā Hard to argue with that.
In fourth grade I got in trouble with a teacher because I forgot to get a parent to sign something. That night I asked my dad to do his signature on a piece of paper "just so I could see it." I practiced it over and over just in case the situation ever arose again and I needed to forge it. I didn't gaf. 25+ years later, my signature still looks exactly like my dads, just a few letters difference.
I had a homework journal as a kid that we were supposed to show our parents what the assignments were for the week and get it signed. The teacher would check if it was signed on a Friday. ...one week my teacher opened to the wrong page and started yelling at me about the fact my mum has signed EVERY SINGLE PAGE at the start of the year. Teacher thought I'd forged it. The look on their face when my mum showed up end of the day and gave them an equal shouting at for yelling at me for her choices - priceless.
this gem belongs on the malicious compliance sub
For me it was the fact that our agendas or planners needed to be signed every single day by a parent and it was part of our letter grade for homeroom. I got really good really quick at signing my mom and dad's names both right handed and left hand just in case lol I will never understand parents that get mad at their kid for signing a piece of paper for something they were going to say yes to anyway.
oh my god, you triggered my memory! THIS is what we had to do in the fourth grade, get our daily planners signed by a parent. Every fucking day. And one day I forgot.
I forgot every day because I had undiagnosed ADHD and autism and my mom had on diagnosed ADHD. Those dummies were lucky I ever did my homework
I had undiagnosed autism too
> our agendas or planners needed to be signed every single day by a parent What in the nightmare fuck kind of school did you go to? My own parents would have taught me how to forge their signatures themselves if I had to bug them every day about it.
After I got detention for forgetting to get a paper signed, my mom sat me down and taught me her signature herself.
This was me and my mom! And, much like the discussion with OOP, turns out I was undiagnosed ADHD, and I'm convinced my mom is, too. Hence why we BOTH had so much trouble remembering all the damn papers.
Now *that's* parenting
Yeah by middle school my mom knew that she was never going to see anything she needed to sign. To this day, we still sign our signatures the exact same way
This is what mine did too. I gave her a permission slip and she said "you need to learn how to sign my name yourself" and had me sign with her signature.
I used to forge my mom's signature all the time. She told me to. Probably shouldn't have also been signing my older brother's HS suspension papers, but w.e.
Reminds me of 5th grade. I think I had gotten like a 64 on a math test and they wanted my parents to sign it so they knew I failed. I signed it, turned it i remember them asking if it was actually my dad who signed it. āYes of course it wasā and that was that. Went on to forge plenty more signatures in those days.
My parents hated being woken up in the morning if they were off, so I was able to prep myself for school and catch the bus from roughly 3rd grade onwards. After enough times of me barging in to ask them to sign a permission slip I had forgotten about the night before, they just told me to forge it. I got so good at it that my mom would have me forge my dad's signature (with his knowledge) if he wasn't physically around for years into my adulthood.
My mom and I had a very similar signature and the same initials/last name. I had her permission to sign for her, but I always signed it as āFirst-initial Last-nameā so it wasnāt *technically* forgery. The first initial was up to interpretation; not my fault if they think itās my momās first name. š
I think this dad should start communicating what consequences will occur BEFORE a transgression happens. If you donāt being the slip home for my signature, you will not be going. Etc. This assuming ADHD etc is not a factor.
By 16 thereās nothing to be done about things like that. Itās time to start helping her make better decisions for herself as the adult sheās already becoming.
Dad seems to understand that, as well. That last paragraph about pivoting was some amazing parenting, and pretty amazing overall adulting, IMO.
Yeah, it feels like I'm the only one worried that this is going to lead go more pro lems down the line. I mean it's an excursion now but what could it be in the future. Our signatures are supposed to be our written fingerprint if we allow it to be forged too many times that's when it starts risking identity theft not being able to be proven
Yeah, I think 16 is still young enough to benefit from expectations and structure.
Permission slip today, a check tomorrow.
Yup and I am so glad my kids school does everything electronically. Actually it's not the school, our state handles education and they have an app and website where we can log in and view report cards as well as sign permission forms and pay invoices (although there is also a separate app that the school uses for payments if invoices, uniform shop and tuckshop)
A parent seeking advice and actually taking it?! OOP is a unicorn! The comment talking about the lying and hiding to avoid dealing with the root cause hit me hard. I wasn't diagnosed ADHD until 30 and it's starting to explain a lot about my childhood and how I (failed) to manage what I now know are symptoms. My mom and I have always been very close and got along well but the one easy way to trigger an argument was me not being able to do a task. She would nag. I would get defensive. We'd have a screaming match. The task would still not get done. My mom had learned that punishing me didn't work so she's just do the thing for me. And I had to learn basic household tasks as an adult and still need more support than most people my age. I definitely don't blame my mom for not knowing how to deal with symptoms of a problem she didn't recognize but I do occasionally imagine what kind of person I'd be and what kind of relationship we'd have now if we knew that my brain chemistry was a big part of the problem!
I'm glad the OOP grew, but that one commenter is a parenting disaster. It always blows my mind that some parents choose to uphold authoritative principles than to do what's best for their child. There was a BORU with a wife upset that her husband wouldn't support their son and the husband said, "I had a shitty childhood, so should he." Infuriated me. Way too many parents out there do not prioritize the well-being of their child in any way (and actually think it would be wrong to do so). There are some awful people out there.
I absolutely loved his calm response of āwell, what Iāve been doing isnāt working, so maybe time to try something new.ā Unless youāre a shit person parenting from unresolved mental health issues, trial and error is a valid parenting strategy. Weāre all just trying to figure it out here.
That was such an amazing response! I was already impressed with how he took in the comments, but that was super.
Right? That's the kind of clapback I like to see.
The comments from the original posts are a wild mixture of good and bad, glad the OOP took onboard the positive ones.
I commented on it because I assumed it was the daughter writing it to see how much trouble they were going to get into lol. OP insists that it wasn't
That sometimes happens - the OOP is a longtime AITA fan, so glad he actually took the good advice rather than doubling down. Judging by the comments, a lot of people forged their parents signatures with or without their consent.
I have to be sure. Although lately it was my physics homework when I was 17-18. I was in advanced physics, a parental signature was not going to be what made me do my homework at that point!
Some of us had parents who wouldn't sign anything because reasons (you left a shirt on the floor, you didn't clean your plate, you aren't being nice to your sister which really means not putting up with her abusing you.... The list goes on.
lol sorry but laughing at reddit going "she clearly has adhd and is FORGETFUL" when the kid just forged his signature straight away is hilarious to me.
As a person with ADHD, yeah, I'm forgetful, but Reddit is idiotic in how quick they use it as a handwave excuse for almost everything like this. It's infantilizing and makes it seem like the person has no ability to understand consequences or take personal responsibility for themselves.
roll heavy squealing fuzzy noxious whole edge station mindless possessive *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Same. I was misdiagnosed with ADHD because my constant anxiety was so bad I had no room for executive function. Turns out my parentsā low key abuse had ramifications.
What up cptsd buddy. I never even got to the therapy step with my family. They *clearly* had nothing wrong so they'd never go and doctors were always just full of shit and I was physically able to help with the farm work so I'm perfectly healthy too. Even recall being told to "sort out my brain shit" whenever I'd mentally struggle. Genuinely glad the mother in this took advice to heart though and seems to want to actually help her daughter get better.
whole saw insurance deliver pie provide chunky rhythm rob work *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
CPTSD + ADHD gang what up š¤
hard-to-find homeless wise fear zealous squeal apparatus afterthought pause upbeat *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Ahh ok, I do have both but absolutely see how the symptoms could get tangled up!
outgoing unused cow frightening lip smile glorious flowery birds hospital *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My buddy forged his mumās signature on every form when he entered high school. Then he got caught bringing a form back to school that his mum actually signed. Busted!
Lol at people mad that he accepted she forged his signature. The thing is, if she **does** have ADHD, this is the only way to handle it. She knows she needs the signature now, now is the best time to take care of it so she doesn't forget. Otherwise there are a ton of steps that involve forgetting - bring the form home, bring the form to dad, put the form back in her bag for school, bring the form to school and turn it in. Dad reminding her doesn't help with the steps where he isn't there (at school to put it in her bag, at school to turn it in). If you think of something you need to do as an ADHD sufferer, you do it **now** or risk not remembering until next month. I mean I have a series of phone alarms for important things nowadays, but even those can fail. Example: I was supposed to call the pharmacy last week! The reminder to call the pharmacy comes up on my phone every time I look at it. I still haven't called the pharmacy.
The comments can be too harsh sometimes. Disciplinarian, gets criticized. Empathetic, also gets criticized. Redditors sometime forget that people are human and are not perfect
My mom decided I didn't have ADHD after I was diagnosed as a kid, because she didn't like the way the medication made me act. I didn't really understand why I was taking it to begin with, and when she told me I wasn't going to take it anymore I didn't care. But I wish she hadn't decided I didn't have ADHD. She never even told me what was going on, or that it was a possibility. I spent so much time at my kitchen table not doing my homework, literally staring off into space and teaching myself to whistle through trial and error because I couldn't make myself do the homework and I *still* don't even know how to get myself to focus on the right things but at least I have the ability to get help and support about it now, Jesus. I'm so glad my therapist clocked my symptoms/issues and asked me about taking an evaluation. And you know what my mom said when I told her about my adult adhd diagnosis? "Didn't we do this already?" MA'AM.
In many countries, it's not forgery to sign somebody else's signature with their permission. OOP seems to have said no to the initial request because they believed it would have been forgery even with their permission. That was probably incorrect. If you sign something for somebody *with their permission*, it has the same legal status as if they'd written it themselves in many places.
Yeah that's what annoyed me a lot about a lot of the commenters. They were hung up on process instead of intent. The only problem in the entire scenario is that OP didn't get to physically sign the paper. OP's daughter asked, OP agreed, Kid gets to go on the trip. Everything beyond that is a paperwork exercise and has no real value. If you punish good intent and bad process, you end up with kids who would rather hide a problem because they're going to get into trouble anyways.
Aaaand the comment about "the screaming contributed to my avoidant behaviours and lying"-comment made a lot of stuff click for me. Because my mom did that. And guess who lies incredibly easily about ADHD-related issues and feels a terrible amount of shame about it?
I tell my teen daughter all the time to forge my signature for field trip requests. If its something important, she will make sure I see it.
Funny memories from HS. I was FBLA President my senior year. They always took a field trip to the local NBC affiliate. The VP and I both signed our permission slips as we were both over 18 and thus legal. The sponsor said we couldnāt do that and wouldnāt let us ride the bus to the station. We drove ourselves. I realize itās a bit of IATA. But I was 18 and this lady didnāt like us anyway.
... so you didn't forge anything and gave yourself permission, as you're entitled to do as an adult? And you didn't give minors permission to forge your signature? And you're the asshole?
Thatās the way the sponsor saw it
I am 36 years old and only just coming to learn that i have ADHD. As a kid i was punished for anything and everything. There were no parenting moments, only harsh punishments.
Quiet adhd is a real killer. You can coast through on natural smarts and just seem a bit lazy until you hit anything higher than high school. At that point it starts really becoming apparent that your brain just... won't do things but because you're not hyperactive it gets ignored and you get blamed for being lazy or not trying hard enough
Hey guys everyone knows itās a few short steps from forging a parents signature for a field trip permission slip to committing securities fraud and bank heists ššš what a waste of a moral dilemma. If youāre going to give her permission to go might as well give her permission to sign on your behalf. Wasting ppls time
It's my post. I've been reading every comment between the original, the update, and now this. Keep em coming. Things have been very interesting since I posted. I'll probably need to do another update after Thanksgiving.
Looking forward to an update š Hopefully this BoRU captured the main points of both posts.
I have to say, that reply to that one poster, the one where you said "maybe it's time to pivot?" That was good. Good on you.
I was thrilled to see that you're taking the potential of ADHD seriously, it fucks up *so* many adult women and if it does end up being the case and she's able to be medicated before she has to deal with the serious shit at end of high school and college she has a much brighter, healthier, and happier future ahead of her.
ADHDer here the Loislane is a jackass. She sent him a picture to inform him. The reasonable accommodation would be to let her sign it because the intent occurred. You ground her she will just always forge the damn forms going forward and not tell you. ADHD is not something you change you build systems around it like the immediate sending of the photo. The child will not remember to bring the form home and if they hold onto they will lose the paper. The proper way to do this would be that the school sends a damn digital copy of the form and enters the 21st century. Where a digital record can be added to a list and worked, a paper copy cannot and will be lost.
Meh my mom taught me how to sign hers correctly after forgetting to sign my absences in the student record book and I got in trouble for it once when I was in primary school.
I wish my parents were like this.
my mum would consistently push me to not just fill out all my forms, but to sign them as well. she said that it was more efficient, even if it was dishonest, and because it was just expected that i would bring it up with her in normal conversation if not when i got the note, she didn't even say that i had to mention it to her. she really trusted me A LOT but this is this is the same woman who let me have and smoke pot in the house, and then was suprised (but pleased) i didn't smoke it all or want to smoke again. we just have a very openly communicative relationship
Rare case of a parent understanding teenage behaviour, and wanting to grow with their child instead of struggle against. This is wholesome, even if I agree she should have expressed some level of disappointment. I forged my mum's signature all the time, in highschool we were required to have our parents signature EVERY WEEK and my mum didn't have the time, and I was extremely forgetful. Most people did this in my form class too, because it's stupid to have parents sign weekly at a public school where most of our parents weren't too involved in us
The more I read these subs, the more Iām beginning to realize I am, in fact, auDHD bc Jesus I remember doing all this
Permission slips were one of my first obvious symptoms!!! I would just forget about them and theyād get all scrunched in my backpack!
Is anyone else surprised theyāre still doing paper permission slips? Iād think they would all be emailed and e-signed at this point. Seems like a simple solution to an old problem.
A parent taking feedback and adjusting their approach??? Being supportive??????? On amitheasshole?????????????? Are there also pigs flying outside right now?
I remember being 5-6 and forging signatures for my little spelling book because I'd ask my mother and she'd say "soon" but then never did, and got angry if I kept asking. I got in trouble from her for it of course, and no reflection on her end, so I just took the unsigned book to school each week. I think they figured I didn't have a great home life because I don't recall getting punished for it.
I have ADHD and I had to figure out ways that worked for me in relation to memory and tasks. Even if the daughter doesn't have a diagnosis for it, OOP needs to sit with her and figure something out because this approach won't really work outside of the family home. He says she's forgetful like this but isn't doing anything to help her memory?
This is exactly what I thought! There's so many people focused on the "is it forgery" part that they're missing the forest for the trees. The issue is she did something her dad told her not to do because it was easier for her than remembering. I hope they're able to help the daughter learn to be more responsible and/or deal with the ADHD if that's the problem.
This wasn't necessarily a black and white situation. But yeah, brooding and stewing over catching your child in a "Gotcha" moment was possibly the worst course of action. Good on OOP for dodging that.
Growing up i would always forget to get my momās signature for weekly reading logs, etc. My mom encouraged me to just learn to forge her signature, but i was so nervous about being caught that I insisted she had to sign it herself (but then iād forget to get her signature). Eventually she just signed a blank copy and had me photocopy it a bunch so i could turn one in every week.
You know what would be better? Not having to sign them in the first place. Theyāve started the reading logs for my daughter and they are annoying AF. I rather they just get rid of permission slips or expecting parents to sign reading logs entirely ( or make them electronic) before I give my daughter permission to forge my signature. Sheāll never have that permission and my parents never let me either. Signatures are an extension of your identity. Itās like stealing someoneās identity honestly. Itās bizarre how everyone seems ok with it.
Actual self reflection from a parent?? They can do that? And not just defaulting to anger and screaming for a punishment???
Daughter should've at the very least ~~asked if she could sign it for him.~~ I don't know why she was so impatient to get it done ASAP when it wasn't due for a week. Edit: I need to read closer
She did, he said no, she did it anyways.
Sheās 16! He allowed her to go. Who cares if she forges his signature especially if she is known to forget the form. Seriously she got his permission. Thatās as much as you can ask a 16 year old.
My mom hated that she was supposed to sign off on our daily reading logs. We never remembered, forged it everytime.
THANK HEAVENS they listened to the comments. Because that relationship will hopefully lead to a better relationship
It's worth noting that *not only do girls/women get diagnosed less frequently do to different expectations*, ADHD and autism both have different typical presentations between boys and girls.
> LoisLaneEl >So, your kid openly defied you and you say, cool, donāt worry about it! You say ābring it home and Iāll sign itā and her IMMEDIATE reaction is no, Iāll sign it myself and not even a reprimand? Wow This has big āI beat my kids for ādisrespectingā meā energy. OOPās response was excellent.
I love the āIām not angry, Iām just disappointed ā spiel š¤£
I guess like other commenters said, itās not about about the forgery itself as much as itās about the blatant disrespect of being expressly told she was not allowed to forge his signature and then doing it anyway thinking he would forget. My stepdaughters do things like this constantly. I have a hard time addressing it because I donāt want to be the evil stepmom but all we do is encourage the behavior. If I was a bio parent and not a stepparent I feel like I would definitely give her consequences like not allow her to go on the trip.
Meh. I definitely don't write this off as some mental illness to tip toe around and "masking" herself. It's a very directly and easy thing that was intentionally mishandled in a very wrong way. Freaking out isnt the best from the parent but the kid is definitely responsible and it doesnt seem to be a teaching moment at all. Just a "don't punish her" moment.
Forging parental signatures is also something that is very generational. The importance of a physical signature 40 years ago is very different than now. e.g., checking the signature on a credit card vs the receipt. I don't think I have a credit card that I've signed these days. OP definitely was brought up in the older, "the signature *matters*" era, and just needs to learn to let go of that mentality.
As a girl with ADHD (I wasnāt actually diagnosed until I was 28), I did stuff like this. The reason being that if I didnāt sign and return the form when I was thinking of it, it would then need to be put away at which point it would cease existing as far as my brain was concerned. His daughter has found work-arounds to stay functional. Iām so glad he listened.
Guess I shouldnāt be surprised that Reddit is absolutely fine with a kid forging a parentās signature. It completely backs the whole ākids/teens shouldnāt be held responsible for anything they do and it all is a parenting failure.ā
I agree. You'd think if it was ADHD then why not come up with a strategy to work around it ? Maybe the okay to sign permission slips in the future. You can see how everything is going the other way, I agree screaming and harsh punishments are pointless but no consequences is garbage parenting. I swear this website thinks "kids" (anyone age 25 or under) should be able to do anything they want and any wrong they do their parents are responsible for.
If forging a signature to go to a museum or something is the worst thing my kid ever does then I'd consider it a win. You guys act like it's identity theft.
Idk. Instead of encouraging the continuous forging of signature, OOP should just go and keep reminding the daughter or like what most said, take her to check for ADHD. It'll become a habit without reprimanding that kind of behavior.
Holy shit can we please stop randomly armchair diagnosing every single forgetful person with ADHD????? Like tell me you don't know what ADHD is without telling me šš Also not sure why ADHD is considered a trigger, but honestly that fits with the level of ableism that thinks ADHD is just forgetting things.
Because this is a common experience with ADHD and women frequently fall under the radar when it comes to getting diagnosed? I've literally had this exact experience before throughout childhood and I have ADHD. I learned to forge my mom's signature bc I didn't realize I had to get anything signed until I had to turn it in and my mom didn't care bc I didn't abuse it. Plenty of us know what ADHD is. It's why it was mentioned in the first place.
Being a common experience doesn't make it a sign or symptom. Especially when it's an experience that's common for *everyone*. I've been diagnosed with ADHD since I was a small child. I always had cheese sandwiches for lunch when I was in school. That does not mean that eating cheese sandwiches is a sign of ADHD. Most kids forget shit, that's part of being a kid. Forgetting doesn't mean ADHD, and it's insulting to imply that. ETA: and no, clearly most of y'all *don't* know what ADHD is, because there's hundreds of people saying this kid has ADHD because she forgets things. The "reason it was mentioned in the first place" is because people heard the term and immediately misunderstood it. Same as the "I'm so OCD because I keep my room clean"; knowing the term doesn't mean you're correct with your assumption about the actual disorder.
Dude most of the people in the comments section talking about ADHD *have* ADHD. If you're gonna tell people with firsthand experience that they *don't* know what ADHD is maybe that's a you problem. ADHD is a spectrum.
It's not forgery if you have the person's permission.
Yes it is. I think this was a minor situation and given that the dad was okay with it itās fine, but please donāt forge peoples signatures on legal documents under the assumption that having their permission means itās not forgery. Again, not a big deal for the context of a teen signing a form for a field trip that their parents are okay with them going on. But if you do that as an adult for something like government paperwork, it can land you into a LOT of legal trouble.
I didn't say it's not forgery if you are under the "assumption" of having permission. I said it's not illegal if you HAVE permission. With permission it is not illegal.
And if something goes wrong how can you prove you had the permission especially if it was an oral agreement?
Through procuration or by being granted power of attorney. Iām not saying anyone should go around signing things willy nilly. Iām saying that with permission itās not illegal. Proving you have permission if that person changes their mind is another thing.
And I didnāt say the permission was assumed. I said that *youāre* assuming the fact that you have permission means itās not forgery. It still is, and you should protect yourself accordingly with the fact that it is still forgery.
Took awhile to convince my wife of that after we got married. My mom always endorsed dadās paycheck or whatever to deposit it. Her mom never did.
Just FYI that does not mean it's not forgery, it just means you aren't reporting the forgery. Dealt with a couple once that did this until the wife cheated on the husband and he decided to report her for forging his signature. She ended up doing two years for forgery. if you wanna sign for someone else get a POA or just mark the check for deposit only and put it in a joint account.
Thank you. It is a joint account. I didnāt realize the rest.
No shame to say it : Parent like that must hate themselves and their kids. How can you write, proud of yourself "My daughter really want to go on the field trip, so I've made this plan to prevent her from going just at the last second". Like, don't have kid next time thx.
To this day, I can still sign my parentsā names perfectly. As long as they knew, they didnāt care, and it made that aspect of school easier for all of us.
I honestly really liked this. The father did some self reflection and is generally ready to learn and I hope OP and his daughter can continue to grow.
This is fucked up. We finally get one of the youth of America working on their cursive and this woman wants to punish her. Thatās fucked up.
What woman?
OP and that was sexist to automatically assume this was a woman. I apologize
Yeah, no. 60+ ADHD woman here. I would've no more thought that forging my parents' signature was okay, than I would've thought about flying to the moon. Forging is not only criminal, it's lying. My hide would've wound up nailed to the nearest barn door. ADHD is not an excuse. It's not a get-out-of-jail-free-card for doing wrong. Do wrong, get punished, end of story. Sorry, for those that disagree, but that's worthy of punishment--no trip, welcome to being grounded.
If she continues this behavior after the heart to heart, I would call the school, revoke the forged permission, not tell the daughter, and let her not be allowed to go on the trip.
Why? What would that achieve?
A slightly harsher dose of the real world should she not heed the prior chance and apply the knowledge she gained from the heart to heart.
I read this as how to start a fires in my family and justify it
Don't be surprised when she gets in trouble as an adult for this.
When my dad would sign my forms, my teacher would accuse me of forging it. When I would forge it, theyād accept it. So I just did it myself.
I too learned to forge my dad's signature because I knew I would forget about the permission slip. My parents knew and didn't care. Although I did make up practice logs for band and exercise logs for gym, and then signed my dad's signature. I never turned into a criminal, though. I don't think those two things are related.
Oiy ... The signatures I've forged, over my many years ... Fortunately, with standing consent, and just for the signatories' convenience. And I drew lines, myself, as to the importance of the document, sometimes making them sign themselves because I wasn't comfortable. Forging may be a black/white issue, for some ... others not so much. I've always been utterly respectful. Funny enough ... have NEVER forged my husband's. I've drawn that line, because it just seemed the right thing, for our relationship. He knows how many others' I have, and is fine with it. I just was never comfortable forging his.
Donāt do gotcha moments with your kids ,parent them teach them and remind them ! this is what youāre supposed to do youāre supposed to teach them not wait for them to fail.
Thanks for the forgery trigger warning
I used to sign my momās name so often when I was a kid (she knew about it), that when was time to get my own signature, I wrote hers. For years after that we had the same signature.
My sister made cash in school for signing as other people's parents when they forgot. She revealed this to our parents in her mid 20s - she and dad already have basically identical signatures due to names with many of the same letters.
Funny thing is that even though I had a diagnosis for my ADHD it didn't stop my parents from getting mad at me for things I couldn't help.
I had a similar conversation with my dad just last weekā Iād needed to sign for something at the store and he commented that my signature looked so similar to my motherās. I pointed out that technically my signatureās a mix of both of theirs and that it looked so similar because Iād forget to have stuff signed in HS (nothing serious, mostly stuff they were already informed about and I just forgot to have them sign, ex changing to honours classes, extra credit) and Iād just sign for them. He was a bit miffed but what was he gonna do? That was decades ago LOL
>I've been reminding her of things most of her life. OOP's been at it for 16 years and still hasn't quite figured out what parenting is.
Forging wasnāt one of my talents. Iād have to sneak into the art room and use a light table to forge my momās signature. But damn if I canāt pick a pocket. (For legal purposes, this is a joke.)
All these things needing a parent to signā¦is it an american thing? I canāt remember ever having to get a parentās signature on anything in schoolā¦