"Letting Kids with ADHD and Anxiety Skip School? Here's Why That's Not the Answer and What Works Better!"

DO you, too, often become irritable?

Do you regularly forget, say, where you put your car keys?

Allowing kids with ADHD & anxiety to skip school will just create MORE benefits shirkers – there’s a better solutionCredit: Getty Ms Reeves has further softened welfare rules by exempting youngsters with ADHD from attending school in order for their parents to get benefitsCredit: Reuters

Do you, when people are rabbiting on with inane stories, interrupt to get across your own far more interesting one?

Then congrats! You, too, are quite ­possibly eligible for a fancy new car, some time off work and a few thousand quid in free money.

Yep, with diagnoses at an all-time high — almost three million of us and counting formally diagnosed — under the this number will only rocket.

Because whoever said there is no such thing as a free lunch has never known a Labour government under PM Sir and Chancellor .

Under this pair of jokers, lunch, dinner, cars, smartphones, dentistry, broadband and a rail-discount card are all yours.

As someone who cannot stay still for more than five minutes, is glued to my iPhone, stops unloading the dishwasher to clean the fridge, and regularly interrupts people because I find my own anecdotes far more exciting, I realise I am a classic millennial ADHD type.

Certainly, a 12-minute online test told me I was riddled with the “disorder”.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is characterised by the as a condition where “the brain works differently to most people” and “symptoms involve your ability to pay attention to things (being inattentive), having high energy levels (being hyperactive) and your ability to control your impulses (being impulsive).”

In the age of the smartphone, this, surely, is everyone.

There are people with real, crippling ADHD, who need hardcore medication to function, but these are the exception and not the rule. We should be ­helping them, not people like me and my similarly dopamine- seeking generation.

My symptoms — for which I shall not be claiming anything, fear not — have unquestionably been made 100 times worse by smartphones.

Whereas once upon a time I could happily walk for hours listening to gentle birdsong and admiring the pretty clouds in the sky, etc, now I cannot go anywhere without earphones in while listening to .

Softened welfare rules

My phone goes everywhere with me, and watching a film takes approximately five hours because I pause it continuously to check my phone/get a snack/WhatsApp someone/rearrange the furniture.

None of this is healthy — and all of it is avoidable.

ADHD is traditionally a disorder that develops in children. But now, more and more adults are being diagnosed and our modern, tech-first world is to blame — fuelled by lockdowns.

It also emerges that Ms Reeves has further softened welfare rules by exempting youngsters with ADHD (and anxiety — don’t get me started on that one) from attending school in order for their parents to get benefits.

The move, buried in , comes on top of the abolition of the two-child benefit cap, which will cost taxpayers at least £3billion a year.

It means will struggle to develop the skills they need to work, and become functioning, contributing ­members of society.

So what will they do now? Join the 2.8million people out of work owing to long-term sickness, of course.

There is, though, a very simple solution. One I have wanged on about time and time again — to ban phones in .

With ADHD diagnoses at an all-time high — almost three million of us and counting formally diagnosed — under the Chancellor’s Benefits Street Budget this number will only rocketCredit: Alamy

At all times.

Make youngsters do what we had to do — chat, play, gossip, get up to mischief.

If Labour truly wants to be the party of kindness, it must protect the youngest members of society.

And that means preventing tech ­addiction before it’s too late — and before we facilitate a new generation of faux-sick, lazy, entitled, benefit seekers.

Let me tell you the pecking order, mister

Donald pardoned the Thanksgiving turkeys in a bizarre White House traditionCredit: Reuters

HERE’S , a giant turkey and one poor soul bracing itself for December 25.

OK, OK, it’s the US President pardoning this year’s Thanksgiving turkeys, Waddle and Gobble, in the bizarre annual tradition.

COFFIN OR OUT, DEAR?

NEW fear unlocked. A has been found alive and, gingerly, kicking – just moments before she was due to be cremated.

Her family had brought her to a Buddhist temple after she had appeared to stop breathing two days prior.

A 65-year-old Thai lady thought to be dead has been found alive and, gingerly, kicking – just moments before she was due to be crematedCredit: Supplied

But just as the service was due to begin, shocked temple manager Pairat Soodthoop heard a faint knock coming from inside the coffin.

He said: “I was a bit surprised, so I asked them to open the coffin, and everyone was startled. I saw her opening her eyes slightly and knocking on the side of the coffin. She must have been knocking for quite some time.”

The cremation was due to be live-streamed by the temple.

The stuff of actual nightmares.

MEN, just don’t go there.

Toblerone’s Christmas advert implores: “Whatever you gift, add a diamond”, alongside a picture of their latest gem-shaped praline treat.

May I politely suggest that promising the fairer sex a glittering rock for Christmas, and delivering a £5.99 lump of chocolate is not the move to pull this December 25.

Meme of the week

Credit: Supplied

EVERTON’S Idrissa Gueye was sent off against Man Utd last week after striking his teammate, Michael Keane.

Some fans were up in arms, and even Gary Neville reckoned it should have been just a yellow card, not red.

Er, no. If I slapped a colleague at work – maybe tempting – I’d expect to pack my stuff and be sent marching.