Emiliano, two languages and a system that doesn't understand his
Emi, here at 2 years and 6 months old, is on a journey through the universe. Illustration by Stef Arreaga and Emi Martínez for palabra
Emiliano, a boy diagnosed with adhd, faces a system that doesn't know how to see him. While he deals with labels and barriers, his mother — a Guatemalan journalist and refugee in the United States — fights to pave the way for him, convinced that her son is not a problem to be fixed, but a beautiful mind that the world has not yet learned to understand.
Editor's Note: This article is a personal essay reflecting the author's perspectives, vision, and experience. It was originally published in Spanish. Haz clic aquí para leer este reportaje en español.
Emiliano was born in Guatemala in 2015, and early on, his world moved at a different pace. He learned to whistle before he was a year old, walked before he was eleven months old, and once he could climb, never stopped. But as he grew, his way of learning and relating to the world shifted. He didn't easily make eye contact, avoided certain textures in clothing, and could spend hours lost in a single thought or, conversely, switch activities in seconds.
The diagnosis came at eight years old: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). But it didn't come with instructions, but rather with labels. "Deficit," "disorder," "hyperactivity": words that pigeonholed him into a problem to be corrected instead of recognizing him as a child with a different way of processing the world.
For Emiliano, the challenge isn't ADHD. It's the system itself, especially the school system.
Emi at four months old, after a bath. Illustration by Stef Arreaga and Emi Martínez for palabra
The Clash With An Education Not Designed For Him
In November 2021, we went into exile with Emiliano and his sisters. We packed our lives in a suitcase and arrived in the United States carrying extra baggage: uncertainty, anxiety, and fear of starting a new life in a different country.
Emiliano, six years old and not speaking English, entered the classroom as the only Latino child in his class. He learned English quickly, but problems soon appeared. Teachers said he was distracted, had difficulty following directions, and talked nonstop. I discussed this with his pediatrician, and she soon referred him to a psychological care center in Boston.
The process was slow, bureaucratic, and exasperating. We waited more than six months for a psychologist to be assigned to us, and that psychologist frequently missed scheduled home visits.
In second grade, the teachers were concerned that Emi continued to have difficulty paying attention and that his attention levels remained below par. They suggested he see a specialist. A pediatrician at Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts saw him and did a developmental analysis. He collected information on important areas of his life through four special questionnaires that his parents and teachers had to complete. Three weeks later, he told us what we already suspected: he had ADHD.
The doctor suggested medication to improve attention and reduce hyperactivity. He explained that there are different treatments and that it would take time to find the right one. Emiliano started on a minimal dose, but side effects soon appeared. These are specialized medications designed to stimulate and improve the function and effectiveness of neurotransmitters in the brain. Some stimulant treatments have short-term effects, lasting three to six hours, while long-acting ones remain in the body for up to 12 hours. They are then excreted through urine. The medication would help the neurotransmitters reach Emi's frontal lobe and its connections to other parts of his brain. The doctor said that Emi probably wouldn't need to take it anymore by the time he was 15 to 17. What he didn't tell me is that ADHD can't be cured and that the effectiveness of medication is only part of it; the other is a combination of therapy, nutrition, supplements, routines, and structure.
When I explained it to Emi, I tried to keep it as simple as possible:
“For our car to run, it needs an engine. This engine needs gasoline and oil so it can go without any problems. But what happens if the engine doesn't get enough gasoline and oil because the little tubes that carry it are clogged or damaged? The car will probably have difficulty moving and won't get as far as it wants to go. So, we need to take it to the mechanic, who will give us a solution so that the gasoline and oil reach the engine and we can drive it on the trip we wanted. The same thing happens with our brain, Emi. The brain is our engine and needs certain substances that help us feel better. The doctor will give us a medicine that helps those little tubes carry the necessary gasoline and oil for the brain, so things will go better at school and in everyday life.”
"Yes, it means I'm going to take medication," he replied without further ado.
Despite the pediatrician's recommendation, I had a strong internal conflict with medication. I grew up watching my mother, my aunts, and my grandmother rely on pills. I didn't want to repeat the same patterns. For days, I felt anguished, I cried, and carried a guilt I didn't know how to let go of.
But then I heard something that changed my perspective. In a podcast, a specialist said:
"If a person with diabetes takes insulin, their quality of life improves. If someone with high blood pressure takes their medicine, it reduces their risk of a heart attack. If someone with ADHD has neurotransmitter deficiencies, medication can help their brain function better." That's when I understood.
In second grade, Emiliano began comparing himself to his classmates.
"Mommy, I can't read fast like my friends. I'm stupid."
I told him how smart he is and how proud I am of him, but his words inevitably broke my heart. In meetings with his teachers, they all agreed that Emiliano tried hard, but was distracted, talked a lot, and struggled with reading. They also said that math was his strong suit, even though he responded so quickly that many of his answers were wrong.
“He tries really hard, he really tries, you can tell he wants to get it, and by dismissal time, he looks exhausted.” And yes, Emi would come home clearly mentally and physically tired.
The United States acknowledges people with ADHD as those with disabilities who require educational support. However, in practice, accessing those rights is a different story. When he was in second grade, his school put together an interdisciplinary team to help him, but by the end of the semester his progress was minimal, and they proposed that he be evaluated by the school district to determine if he was eligible for special education.
8-year-old Emi, making wishes and blowing on dandelions. Ilustration by Stef Arreaga y Emi Martínez for palabra
A Teacher Who Doesn't Understand, A Student Who Stops Believing In Himself
Emiliano started third grade in September 2024. He felt nervous because he knew he wasn't at the level the school required for the new grade. Emi bit his nails and lower lip and ate compulsively, mainly spicy and sweet things; sugar overstimulates dopamine production, generating an immediate pleasurable effect, but then lowers levels, triggering more anxiety. However, Emi's academic difficulties weren't his biggest problem: his real challenge was a teacher who didn't understand what it meant to teach a neurodivergent child.
When I tried to speak to the teacher, there was no response. Instead, I received a crushing email:
Good morning,
I wanted to let you know that Emi is having a lot of trouble with his behavior. He’s not listening, doesn’t follow directions, distracts others, doesn’t finish their work, and doesn’t pay attention. He’s also being disrespectful to his teachers. This situation is becoming a serious problem.
Academically, Emi is no longer performing at the level that he should be, and his behavior isn't helping him succeed. He doesn't come to school with a willingness to learn, but rather intending to play and be distracted.
I ask myself, who decides what success is for an eight-year-old?
The teacher never implemented the accommodations that, by law, were required for Emiliano. He scolded him in front of his classmates, making him feel like a burden.
“Mommy, my teacher never notices when I try hard, but he always notices when I make mistakes,” Emiliano told me, filled with frustration.
The consequences were devastating. His appetite went down and he began to lose weight. Every night before he went to bed, he relived what had happened at school, replaying every scolding, every correction. Emiliano began to believe he wasn't good enough, that he would never catch up with his classmates.
The Right To An Education Without Humiliation
That same September, I was summoned to receive an evaluation that could allow him to have an Individualized Education Program (IEP) or a 504 plan, which allows for classroom adjustments. But the school's response was that Emiliano didn't qualify because “he first had to learn to read and write well in English.” In other words, his right to receive support was conditioned on a language he still only partially mastered. This happened after meeting with the school psychologist, the evaluator appointed by the city to determine whether he needs special education. His ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher, school officials, and his grade-school teacher were also at the meeting.
Official assessments placed him at the lowest level of reading performance. They sent a report with graphs marked in red: “Below Level.” But not one document mentioned his effort, his curiosity, or his ability to translate between two languages with the ease of an adult.
Among the many documents they sent to my home, I found a sheet three months later stating that my son was indeed eligible for Section 504 and listing the "accommodations" (reasonable adjustments to support individuals with disabilities) and personalized interventions to improve his academic performance. During that time, no accommodations were made, even though the teacher was aware of the decision.
Emi felt misunderstood, embarrassed, and frustrated by a teacher who didn't know how to work with a neurodivergent student.
Parents report that only 1 in 3 children with ADHD receive behavior management in the classroom.
“Emi, how do you feel about your teacher?” I asked him at the end of 2024, around Christmas time.
"My teacher this year gets mad, he embarrasses me in front of the others because he constantly scolds me and says I distract others. When I do things well, he doesn't congratulate me or notice that I've made an effort. He just doesn't say anything to me. I liked my teachers better last year; they did notice that I was trying."
I sent the teacher a long letter in which I mentioned his failure to follow the accommodations that my son deserved by law, about the cruelty of his actions in ridiculing him in front of others, and described in great detail each of the things that were affecting Emi.
The teacher never responded.
Despite his silence, Emiliano told me that the teacher changed his attitude. He told me he stopped embarrassing him in class and speaking rudely to him, but then he started ignoring him. When I requested a classroom transfer, I was told it wasn't convenient at that time and that the school would work to change things between the teacher and Emiliano. My son would have to see a reading and phonics specialist four times a week, and the school would schedule sessions with the school counselor for him. Weeks went by, and Emiliano didn't have any of these sessions. When I asked the school why, they told me they were trying to find time in the counselor's schedule to see him. To date, that hasn't happened.
Even the smallest changes shouldn't depend on a mother's insistence or a principal's will. They should be a school right, guaranteed without resistance.
It’s The System That Needs To Change, Not Emiliano
Like my son Emi, more than 7 million children between the ages of 3 and 17 in the United States have been diagnosed with ADHD. Science has shown that it's not a behavioral or intelligence problem, but rather a difference in the way the brain processes information. Yet, with a few exceptions, the educational system continues to treat it as an obstacle rather than a characteristic that requires new teaching strategies.
The world needs to learn to see him, to listen to him, to understand that his mind, his energy, and his way of learning are not flaws.
Schools shouldn't extinguish children's curiosity with labels and scolding. They should build spaces where their way of learning is seen as an opportunity, not a problem.
While this was happening, Emiliano continued doing what he does best: challenge a system that hasn't yet learned to speak his language.
I noticed a visible relief in his eyes and on his small shoulders when I told him, “School is important, but I want you to know that being an excellent, average, or poor student doesn't define you as a person; it's just a part of you. You are more than a grade at the end of the school year, and I want you to know that I'm proud of you for the effort you put in every day, regardless of the final result.”
Emi and his ocean friends. Illustration by Stef Arreaga and Emi Martínez for palabra
Emiliano's Mirror Showed Me My Own Adhd
Emiliano's diagnosis has not only forced me to confront the system, but also to look at myself through new eyes. While I searched for answers for him, I ended up finding explanations for myself. The more I learned about ADHD, the more I was taken back to my childhood.
Science has shown that ADHD is a neurobiological condition that can also be linked to genetics: studies show that if a mother or father has it, there is up to an 80% chance of inheriting it. Non-genetic factors include low birth weight, premature birth, exposure to toxins (alcohol, tobacco, lead, etc.), and extreme stress during pregnancy, according to specialized publications.
Dr. J. Russell Ramsay, director of the Adult ADHD Treatment and Research Program at the University of Pennsylvania, estimates that 366 million people worldwide are living with ADHD, many of them undiagnosed, let alone untreated.
Watching Emiliano, I've seen myself. I spent my whole life trying to be functional, devising strategies to fit in, to hide what I didn't understand about myself. Now, through my son, I allow myself to see my own story with compassion. And, above all, with more clarity.
Late last year, I started a process at Boston Medical Center to receive an ADHD diagnosis. I hadn't done so before because the grief of exile and adapting to a new country consumed me. But being with Emiliano also means understanding myself.
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For me, I can say that living with ADHD is like listening to five radio stations at once without being able to turn any of them off. It's like going blank in the middle of a conversation, wanting to do everything and ending up doing nothing, obsessing over something for weeks, and then abandoning it for no reason. It's the impatience, the anxiety, the disconnect. It's forgetting what is urgent and getting lost in the irrelevant. All of this happened to me, and I didn't know what to name it until I saw in Emiliano all those things that made me feel different.
“Emi, how does it feel to have a mother with ADHD?” I asked him one night as we listened to the playlist to fall asleep with and looked at the stars from his window.
“Normal, because I don't know what it's like to have a mom without ADHD,” he answers with the ease with which children understand the world.
And in that simple, direct, uncomplicated answer, it became clear to me that the problem has never been us, but rather the system that insists on seeing us as a mistake.
I don't want Emiliano to grow up feeling limited by his diagnosis. That's why I decided to turn the narrative around. At home, his ADHD isn't a barrier; it's a set of "superpowers" he needs to learn to use. The hyperfocus that captivates him on the topics that interest him, his developed intuition, his ability to make friends, his spontaneity, and his inexhaustible energy. All of which the system sees as obstacles.
“Emi, what do you like about your skills?”
“I learn more when I listen. I'm a good athlete. I'm smart because I can speak two languages, and I'm a good translator for my friends who don't speak Spanish and for those who don't speak English. And now I understand some things in Portuguese!”
Those are his words. That's the version of himself I want him to keep. Not the one imposed on him by a school with charts in red and lists of deficiencies.
My biggest challenge isn't just raising a child with ADHD. It's doing so while I myself continue to discover what it means to have lived with it without knowing it. Along the way, I've found a community of adults with ADHD who, like me, spent years feeling broken, unaware that their brains simply worked differently. We share tools, strategies, and reminders that we are not alone.
The system won't change overnight, but here at home, Emiliano and I continue to find our own rules. He wants to be an Olympic athlete and represent Guatemala. I want him to get there knowing that his mind, his energy, and his way of learning aren't obstacles.
Emiliano doesn't have a problem to fix; he has a world to conquer.
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The illustrations for this story were created by Stef Arreaga in partnership with her son Emiliano Martínez.
Stef Arreaga is a Guatemalan investigative journalist living in exile in the United States. She has worked on issues related to childhood and adolescence, femicide, human rights, historical memory, extractivism, and land rights. She is an audiovisual producer and is currently working on a project with filmmaker Bryan Buckley and the production company Hungry Man Productions. She is a former IWMF (International Women's Media Foundation) fellow, a board member of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission, and the founder of the organization Ocho Tijax. Stef has published in the Boston Globe, Revista Ruda, Prensa Comunitaria, El Planeta Boston, Oregon State University Magazine, Desinformémonos Mexico, and Latin America Bureau (LAB) London, among others. @Stefarreaga
Wendy Selene Pérez is a freelance journalist with a two-decade career in various media outlets in Mexico, Argentina, and the United States. Her work focuses on issues of social justice, victims of violence, government accountability, transparency, and immigration. Throughout her career, she has contributed to publications such as El País, Gatopardo, Proceso, Vice, and Al Día Dallas - The Dallas Morning News. She also held key positions such as chief correspondent at CNNMéxico.com and narrative journalism editor for Domingo magazine at El Universal, in addition to working as a multimedia editor at Clarín (Argentina) and Grupo Reforma (Mexico). Wendy holds a Master's degree in Journalism from the Clarín newspaper, the University of San Andrés, and Columbia University. She has received various awards, including the National Journalism Prize in Mexico (2019, 2022), the Walter Reuter German Journalism Prize (2020), the Breach-Valdez Human Rights Prize (2022, 2023), the 2021 Texas APME, the ICFJ COVID-19 reporting competition, and an honorable mention in the Latin American Prize for Investigative Journalism (COLPIN, 2022). In 2025, she was nominated for the Fetisov International Journalism Prize in the category of Excellence in Environmental Journalism, together with Alejandra Martínez, for a work published in palabra and co-published with The Texas Tribune, Environmental Health News, as part of the Altavoz Lab fellowship. Currently, she works as a freelance investigative journalist, fact-checker with Factchequeado, and freelance editor with palabra. @wendyselene
Patricia Guadalupe, raised in Puerto Rico, is a bilingual multimedia journalist based in Washington, D.C., and is the interim managing editor of palabra. She has been covering the capital for both English- and Spanish-language media outlets since the mid-1990s and previously worked as a reporter in New York City. She’s been an editor at Hispanic Link News Service, a reporter at WTOP Radio (CBS Washington affiliate), a contributing reporter for CBS Radio network, and has written for NBC News.com and Latino Magazine, among others. She is a graduate of Michigan State University and has a Master’s degree from the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University. She specializes in business news and politics and cultural issues. She is the former president of the Washington, D.C. chapter of NAHJ and is an adjunct professor at American University in the nation’s capital and the Washington semester program of Florida International University. @PatriciagDC