S4 E5: Parenting Children with ADHD through Connection

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• EPISODE RESOURCES

  CHADD - Improving the lives of people affected by ADHD

  Understood - For learning and thinking differences

  Think:Kids : Collaborative Problem Solving® (thinkkids.org)

  CPS Connection – This is how problems get solved.

  Dr. Russell A. Barkley - Dedicated to Education and Research on ADHD (russellbarkley.org)

  Home - Dr. Hallowell (drhallowell.com)

• EPISODE TAKEAWAYS

  • It can help to start by trying to understand the experience of the child with ADHD as a way to empathize and strategize how to work with them.

  • There are many strategies that can be employed to help a child with ADHD; however, not every strategy is going to work for every individual every single time. Therefore, the relationship and connection can be the foundation to cope with the ups and downs and work together with your child.

  • Individuals with ADHD can have incredible strengths. Additionally, a strength can be a weakness and a weakness can be a strength, depending on the context.

  • Children with ADHD often get a lot of negative feedback, which makes the relationship between the caregiver and child very significant to balance out that negative feedback. It is not uncommon that the child may internalize negative feedback in terms of having a negative sense of self and low self-esteem.

  • Children with ADHD may struggle to process their emotions effectively because things move so fast in their mind and their impulses can occur so quickly. They may shut down or get defensive or meltdown due to this. Much of their reactions can be unconscious. It is important for adults to help ‘slow things down’ in order to process emotional reactions they are having and also to proactively address issues outside of when they are emotional.

  • You can help the child to make what is implicit and internal more explicit and external. 

  • You can change the context in which you communicate and problem-solve with your child. It may be too difficult to communicate in the heat of the moment. Similar to a coach talking about game-time strategy during practice to prepare for future scenarios.

  • In the heat of the moment, you may want to consider the emotion (within the context and perspective of the child) behind the behavioral reaction the child is having, which can inform how you communicate with the child and about the problem. Sometimes feeling understood can be calming, simply by nature of feeling understood; especially if the child has a hard time communicating what and how they are feeling leading others to often misunderstand them.

  • Not having a skill to handle an issue can make the child anxious, and also vice versa being anxious can make it difficult to use a skill to handle an issue.

  • Children with ADHD may have social anxiety due to their distractibility, impulsivity, hyper-fixating on perceptions of judgment, and difficulty seeing the big picture (forest from the trees) and blowing things out of proportion.

  • Those with ADHD may hyper-focus on details but without seeing the big-picture. Conversely, they may also neglect details due to inattention and impulsivity.

  • When things go wrong, it can be a point of learning for next time rather than putting blame on the children in an emotional way, which can lead to more defensiveness and shame.

  • Boundaries can be helpful to practice self-regulation. At the same time, consequences can be natural, or even flipped into a positive privilege that you are hoping they can have (rather than condescending that they won’t get their privilege). You can remind the child that you actually want them to have their privileges by fulfilling their responsibilities and that you are available to support them to get there. Boundaries can become too open (not consistent enough) or too strict (not flexible enough to learn how to navigate changes and uncertainty). The child can be engaged in identifying a reasonable consequence so they are more invested and accepting of it.

  • It can help to actively ignore the arguments if it’s unproductive or even counterproductive and simply let the emotional waves rise and fall until they are ready to engage with you in a more calm and open way. It can be normal to have an emotional reaction before moving on, particularly if it’s not destructive or harmful. Expecting that the child should never have an emotional reaction can lead to unrealistic expectations and pressure.

  • Emotional behaviors may come out more at home because they are more tired and their resources may be depleted by the time school is over. Additionally, there is a lot of predictability and structure at school compared to at home, which can be dysregulating. Creating some more structure if there is little can be helpful for this.

  • Be collaborative with the ideas for how the child can get things done more efficiently. This 

  • Kids with ADHD may lack trust in themselves due to all the negative feedback they can receive. Doing too much for the child with ADHD can prevent them from learning and growing in their abilities. Doing too little can make things too overwhelming, though, and so scaffolding is a middle ground to support their ability to do things without being too passive or too controlling.

  • Asking for help may be very difficult for a child with ADHD because they may experience shame or even feel as though they ‘should’ be able to do it themselves. To the child, asking for help could ‘mean’ there is something ‘wrong’ with them so they may avoid asking for help. 

  • Making repairs with forgiveness, moving on instead of resentment, and working as a team can help maintain trust and motivation to persist despite the challenges and ruptures and errors that happen along the way.

  • Sometimes parents/caregivers need to attend to their own needs more in order to show up for their child with ADHD. This can be self-care, leaning on loved ones, or even acquiring their own therapist or counselor for support and guidance. It can be overwhelming to try to address all of the child’s needs at once, but start small and make this journey feel more possible instead of taking on too much all at once.

  • Be careful if the child loses hope that they can get positive attention anymore, as they may fall into patterns of getting negative attention all the time.

• TRANSCRIPTION

  00:17 Gerald Reid

  Welcome back to season four of the Reid Connect-ED Podcast. This season is all about connection. And today we're going to focus on the connection between a parent or caregiver and their child and particularly a child with ADHD. So ADHD has three subtypes. And I'm not going to get into detail about what ADHD is necessarily. You can look at other podcasts and other resources online to understand exactly what ADHD is. But in general, we think of ADHD as having three subtypes. And ADHD is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And there's three subtypes. The first is predominantly inattentive presentation. And that means essentially that the child has difficulty with sustaining attention. And there's a whole range of symptoms that go along with that; things like being forgetful, having a hard time holding a lot of things in their mind at one time, being disorganized, having a hard time attending to the details, and so forth. And there's a second presentation, which is called hyperactive slash impulsive presentation, which is essentially children who have a hard time managing their impulses. So they can be high, high in their energy in terms of always seeming like their motor is running at high speed. Having a hard time sitting still being patient. And there's kind of an impulsivity part in terms of how they present. And there's also a third subtype, which is essentially combined, which means that the child has difficulty with both inattention and also with hyperactivity and impulsivity. So it's when those two presentations both are combined, and they have difficulty with both sides of them.

  And ADHD. Again, you can look on resources online. There's websites like understood.org, the CHADD website, CHADD the organization as well, which specializes in ADHD. And you can look more into what ADHD is. But today, we're really going to focus on the relationship between the parent/caregiver and the child. And I do want to make note, though, that ADHD does tend to co-occur with a lot of other mental health challenges. And let me go through a list of what they might be because we don't want to look at ADHD as one diagnosis as a standalone that exists in a vacuum. You know, every child is unique, and even every child with ADHD is not going to look the same, they're not going to be the same, they're going to have different contexts in which they grew up, different personality aspects, different strengths and weaknesses. You know, it's not a one size fits all in terms of understanding ADHD within all children. And there's really no such thing as an average, we don't want to just say on average, you know, your child's going to fit into a box. So we want to try to provide some more nuance about ADHD as we go into this conversation. But ADHD does tend to co-occur with different other mental health challenges. Some of them could be anxiety, depression, Tic disorders and Tourette's, which is kind of difficulties with managing impulses that are very automated in inside of them. It could also co-occur with substance use challenges, sort of the impulsivity that can come out there. Learning challenges as well, it tends to co-occur with that. And also with Autism and Autism spectrum disorders. And there's among others as well, behavioral challenges that can come. And so, you know, one of the things we want to think about with kids with ADHD is, their self-esteem really tends to take a hit, because you think about being inattentive, and being impulsive. When you think about that, you're gonna think about a kid who's gonna get a lot of negative feedback, because maybe they may not fit within the structure or kind of fulfill responsibilities or expectations or be able to function efficiently and effectively within whatever system in which they exist, whether it's at home or in school and sports team, because of the, you know, because of how their brain works, right, so you know, and that's why other things can manifest as well with their other mental health challenges.

  04:15

  Alexis Reid:

  So I really appreciate the clinical definitions and understanding of ADHD. And I want the listeners to challenge themselves to think a little bit differently. When I go out and I work with parents or educators, I'm not just going to give them a set of strategies that are going to help to support the children in their lives who are struggling with executive function challenges, which are closely related to ADHD. I'm going to help them to understand the experience of these children. Right, and the label ADHD and understanding the clinical functions and the different comorbidities is important and helpful because it gives us information about what we can do to support these individuals. But on the whole, like you said, there are no averages. One size does not fit all. I joke all the time, you've heard me on the podcast say, there are million strategies that can help and support individuals struggling with ADHD and executive function. But it doesn't mean that every single one is going to help every single person all the time.

  And in fact, the label ADHD, a lot of people that I work with, and I know, really feel seen and validated by understanding their experience. When we talk about cognitive variability and diversity, especially in the field of education or mental health. We talk about neurodiversity when we relate to ADHD, and a lot of people understand and feel really seen and understood to, you know, label themselves neurodiverse. But in our world, I hope my dream, my goal, and hopefully this conversation today, Jer, between you and I will help to move the needle a little bit further. My hope is that we can all really have a different relationship with some of these behaviors, some of these challenges. And essentially, this is a neurodevelopmental disorder, which means that these skills, these cognitive functions, these behaviors, that we are seeking to fit into this world and society that we currently live within, they are more difficult to develop for these individuals, right, for many different reasons, either neuro chemically, environmentally, and I want us to think more broadly about the experiences of the individuals who are neurodiverse. Are they neurodiverse because their environment doesn't allow for the flexibility that they require, based on how their brain is developing and functioning, and how they relate to some of these impulses, reactions and behaviors that they have and experience? Or is there something, you know, is there a deficit in them?

  So I want us to challenge ourselves in the field of ADHD, there are many experts, who have been talking a lot about is this named correctly, is the nomenclature in saying that there's an attention deficit disorder, the right way to label and describe what the experiences are of these individuals who get clinically diagnosed as ADHD or ADD. And I want us to think about this, you know, Russell Barkley thinks about this in this way. And he talks about how attention is on a spectrum. And this is the way I really see things. Because individuals with ADHD, parents and educators you'll talk to, or even individuals themselves will say, I can focus, I have attention, just not always on what others tell me to focus on. It's not always on what I'm supposed to be doing all the time. And in fact, I want us to be able to embrace those moments. Because the individuals I work with, with ADHD, my friends, family members, people that I've interacted with, of course, my life are some of the most amazing, brilliant, intelligent, creative, driven people I've ever met, and sometimes some of the most fun people I've ever met. And they oftentimes will grow up and live through their lives, feeling challenged by the environment, and the expectations that society and others put on them, which make them feel different and wrong. And as if they're at a deficit, they are not functioning properly in their worlds.

  So when we go through this conversation today, Jer, I really hope that listeners will expand their thinking on what ADHD looks like for especially young children, and how we as adults in their lives, caregivers, parents, a lot of things are going to overlap into education, coaching and otherwise. But the focus of this episode is, if you're a parent or caregiver, who has a child with ADHD, how do we best understand support and relate to them? How do we help to build the bond of connection with them, so that they can better understand themselves? Because again, this label gives us lots of information, to better understand ourselves, what we need, what we need to develop, how we need to ask for help, and how we can build in structures in the environment to proactively support the development of these skills.

  09:17 Gerald Reid

  Yeah, well said Lex because, you know, every human on Earth, right, has strengths and weaknesses. And it all depends on the context, right? One person's weakness in one context, you know, let's say you're in a lecture for, you know, one and a half hours. Let's say you're in a lecture, that's like 90 minutes straight and you have no breaks, right? Maybe your weakness in that context is that it's hard to focus because it's hard for a lot of people to focus for 90 minutes straight. But then another context, right? Let's say that you're distracted because you have a lot of ideas and you have some creative idea that pops in your head. And following that idea actually is going to lead to some amazing creativity that is going to turn into something beautiful right? Strengths and weaknesses are part of being human. They're pros and cons to everything, depending on the context. And so what you're saying is important we want, you know, the message here, in general, overarching message of the episode is understanding and empathy and understanding is essential. It's part of therapy, it's part of my job as a therapist, and all therapists out there is to try to understand first and help second.

  And, you know, understanding a child with ADHD is it takes time, because things can move very fast. And so, you know, even for the child with ADHD, it's hard for them to truly understand things about themselves or about situations, sometimes, because things are moving quite fast, whether their mind is moving fast, or their impulses are moving fast. And so that's why whether it's therapy, or you know, with, you know, therapy does include parents, by the way, with children with ADHD, it's very important that parents are actually involved in that process. Because whatever the therapist is doing, you know, in terms of supporting, you know, you can kind of translate aspects to the parents to say, hey, here's strategies that are going to work and be helpful. And one of them really is just slowing things down. And this is the more emotional part that that gets overlooked. Sometimes, you know, a lot of ADHD therapies, especially with parents and parent training is around behavioral aspects. And Russell Barkley, Dr. Russell Barkley talks a lot about the behavioral aspects, in terms of psychotherapy, and we're not going to get into medication in this episode. Because, you know, we're not psychiatrist here, but we're gonna talk about the psychological aspects. And particularly, the behavioral part is very much emphasized a lot with ADHD, because it is considered, you know, quote, unquote, the gold standard in terms of helping a child with ADHD; is changing the behavioral aspects, you can look more into that in detail, we'll give some examples as we go. But importantly, something that does get overlooked is, is that kids with ADHD may not check in with their emotional life. And I really want to emphasize this, I know you do a lot as well, because things are moving so fast. And when things are moving fast, it's kind of like you're just reacting to everything. Whether you know, you have a homework assignment in front of you, and you feel some sort of dread, because maybe you don't know where to where to start. Or maybe you're imagining that you're not gonna have time to do something fun later on, where you're thinking ahead to how hard it is to get to the outcome. You know, I think a lot of kids with ADHD focus on the outcome so much that it takes them away from taking one step at a time, right.

  So that is emotional nature. As much as this is cognitive, and then a cognitive neuro developmental challenge. It's also emotional, because if your mind is jumping to the future, or feeling like you can't do something, or maybe you're thinking about something else you want to do, you're gonna have an emotional reaction to that. And if you can't regulate your emotions, you're surely not going to be able to regulate, you know, how you approach a task that's hard for you.

  So for parents, right, you know, in certainly in therapy as a as a parallel here, slow things down to help acknowledge the emotional reactions that happen that are not being processed, necessarily, and can lead to unconscious or just quick reactions in situations that could lead things to spiral and lead to a lot of conflict as well.

  13:05 Alexis Reid

  So we have a lot of episodes that you can check out about how to diagnose and understand if your child actually has ADHD. Again, we are not here for you to listen and say, Oh, I'm going to diagnose my child with ADHD because some of the things you talked about seem familiar to my experience or their experience. We want to caution that if you have questions, please talk to your pediatrician or to your doctor or psychologist or psychiatrist. There are really great episodes about neuropsychology and understand that process, understanding the process of getting involved in therapy. And we'll touch upon some of those things here too. About executive function, about attention about executive function supports in the classroom, and at home. There are lots of great resources but today we're going to invite you to slow down take out a notebook if you feel encouraged to and listen along as we expand our ideas on how to care give a to a child with ADHD.

  14:25 Gerald Reid

  So let's talk about attention that the parent can give to the child so you know this is more behavioral, but it also very much is about the connection and it is emotional in nature. So a lot of times with a kid with ADHD, I referenced this in the introduction is that they're gonna get a lot of negative feedback. And the reason for that is because like, you know, think of any given example for a kid with ADHD maybe they're not completing their homework, maybe they're not listening. Maybe their parents tell them to do something and they don't follow through maybe you know, they're they forgot something and then the parent has to drive back home to pick something up that they forgot, right, there's going to be, quote unquote, errors that can happen in terms of things moving along, and getting done, or tasks getting completed and so forth.

  So, you know, by nature, if you have ADHD, the chances are, you're going to get more negative feedback, because the things that are, quote unquote, not going well. And so the behavioral aspect of it, that's going to help the relationship and also help, you know, you to problem solve these issues with your kid much better is, is to be careful that the attention is not always negative. And to be careful about the tone, and the approach and the way in which you react to your child, when they when they quote unquote, make an error. Because, you know, it's hard, right? As a parent, as a parent, you're wanting things to move efficiently, you know, part of a parent is it's hard work, it's a hard job, you got to keep things moving. And there's a lot of things not only in your child's life that you got to attend to, but also in your own life and with your own relationship with if you have a significant other or other aspects of life, so like moving keeping things moving efficiently, could be a stressor, right. But the caution is that, you know, the negative attention could become just a pattern, right. And so you wanted to think of this as almost like a balancing act, you want to balance out the positive attention, and have more positive attention on purpose; more intentional, and it's not to just kind of blow smoke or to just inflate someone's ego or to try to just, you know, have empty validation or empty praise, it's not empty praise it’s got to be very intentional and very accurate, and very thoughtful, to allow the child to also experience positive feedback to balance out that negative feedback that they're not just going to get from you, they may get it from their coach, their peers, their teacher, right, other people in their life, because it's not just going to happen at home, it's going to happen other contexts.

  So to Alexis's point, we want to understand the experience of the child with ADHD and have empathy and put yourself into their shoes and to say, well, what is that, like? You know, one of my favorite questions, a therapist, I'm always asking myself, “What is it like to be this person?” And that is going to happen a lot, they're gonna get a lot of negative attention, negative feedback. So you want to balance that out. And you also want to be careful about how you deliver feedback. And you know, Alexis, and I can have a whole conversation about this as we go. But you want to be careful, because it could be taken very personally, you don't want things to be personal, right. And it could be taken the wrong way, as opposed to a correction, it could be a criticism or an attack towards you that you're wrong, or you're bad. And you want to get into more a psychodynamic understanding of the child, the child can begin to internalize that they're bad, that there's something wrong with them as a person. And that's a deeper thing that can get overlooked.

  17:47 Alexis Reid

  So I want to tap into this for a minute. Because, you know, as children grow up, as they get older, into pre adolescence, adolescence, and even into young adulthood, for those of you who are listening with a college age student, or a young adult, you know, a lot of times, you give your child feedback, and they resist and, you know, you and I are talking through the lens and perspective of people who are in a therapeutic relationship with parents, we help to coach and guide them. So in this situation, I want to think with you all, from the perspective of you're trying to give feedback to your child with ADHD. And their immediate response is going to probably be super defensive. You know, I hear this all the time from the parents I work with, you know, I point out, you know, they didn't do their chores, they didn't do this. They're on their phone all the time. What do I do in the situation? You know, I point out, I try to be calm and cool and collected. And I tried to, like, bring awareness to the fact that they didn't follow through. And their immediate reaction is defensive, or they shut down or they yell, or they scream. And in the beginning, I was talking about, you know, sometimes behaviors related to not knowing how to do something or not following through, is to get loud, right, especially if you have this impulsivity, from ADHD that like, doesn't regulate your emotions to think logically like, Oh, yes, yes, Mother, I didn't realize that I didn't follow through on my laundry, let me get right to that. Like their reaction is super defensive. And as we mentioned before, there's like the emotional component and so much more to it. So let's pause on this for a moment and think about, you know, how do we give feedback as a parent or caregiver to a child with ADHD?

  19:35 Gerald Reid

  Yeah, well, I think you hit the nail on the head is that it is emotional, right? It may happen so quickly, that the kid may not even realize how they are reacting because basically because of how their brain works is very impulsive. Right? And so back to you know, what we said an introduction, slowing things down and actually, you know, as a parent too, it could help to almost expect that that's going to happen and not take it personally, and not overreact to the child's overreaction, and almost treat it like a wave that's going to happen. And I have seen this sometimes, you know, even you know, working with kids and seeing how they interact with the parents is that if you kind of like ride that wave out, eventually, the kid can come around and think more clearly. Because in that moment, they probably are not thinking clearly. So trying to reason with them, or trying to, you know, even arguing with them is going to not really help because they're there in their emotional brain, you know, dialectical behavior therapy talks about, you know, you're in your emotion brain versus your rational brain. And when you're only in your emotional brain, sometimes you can't think rationally so in some ways, kind of expecting that that's going to happen and allowing it to kind of just ride the wave of that, instead of kind of engaging with it. Because you know, when someone's upset like that, and when they're defensive, it's kind of like they want to fight, they want to engage in that argument, because they're trying to defend themselves, right.

  20:53 Alexis Reid

  They're also, they're also deflecting, right? Deflecting that negative attention of I didn't do something, or I didn't do something well, by, you know, reacting in this big way. And so often, you know, adults in the lives of children with ADHD, they will get bigger as their child does, right, they'll yell, they'll match some of that energy. And one of the things that I coach parents and people working with young people, just in general, is, is to be able to quiet and calm yourself. One of my favorite stories from when I was in the classroom is, when the energy would get really high in the classroom, I would pause, I would go into my own breathing exercises, I would, you know, pretend I'm taking a breath, and I wouldn't pretend I would do it. And I would exaggerate it. So they understand and recognize what's happening. And then I would narrate it. So one of the biggest things with children, especially with ADHD, is that sometimes you have to make with internal external; what's inherent, you know, a little bit more apparent, right. The things that we think of as adults, as we've navigated through life for so many years, they don't come naturally to young people, yet most of the time, because developmentally, they're not there yet. And in kids with ADHD, they have a really difficult time controlling their impulses. So what we want to do is we want to model and support that. And I think the number one thing about giving feedback to a child with ADHD, who perhaps hasn't done a thing that they need to do, is to not always give feedback in the moment when they're supposed to be doing the thing. Right, because of the reasons you just mentioned. It's it's so emotional, you often will have this big reaction or response. And in, it's not always productive.

  22:40 Gerald Reid

  Right, so let's, let's say that there's two different versions of advice here. One advice is changing the context to have a hard conversation. And that could be hey, let's wait to talk about this later. Let's go for a walk, let's you know, I'll just sit there, and we can maybe play a game while we're talking or, or, you know, get some ice cream, and to make it more positive and calm and change the context so that both people can hear each other and you can problem solve. And, you know, Dr. Ross green and Dr. Stuart Ablon. They both have a similar kind of collaborative approach to problem solving with children who have ADHD and behavioral challenges. And the idea is that there's a skill that they are struggling with, that you need to problem solve, to allow the kid to be successful that there's an underlying problem that has not been solved. And as an example, it would be, you know, let's say kids playing a game with their friend or on a video game, right? The problem for the kid could be that they are afraid that they have to close the game to go to dinner, and they're afraid that you know, there's all these implications about stopping a game before it's over, right? I'm going to lose my I'm going to lose my progress, or it's not going to be saved, or my friends, I'm not gonna be able to see my friend my friends are gonna be disappointed because we're playing as a team. And I have to leave them right. And there's like this underlying problem as you said, Lex, there's, there's an anxiety to it. And this could be anything, it could be about even getting started on an essay, you know, you're anxious because you don't know how to get started and you're having a hard time with it. Or you get too many instructions at once from your parent. And you're, you know, you have a hard time organizing it all in your brain, right? There's all these skills that are difficult for the child. And so the idea behind the problem solving is let's pull back have a conversation in a calm way. Okay, when this situation happens, kind of like being a basketball coach or any type of sports coach, like let's go into practice mode. Let's pull up the whiteboard. When this situation happens. Here's the challenge. Here's the reaction, here's the emotion, how can we work with that in a better proactive way to work together to make this to make this better?

  And then secondly, you know, another piece of advice is sometimes you have to respond in the moment right when the kids emotional or reacting to the feedback and getting the defensive and so one way to do that is actually to try to think to yourself, what is the emotion behind the reaction? You know, is the kid anxious about something about what's happening? Are they feeling embarrassed? Are they feeling like, you're mad at them that you are actually angry at them when maybe you're not or maybe you know, your tone is coming across in certain ways. So, so thinking about the emotion and actually labeling it for the kid can be very validating. And sometimes when you feel understood, you calm down. So just to feel understood, could come the kid down just to feel like okay, my parent understands, or my caregiver is kind of getting what's going on under the surface. Because as you said, Lex, a kid with ADHD may struggle to label what they're feeling because everything's moving so fast in their brain, and to slow it down to help. Okay, what is the what's the feeling behind? Are you feeling anxious or feeling worried? There's so many kids with ADHD that I work with that you do, too, that they have anxiety, it's almost like it's almost a given at this point.

  26:01 Alexis Reid

  I often say what comes first, the chicken or the egg. Are you anxious because you don't have the skill yet to do something, or you don't have the skill yet, which makes you anxious. And it just becomes this reinforcing cycle a lot of times, and I want to zoom out a little bit more and what you're saying, because I think it's so important. And one of the things that I often teach educators and parents alike is, you know, very simple behaviorism ABCs, you have the antecedent, what was happening before; you have B, the behavior and C, the consequence. And I always say that, you know, the behavior actually isn't the important part, the behavior itself, it gives us information to kind of see how they're reacting and responding. But the behavior actually isn't as important as what was the context what was happening before, you know, to your point of playing video games, they were socially connected, their priority was to connect, to engage, to actually problem solve through the game, to be able to be entertained. That was the context before where their priority was to do that. But your priority, and maybe priority in the broader scope of the day, was that they needed to finish their homework or get down dinner or something else was happening, that they reacted (Gerald: they weren't seeing the big picture either.) And that's often one of the greatest deficits of people with ADHD, right, it's not their attention, it's more of they can't prioritize, to be able to see different levels and layers of situation, they can't often understand the details in the grand scheme of the bigger picture or the bigger picture with regards the details. Oftentimes, they get stuck in one or the other. And that cognitive flexibility piece of being able to like zoom in and zoom out is really difficult.

  And I like to think of like ADHD, not only as a spectrum, but also as like a difficulty in prioritizing, because, you know, these are kids who have attention, they have interest, they have focus, but they're prioritizing where it goes and where their resources go, based on what feels comfortable, exciting and engaging to them at any given moment. So when I say that the behavior doesn't matter as much like that behavior is really just the reaction. And we know that reactions are often emotional. And as you mentioned, I love that you said this, because I do this all the time in my work. It's like, well, you forgot to do an assignment, you've been avoiding this task? What actually is the emotion behind it? Is it fear? Is it frustration? Is it anger? Is it sadness? Is it embarrassment or shame, and oftentimes, that is the milieu of all of the different things and the range of experiences that the child or the individual is having.

  28:40 Gerald Reid

  And the emotion could be about anything, it may not even be about the task. It may be like something unrelated. Maybe something's bothering them from the day, maybe they feel like they're missing out on something with social connection. I mean, with social media nowadays, you feel like you're missing out on something all the time; it's like built into the idea that you're always connected to everything and everyone at all the time that you're always missing out. And you can't tolerate that, you know, which takes practice, disengaging from it.

  But you know, you set a good point, right? Like, you can have ADHD and hyper focus on something, it's almost like you're hyper focusing on the details, and you lose touch with the bigger picture, you know. (Alexis: or vice versa? You know, I see it both ways with a lot of people I work with). Yes, and so you can hyper focus on some specific details. Or you can notice everything that's happening and being overstimulated by it. So there's kind of two different ways of looking at difficulties with attention that you want to understand what's happening in that moment.

  29:40 Alexis Reid: Yeah, and oftentimes, you know, people with ADHD will be described as they don't have an attention for detail. Right? But that's not always the case. Right? And sometimes they miss the little things because they're focused on what comes next because it is getting to the goal. It is getting to the bigger, broader picture.

  29:55 Gerald Reid

  Yes. And that's why it's so important to slow things down and to help the child to appreciate the process. And not to always focused on outcomes. And that can happen. And that's why kids with ADHD ADHD tend to have social anxiety too. It's not like a given, but it definitely comes up is because if you're in a social situation, or relationship; number one, if you're just overstimulated by thinking about every little detail that happens in the interaction in the relationship, that's anxiety provoking, because you're like, Well, what's important, what's not important in terms of how I relate and how I have kind of a social and social nuances, but also like how people feel about you. Like, you may notice, like the person yawns, and you're like, Oh, God, I noticed that, that yonder, they bored by me. They just made me tired, right? There are so many details that could happen in a given social interaction that, and then and then you notice everything, not only notice everything, but you hyper fixate on the things that are negatively evaluated, like, oh, that must mean they don't like me, or I'm being judged. And all of a sudden, like I said, it goes from noticing everything to noticing, to hyper focusing on one little thing. And all of a sudden, that's going to trigger anxiety.

  And by the way, if you start to believe something about what something someone feels about you, you're going to act as if it's true, and it might actually become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because you might think, oh, this person doesn't like me. So now I'm going to act different, I'm going to act defensive, or I'm going to act differently, or gonna try to prove myself, right, all those things that could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, we're actually pushing that person away. So it's like this whole cycle that can happen, which, you know, for the parent, like pull things back and start from the beginning, you know, what was going on in the social interaction. It's very easy to get pulled into the big reactions in the conversations with your child being just about the big reaction, or about what they're focusing on, like, oh, that person hates me, or I don't like them, like these kind of blanket statements about life, about the relationships about themselves. I hate this, I hate that…

  31:50 Alexis Reid

  About the thing they're engaging in whether it you know, and then it becomes about the video game, or the cell phone use, or the hanging out with the friends, which makes the child feel like I'm doing something wrong, or my parent just doesn't understand me, versus the point. And the point is, they were negating their responsibility they didn't follow through, they were prioritizing something different in a moment. You know, being able to understand what that priority is, in everything you're describing as like, how am I prioritizing what is important, which developmentally is a really difficult thing for young people to do. It's a difficult thing for adults to do these days. Because everything seems important, because of you know, whether it's social media or exposure to information, that everything seems important. But for a child with ADHD, oftentimes, that becomes overwhelming. And disorganizing and dysregulating.

  32:45 Gerald Reid

  Right, it's kind of like, it's kind of like take up any big topic and you learn one thing, and you're like, oh, that's the most that's like. You can make a lot of assumptions if you have ADHD, because you're jumping to a conclusion, because you're again, you can be so focused on the outcome of something that you kind of notice every little detail. And then when you want to get to the outcome, you want to get to the end, and miss kind of the bigger picture and see how things connect to each other. And vice versa. Sometimes your mind, like let's put this back into the strengths, your mind can make so many connections, that's actually how incredible things can happen. Where creativity can happen, where a really unique solution to a problem can happen. So we want to, again, pull back and say in a different context, that noticing everything that hyper focusing on details, if you do that in a way that as a kid gets older, they can kind of harness that. You can be brilliant, brilliant ideas.

  33:40 Alexis Reid

  Again, like I said, some of my favorite people that are so creative, and so inspirational, on so many levels. I mean, I share with you all the time because we collaborate and work across different. We share cases we share families that we work with, I share some stories all the time, every single day, I have something incredibly brilliant that one of the people I work with has said or done. And it's incredible. But I want to get back to this idea of like that C; that consequence, because this is where I think the real work happens. Because you don't want to blame or put focus or, you know, paint a picture of negativity around the behavior, or the opposite of the behavior or like not actually doing what you need to do. The consequence actually is a point for learning. And again, like we said before, it shouldn't be in the heat of a moment, when we are very emotional, you know, you have to remember that when the defensiveness comes up, it's embarrassment and shame, like I can't do the thing I didn't do the thing I let you down is really what these big reactions and behaviors are saying to the parent or the caregiver. And what you need to do in this moment is turn it into a learning opportunity. And I always say like, these are the best opportunities when things don't go well, when there's a mistake that happened. That is one of the greatest points of learning. And if you think back, I want everybody to take a minute and think back to, you know, something that you remember, as like a core moment in your life. It's either something that was really joyful, and amazing, or really terrible. Those are, those tend to be the things that we remember the most in our lives, right for a lot of neurological reasons we're not going to get into today. But again, it comes down to prioritizing how important was this moment in my life. And if you take a big, sometimes negative experience of things not going well, whether it's at school on a test, on the playing field with a team or, you know, teammates, with a friend, that things don't go well; if you are being bullied in a certain situation, you know, whatever the situation is, it's an opportunity to learn and grow. And oftentimes, you know, with executive function in ADHD, especially, we don't notice what we want to go well until it doesn't go well.

  Right, there's an expectation that, you know, we just, we have our routine we do what we need to do. And things just happen like this is part of the issue with people with ADHD is that they don't often see the steps and stages and the conscious effort that needs to go into getting things done. So we need to be able to break things down into smaller chunks, bite sized pieces, planning the process, instead of just – you need to do a thing.

  So this, you know, we talked about giving feedback. We're still kind of in that realm right now, in talking about how we coach in support and guide children with ADHD, to be able to navigate through their lives in ways that are… I don't like to use the word productive, but efficient is probably a better word. How do we help them to navigate through their lives efficiently? You know, I actually hate, Jer, a lot of the people I work with they see me as like the productivity person. So if they're not being productive, they like to avoid me, especially older people have that opportunity to do that. And I'm like, Listen, if you're avoiding me, if you're not responsive, that's all information that tells me that something's going wrong. That tells me that, like, the plan that you had didn't work. But that's not a bad thing. In my mind, it just means we need to pivot.

  And this is about that idea of connection and understanding, where we need to grow this awareness enough to connect with ourselves, to help our children connect with us to not feel like when we make a mistake, when we don't clean our room, when we don't shut down a video game when we don't finish our homework, or we turn something in late. That's not a terrible thing. Right? Like there are consequences, real consequences to not doing things on time. But it's not about the consequences about what do we learn from it?

  38:05 Gerald Reid

  Yeah, and it's okay to have consequences, you know, it's thought it could be done to your point in an empowering way to help the kid to make their own choices, right. And I know, it's hard sometimes for a kid with ADHD to intentionally make choices when they can be impulsive or distracted. But, you know, that that is one way of learning is to have boundaries around something, and to learn how to navigate them, which essentially helps to practice self-regulation. So the idea though, that if you are going to create, you know, consequences, like you know, if the kid doesn't finish all their homework by the end of the week, that there's you know, they have to… let's flip that, you can turn into a positive, you know, you complete all your homework, you're gonna be able to see your friends on Friday night that was, you know, what we agreed to. The point is to have it collaborative, to make it reasonable. You know, the challenge is, with a parent or creating any type of structure, you don't want the structure to become oppressive, and just kind of a power trip, or kind of this power dynamic where you just imposing power as a form of control. It's not about control. It's about helping the child to see how you know the structure works and to see that there's reasonable limits around their life so that they can practice being disciplined and self-regulated and to make decisions that are going to help them in the long run. But you don't want that structure to be too, too much that it's actually oppressive. And you also, you know, in some cases, want to learn how to be flexible yourself, so that you can learn how to ride the waves of changes and unpredictability in life as well. But you know, you do… consistency could be important. And consistency is kind of, you know, it's kind of like, you know, you don't want to live in a room where the walls cave in when you lean against the wall. Because that's kind of like scary, right? That's a metaphor. And so you know, you want to create some boundaries. But again, make it reasonable, have a conversation about why it's reasonable, have the kid themselves come up with the consequence that they feel like, is, you know, make sense, you know, make a collaborative. But be consistent with it. And again, again, make it an empowering way. And you can flip it from a negative consequence to a positive privilege, right? Instead of saying, oh, you know, you don't finish your homework, you're not going to see your, your friends, like, that's, that doesn't feel good, you wouldn't want someone saying that to you, you know, like, Oh, you're not gonna be able to do this. Like, flip it, say, like, well, you get your homework done, you're gonna feel better, you're going to be able to get that off your chest, you're not going to have that weighing on you, you're going to have time to go and play with your friends and have fun. And I want you to have that that's something I want. And also, by the way, how can I help you to get to that goal? How can I help you? You know, make it collaborative, you can always change the way you're talking to make it more empowering and more positive.

  40:55 Alexis Reid

  Totally. And I just want to emphasize that, especially for kids with ADHD, who do often get a lot of negative attention in school and social situations and in teams, that it is so important to nurture, social situations, even if they are online, and they don't always seem to make sense in our thinking in our world, we want to make sure that we're nurturing and supporting that, because that is often a big priority. And often it takes a lot of attention and focus from what needs to happen, right? The child or the kid might be focused on those social relationships, which kind of distracts them from the other stuff they have to do. And it's so important to help support that.

  So you mentioned how do we support and scaffolding is really like, you know, an outside of the building. As a as a building is getting built or, you know, reinforced or fixed, you'll often see the scaffolding that is built so that the workers can get to, can reach the higher points. So when we think about scaffolding for children with ADHD, especially, we don't want to think of like, what do we do for them? We want to think about how do we help them to climb the ladder? Right? So we think about zone of proximal development Vygotsky work from, you know, psychology and thinking about how do we consider the developmental needs of each child. And when we think about kids with ADHD, we want to remember that their executive function skills, their ability to pause and inhibit, right, which is closely related to emotional regulation and impulse control, that is going to be challenged and vulnerable.

  We want to think about working memory. And when we give them directions and information, they need to hold on and do something with it. That is often a vulnerable cognitive skill. And then we want to think about cognitive flexibility, seeing that there's other options, again, directly related to impulsivity, that they think that there's just one thing that needs to happen right away, versus what are my other options? How else can I approach this?

  So when we think about scaffolding and supporting and coaching, we provided a bunch of ideas already in the communication. But to Jerry's point, like we really need to slow things down, to help understand that it's not just about the goal what we're aiming to achieve or do. It really is about the process, the steps, the planning, those little markers that get you to the point. So to your example before about, you know, if you finish your homework, then you can hang out with your friends. Like I would break it down even further. Of course, considering developmentally appropriateness. We want to think about the age and what they are prioritizing, and what their skill level is like, what are they struggling with? Like, I would actually break it down and be like, Okay, it's not just about getting your homework done. It's like, Do you have a plan for your homework? Did you prioritize what you're going to start with? How much time do you think it's going to take for you to complete. Let's actually build some skills in this moment? Can we time it can we make time visual. You know me, Jer, I love those time timers that actually allow for time to become visual because you can see how much time is passing which is very difficult for individuals with ADHD or all humans. I say. That it's really tough. To see the passage of time because sometimes when you get overly focused or you're overwhelmed, you lose track of time, you know, can you actually build in all of these opportunities to build skills, instead of just getting something done, instead of just moving on to something that's different.

  So in these moments, when we're thinking about how to support and scaffold it all, it's really about what are the pieces we can put in place to help the child to be able to gain skills, because the name of the game is we want them to become independent, confident, and have agency. We want them to connect with themselves to know what they need, and then how to plan a path to be able to achieve that.

  So when we think about like building in those scaffolds in, being able to map out that structure. So if you are going to support them to get their homework done to clean the room, you really need to help model and work through with them. What does it mean to have a clean room? Because their version of clean might be way different than yours? So you know, work together, this comes down to the collaborative problem solving you mentioned before, you know, talk about like, Okay, well, what's gonna be the most efficient way to keep your pajamas and your clothes? Is it on a hanger? So you can see everything that's there? Is it in the drawers? How do you fold like, these are all skills that are required to just, quote unquote, clean your room, there's a lot that is being asked of these children, that's difficult. So when you're doing that, you know, walk through what it looks like, and make it, again, what's implicit things that we sometimes do as adults, explicit. Take pictures of what it looks like to be clean, to be folded to be put away to be, you know, the homework is finished, what is your checklist that you need to go through before you move on to the next part of your day, or work or whatever it is.

  46:05 Gerald Reid

  And as we alluded to earlier, like, they may have a reaction at first, right? Like, okay, like, we're gonna go do this now. And they may be like, Oh, I don't want to. And so there's going to be maybe this negative reaction, they have to doing something like that. And so there's something you know, the differential attention, which comes from, you know, Dr. Russell Barkley and that comes from CBT for working with parents, is you want to try to actively ignore certain behaviors that are if you if you engage with them, it's just going to kind of lead to this spiral of negativity, right? Where it's like, you're kind of arguing with each other, or this or that. And certain things, you want to just let right out and just treat it like, okay, that's their emotions coming out. Let me just let that emotion come out and go away, like maybe just give it a minute to like, let them vent a little bit. And then they're gonna go and go along with what we're doing. Sometimes people get it out. It's for adults to right, like, oh, shoot, like, I gotta do my, I gotta do this now. Like, okay, it's human. Sometimes that could be come from coming from, oh, I really wanted to do something else right now that I don't get to do. And that's just an issue. So some ways, you got to kind of acknowledge that being human is okay. It's okay to have those reactions, sometimes. Kind of, like, you know, I do, I work with athletes. And, you know, there's a video, there was an interview with Derek Jeter once, and he's like, you know, nobody likes his strike out, like, I didn't like it, but I had to, like, just let it out and move on. Right. So to say to like, an athlete, like, you should never be disappointed, you should never be frustrated, you should never get angry, never. Like, that's not the point. That's like saying, Don't be human. But the point is like, okay, you can allow that to happen and ride it out, and then move on from it more quickly. Because, you know, if you kind of engage in this back and forth with your kid around these little reactions they have it just kind of spirals. And so that's part of the differential attention, you want to try to, you know, if you give attention to it, it's just gonna kind of magnify it and make it bigger than it needs to be some times.

  48:04 Alexis Reid

  Yeah. And I think it's important to consider, you know, we're asking these children to be able to plan and prioritize what they need to do. And we need to do the same as adults in their lives, right? We need to plan like, Okay, what is the best time to engage in this, it's, you know, you're not going to, you know, teach them how to clean and organize a room when their friends are all playing outside in the backyard or down the street or whatever it is, or when there's their favorite show or a game, you know, you need to really plan out what is the best time what is my best entry point to doing this? You know, and oftentimes you want to couple it with something that's fun. You know, even when we as adults, we're doing chores, right? Like, can you do your dishes and listen to a podcast or when you're folding your laundry? Can you listen to some music? Can you… I saw something on Instagram actually, that was so cute. The Gottman Institute talks about relationships in couples and if you're a parent who's co parenting or you have a significant other it's a great point of information to follow, but they had this great idea of like make date night about chores, right? Like, hey, instead of calling it like, I gotta go do the laundry, it's like, Hey, we're gonna do the laundry together. And this becomes like a point of growing a relationship, do the same thing with your kids, right? Like, hey, we're gonna, like, have fun, we're gonna make this into a game or something that we're going to earn something else later, right? Think about, and we'll have this episode at some point to talking about video games and attention. But, you know, think about what they are actually getting out of the things that they love the most? And how do we bring that into real life and into the relationships we're building with them, because you don't want them to go through their whole lives thinking everything that's challenging everything that's difficult; everything that's not as fun and exciting as the things they love is a chore. You know, we don't want that for ourselves as adults, how do we bring that into our relationship with our kids, too?

  49:55 Gerald Reid

  Yeah, you know, growing up with you. And I saw this in you and mom, too, like they were. And dad sometimes, too, like they there's, there's like a joy to doing projects. And for me, like, sometimes it's like, you don't could be doing something different. But you know, you really helped me to appreciate the the project side of it, it's like it is like problem solving, let's assemble this thing, right? The TV stand that's in mom's house now, right? As I put it together myself, and like, at first I'm like, wow, like, I don't even know where to get started like, this is gonna be frustrating. But working through those emotions and actually doing it, like I look at it now my it feels good to know that I did that there's a sense of pride in that. In learning, and also learning how to do things yourself and see your point. Like, you can do that with kids and find ways to make it enjoyable. You can you know, ya gotta clean up the leaves? Let's see how quickly you can do it. But I'm gonna time you. Let's see, you know, who can put as many how many piles can you make, let's see how many piles you can make. Or, laundry let's put a basketball hoop around above the hampers and see how many, you know, shots you can make. Making it into a positive thing.

  51:00 Alexis Reid

  We need to bring joy back into these things. Because this is a part of life. And we actually don't want to automate everything either. You don't want to have, you know, the, you know, people who are privileged to be able to have housekeepers to come in and to clean and do the chores for them. Like if that's your situation, great. But don't take the responsibility away from the children. Because one of the biggest correlated factors to children actually building his skills is having chores earlier in life. Right? There's a lot of great research around like how important chores are in building diligence, building more empathy, helping to build happiness, joy, and executive function skills. Like we need to help them to understand that, you know, hard work is not always hard or difficult or bad. But we need to break down in support them to better understand what is the process of doing this. And, you know, you probably know this, by now in though I am not your parent, I'm your sister, I could have put that TV stand together by myself. That's something I love to do, and I'm really good at. But I knew it was a skill you needed to develop more. And I let you do it. And you know, I was there to help if you needed my help. And we worked on parts of it together. But that was about you creating it yourself. And the same goes for kids, right like we can do for them. But we're actually taking away from them. When we do that. We are taking away. Dr. Amen said this, he has his new great book out. He said, You know, when we do for our kids, we actually are stealing their confidence. Building our own confidence, we're kind of building up our own self-esteem, but we're taking away from our children if we're not helping them to strengthen those skills. And we have to keep in mind that just as you'll advocate at school for what your child needs, and we'll talk more about this in another episode too; you advocate for what your child with executive function challenges in ADHD needs in school. But we need to consider the same at home. They're not going to change who they are because they're in one context or another. In fact, when they're at home, we might see more emotional behaviors come out, because they don't have to mask to fit into a classroom. They feel more comfortable, they are more tired and exhausted, their resources are depleted. So we actually might see more of the emotionality at home than the teachers are seeing at school. I can't tell you how many parent teacher conferences I had, Jer, where the parents were like, oh, when they when they get home from school, they are just all over the place. They're running around. There's so emotional. They're yelling and screaming. They don't want to do anything. And I'm like, Oh, I don't see that at school. And they're like, oh my gosh, what's up with that?

  53:43 Gerald Reid

  Well, there's also like, when you're in school, like you're basically entering into a structure that's very predictable, right? Like everything is expected. There's this there's that and when you're home, it's like well, there's rooms. That’s pretty much the structure. Yeah, room for each thing. But that's it.

  53:58 Alexis Reid

  Yeah. And we want to give them flexibility. We want to help them to understand how to regulate themselves independently and on their own. We want to give them the freedom and flexibility outside of the structure at school at home. But we do want to maintain some structure. And this is not about just only the adult saying all the time, this is what absolutely has to happen. Again, you know, Maria Montessori talks about how we need to build support and structure in an environment to allow for freedom and flexibility. And I would say the same goes both at school and at home, we need to be clear about our expectations, we need to preview what those expectations are. Set up supports and scaffolds in the environment, whether it's a routine, an agenda, pictures and checklists of what things should look like when they're done complete or clean. And helping to build in transition points, like, hey, in about 15 minutes, we're going to wind down, we're going to unplug, we're going to meet together as a family, we're going to go for a walk, we need to leave the house before school, or insert anything that you need to leave the house for. Right, giving those previews of time, of space expectation, of the goal is so important. Because again, we need to make what's implicit, what is internal, external and explicit.

  55:17 Gerald Reid

  And so this is clarifying what the roles are right? And you didn't if your role is like, Okay, you're the one who has to put the dishes away, or you're the one who is going to be doing this and make it very specific and very contained. So it's clear, right, clarifying roles and expectations is very important. To have clarity.

  55:38 Alexis Reid

  And practice, practice, practice in low stakes situations, right? Not like, right before you're about to have company over, like, hey, we have to clean the house, it's like no, no, we're gonna practice cleaning certain parts of the house that you're responsible for. And we'll practice it many times until it feels comfortable.

  55:55 Gerald Reid

  Yeah, and express appreciation, you know, with your significant other, if you have one, like make that a model that you know, you appreciate things in you, you say, you know, you don't just hold it in. Maybe that's not part of your culture. And that's okay. But you know, certainly could help to reinforce how important things are the little things are important, and not to overlook them, like, you know, not just to say, Oh, well, you just did it, and let's move on. But like, I really appreciate it. And here's how it affected me, because kids with ADHD may not see cause and effect how what they're doing is coming across to another person, they may not realize it both in a positive or negative way, right. So it's good to give feedback in a helpful and empowering way to say, hey, like really appreciate that you did that that made me feel good. And that's a good model. And that's a good in the moment experience to help the child to connect their behavior to how it affects other people, because like I said, they may, they may struggle with that which could actually interfere with other relationships they have.

  56:48 Alexis Reid

  You know, and if that feels uncomfortable for you, as an adult with yourself or with your partner or with your child, you know, if you see that in a movie your watching or your child's watching, or in a story you're reading with them, or in some kind of other outside of yourself moment, to be able to point that out and be like, Oh, look at how this impacted that. You know, I really appreciated when you… And practice yourself again, as an adult in the life of a child with ADHD. It is a lot. It is a lot of work. It requires a lot of consistency. But I always say my greatest advice to parents, parenting to kids with ADHD is to slow things down. Like you said before, simplify and practice consistency. Those are like the three main things. If you take nothing else from this episode, we want to slow things down, right? Because it helps us to regulate ourselves. So we can be there to co-regulate with our child so that they can help to internalize and self-regulate on their own. And there's a really great book, Goldie Hawn actually wrote with some neuroscientists called 10 mindful minutes, which I really love. Right? She has this whole mind up program where she goes into schools and teaches kids about their brain and how to regulate their emotions. But, you know, take that time proactively, or in a moment that feels heated or like too much or overwhelming for yourself. If it's overwhelming for you, and you don't have ADHD, imagine what it might be for them, your child who has ADHD. Oftentimes, it's magnified and amplified, and it feels that much heavier and bigger and more challenging. So can you be able to take those mindful moment moments, figure out in articulate, like, hey, I need a minute. I'm gonna go for a walk. I'm gonna get some fresh air. I'm gonna take some breaths. I need to turn on a song and like get my dance on. Sometimes we need to get out of our heads and into our bodies to get that stress out, to even move past that moment. Practice, right, slow things down. Simplify, what are the routines, structures and approaches that make the most sense? And again, once you have a system down that works. Sometimes it needs to be adjusted. The scaffolds aren't intended to be there forever. Right? That's, again, the thing I love about working with kids with ADHD is that, that you're not stuck with what you have, you can build and strengthen these skills over time. And oftentimes that happens, especially with consistency of practice, and with support.

  And that's why this idea of connecting and helping these kids to understand themselves and what they need is so important. And then finally, you know, consistency, that practice, practice, practice.

  59:41 Gerald Reid

  Yeah, you know, Dr. Walter Michel, he did the marshmallow test, you have that book, the marshmallow test, which essentially says is, which essentially was about studies where he had kids look at a marshmallow in a plate in front of them. And the kids with ADHD struggle with this test more often. And the idea is that the researcher would say, if you don't eat that one marshmallow that's right in front of you, while they're salivating, I will give you two marshmallows later, whenever that time came. And as you can think the kids who are more impulsive are going to eat that one marshmallow because it’s in front of them. There's a funny movie called The Five Year Engagement that kind of has kind of a satire around that whole thing. But the idea that came from it, I think, as far as I understand it, the theory behind it is that, you know, kids who came from underprivileged environments, who struggled more on this test, he was thoughtful about it. He said, are the kids who grew up in these more underprivileged experiences… is that that they're just less disciplined is that it? And, you know, what he came to conclude is that actually, it's about trust. In some ways. And it's not always one thing, but this is certainly one aspect that, you know, if you trust the person in front of you that they're going to do what they say they're going to do, you're more likely to be disciplined, because you know that the reward or whatever you're expecting will come. So that's why the consistency is really important.

  61:13 Alexis Reid

  Yeah. And to your point about trust, you know, I had the great privilege of hearing Dr. Mischel, speak before he passed away. And, you know, he actually in combination with my adoration for Dr. Kagan's work; and both of them talk about this idea of trust. And one of the things that I think that we as a society tend to lack is a trust in ourselves. And when we think about kids with ADHD, especially, we want to remember that they are constantly second guessing themselves, because they get so much negative feedback. So we really want to help them to trust in themselves.

  And as individuals and adults in their lives, it's going to, it's going to be a reaction of ours, to swoop in and do for them, or to just constantly protect, constantly do, constantly prepare. But I want to be super clear and emphasize the fact that we don't want to always do for them. I use the animal behavior metaphor, thinking about the mama bear who swoops in and saves the baby cub, whenever they're like too close to danger, or water or whatever. Like, we have that tendency, especially when we see children struggling to do that. And I always encourage everybody who works, especially with kids with ADHD, that, you know, we want to think about their development, we want to think about their confidence, we want to think about how they learn to trust themselves. And oftentimes, this is about them doing. This is not about punishing, or making them feel too much shame and guilt around when things don't go well. It's really helping them to unpack and unwind that. And again, when we slow things down, we help to show them that, you know, we can trust in ourselves and things still might not always go well. But how do we help them to get through those moments, and it really is about them trusting us; them feeling comfortable coming to us when things don't work, so that we build that relationship later.

  I always say that we either work on these behaviors in the relationship now early on, when a child is still young, versus later, because these are things that if we don't target and support earlier in life, when in fact, you know, we think from a neurodevelopmental perspective, Jer, you know, neuroplasticity is at its maximum when you are younger, and as you get older, we still have neuroplasticity, right? Our brains can still change and grow and evolve. But when we're younger up until when the prefrontal cortex is fully developed around 25-30 years old. In that range. We have more opportunity to build these skills and build these connections. So we can help to encourage these behaviors and these cognitive skills to come online by entertaining this idea of feeling comfortable sharing when you make a mistake. Asking for help, which I have to tell you is one of the hardest things for these kids to do. It is so difficult for them to say, I don't know, because a lot of them are so smart, so intelligent, so creative, so kind and empathetic, that when things don't go well for them, they totally question themselves, they have no trust in themselves, they lose their confidence in themselves. And this often, again, what comes first, the chicken or the egg leads to a lot of anxiety, potentially depression, or other significant mental health challenges.

  64:36 Gerald Reid

  Or they're so fixated on the outcome, right? Yeah, help is a process of getting help is actually part of the process. And so, you know, it's important for the kid to learn how to value the process to actually see it as important. And so, you know, and also, like you said, the shame, the guilt of asking for help, right? If there's something wrong with you, as a person asking you for help validates that there's something wrong about you, right. So just to say, I need help, in some ways, if you feel so bad about yourself, because of the negative feedback, you can actually think that help means there's something wrong with you. It's validating, it's giving it life, it's giving it, it's making it real, right. So that's those two things could get fused together help means there's something wrong with me. That's why it's so important, you know, to to work that out with your child. And that's why, again, like repair. A big aspect of helping a kid, this my last statement here, is helping a kid with ADHD to see both things existing at the same time. This is from dialectical behavior therapy, it's called the dialectic, which is to say, two opposing things can coexist at the same time. And so that's what a repair is; a repair in a relationship is, you know, you did something that didn't work out, or you made a mistake, or you quote, unquote, messed up, or you did something that hurt me, or that you didn't realize, or maybe you did, whatever, you know, it hurt my feelings, that, and it's also true that we can repair it, that I can forgive you, you can forgive yourself, you can forgive me for maybe I reacted too strongly. There's forgiveness, there's the ability to move on, instead of holding resentment and holding anger and holding this grudge like this the stuff that's going to make it worse and because that's, that's helping the kids develop that ability to do that. And that's what the repair is because like, like we said before, there's all these ruptures, there's all these negative feedback and mistakes and errors that the kid with ADHD is experiencing. And it's important to counterbalance that, with the ability for forgiveness for starting a new for grace. Because that can allow for change. And that's not an excuse. You know, a lot of times parents will think, Oh, I'm just excusing the kids behavior, the kids not actually putting in the effort, the kids not changing. And that's an understandable frustration, right? Because it is it goes both ways, especially as the kid gets older, they really have to take ownership for their, for their ADHD to get better. Because as you get older, it's only you, you know, you don't have parents, you know, doing everything for you as much as you get much older. And so there is, you know, things definitely improve when the kid does take ownership and kind of lets go of that ego. You know, it's not about ego, it's not about protecting my self-esteem anymore. It's about like, I accept myself for who I am. And I'm going to make things better. And that can be nurtured when the kids are younger. So as a parent, nurture that, accept who you are, accept you for who you are, you know. To feel accepted, despite having these diverse challenges, right, is to feel unconditional love. And you really want the kids who unconditionally love themselves as well, especially as they get older, because that's going to allow them to accept themselves which leads to change, and leads to taking ownership over how to work with yourself despite having these challenges, and not to just self-sabotage and not to just say oh, I can't do anything, or I can't do it or, or just arguing with people or just leading to all these emotional outbursts because they're so defensive, because they have such a, you know, hurt self-esteem because of how they've experienced having ADHD. And again, this is not blame I'm not blaming anybody for instilling that into the kids not about that it's this this is the kids experience this is how it is to have challenges. It's just them you know, and it's not you know, they're gonna get they're gonna feel this way with everybody not just with their parent because of who they are. And so as a parent, you want to try to counterbalance that as much as you can to help them to feel understood and loved and cared for and to allow them to also make changes because it's not just the parent making changes also the kid as they get older to make changes.

  1:08:35 Alexis Reid

  So between you and I we've probably worked with hundreds of children and people who have ADHD or characteristics of ADHD right, going back to my previous point of what comes first the chicken or the egg if you have a mental health challenge it’s gonna impact tension, focus and executive function. And if you have attentional executive function challenges where they're still developing those skills, you might experience anxiety or mental health challenges. So, you know, I want us to really consider that this is complex. This is not just one thing. And it also is not just people who are diagnosed with ADHD. So if you hear characteristics on here that are familiar, a lot of the things we talked about today are really just about parenting, understanding, communicating, working on relationship building, and really focusing on connection with each other and within yourself as a foundation for all else.

  And I will also say that what you just said was so beautiful. And there's a lot there. And if you're a parent listening, or a caregiver listening, I want you to just acknowledge that, like, sometimes we need to go inward for ourselves first before we can fully show up, and to do all these things. And, and that's a really important thing that you don't need permission for me to do. But you know, take a moment to even like sit and journal, reach out for support for care, love, from loved ones that you trust and support, who can talk to you these things, or have a therapist and a counselor to guide you to, because this is a lot to do, and a lot to think about. But you also don't need to do all the things at once, right? Like pick one thing that you want to focus on. Do you want to focus on, you know, creating more structure and routines and expectations that are super clear in your environment? Do you want to focus on the communication? Do you want to focus on proactively pausing to regulate yourself before you react or coach and guide your child. Like focus on one thing, and see what works.

  10:10:43 Gerald Reid

  And maybe you just need a therapist yourself, whether it's to learn how to parent and differently and to kind of make adjustments. Or maybe you just need a therapist for yourself or a trusted person you live to work through your own experience with your child with ADHD. So we do want to validate that, right? This is everybody's important, the parent’s important, the kid’s important. So certainly important, as you're pointing out Lex, right? Like you can have your own feelings as a parent about, you know, how to challenge and live challenges that you have, or the thoughts or the assumptions or the expectations that you have, that you got to process yourself and, you know, take care of yourself, you're important as much as you are as a parent as an individual, yourself.

  10:11:23 Alexis Reid

  And I feel such empathy for the parents that I work with. Because I hear a lot of shame, like, Did I do something wrong? Why is this so difficult? And, you know, we need to talk through this. And one of the biggest struggles I think in our society is we don't talk through the things that are hard enough with others, that it makes us feel like something's wrong for ourselves. And it goes back to the same thing we're talking about when we think about kids with ADHD. So I want to just encourage folks to reach out and get the support you need, whether it's a therapist, again, a friend, or a guide, an executive function coach, like myself, you know, somebody to help you process through what's happening, and maybe give you some other strategies and advice to guide you. There's absolutely no shame in that. And it's super helpful, just to be able to give yourself some space from the situation, slow yourself down, to reflect on what's possible, and where you want to go with things.

  And the other thing that I want to just share is like I want us to consider this expansive idea of are these behaviors just negative behaviors? Are they getting negative responses that reinforce the behaviors that are sometimes not necessarily positive in a child's life.

  Gerald Reid : like a kid can get used to getting attention from negative behaviors, which is the idea that you're getting attention from me attention is better than no attention at all. And if the kid doesn't, if the kid loses hope that they can get attention in positive ways, which could happen with the kid with ADHD, you kind of lose hope, like, oh, nobody's pleased with me, I can't make anybody happy. So, you know, you kind of get in this pattern, you could be unconscious, were you just getting attention for negative behaviors, because, again, that any attention is better than no attention.

  Alexis Reid: And I just want to remind folks, too, that like, sometimes these kids may present as more immature than their peers. But how do we embrace that? How do we help them to see their strengths, and let all the things that are so amazing about them to shine through, and shine through in context, that they're going to get positive reinforcement, to be able to lift them up, build their confidence and trust in themselves, as we help them to trust in us too. So when we think about this, this feedback loop with these points of connection, you know, always think about what is actually the goal that we're working towards here? How do we support and guide and build the confidence and the self-esteem in these children so that they can become the brilliant, incredible folks that I have been privileged to see, you know, every single day, and that we see, you know, in our culture, some of the most fascinating, talented, successful people are those who identify as ADHD or have characteristics related to ADHD.

  But again, we've thrown around the terminologies it's probably the most I will ever say ADHD in one period of time. Because again, I think these labels are helpful for us to better understand ourselves to get what we need, but they don't need to define us. They are a point for us to work from, and to understand ourselves so that we can embrace all the nuances, the quirkiness, the energetic moments of, you know, high energy and low energy and figuring out what we need and who we are.

  1:14:34 Gerald Reid:

  Dr. Ned Hallowell calls them superpowers.

  Alexis Reid:

  You know, a lot of people think of them as superpowers, but they're also kind of tricky sometimes, too. There's nuance yeah, there's nuance, and we need to figure out what feels right for us and how we can navigate the world. So I'm grateful for all of you for listening, for expanding your idea and definition of this label of ADHD, and how we best support especially children, but all individuals who have these characteristics and who sometimes struggle with attention and executive function. Because I am there with you. And I am here for you and I am so appreciative of the work I get to do and the people I get to meet every single day, and we hope this is supportive and helpful for you.

  Gerald Reid  

  Thanks for tuning in to the Reid Connect-ED podcast. Please remember that this is a podcast intended to educate and share ideas, but it is not a substitute for professional care that may be beneficial to you at different points of your life. If you are needed support, please contact your primary care physician, local hospital, educational institution, or support staff at your place of employment to seek out referrals for what may be most helpful for you. ideas shared here have been shaped by many years of training, incredible mentors research theory, evidence based practices and our work with individuals over the years, but it's not intended to represent the opinions of those we work with or who we are affiliated with. The reconnected podcast is hosted by siblings Alexis Reid and Dr. Gerald Reid. Original music is written and recorded by Gerald Reid (www.Jerapy.com) recording was done by Cyber Sound Studios. If you want to follow along on this journey with us the Reid Connect-ED podcast. we'll be releasing new episodes every two weeks each season so please subscribe for updates and notifications. Feel free to also follow us on Instagram @ReidConnectEdPodcast that's @ReidconnectEdPodcast and Twitter @ReidconnectEd. We are grateful for you joining us and we look forward to future episodes. In the meanwhile be curious, be open, and be well.

Raising children is a role that requires so much - understanding, flexibility, planfulness, love, consistency, responsiveness, care, and so much more. We believe it is one of the most admirable roles that we can take on, the pursuit of raising happy and healthy children (whether a parent, caregiver, educator, coach, mentor, family member). In this episode, we share a nuanced discussion about how to support children with attentional and related differences, such as ADHD. 

Recognizing and understanding the challenges that are present is the first step, whether it’s attentional challenges or executive functioning vulnerabilities. However, in this episode we talk about how connection is a key component when raising and interacting with children who have neurodiverse profiles. We provide examples of ways in which connection can be built into the strategies and interventions that parents can utilize when guiding, responding to, and supporting their child with ADHD.

Be curious. Be Open. Be well.

The ReidConnect-Ed Podcast is hosted by Siblings Alexis Reid and Dr. Gerald Reid, produced by and original music is written and recorded by www.Jerapy.com

*Please note that different practitioners may have different opinions- this is our perspective and is intended to educate you on what may be possible.