The case of the spinner: and the Jobs behind the reactions
Photo by Peyman Shojaei on Unsplash
Have you noticed how the punch line and the mic drop have risen through the ranks until they're not reserved for the occasional big moment anymore; they're for every moment? Every exchange has become a contest to win or lose. Everyone is angling for their slice of recognition.
Yesterday I was at the playground. Jad was running around, having a great time. He's been loving this place lately, and it's not even a big playground. Maybe it's the summer evenings, or the zip line, or the climbing structure, or the fact that its compact, square shape with benches around the perimeter means I can see him from anywhere. Whatever it is, it works.
Playgrounds are hard for my almost-ten-year-old, who has combined-type ADHD. Kids with ADHD carry a level of impulsivity that makes ordinary playground friction harder to navigate: they react before their brain has finished processing. That's not an excuse; it's a well-documented symptom. And people, adults included, can be mean about it. I've watched him get in trouble more times than I can count, on our own or with friends around: usually something like repeatedly trying to push through a fear and not noticing a younger kid waiting his turn, or losing patience in the queue. One incident was such a gross misunderstanding that I still think posting it would get me the "that didn't happen" response from strangers online. Except it's the absurdity of it that makes it true.
So yesterday, as my son ran towards me fighting back tears and trying to explain himself, with my inner voice noting, as it does, how much easier these conversations are now that he's talking (he was a late talker), his story immediately put me on the defensive: "...and then she said a bad word at me, and called me a brat." I asked which woman. He pointed to the most put-together mother in the playground, dressed sharp, with a toddler of her own, staring back at us.
I kept asking for details, and at first it was like trying to get a brick wall to talk. No matter which way I asked, the story that came back made this woman sound unhinged and a little cruel. But this is where even a simple framework like Jobs to Be Done can help. Why do people bring their kids to playgrounds? Certainly not to swear at children who aren't theirs. And kids with ADHD are especially afraid of getting in trouble, for good reason: children with ADHD get in trouble far more often than their peers, and by age ten, experts estimate they've heard over 20,000 more negative comments and corrections than neurotypical kids their age. Up to 80% frequently clash with parents or teachers, and nearly half go on to develop related challenges like Oppositional Defiant Disorder (Miller).
Without digging all the way into the functional, emotional, and social jobs each person in this scene was trying to get done, here's a starting point:
My job: figure out what actually happened, decide what to do about it, and get my son off this playground without him now associating it with something bad.
My son's job: avoid getting in trouble, get back to playing.
The other parent's job: let her child play. But the real question underneath that is what would push a parent to speak to my son with the hostility he described?
My son is a reasonable kid, so I told him it seemed likely there was a piece of the story he hadn't shared yet, probably because he was afraid it would get him in trouble. It didn't add up, after all, that a grown woman would swear at a child and call him names for no reason. I gave him the context I was working with: we're in a nice neighbourhood, this is a small playground, she's dressed smartly, her own child seems calm. Tell me what you were doing right before this happened.
Eventually we got to the antecedent. He'd been on the spinner. No one else was using it, so he'd taken the chance to see how many rotations he could get going on his own. He was close to hitting his goal when the mum asked if her child could have a turn.
Two things were colliding here that I didn't understand until we talked it through.
The first: my son has sharp pattern recognition, and it was working against him. On a trip to Paris, a father had stopped the spinner my son was riding, sat his two-year-old down next to him, and, when my son's yelling on the ride startled the baby into crying, said something sharp to my son in French. My son didn't understand enough to know exactly what was said. My back was turned; I'd assumed his grandmother was watching him. Within a minute, the father and another parent were trying to talk to him in English, and he shut down into "don't talk to strangers" mode. So in his mind, the equation was already written: spinner plus adult plus baby equals this is about to go badly.
The second: like a lot of kids with ADHD, he has a processing delay that shows up unpredictably. You give him input, and his brain is working on it, but from the outside it looks like he's ignoring you, because there's no visible reaction. The adult keeps talking, waiting for a response, which only backs up the queue of information he's trying to process, and that's often exactly when things escalate (Mioni).
Once I understood what had actually happened, I told him plainly: either way, it's not okay for grown-ups to swear at kids or call them names. Full stop. But he also should have shared the spinner, and no kid should be rude to an adult. Then I told him, "I'm going to teach you the value of being the bigger person and taking responsibility for your actions. I want you to go find her and apologise."
So he did. He came back once, saying he couldn't find her. When she reappeared, he walked over on his own. I stayed put: this was his to repair. He said his piece, and to my surprise, she held out her hand, they shook, and then they hugged. As he ran back to me, I waved until she caught my eye and signalled my thanks. She smiled back and made a heart with her hands.
Here's the part that stays with me: neither of them knew a thing about the other's life. This could easily have gone the other way. We're almost always missing context, and we react anyway. But consider: what if the woman in the sharp black clothes wasn't even a mum, but an aunt, or a family friend? What if she'd just come from something emotionally draining? What if she was carrying a stress none of us could have guessed at?
The more we understand about the antecedents (the people, the history, the five minutes before the moment we walked in on), the more our perspective shifts. Which brings me back to where I started: a culture built for punch lines and mic drops doesn't leave much room for that kind of understanding. It rewards the fast read, the confident verdict, the clean win. But most of what actually happens between people isn't clean, and it isn't fast. It just takes someone willing to ask one more question before deciding who's right.
Works Cited
Frye, Devon. "Children with ADHD Avoid Failure and Punishment More Than Others, Study Says." ADDitude, 28 Sept. 2016, www.additudemag.com/children-with-adhd-avoid-failure-punishment/. Accessed 13 July 2026.
Miller, Caroline. "ADHD Behavior Problems and How to Help." Child Mind Institute, childmind.org/article/adhd-behavior-problems/. Accessed 13 July 2026.
Mioni, Giovanna. "Difficulties of Children with Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Processing Temporal Information Concerning Everyday Life Events." ScienceDirect, 2019, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022096518304235. Accessed 13 July 2026.
