I am not officially diagnosed yet, but was (pre) diagnosed by my GP and their private psychologist. Waiting on full diagnosis which could take a year here in the Netherlands.

I struggle immensely with time. Being on time, remembering to eat etc. My mother in law spoke to me about always being late and said I can't just attribute everything to ADHD. She says I can be on time for work, so I can be on time for family gatherings, and attributing that to ADHD is just being lazy and disrespectful.

This happened after I asked if our dinner time could be moved back 30 minutes after me and my partner messed up the planning for mother's day. As a result I was only able to see my mother for 1.5 hours and I asked to move the dinner with my mother in law 30 minutes back, so I could spend 30 minutes more with my mom. After which this happened.

How do I explain that a repetitive appointment like work is easier to manage and something like family gatherings is just harder? I am under a lot of pressure from work/school right now (make 70 hour or more workweeks) and therefore my partner plans a lot of things around that to help me out. We just had a miscommunication and there resulted in this connumdrum.

I left it at that, as it was mother's day and didn't want to press the issue. But ofcourse this will in the future come up again as I struggle with this since I was 5ish. I hate it too, but seem to run into issues I can't fix myself, maybe after I get actual help after the full diagnosis. But for now, without medication and without help I see this happening again.

How do I explain that her logical argument doesn't hold for me and my partner? (we both have ADHD) Any tips? I'm thinking of giving a presentation on how ADHD works and how it affects our lives daily.

For clarification: I asked to move it back, 5 hours before the dinner, the restaurant didn't have a problem with it. We didn't do it in the end because she wasn't ok with it, and we spent over 4 hours with her eating dinner.