My parents thought there was something wrong with me as a kid. They sent me to the psych office of my elementary school, and they told them that I was just bored, and that I needed to be in GaT. But they put me in that in the middle of the year, so I was completely at sea. My problem was hyper focus on the things that interested me, and not doing shit with things that didn't, which doesn't work with school, unfortunately. But they never diagnosed me as ADD or ADHD, and that behavior just kept on going all the way through school. They sent me to the psych in high school again, because I was 'too rebellious and defiant" and other basic shit. Hours of telling this guy my life story later, He told them that considering everything that had happened (mom dying in front of me as a kid, abusive stepmother/stepgrandmother, etc), they should be thankful I was so 'close to normal as any teenager gets'. - Still no ADD diagnosis. That didn't even come up until my senior year, taking classes in psychology, the professor suggested I might be. One headphone on and music later, everything came so much easier. The school wouldn't allow it, though, so I kept getting in trouble. But I used one earphone in college, and the music gave me enough mild distraction without too much, that I could focus on my notes and learn, even if the subject bored me.
When I told my father (who also thought I was a slacker and a fuck up) that I was diagnosed finally, he told me I was full of shit (he was an abusive drunk fuck who should join those other dads in the well, until he had a heart attack and stopped drinking. It's amazing how people change when they get sober.).
My current job, when it gets slow and I get distracted by reading or my phone, the beep in my headset scares the shit out of me because I get so focused on what I WANT to be doing. But when I'm on the call, I can talk to the provider, and pull up all the stuff, and I'm in enough windows and programs that I can stay focused.