I Just Had a Classic Delayed Auditory Processing Moment

I am autistic, adhd and have auditory processing disorder (APD) and what I just experienced is a beautiful example of what it can be like living with all three of these at the same time. Firstly let me describe what happened and then I'll look at the reasons why.
You can see the video here

What Happened:

For context, my office is upstairs and we have a feijoa and a fig tree at opposite ends of the garden.

I went downstairs to make a cup of coffee and couldn't find Fen, my wife. So I asked my son where she was and he said she was out picking feijoas. So I went to the feijoa tree to find her and she wasn't there. I assumed she had finished picking and was taking some to our neighbours. I didn't give it any more thought and went to the kitchen.

A few minutes later, about halfway through making my cup of coffee, my brain suddenly said, he didn't say feijoas he said figs. Thus Fen is down at the fig tree picking figs not up at the feijoa tree picking feijoas. The way it felt in my mind was that my son had always said figs. It's like my brain just adjusted its version of events based on the new data. So I went down to the fig tree and sure enough there she was picking figs.

The thing is that up until the fig revelation I was certain my son had said feijoas, but after the fig revelation I was just as certain he had originally said figs. It just seems to have taken a while for that original correct version to make its way through to my conscious mind.

The Reasons It Happened: 

What happened to me this morning, and on many other occasions, is the combined result of the three different neurotypes I have in my brain each doing what it does best and, importantly, at different speeds.

My Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)
My hearing is excellent, so APD is not about the way in which I detect sound. Instead it's about the way in which my brain processes the sound once my ears have detected it. In particular my brain can struggle to distinguish between similar-sounding words, especially in everyday conditions (background noise, distance or when I can't get additional information from lip reading). 

When my son said "figs", my ears sent that sound to my brain, but my auditory cortex needed extra milliseconds to tell the difference between "figs" and "feijoas". Both short, both fruit, both starting with 'f'. In that brief gap, my brain hadn't finished decoding. But life doesn't pause.

My Impulsive ADHD
My ADHD hates waiting, is impulsive and has limited working memory, especially when I'm already task-switching (looking for my wife, planning coffee). So instead of standing there silently for 5–10 seconds while my APD finishes its job, my ADHD brain impulsively grabbed the closest possible match: feijoas, and ran with it. My ADHD was being 'efficient': "Close enough, move on."

My Certainty Loving Autism
Once my brain committed to "feijoas", my autism treated it as a fact. Autistic brains prefer stability and hate ambiguity. So I became genuinely certain that's what he said. I didn't question it, because questioning would create an uncomfortable uncertainty loop. That certainty is why I walked to the wrong tree without hesitation.

My Mid-Coffee Making Delayed Correction
While I was making coffee, a low-stakes, repetitive, physical task, my cognitive load dropped. My ADHD stopped racing. My brain finally had spare processing power. And in that quiet moment, my APD finished its job. The correct, fully-decoded word  "figs" arrived at my conscious mind. And it felt like my brain suddenly said, "Wait, no, he said figs." Then my brain reconstructed the original memory with the new one as if nothing had happened. That's why, after the revelation, I felt so certain my son had always said figs, rather than feijoas. My brain simply replaced the error with the truth.

This is a really good example of how the different parts of my brain don't always work together in the most efficient manner possible and can create some interesting results. Thinking about it a little more I also believe this variable processing system is probably partially behind some of the creativity built into my brain. As I'm sure many great ideas and inventions stem from the randomness and imperfections of our human brains. 

While this can be frustrating for those around me at times, I'm happy to say that most people get used to it and learn how to spot it. Which is a good thing because most of the time I'm completely unaware it's even happened.

To summarize:

• APD delayed the signal.
• ADHD grabbed a guess and ran.
• Autism locked that guess in as fact.
• A quiet moment (making coffee) finally let the real signal through.
• My memory updated cleanly, because that's what an honest brain does when it gets better data.

This was my neurology working exactly as they do, just on a delay, and with a few extra steps.

If you're AuDHD and APD, moments like this will happen. You'll walk to the wrong tree. You'll answer a question with confidence and realise ten minutes later you heard it wrong. You'll feel certain of something, then feel equally certain of the opposite when the real information finally arrives. And, one of the worst for me, misread or mishear the exam question, answer it, only to find I answered the wrong thing.

This different processing isn't something I can stop from happening, my brains built that way and that's fine by me. What I can do though is learn about it, how it affects me and try to get better at picking up when it happens. But really the greatest asset I have are the people around me that care enough about me to provide me with helpful corrections and not be afraid to point out to me when I got it wrong, and not get angry with me when I ask them to repeat the same thing three times in a row. And for that plus the many other accommodations I enjoy, I am eternally grateful.