ADHD diagnosis!! Father and Son get an ADHD Diagnosis

hi guys welcome to coming home to autism dylan has autism and i have adhd all symbols when your brain works differently and adhd is it kind of like a super power that's my dad says what is adhd what is it attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and what does adhd mean to you adhd okay i think first and foremost is you know it's it's not a label it's not a one size fits all imagine your amygdala or your thought process in your brain was the tasmanian devil and he was just spinning around in your head all the time bumping off the sides as he goes and that's probably my practical analogy of adhd it's a constant uh onslaught of thoughts you know your brain always needs to be thinking it always needs to go somewhere it's not very good but sitting still hey focus yes come up here no luca let's try that again hey luca come and sit down beside me okay yeah okay so what do you find hard to do sit on my chair sit on your chair sit on your bottom because you get lots of widgets and fidgets we call it widgets and fidgets and bits you find it hard to concentrate don't you he's a bit fidgety okay look this is you know okay so can you focus on what we're doing whoa puka listen come on and there's what i believe um and not everyone may agree with me but having read an awful lot about it is that people with adhd what we all share is we're sensitive you know if you look at all the tests and the studies of anyone that suffers from adhd the one thing you'll find that everyone has is sensitivity put on for value four seasons [Music] i felt very different growing up didn't quite know why did i get labelled at naughty yeah i did i constantly in school was in trouble for acting the maggot i couldn't sit still i couldn't concentrate i was never never in trouble for doing anything kind of you know malicious or it was always seeking it was always acting the mick looking for a way to connect that i was tuned out of life that's how you feel when you're a kid with adhd you don't fully feel present you feel like you're you're kind of there but you're not there so i always wobble on my chair the teacher tell me if i'm doing but it but i just carry on you know they don't really listen because i like warming [Music] separate separate why do we jump around to look for that attention i think it's two folders one your ability to communicate um is slightly stifled by adhd i struggled and i believe people with adhd struggle terribly with initial interaction and communication and thus why you dance around like an idiot because it's he's almost you're allowing your body to do something that feels comfortable and you can make people laugh and that becomes your main source of communication you know as a child you know i was always the first person to do that dare you know i had no problem running up knocking on that door and running off because i i got a thrill out of it well it made me feel normal it was giving you cred street cred with your friends you struggle to communicate with your friends in a normal way so i'll show them i'll do something silly or something you think is cool they will love me they will like me i can be part of a gang that's just your way of communicating when you've got adhd it's been shown obviously shown that people with adhd have um certainly the the patterns of a number of their receptors in the brain act in a different way so obviously dopamine has been highlighted as the the biggest and i remember a psychotherapist once explaining to me that obviously if you've got a normal person's two receptors dopamine is firing nicely between these two adhd you're kind of like this um and depending on the mood you could be these are a bit off so you're looking for that dopamine hit so you're taking a risk you're doing something silly um there's the thrill seeking so you're you're trying to bring that up to get that kind of that dopamine hit and that's the reason why we are risk takers or thrill seekers you could probably look at all the uh extreme sports people in the in the world um do a survey on them as to how many of them have adhd and i'd say there'd be a a pretty high number of them the trail of a person with adhd is quite often a lot of projects that have started a lot of projects that haven't finished you know you've got a super creative mind 80 people with adhd you're constantly wanting to do stuff and some of that stuff you don't get finished but because you don't complete things and see them all through in a structured process because you lack the ability to do that you beat down on yourself and you're constantly criticizing yourself because you you didn't accomplish something you moved on to something so it's it's kind of like a vicious circle uh at times yeah i mean low self-esteem is is one of the biggest challenges we have i was reading all this literature on autism and a lot of the times it was like that's me or some of those things certainly align with me dylan's autism is has manifested in in a vastly different way than my ad adhd has or had but there was a lot of there was a lot of things that were jumping off the page that kind of made you go hmm i think like that and it makes you start to ask questions and actually go through the process of getting a diagnosis so really i have dylan to thank because if if dylan hadn't been diagnosed with asd and we hadn't started looking into it i never would have found the answers uh that have helped me so much obviously i didn't get diagnosed until what three three years ago two years ago so you're gonna make me say my age on camera and i have to say it was a massive relief that's just answers a million questions that were left unanswered in my mind and it kind of took a massive weight off um if you know what something is and you can accept it then you can start to to deal with it i kind of knew obviously before i got the diagnosis as you grow up and you get a little bit more sensible you know i knew i was hyperactive or had some form of adhd and you were putting in place systems and processes to deal with that but obviously the diagnosis was an absolute eureka moment for me it allowed me then to tap into specific resources to kind of deal with the adhd [Music] a diet first of all that has been a massive help for me you've got to get sugar out of the diet because you're up and down anyway with your dopamine levels if you chuck in processed sugar on top of an adhd brain you are pouring petrol on a fire it has it gives you a higher high and it gives you a lower low a good balanced diet just whatever it is keep processed sugar out obviously supplements you know get your your key supplements right b12 magnesium at night fantastic for getting the brain just to kind of calm down a little bit obviously then exercise is e absolutely key if i don't exercise after the third day i can notice my control of my adhd starts to i start to lose more control of it i will have more mood swings less ability to focus um starts to get away from me because exercise creates you know endorphins it creates dopamine um it it it rationalizes it streamlines a lot of those processes so running weights obviously whatever works for you with adhd as well you're more prone to addiction so you've got to get yourself addicted to the stuff that makes you better as opposed to the stuff that makes you worse so for me morning routines are massive for me exercise is massive for me um diet our three pillars that help me hold my together and you'll have to beat that out actually the one thing i didn't mention earlier meditation with adhd you will probably think it's impossible for me to meditate and sometimes i still think it's impossible to meditate but it does have a massive calming effect on on your brain and your ability to try and rest your brain a little bit meditation definitely helps when the dopamine is down and you are you can be a little bit more zen about your sort of your response it's one of the first thing that kind of falls away you know when you're on a rush day or you're retired or something and really it should be the first thing that you do she wants to be famous ow ow something nice but help this is just about maine night yeah medication can be good as part of a a complete treatment package you know in line with cognitive behavioral therapy you get a lot of these kind of social groups or work groups now with people with adhd you know get together they they share learnings they what works for them what hasn't worked for them where they're struggling and it's a whole network group so i think that's a key part of you know a treatment process but my view on medication is it's a plaster you know you're you're plastering over the cracks so you can use it while you're dealing with the cracks but if you're not dealing with the cracks that you know there's no point taking medication it's a crutch medication is a crutch you know and i have used medication in the past i still may use medication if i know that i have a really intensive conference or work period coming that i just cannot risk it not being 100 spot on i don't think the long term of any medication ideally is a good thing because you're putting you know a toxin in your body and one of the things you know i need to get better at well give up alcohol is is limit and reduce the amount of toxins in your body because again adhd you're super sensitive to these things so you react so there's the cons of medicine as well i remember a few years ago they tried me on a neuroadrenaline reuptake inhibitor as opposed to a dopamine reuptake inhibitor it was awful absolutely awful um the side effects were horrific after a few days i was like geez i'm not taking this then i tried a more modern version of the stimulant that had a very very good effect on getting my concentration levels up you know we've talked a lot about the challenges and the downsides of adhd i think it's really important to you know mention the good things about adhd and i've had massive success in my life because of adhd you know and that is the ability to hyper focus so if you find something that you really like or are passionate about for me that was sailing you know you have the ability to hyper focus and where you can hyper focus you can block out everything else and be really truly successful at something so that is a massive skill people with adhd with the right help uh will be able to do so first and foremost diet and lifestyle so exercise because they have adhd you know processed sugar is kidney cocaine i mean it's going to send you off off the wall and also coloring food coloring to that point it's not like you can't have any sugar but if you're gonna have sugar give them some proper chocolate don't give them skittles that's probably the worst thing you can give a child with adhd sport you know activity outdoors like if you have that kid indoors they're going to be bouncing off the walls you know we know ourselves too much time on screen time is twice as bad for a brain with ahd because it gets scrambled a lot quicker so fresh air activity but be prepared they will probably go through 13 or 14 activities before they find one that they like i remember my mom tried me at absolutely everything um i didn't want to get involved in it and eventually found swimming and then found sailing which was actually became a massive therapy to me but i took luca to football he wanted to play football we bought all the kit and then he just didn't want to play didn't want to go he was too overcritical of himself but he loves fishing you know it's like just you're gonna have to try lots of different things find something that they like it will give them a feeling of self-confidence it will give them an understanding of how to use that hyper focus how to turn adhd into a superpower because it can be when you manage it i've marked greatly phelps the swimmer he was useless at everything and his mother went through 100 different activities he found swimming hyper focused on the swimming most decorated olympian in history tip number two don't berate them try and understand them and why they are behaving the way they do it's very easy to to berate a child with adhd because you're probably going why are they acting like that they suffer terribly from a lack of confidence give them confidence where you can but obviously they need to know right from wrong but just don't berate them constantly because they will suffer in the long run for luca i see elements of myself and luca you know he's looking for acceptance he is he's a very sensitive child he's a very loving child he's a very caring child so i so i understand where he's coming from i see an awful lot of myself in him and i'm never going to berate him for it i think that one of the biggest challenges is people didn't understand adhd when i was a kid so you were just a messer you were just labeled as a little bit dumb um i was constantly outside the uh the principal's office because i was thrown out of class for distracting class and celebrate it i think as i said there's upsides to it you know adhd can be a superpower and it's certainly being a superpower you know for me through successes and whatever sport and business so um yeah celebrate adhd channel that adhd so obviously tara asked me to come on and speak a little bit about adhd today hope it's given a bit of an insight and some help would love to hear your views on adhd and also if you have any more questions if you'd like to hear more about what's worked for me or what hasn't worked for me or our family and maybe some questions about what might be able to work for your family would love to help let's get the conversation going and uh thanks for listening [Music] thank you so much for watching please like and subscribe see you next week bye

Channel: Coming Home to Autism

Views: 23,180

Keywords: coming home to autism, tara leniston, autism, family vlog, adhd, adult adhd, late diagnosis of adhd, child adhd, trouble child adhd, problem child adhd, adult adhd diagnosis, autism family, autisic son autistic father, is adhd genetic, causes of adhd, help for the adhd mind, do i have adhd, adhd symptoms, medication and adhd, adhd meditation, how do i know if i have adhd?, Father and Son ADHD Diagnosis

Id: WecvS16ICxo

Length: 18min 17sec (1097 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 18 2020