How To Parent A Child With ADHD When You Have ADHD Yourself (w/ Elaine Taylor-Klaus)

[Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] that's [Music] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] huh [Music] hi hello brains i'm like wait it's not on me yet that's because there's a delay hi oh my gosh anybody anybody want to do my history work um i don't think i'd be very good at it i was so bad at history hi hello oh my gosh there's so many of you uh raise your hand if you're supposed to be doing something else right now this is super cool so i just wanted to celebrate i came on a little bit early elaine is going to be on at two o'clock talking about how to parent a child with adhd when you also have adhd which i know we get a lot of questions about hi so uh if you if you have parents that you would like to watch this stream text them now um it's that's gonna be like 20 minutes but for now i just wanted to come on and say hi to people and just thank you for being subscribers to the channel we have hit 500 000 subscribers we're at half a million people now oh my gosh hi from melbourne oh my gosh hi guys there's so many there's so many people from dubai that's so cool please speed up the respond time okay what is the respond time i don't know what that is uh i'm kind of i'm kind of new to the live stream uh thing so this is kind of like nerve-wracking but oh my gosh there's so many people okay very cool all right so yeah we're gonna be talking about how to parent a child with adhd when you also have adhd so again um if you are a parent great you're in the right place elaine will be on with us in about 20 minutes if you are a kid with adhd and you'd like your parents to watch this like send them the link um and that'll be in 20 minutes or so but for now i just wanted to again thank you for helping make this channel awesome like this community is what makes this channel it really is you guys are incredible and kind and if you've ever shared a video or commented on a video you've helped us get to this point if you've subscribed you've definitely helped us get to this point where we're at half a million subscribers so i think it's pretty cool it will be posted later yeah um yes so you can see this later if you have to go do other things like homework feel free to come back later the only thing you can't do is ask questions um i will be taking questions and answering as many as i can and having elaine answer questions as well so that's the benefit i guess of being here for the live stream um you can also do super chat oh gosh yeah so timothy harvard just donated so if you guys see um steven behind the behind the scenes is a tech genius and has made it so that you can if you donate to super chat your donation will show up and i think your comment shows up too hey trace jackson trying to read everyone's live comments yeah that's gonna happen um i am gonna be on for the next year i'm gonna be talking for the next 20 minutes just me and then elaine will be on at 2 p.m pacific time so in about 20 minutes and we're gonna talk probably for an hour hour and a half oh yeah new subs too just a few a few weeks ago thank you how am i really doing with everything i see that question yeah oh matthias thank you uh i am it's interesting i it feels like sometimes i'm doing really really well and things are back to normal and sometimes i'm struggling um if you guys don't know what i'm talking about we did a few videos about this i went through uh i didn't really that's what it's called but it's called a traumatic loss when you lose somebody close to you without warning my mom wasn't sick or anything and i just got a call from the corner uh or from the county medical examiner's office i guess out of nowhere saying that she was gone and so that's been really tough to process it's been hard to deal with but i've been reaching out to to the community for support i've been reaching out to friends and i've also been taking advantage of some free resources if anybody's going through grief there are free resources available um especially right now during covid online where you can work with either a peer or you can do like a group therapy thing and those resources are available for free so i've been taking advantage of that thank you yeah it's actually interesting so elaine who's going to be talking here worked with my mom i introduced her to my mom because my mom was struggling she she had a hard enough time with me but she had an even harder time with my brother and so elaine actually worked with my mom for a little bit about um just to have her help hey shout out hi bts army bomb hey gabby or gaby hey you that's cute wow the super chat's super cool thank you yeah it's it's interesting because like there's stuff that's going really well right now and probably a lot of people can relate to this there's stuff that's going well and then there's stuff that's like really not and so you almost don't know how to feel about stuff aw karina thank you for helping me make sense of my life thank you thank you for the donation uh any anything that people donate by the way is going to go right back into creating more content for the channel hiring more people we've got a small t we've been growing so we're gonna be doing some cool things we're gonna be revamping the website um that that definitely needs updating we're gonna be posting more on social media and doing all kinds of cool stuff thank you carlene keep it up those are so cute hey and people who are supposed to be working yeah you guys can see oh thank you thanks christy never done it before yeah i'm actually new to this too salsa pixie wait you i think i'm not seeing the actual um chats if you guys are actually saying something when you donate oh oh there we go i can click on them and see them i'm new to this thanks for your videos that finally got me to take meds it's been amazing for my underlying anxiety i'm so thankful thank you rose that's awesome i'm glad this worked out sometimes meds don't work right away or can take time to find the right one i'm glad that those are working for you okay cool so sometimes there's okay that sometimes there's a comment and not always oh michael thank you for unknowingly helping me get through being laid off last spring and getting another job oh man yeah i think a lot of people are going through job loss adhd years especially we go through jobs pretty quickly if if that's the case um you're in good company i'm glad you got another job scribblenerd i love that your ted talk inspired me to help me through tough times thank you thank you i'm really glad i did that it was weird i got an email kind of out of nowhere like hey do you want to go to bratislava slovakia and do a tedx talk i was just like sure adhd impulsivity yeah why not i had no idea the difference it would make it's really cool seeing it helena glad you're here i just had a video chat with a possible new doc and she made me feel bad because my addictive tendencies you make me feel better oh man that sucks i'm really sorry to hear that um yeah adhd is it's so important to find the right doctor because a lot of them don't get a lot of training well they don't generally get a lot of training with adhd um and so unless a doctor really specializes in it or goes out of their way to wait to learn about it they have a lot of misconceptions i think about it um and yeah we do get judged for that stuff when it's like self-medicating is a really common thing with adhd kate kramer love the videos thank you redneckonomics thanks for everything your channel's been a huge help i'm really glad to hear that thank you guys and by the way you helped me too i read the comments on all the videos and uh just every day i wake up and i read i read through them even like even if i can't respond um i read the comments all the time and it's it's i've learned so much from this community i've learned as much from this community as you've learned from me i'm sure of it you gotta go yeah if anybody has doing i definitely don't wanna make you guys i i i wanna i want to support your progress toward the things that you're trying to do i don't want to be the one to derail you so you can always watch this later evangelist thank you oh thank you pounds euros i think catherine you're wonderful i'm a digital marketing person doing nothing productive with my life so can you help thank you i appreciate it um we we just brought on some new people and like once we get everybody settled we may be posting about volunteering opportunities or more job positions as that opens up so thank you for that oh jessica's asking is habitual lying possibly a symptom of adhd um it's not an official symptom but it it is something that i know attitude magazine has talked about before there's some articles that you can look up with them uh it's not it's not a super uncommon thing from my understanding mayan says i was telling my therapist i saw a video about rejection sensitivity and she was like how to adhd and i was like yes how do you know she met me a few times oh who was your therapist ah tibia by j.o gaming thank you times have been tough and you helped me thank you how's the 90 take it to our challenge going so yeah i'm about to send out another email if anybody did the 90 day challenge and the email's totally gonna be like so does anybody else like missed a day already like i totally thought i'd be able to do at least one thing every day and i it's been enlightening how hard it is some days to do anything toward my guitar so there have been a few days that i've missed and i'm just gonna kind of be like okay so it's a 90 day challenge try not to miss days but if you do you can still participate because like otherwise i'm out like i can't even participate in my own challenge because i have already missed days it is so hard you guys uh but i have made progress i'm getting better even missing days i'm getting better rebecca says just diagnosed at 42 after watching your videos from a young adult kid everything makes sense now ah yay and stick around yeah i don't know if uh you heard the part earlier um if you were here from the beginning but we're gonna have elaine taylor klaus on who wrote a book literally wrote the book on on parenting complex kids and she's gonna be on to talk mainly about how to parent an adhd child when you have adhd yourself but she'll answer other questions as well music by stanley my nine-year-old daughter has adhd and we've been through a rough period your channel really helped to look at things from her perspective that's really great to hear that's really great to hear oh oh wow this goes this goes so fast ah martin thank you for helping me understand myself thank you i'm glad that i could i've been learning as i go i didn't really understand adhd at all when i started this channel um and just basically did the research every week whatever i learned i shared um and now now i know a lot about it but it's it's funny because i forget what it's like to not to not remember this stuff you helped me get through adjusting after the birth of my second daughter while dealing with my adhd and my toddler's adhd wow that's amazing i'm glad you're here the legacy we've spoken on discord hi yes i know you but wanted to shout out here through a bit of money thank you you're already supporting thank you for supporting even more especially meeting fellow brains on your discord literally saved my life community is important i'm glad that you've found a place where you feel like you belong it's been it's been a pleasure talking to you aika adhd mom here with two under four and your videos helped me feel like not the worst mom ever so thank you yeah man there's something that dr carolyn lynch parcells said in the last video that i completely agree with parenting an adhd child is not the same as parenting a neurotypical child it's just not and it's so easy to feel she talked about this a lot it was it was easy to feel like a failure as a parent um if you have ideas to yourself we're all we're already used to failing at stuff and feeling not good enough and now you're you know you're failing your kids too but yeah it's it's hard it's parenting is hard in general if you also have adhd especially if your kids also have adhd it's it's my i my poor mom that's all i have to say oh ian saw this show up in my feed and i had to join to say thank you thank you be a few minutes late oh thank you i've learned so much and you helped me articulate challenges of adhd to my family that makes me so happy thank you don't go to your meeting don't be late lol1hi too i am studying psychology i want to help you someday reading studies or something rain from germany thank you i appreciate it we do have a network of people helping with research and stuff so um well we're putting systems in place now because we we do have a lot of people reaching out that want to help and i definitely want to do that i want to do more with this channel and help help more people and make sure we're all up to date on the latest research so that's gonna be something we'll put out volunteer opportunities for at some point minnie keep up the good work and videos for adhd community best wishes from germany got my diagnosis last year with 38 and your videos helped me a lot thank you how many people have been diagnosed within the last few years in the chat i'm really curious uh claudia's asking if i can talk if she can talk to me would love some advice um i i'm actually not trained or in any way qualified to do one-on-one support um that's a really good thing to go to a professional for um whether it's a coach or a therapist or whatever um but i actually am not qualified to do that and if it's something that you're having difficulty affording there's people who work on sliding scale and some people even do pro bono work you can also find peer support um support groups chad has support groups um but yeah unfortunately one-on-one advice isn't something that i can do i just talk general principles i general research and i hear from the community and i can share what what works for a lot of people um but i'm not at all trained to like help one-on-one jonathan says you've changed my life so much i started seeing a therapist because of you got my diagnosis the result things have been so much better yay i'm really glad to hear that oh man yeah i'm really big on support like just treatment for adhd in general society doesn't treat it like it's that big a deal but it can really derail our life if we're if we don't address it and how we address it might vary depending on our circumstances and what we can afford honestly but i definitely think it's deserving of support oh burst fire academy just discovered this community four weeks ago asd and adhd i suffer a lot thanks so much already there's a lot of people with um with autism in this community as well that are on the spectrum i've always gotten along a lot of my friends have autism as well i've always been drawn to neurodiversity in general i think since 1994 hey i was diagnosed i was diagnosed in 1994. i'm in the process of getting diagnosed in my early 20s excited and nervous yeah that's that's about right does everyone with uh add have another diagnosis like anxiety really common really common comorbidities are super common with adhd especially for people who weren't diagnosed early because other things can kind of develop as a result of it so even if you wouldn't have developed anxiety otherwise like if you if you spend your life losing things and being corrected developing anxiety and depression is fairly common um there's also learning disabilities that are very common dyslexia is very common with adhd dyscalculia um there's dysgraphia there's there's all kinds of things that can come with it um a lot of people with autism would also technically qualify for an adhd diagnosis i think i missed some of these let's see uh okay got to love america i'm 23 years old going to my first doctor's appointment this thursday i'm nervous i might not have adhd and just might be unmotivated this is normal it is so normal that it should almost be a diagnostic criteria the like what if i don't have adhd what if i'm just lazy is something i hear all the time so yeah that is completely normal and it's it's not that it couldn't be something besides adhd but like i don't think there's a thing such a thing is like just lazy um that's you know adhders are like our brains are under stimulated the motivation can be a challenge for us but that's not that's a brain thing there's something going on there there's also other things that can cause adhd-like symptoms so i think it's important to go get a diagnosis and make sure you know what you're dealing with but no there's yeah that's that's a very common thing let's see shane hi from new zealand thanks for everything you do for the community my son and i have learned so much from you our doctor recommended your videos to the support group oh my son has been diagnosed and i'm trying to get checked that's awesome hi yay okay cool so yes definitely stick around elaine will be oh my gosh thank you for that donation too um elaine will be on shortly probably within the next five minutes or so to talk about um yeah talk about parenting that's perfect yeah rebecca i was diagnosed two years ago at age 41 better late than never your videos have helped me tons big love from brazil oh man yeah definitely better late than never thank you so much for that donation two years ago yeah we have a video on the channel about being diagnosed with brett thornhill and it's really interesting hi there let's see i'll keep going through these and it looks like steven's uh getting on the call with elaine right now so she'll be on shortly oh i'm not with autism i am autistic yeah can't separate me from it it's not a disease so it is a disability i'm going to run close my door stephen i'll give you a shout out really quickly to to uh identity first language versus perfect or person first language a lot of professionals especially now are trained with autism you know this person has autism but a lot of people in the community um in the neurodiversity community actually prefer person or sorry identity first language which is um i don't have autism i am autistic you can't separate me from this this is part of who i am and with adhd it's a little more awkward to say like i'm adhd but i do tend to fall into the like identity first camp personally myself i respect whatever anybody else wants but i'm an adhd student like if i you know if i'm a student with adhd yeah i'm a student but adhd is so much a part of me and so much part of how i learn that i i have personally found it helpful to embrace that because i understand that i'm working with a different operating system and my boyfriend is also autistic and so i have adhd he has autism or is autistic he goes back and forth with the first person identity first because he's also a trained professional um he's got a doctor in psychology and so he he has like both perspectives he has the lived experience perspective and the trained mental health professional um perspective but it's in any case like i i consider it like if i treat if i treat the world like i'm working you know if i'm working with a pc but i'm actually on a mac like it really helps to know that i'm working with a mac you know i'm not a computer with mac like this is a mac computer like i have an adhd brain um and he he talks about his autism as linux like he's on linux like a completely different completely different uh operating system and it's been interesting because some in some areas like we really get each other and in some areas i'm like what like how does your brain work it's really it's kind of cool let me go back through these let's see shakespeare and chris wants to know how can i balance being a creative person trying to build and finish things while also working full-time i'm a hamster running in a wheel yeah yeah um i you're not gonna like the answer but like it's what i've found you have to limit yourself if you have 15 projects going at once like none of them are gonna get done and so for me on top when i had a full-time job i had i had like my one obsession with which was starting this channel and that's the only reason it went well like when i wasn't working i was doing this um and that's the only way i was able to get through it in the past i've had way too many things going on and been bouncing around so much and i don't make progress at any of them so um like two things two things other than work that you focus on and then you start making progress yay okay cool all right well um let's do this let's have you laying on because i know that a lot of people have questions about adhd and parenting and by the way even if you're parenting yourself like that's also a challenge parenting yourself as a person with adhd if maybe you weren't raised in a way where you learned the skills that you need to learn you are your own parent now and elaine's nodding so yeah let's bring let's bring elaine on to talk about this and this is elaine taylor klaus she is elaine taylor's house she is the author of um the ascension actually known as the essential guide to raising coffee essentially i think that's right i think is that right yeah okay pretty good yeah okay well she's gonna explain a little bit i'm gonna explain a little bit more there we go um hi elaine thank you so much for coming home hey elaine i'm so coming home thank you i'm so thrilled to be with you so we have a lot of people in chat a lot of we have a lot of people a lot of people are gonna have for you i'm sure impact adhd adhd anxiety and more adhd anxiety and more i do what i did because i do well first because i had well first because i and then through that of course discovered that i of course discovered that i had been identified and diagnosed and treated identified and diagnosed i think happens with a lot of i think happens with that um i was just writing about social writing actually one second it looks like there's a lot of echo a lot of echo that's better give me a sec okay um one second something's wrong with the sound all right and hmm do i need to switch to a different headset i'm not okay it's good now okay thank you guys thank you very much yeah everybody's like ah okay so why don't we yeah okay yeah yeah that was a sensory nightmare for a second apparently sorry guys everybody thank you for sticking it out um okay cool so yeah go ahead and start over um introduce yourself let us know um tell us about you tell us about your book and why you do what you do okay elaine taylor klaus founder co-founder of impact adhd and impact parents and my recent book is the essential guide to raising complex kids with adhd anxiety and more and um and i wrote that because i needed it and it wasn't there when i needed it and when my kids were little i had three complex kids and i was lost and overwhelmed and pretty freaked out for about a decade and and there was a lot of support out there for the kids and there was nothing available to help me as a parent and i was just frustrated by that so when i finally started getting my head above water i just made this commitment that no parent should ever have to go through alone what i went through those first 10 years so when i met my business partner diane dempster we created impact adhd and for 10 years now we've been providing online virtual support for parents and teachers and providers to help them understand how to help complex kids in a more coach-like way and more empowering way because i don't i don't want parents to be as frustrated as i was and i don't want kids to be as frustrated as i was you know like i didn't ever my issue until i was 40 years old so that was a lot of decades of feeling inadequate and stupid and incapable and all of those things that happened to kids when their issues aren't identified and supported early so that's why i do what i do that's why i'm here and love talking to you because i think you do that so well is break it down and make it manageable for people thank you so much but yeah one of the biggest questions i get asked is is how do i parent a child with adhd and i can point people to resources for that there's a lot of resources about like what to do for your child who has adhd but the thing that there isn't enough out there for and i'm glad you're filling that gap is what do i do for these kids when i also when i also have adhd like how do you how do you give them the the structure and the routine and the encouragement and all of this stuff that they need the accountability they need when you can barely manage your own life i guess well you know so here's what comes up is i think there's a lot of information for parent parents about what to do i think what we try to do differently is help them figure out how right whether you're a parent who does have have these complex issues that yourself adhd anxiety autism whatever or not it's the how it's like okay great the expert says i'm supposed to be consistent well how does that work when you know on wednesday my kids kicking it and rocking it and on thursday they can't get out of bed like how do i do it when consistency doesn't work or whatever whatever the mandate is because there's all kinds of wonderful parenting mandates the you know the parenting police so i think it's about how and i love what you were saying when i first came on because to parent effectively when we have these issues it is about parenting ourselves and being being kind and generous and graceful with ourselves and learning to manage ourselves so that we can model it with our kids and i think be transparent with their kids to help them see i'm struggling with this too i'm figuring it out let's figure it out together you have it all together and you know you're just teaching your kid like just do like i do and then everything will be fine well and that's what happens is a lot of times parents will say well you have a dd and i have add so you need to do it this way because this is what works for me and that's actually not likely to work why is that well because 80d is so different for everybody and so what what's most important about about attention issues and focus and organization all of the stuff that shows up with abd is that we have to problem solve we have to understand how it shows up for each individual person and then learn to navigate it and manage it for each individual person and and you know you put 10 people in a room with 80d and you're going to have like 15 different ways that agency shows up that's true that's true i even get that you know i'll find something that i think is really exciting and i'll share it on the channel i'll be like this is going to solve everybody's problems and you know 50 people on chat are like yeah it didn't work for me and i'm just like oh right yeah or or have you ever had this one where you work you've got something and it works for a while and then you get bored and it doesn't work anymore all right yeah oh got a system that really worked and then three months later it's like i'm done oh all the time yeah comments on old videos like hey you know did you ever like follow up on that like which doesn't make it a waste of time by the way because i learned things about myself or it worked temporarily and it worked great at the time um well what i've learned is sometimes i have to have three different ways to do something so i can choose which one is going to work for me that day or that week like i know there's a stupid example but i have three or four different toothbrushes and different toothpastes because brushing my teeth realizing i don't have to stand at the sink while i brush my teeth it really helps like i brush my teeth and i wander around the house the only thing is then i end up putting like the two parts uh people are really resonating with that um okay so i'm gonna ask the chat questions as well or sorry i'm gonna let the chat ask questions as well so guys if you have a question put question in caps at the beginning of it we we do have moderators in the chat that are trying to pull out questions for us to answer um just like make it really obvious if it's a question um but we do have a couple that are in here already so from mrs smith how can i help my husband help himself and our five-year-old at the same time better together than apart um so you know i'm assuming this means that your husband has adhd and maybe your five-year-old does as well um and based on that what i would say is it starts with with understanding i mean all of add management starts with understanding it like how it shows up for you as i was just saying how it shows up differently for your child um without judgment and this is the key is often i think when one person in a marriage has it and the other doesn't um is that is really really essential for for those of you who don't have it to step out of judgment of those of us who do because we're trying really hard sometimes we're trying harder than you can possibly imagine um sometimes we've given up trying because it feels like there's no winning and so there's a motivation piece involved with okay let's get back on that horse let's see what we can do to manage it but if if you can help create an environment that that takes the shame out of it so that you're really creating a loving way to say okay let's understand and let's problem solve each individual issue as it comes up that's the it's you know we talk about in terms of a marathon this is not a sprint you can't sprint your way through a d management it's a lifetime thing and it takes a long time to really get an understanding of it so that you can begin to get a handle on it it takes time yeah that makes sense yeah um somebody said that the person not talking has to meet their microphone um we're actually doing this through a skype call so stephen and i don't know if it's possible for you to mute whoever's not talking or if we need to figure out how to do that is the echo really bad guys okay and then um that was a great answer by the way ari tuckman came on in on the show last year we did an episode about adhd and relationships um if you guys haven't checked that out it's really good it's adhd after dark and one of the things he said that i really liked was just practicing acceptance of your partner's adhd and recognizing it's something you're both dealing with it's not like them you know it's not like you versus them in their adhd or them versus you and your adhd it's like you're both on the same team and adhd is a factor and there might be things about your partner with adhd where it's just like that's not how i would love it to be but whatever a lot of things in my my life are not how i would love them to be and just thinking of it like that like yeah there's things that i hate about my job or there's there's things that like you know traffic is awful and you just kind of accept that those things are just the way they are and then you work around them kind of the same thing where you find the shortcuts or you find that you know yeah i mean the way i like to look at it is that the adhd is like a third entity in the marriage like there's my husband there's me and then actually for us there's both of our adhd right yeah um in my case it's the adhd and my boyfriend has autism autism right yeah and then there's usually some anxiety and some depression and some other stuff sort of blended in their little learning disability you know we've got lots of these these sort of entities that are flying around um but if we if we and i love you i was listening to your conversation about the third person first person and my adhd or do i have adhd if we kind of in this case separate it out and say i am me he is he he is who he is and then we share this this other thing called adhd that creates some opportunities in our marriage and creates some challenges and if we can externalize it and not make it not just again it's sort of back to that judgment and acceptance thing it's really amazing how we can we can deflect a lot of the frustrations kind of say okay this is what's happening like the best example is um i'm one of these people that gets overwhelmed by clutter and my husband needs to keep his pills out so he can remember to take them yeah right and so we have to navigate that in a way that works for both of us but if we're if i'm just yelling at him because he's leaving the pills out and he's yelling at me for putting him away we're not getting very far right yeah okay and finding a way finding a way to meet both of those needs is important how do you how do you navigate that we have some conversation about because i've really tried for a long time to get him to keep it in the bathroom and he really needs it in the kitchen so we created kind of a space in the kitchen where he can still see it but it's not like right in the middle of the kitchen you know it's a fair deal it is not how i would like it like you were saying but it's it's better than right in the middle of the island so yeah so this is from ashley how do you go about taking an adhd toddler out when you have a young baby that needs a lot of attention i find myself yelling which is not what i want to do um so i think the first question i was asked i would ask is how important is it that you take the toddler out with the baby sometimes we need to set realistic expectations and um if you know you're gonna you've got a toddler who then it's a difficult stage where they're running and they're all over the place um and if you don't want to put a leash on your kid which most of us don't then although i do know somebody who did um then you may need to to have a period of time where you're not trying to do both because you it it's a high risk i mean you can't change the toddler being a toddler with adhd and so you don't want to put either of your kids at risk and so you might need to find other ways to do it if possible i'm not going to like the answer but yeah especially right now during covid with you know having to make sure everybody's got masks and social distancing i imagine that's a lot i mean it may be sometimes we talk about taking aim so you may choose one specific thing to work on with the toddler and and sort of negotiate and come up with a with a plan and then you do short you know you might go to the end of the street and back or go to the parking back or you know keep it really short and let them build their threshold for following whatever direction it is i remember working with a family once where the big issue was they would get someplace in the car and then the toddler would spring out of the car and take off in the parking lot before you know any anybody had a handle on anything and they had to literally train the toddler he was a little older like four-year-old to stop and wait to get out of the car and it it just was as a parent you kind of think it's obvious but the kid needs you to tell them and needs you to kind of work it out with them so they know what to do so how to focus on what you want yeah try to focus on what you want them to do instead of what you don't want them to do if you say don't jump on the bed what are they going to do they're going to jump on the bed but if you say i want you to sit on the side of the bed that's something they can process and follow that's that's really good advice yeah that would definitely work better with me we have a super chat question i'm a pediatrician in training and i have adhd too what have your kids doctors done that was helpful for you or your kids what do you wish they had done that could have made things easier okay so like advice for pediatricians thank you thank you thank you first of all read the new book um for sure because it was designed for parents and professionals um the the biggest challenge that i see parents face with pediatricians who are diagnosing and treating adhd is that two is a few things one oftentimes the pediatrician doesn't really understand the adhd quite well enough to help the parent manage it and so they tend to wait until things really bad before they start referring for other services or they think that behavior therapy means this kid should go into therapy so they're referring six and seven and eight year old kids to therapy which is not part of recommended treatment so as a pediatrician what i would like you to do like i'll be interested to do is really learn and understand what recommended means there's a great section in in my first book in parenting adhd now that really explains what is recommended treatment and what the protocols are um and it's really terribly misunderstood by most medical professionals like more than 70 according research so understand what's recommended treatment and refer parents to parent training and encourage them to get support and get help early it's not enough to just read articles online they really need help understanding it and integrating it and applying it in their lives and the sooner you can get those communication skills improved the better the long-term impact for the kid by far yeah i mean i definitely agree with that by the time my family went to therapy it was too late like we were you know i was a teenager and they were like you know sticker charts is helpful and i was like it's too late for that like we're we're already way past sticker charts at this point like if it had been implemented earlier it would have helped but by then we were just so oppositional to be honest we're just like we're not doing any of this no and that's that's the other mistake is that a lot of times professionals will give parents a sticker chart and say well we've we've got research that says that that these reward systems work so try them but if the parent doesn't understand or the teacher doesn't understand what they're trying to do why or how to do it effectively then it's not going to work and then everybody gets frustrated and says well we tried that yeah and it's not that they don't work it's that you have to understand how to make them work and it's not going to be the same for every kid right because it has to do with buy-in and motivation and engagement and there's so many other facets of what's happening in the brain that are part of creating any system that works yeah let's see we've got from um from bo brooks i just had a newborn and it's too soon to tell if you'll have adhd are there any tips you can give to a parent to help aid adhd as early as possible that also works for neurotypicals okay so yeah how do you parent a kid where you don't know if they have adhd or not yet um i would say act as if you know assume they do because when you parent a child with adhd well that's that translates well to parenting any kid because it's about it's about communication really good communication it's about empowering them to take ownership and it's about really beginning um a lot of what happens in in the 80d world is that we get into these control battles with kids so the sooner that you can help a kid feel some sense of control them of themselves the the sooner they'll be able to start practicing and exercising control of themselves but if you start with the assumption that they can't well why should they even bother right so so we really want to start giving kids a sense that they are moving into their own decisions and their own whether it's you know choosing what they wear or what they eat or giving kids a voice in their own life the sooner you do that when you're when they're really young and you're really able to kind of control that environment the better practice they'll have at decision making which becomes the most important life skill that they'll ever develop yeah i agree with that completely i i think i think my mom's thought because i struggled with adhd and before she even knew i had adhd she she would step in and help a lot she would do more for me but the thing is i got so used to her helping a lot that when i had to go out into the world and be an adult on my own i had no idea how to do anything because i was so used to getting a level of support that was just not realistic in the real world yeah so we rescue thinking that we're helping right but we're not doing anybody any favors right so the more that i couldn't do that exactly well you needed help learning how you needed to practice it again and again and you want them to practice it while they're still under your roof where there can be a little trial and error and without as as drastic consequences as when kids to get to college and then you know fail out because they didn't know how to get to class [Laughter] it never happened to anybody else but you just i completely dropped i dropped out of community college um from stacy michelle how do i help my nine-year-old son with adhd with big emotions gets upset gets frustrated we'll still cry over tiny things that typically aren't a big deal yeah yeah okay so emotional regulation is a huge part of adhd we know that now we didn't know that 10 years ago but we know it now it's part of executive function where you know they're lagging behind developmentally we teach something called ace which i think is a really great strategy and it's a stands for acknowledge with compassion before you explain or explore or explore your options so when the kids got a really intense feeling start by acknowledging they have a really intense feeling that's really scary that really hurts you're really worried whatever it is i know you're really upset about that i i i understand i hate it when i feel that way i remember when i felt that way have some compassion for for the very real feeling that they're having and connect with them from a relationship perspective before you start explaining or exploring or directing or whatever else we get to we tend to rush through that emotion or say i know you're feeling upset but which means you've negated everything you just said so you really want to take slow down a little bit and connect with them and and help them learn to manage and navigate that feeling instead of just dismissing it and trying to get them to push through it to get to whatever the doing is that you're trying to do is that resonate i i'll see what the chat has to say but i think i think yeah so um so yeah and was talking about how if if your kid if your kid or you if you're parenting yourself is having really big emotions like really take a second to acknowledge and empathize with that emotion before you start explaining um you know explaining solutions or explaining how it's not appropriate to do that here or whatever it is because um it gives them a chance to be heard and it also i think has the advantage too of helping them understand their own emotions i saw this exactly in parenting advice for as young as toddlers where it's like if if you have a kid that's having a meltdown about something sometimes they they just have this big emotion they don't understand what it is they're experiencing and so giving them a name for it can actually really help them calm down because then they don't have the confusion on top of the big emotion they understand what's happening um with them and it also gives them a chance to correct you if you're wrong right if you're like hey you know i understand that you're upset over this and this and this because this and this and this they can tell you no that's not why i'm upset and then whatever advice you give them you know it would have been wrong for their situation if you misunderstood what it was they were going through so it gets people on the same page too well and still get advice what i would add to that is we we ask we encourage parents to ask themselves the question we talk about this in the book is it naughty or neurological right so if it's naughty you're going to respond a certain way if it's neurological you want to understand that there's a reason and generally speaking when kids are having big emotions there's a reason for it right so instead of getting furious get curious and try to understand what's behind the behavior because this kid's struggling and if you see it with that compassionate place of oh wow he's hurting or she's struggling you're gonna approach it from a very different way than if you come to it with like this has got to stop right now because when we have to stop it that's just going to escalate things even further okay yeah that makes sense um let's see um okay somebody somebody uh pointed out in chat thank you yeah let's not shame kid leashes we leash pets because we love them and want to keep them safe why would we do anything less for our children if they haven't learned to be safe parent of adhd and autistics yeah i will say this my parents um there were definitely times that they had to put my brother on a leash like there was no option because he would just wander off and be completely unsafe so there there are definitely times when that's appropriate um and you want to minimize the the emotional impact that has on a child by doing it when it's necessary for safety reasons and not have that become you know you don't want to be continuously putting them in a position where they're not yet ready or able to comply with what you need from them right because that's not fair either yeah so yeah fair fair point but yeah let's yeah there i mean and every child my mom would just my mom talked a lot about like every child is different and like it's really easy to judge what you see parents doing with their children because it's not what you would do with yours and it's important to remember like every child is different every child's needs are different and you don't know you can never know what another parent's going through with their child or why they're using a strategy that they're using um just by seeing it yeah so true um let's see true okay uh from k unit 91 how to manage a child meltdown in a healthy way um i'm speaking to the same thing but let's say they're at the point where they're at a meltdown and they're not cognitively able to really so so we have like the very first program that we ever created back in i don't even know what year it would have been but 2011 2012 was a program called minimize meltdowns and it was what we went through is kind of like all these strategies for managing meltdowns and so there's kind of two places to look you want to look at sometimes the strategies are prevention based and sometimes they're management based so the first place when you're dealing with emotion with meltdowns is just to look at where can you prevent it what what situations what what environment can you put in place to prevent when you know something's likely to put a kid over the edge or push you over an edge right so so that's the first thing i would say what i think the question is asking about is how do you deal with it once it's already gone going right and even there there's kind of two places to look one is sometimes kids will get to a point where you can't diffuse it right the fuse has been lit it's got all the way to the stick of dynamite the dynamite is going off you can't stop it you have to create a safe environment and kind of wait it out sometimes if possible you can the sooner you can recognize that fuse is lit the sooner you can put it out the better likely you are of preventing that full-blown upset but oftentimes what happens is when parents are um when parents are really needing the upset to stop right i'm in the grocery store my kid wants the candy i don't want them to have the candy he starts to throw a tantrum now i'm embarrassed now it's about me not about him and i need him to stop right then part of what we need to recognize is when the tantrum what's happening in the dynamic is us versus them sometimes it's them and we're calm and cool and really collected but sometimes we are actually playing off of it and escalating things even more because we need it to stop so so it's not any there's not an easy answer because it kind of depends on where you are in the process but probably the most important thing that we teach parents is to recognize what your role is in the dynamic and to see what your how you're playing into it and what works for you when you diffuse things and what work what tends to happen when it explodes and oftentimes parents you we know when we're pushed a kid over the edge like we know when we're poking at that or pushing that button and we do it anyway for whatever reason right maybe because something needs to happen or the you know you're ready for them to respect you or whatever it is but nothing constructive is going to happen in the middle of an of an episode and so you've gotta once it once it blows whether it's you or them you gotta diffuse it you gotta reclaim the brain and you gotta wait it out because you're no longer operating from your frontal lobe you're operating from a primitive brain and nothing really constructive can happen until you reclaim your brain and get back to that frontal lobe right whether we're in the middle of a meltdown or kids in the middle of a meltdown like we're not thinking straight at that point so that's not the time to be like you know just you know think through what you're doing and like it's not it's not the time to have a conversation about it right you're just trying to basically like get them back to baseline yeah no problem solving can happen in that moment but i do tend to want to but it does yeah like my dad we think had undiagnosed adhd um primarily an attentive presentation so he would have been diagnosed with add i think and he was very old-school like you know keep your kids in line discipline kind of thing and if my if if i was bad or if my brother was bad or if we were having a meltdown over something that it wasn't even even a behavioral issue it was just we were overwhelmed sensory wise or something and we melted down he would get angry and it would i think it was really hard for him to stay calm in that situation because he had his own emotional dysregulation to deal with right so i think well i'm reminded of a story when when one of my kids the direction had been to to empty the dishwasher before they left or something and and it didn't happen and there was a meltdown and my my in those days this is a long time ago my husband got completely fixated on they need to empty this dishwasher before we can go anywhere and it's like no no we need to let that go right now and move on to something else but when we get fixated it just compounds the problem so managing our own emotionality is is key and and hard but that we do a lot of work around that yeah let's see um from nozomi uh how do i convince my mother-in-law to embrace adhd style parenting for my niece she's very sensitive to criticism herself and i don't want her to interpret as me calling her a bad parent for your niece mother-in-law to embrace that style of parenting for my niece all right well maybe a grandmother working with her you know raising a grandchild um which happens a lot um i would share what you learn in a sort of non-judgmental way to say well i just heard this this is so amazing i want to share this with you i would ask permission to share with her like i just read this thing would you be willing or i just saw this video jessica's would you be willing to let me see it or i just saw this article um would you be are you interested in it um i i would really so we we dealt with this a little bit um when my kids were little and i and part of it was we actually talked to a therapist who basically said this kid needs to not be in an environment where there are explosions happening and so it was really important for us to go to family members and say kind of this is the doctor's orders in a way in this case that may not be possible but i think that when you invite people into a conversation instead of tell them people don't like to be told what to do and kids don't like to be told what to do but if we ask their permission we get their buy-in it's kind of like knocking on a door and waiting for a kid to say come in like as soon as they've said come in they've got a sense of ownership or control right and so you open the door and you can have a conversation but if you just barge in what are they going to do the first thing they're going to say is get out of my room or feel get out of my room people like to be invited to any conversation and they don't like unsolicited advice so that's what i would say is begin to ask permission in different ways to share stuff with her that you have found fascinating or helpful for you and not make it about the kid make it about what you're sharing that's that makes sense okay and people okay so i'm actually gonna bounce back and forth between um older questions and current questions because people are wondering if we're even reading the questions which yes we definitely are there's just a lot of them and these are all really good questions and elaine has really good answers so um let's see um okay okay christina asked how to get a child to sit down and do school work [Laughter] i need more information than that okay how old is the child what kind of school so so here's some questions that might help you christina how old is your kid what kind of school work is it any school work or just particular subjects is it do they does your child like to work independently or just your child like a study buddy so part of what's happening in this environment right now is we've got all these kids for whom learning is already difficult and then you add this whole zoom component to it and it's it's just really really stressful and it's not how they learn best so before you even get to you need to do your work you want to really begin to explore with your kid what does work for her what doesn't work for her what does she like what doesn't she um i was at a wedding recently my my child got married and and their nephew was with us for the weekend there were just a few of us there it's just family and it was fascinating because he's 15 years old and we're watching him do school um with a guitar in his lap and he would occasionally put it down and write or take notes or whatever and then pick up the guitar he made it through the whole day he was playing the guitar all day not disrupting the class and it enabled him to focus so beginning to negotiate with your kids to help them see how they learn and how they learn best and what helps them pay attention um can be really really powerful yeah and it's sometimes counter-intuitive i've heard of kids studying in a bathtub and like that's just what worked you know yeah but then they're also able to do it with the television on but not with music on but then there are also times when it's like no this is what helps me and it's like it clearly does not help it's like that's what you'd prefer to be doing is also playing video game while you're doing homework but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't so but you can you can deal with that with an experimental mind if kid says this helps me then you then you do a science experiment let's check it out let's see how well it helps and you test it and help them prove themselves wrong but if you tell them it's not going to work they're just going to push harder but if you help them learn it they'll own it differently that yeah that makes sense um let's see okay questions okay um this is this is from somebody dealing with a frustration about their parent how do i cope with a parent who says i'm lazy adhd is an excuse and i wasn't acting the way i am before my diagnosis um that's tricky because like i know after understanding my adhd i feel more comfortable not masking i know i feel more comfortable expressing my adhd and you know hyper focusing and be more talkative and stuff because i'm like that's the way my brain works so it's if you are expressing your adhd a little bit more or explaining it more and your parents think that you're just making it up or being lazy how do you approach that well it i mean it kind of depends on your age and and what they think you're being lazy about and you know there's a certain amount of um sometimes we don't do what we don't want to do and you know are they seeing where you are being productive and where you're not um are you verbalizing it and talking with them about what you're learning and and and how you're learning to manage it and and showing or demonstrating some improvement in some areas um i mean when we when we start to manage add we have to do it step by step you can't do it all at once so if what they're looking for and we see this a lot with teenagers i think is that what the parent wants is something inane like i want the room clean which has never really made sense to me as a parent like of all things i'd much rather you do your math homework then get your room cleaned personally but that was just my bet right um but if if the parent wants one thing to be improved and the kids working on something else and so the kid feels like they're making progress but the parent only sees that the room's still not clean and they take offense because they put all this money into buying this new whatever you know then you've got this disconnect that's mostly because you're focusing on different things so so the other thing maybe for a kid who's dealing with it um is to get clear with with your parents let them know what you are working on improving like where is your focus right now what are you really trying to manage and ask their you know ask them to let go of you know help you remember to take out the trash because right now you're trying to remember to get started on your homework or whatever it is yeah because it's not realistic for any parent to expect their kid to just like fix everything or or partners right like i fall into that trap sometimes like hey you know i want you to work on this also this also this and it's like that's not that's not realistic for anybody like it's not realistic for us it's not realistic for other people too no but we do hold it somewhat of a double standard sometimes yeah a little bit just a little um okay uh from mark what do you do when the non-adhd spouse isn't highly empathetic and tends to make meltdowns more likely and is an empathetic the child with adhd as i'm guessing but maybe the maybe the spouse um this is a hard one uh i would you know encourage them we've got a bunch of stuff on on our side melissa orloff does some great work around marriage and adhd and has a great book um it's it's very the hardest part i think in a marriage is when one does and one doesn't or one understands and one doesn't understand and when the person who does not have the adhd doesn't understand it's probably the hardest because there's this resentment that's built up over years generally of i've been doing all this i've been carrying the weight it's time for you to carry the weight time for you to stop making excuses right i mean we've all heard this in some form or another um the tricky thing with them was um my dad was actually the one that didn't get it even though my mom was a neurotypical one so either it can go either way but the problem was it ended up feeling like it was my mom and us versus my dad so how do you how do you get them on the same team so it doesn't end up being just one parent is constantly being protective of the child the other parent is kind kind of ends up in opposition to both of them right well and and a rece a client i'm working with it's it's the opposite it's the non-neurotypical um i mean it's the neurotypical mom has kind of got the kids ganged up against the dad and it's you know who has adhd so it does as you say it manifests in all different ways um and it's a slow process right like it's a process of acceptance and understanding and understanding and acceptance and when someone's not willing to learn it makes it harder and and so sometimes it's about saying okay finding the one thing the one resource the one place where they might be willing to watch this video or read this article or listen to this this podcast or whatever it is just to be get a wedge in the door because it takes time and and here's the thing when resentment has built it really it's very very very hard to undo that without some support whether it's therapy or coaching it's very hard for a couple to turn that around without getting some support to do that effectively yeah and yeah i think the education piece you said is really really critical because what ended up happening is my mom ends up feeling like well she has to do it all herself so now she's getting herself educated and now my mom my dad is even further out of the loop and so there now there's even more of a discrepancy there whereas if she'd been like okay like it's really important for both of us to be on board let me like what are you willing to to do getting on the same team i think is really important because it it was really difficult you know here's the flip side of that the flip side and we say this a lot insanity school um it's really ideal to get on the same page but what i see happening a lot jessica is parents waiting to get help to get on the same page so just as important as it is i would say it's also important to know that you have a relationship with your kids regardless of what their relationship with is like with their with your co-parent or their other their other parent and the sooner you can begin to shift your approach and shift your dynamic with your child that begins to have this really positive ripple effect in the family in my family i started doing this work i started coaching things started improving and a couple years later my husband who is now also a coach became a coach and a few years after that i looked at him and i said so what what did change what what did get you on board because it took him a couple of years to get back to get on the train with us yeah and he looked at me and he said i couldn't deny anymore that what you were doing was working wow right that's really nice to hear that but it took a few years i mean honestly and he's a coaching guy you know but it sometimes it takes time people need to to let go of resentment they need to let go of shame um and and that you know changed his time yeah it it does um rick thank you rick rick donated and says thank you both elaine i've read your new book fantastic validated my thoughts on his parents we need to chill and look for where we can help instead of blaming etc three kids and me diagnosed this summer so wow congratulations that's awesome because now you know what you're dealing with can i make a request will you please post a review on amazon please please please thank you yeah reviews reviews help a lot they're huge yeah um okay but thank you appreciate it i'm gonna go back to okay so i have two documents so you guys know i'm gonna go back and forth from questions that i see in the chat that are current and questions that um people asked a little bit ago that way if your question was asked like it can get answered you don't have to keep asking it over and over again um let's see any advice for a parent whose kid had a late diagnosis early 20s oh yeah how do you how do you start parenting a kid who just found out they have adhd and i imagine some of that is dealing with maybe some guilt um of like not catching it sooner well and probably some some hitting a wall before they've caught it you know usually when a kid's diagnosed at that age it means something's not going well so you've got that whole dynamic going um i think that the most important thing the term that comes to me is having grace is right so as from a parenting perspective um is to is to take the position that that the most important thing to do at this point is to help your kid learn to understand themselves you know i always say that what we want when our kids go off to independence is for them to become the masters if you will the the in control of their own life we don't want to get them to 18 or 21 and be the expert on our kid we want them to be the expert on themselves and so if they're starting late which 21 is is starting a little late i was 40. so there's still time right um it's setting the expectation that it's okay and that there's some some learning to do and some catch up to do and and that's really okay and you're going to support them through it without controlling it that your job now is to really help them figure out what they need to learn to manage it and that you know that you don't want to be controlling their life to let them know you really do want to pass that baton of ownership to them um because that trust may need to be rebuilt because chances are at that point there's been a lot of i've got this leave me alone you don't have it you think you know there's been a lot of that kind of stuff so the extent to which you can really lean into the relationship and rebuild the trust that will set the stage for for conversations that need to come down the line and kind of kind of in line with that um how do you this is let's go back for a second to parenting yourself if you have adhd how do you get through depression with adhd so this is somebody asking for themselves like how do you be a good parent to yourself if you're struggling with adt and depression um get help get help get help get help there's there's so much available so many resources don't try to do it alone depression is a is a chemical condition that's happening in your brain and in your body there's lots of things you can do there's exercise nutrition there's lots you can do to improve it and and to to transition yourself back into it into a less depressed healthier state but you don't have to do it alone i was thinking about my my eldest kid who's now 26 and has suffered from depression most of their life in fact all of their life when i think back on it and i remember a period in their late teens when they decided they didn't want this anymore they didn't need anymore and they stopped taking their meds which happens often with people around 18 19 20 years old and of course spiraled into a terrible depression and um you know and as we started keeping conversations open and you know it's hard as a parent to allow your child to make their choices even when you don't agree with the choices they're making but that's part of our job as parent um it was over time to sort of help them see what the benefits are to them of getting the help that they needed and what the value was and and i remember like i remember the tweet that i saw when when they sort of figured out oh wait a minute this is chemical and i can help myself that way um and they went back on their meds and and managing depression is a constant it's a constant issue for them in their life and it means constantly being aware of food intake and constantly being aware of movement and and how much they take on or don't take on and those are choices that everyone needs to make especially when you're managing depression and so really be gracious to yourself be gentle with yourself and and set realistic expectations for yourself and probably the most important thing is to ask for the help you need whether it's asking from parents or friends or it doesn't matter i don't care who you start by asking but keep asking for help until you get the help you need yeah that's especially important i would say for depression because when you are also struggling with depression you can kind of feel like you're a burden yeah people and you don't want to ask for help and so then you don't ask for help you need and then you don't do the things you need yeah it spirals it it it can feel like quicksand and it can be really hard to get out so yeah um yeah and it really does there is help to get out right yeah it it's just it's work it's effort and and you just can't do it alone yeah and and you shouldn't have to everybody everybody is deserving of that kind of support and especially if you're dealing with something that i mean depression really does make it hard to do the things that you need to do to get out of depression so it's so true without support kind of like the laws make it hard to get the meds you need to help with executive function yeah exactly kind of like that all right let's see um and guys thank you for your patience with these questions again i'm going back and forth from like current questions to older questions um these are all really good questions i wish we could get to all of them we probably won't but i hope that you're getting enough to hopefully be helpful um let's see as okay this is from caroline this dead question how do you as a single mom of two small children deal with your adhd and being very overwhelmed with that while also dealing with the children and their demanding needs so yeah how do you balance how do you balance taking care of your kids and taking care of you when you're a single mom you you set realistic expectations and you try not to live up to everybody else's expectations and you know like lift the brady bunch or whatever whatever that image you have in your head of how it's supposed to be let it go um we often say if all else fails and you don't know what to do there are two places to focus either lean into relationship or focus on self-care and probably as a mom of a single mom with two small kids that probably the most important thing for you is self-care way more important than getting another load of laundry done way more important than you know getting the dishes done every single day like like taking finding those ways finding what you need to take care of yourself is the most important thing and that if that's respite or friends or whatever it is i have a client i was i've been working with who's a single mom with with an extremely hyperactive nine-year-old and has made it through covent but now the kid doesn't have a school to go back to because kid's still homeschooling and the mom lost her job because the job won't let her tell a community anymore even though she's telecommuting all summer right and it's just it's so it's so hard and it's so unfair so all the more important to you know take care of yourself or you know watch a good movie or that makes you laugh or you know get on the phone with a friend give yourself permission to put yourself way higher up on the list than you think it should be yeah i will i will say like it's good for your kids too to see you prioritize self-care my mom was not a single mom but again my dad was very old it was the kind of like go to work come home my job is done and my mom was the one to like get us up in the morning get us ready for school take us to school pick us up you know bring us home help us with homework cook dinner she did everything clean the house and they thought a lot about that um but she ended up being kind of a de facto single mom and the some of the best stuff that she taught me was how to still take care of herself even though and so her saying i need some time for myself right now that was really good for me it was a good model for me and her saying you know hey i have to get this done for school like can you you know you girls if you're going to watch tv you need to be helping like you have to cut things out or you have to do chores that stuff was really good for us um because we got to see you know we got to feel helpful we got to feel useful and we also got to have that role model of somebody taking care of themselves even though there was so much to do so that's totally great i used to my rule was if the television is on and i know that dates me because there's no televisions anymore but if if the television is on you should be folding laundry that was the deal it's like there were just certain things where i started asking for help from my kids like yeah you're old enough if i could let go of you need to fold it perfectly which i got really good at and i let go of it needs to be in a drawer and gave them baskets or buckets or whatever like i just made it as easy as i possibly could for all of us to do the sometimes the bare minimum of what we needed to do and sometimes that has to be good enough you know yeah um let's see okay thank you guys i'm reading all these comments and you guys are awesome um let's see thank you the lady writes has to go there's some people who have to go thank you thank you for stopping by if you do have to go um question c wren says i have to do homeschool sometimes because of coping 19 and my parents have work any advice on getting yourself motivated with so little feedback oh and and if you want to answer questions about parents who have you know who have to work while their kids are are trying to do their schoolwork how do you as the kid motivate yourself or how to as the parent teach your kid how to motivate themselves to do their own work oh my gosh it's so there's so much it's so hard right now yeah and so i love that for the kid who's asking like first of all bravo because just knowing that it's hard to get motivated is is the first step in figuring out how to get motivated um a couple of things you may consider you might consider so notice which subjects you like or which ones you don't which teachers you like and which ones you don't so pay attention to like instead of saying how do i get motivated for work really think about which class which subject which teacher which what is it that you're really struggling with because chances are it's not all of the classes it's you know this these one or two um look at who else is in the class with you do you have like what what's the motivation for you to connect to it do you have a friend in the class is there someone you can study buddy with is there um do you like to have the the screen on but the video off or like play with experiment with what works for you what do you like um you know i was telling you the story about this kid who was playing guitar you know um find fidgets for yourself while you're trying to to pay attention to class online right not easy um so so on the one hand you want to sort of give yourself some grace and know that it's hard and just saying i want to improve my motivation is huge um i guess let me teach you one little trick okay so jessica i don't know if you know this or not they're curious five motivators for the adhd brain okay okay the acronym to remember it is pinch p i n c h okay p stands for play or creativity or humor or you know artsyness whatever but what whatever falls in that realm of play for you play might be i can get myself to get my clothes in the hamper if i put a basketball hoop over it right that's an example of motivation through play um so p is play i is interest maybe you're interested in the subject maybe you're interested in the teacher maybe you're interested in the other kids in the class but whatever it is figure out what it is about you that's interesting about whatever you're trying to do that's interesting if you're one of those people that's highly motivated by interest in his novelty some of us so some if you're the kind of kid that does great at the beginning of a school year because you got new teachers and new notebooks and new classes and all that and then by like october november you're bored you're done right um this is what i was saying earlier is like i'll put a great system into place and within a couple months on board and i'm gonna have to create a new system because i'm a novelty seeker right so figure out what what your what your interests are so there's there's play interest novelty c is competition sometimes that's great sometimes if you have a little anxiety in there it may not be so great like were you the kid that when your parents said i'll race you to the bottom of the stairs you were running or were you the kid that was like when they said i'll race to the bottom of the stairs you sat down that'll help you know if you're like and sometimes you're going to be competitive with others and sometimes you'll be competitive with yourself one of my kids did not like to compete with others but i did kind of like to compete with himself right and then h is hurry up or urgency and that's when we kind of rely on another part of our brain to get ourselves activated and get stuff done that's when the amygdala kicks in so that's when we kind of wait till the last minute to get something done or we allow that urgency to propel us to stimulate us to get action and and i think that it gets a bad rap this whole urgency thing because i think that sometimes it can be a useful tool to wait to the last minute the problem is that many of us with 80d it's the only tool in our toolbox and so when it's overused you know when it stops working it stops working right so p-i-n-c-h play interest novelty competition and hum and uh hurry up or urgency if you can figure out which of those five motivators work for you you will begin to find ways and again take aim on that one class or that one teacher instead of trying to keep it general is that helpful yeah yeah i like that a lot and i'll add to the competition another alternative for c for competition because i am on the anxiety side of things and so foundation is not as great for me but challenge any sort of challenge like something to make it challenging um the and the right kind of challenge because if it's too if it's too hard to wear your brains like i'm not gonna be able to do this like it's discouraging but the right level of challenge like that that little bit of a sense of like i don't know if i can do this i think that's part of why the urgency works too it's like oh i don't know if like i have to get started right now and i still don't know if i can do this that it creates a bit of a challenge um so let's see i i just i saw this comment hang on i gotta go back and see this really quickly somebody sat next to me on a plane i sat on the plane next to you and chloe while headed to seattle you gave me advice and changed my life i was diagnosed with adhd shortly after our conversation that's so cool hi i talk to random people on planes and like sometimes i don't know how it turns out or like sometimes i'll be in a in a an uber or a lift or something and somebody tells me their life story and within five minutes i'm like have you ever been checked out for adhd i'm with you i do it all the time i love that yeah that's super cool thank you um let's see okay uh let's go back to the older questions um statistics will go back to that one i'm gonna go specifically to the parenting ones because that's what elaine does so well um yeah there's just a lot of questions needing help with online learning so have you have you uh have you noticed anything with parents having to teach from home and suddenly they're homeschooling their children essentially like what are the things parents are struggling with do you have any advice for making everything epic everything it's so it's so hard so i'll tell you what i've been saying since the beginning of the pandemic um and some at some point this summer i interviewed ned hallowell who kind of confirmed what i've been saying which is don't let school get in the way of your child's education right create a print rich environment create a conversation rich environment there's certainly a lot to talk about what's going on in the world right now so have really interesting conversations talk about what's going on in your world talk about how you're planning your life use the experience of of the intimacy that we have with each other in in covet to um to teach other things and let go and lighten up a little bit on they're going to learn or they're going to be behind because i guarantee you at the end of all this they're all going to be behind right so so yeah so really focus on what they can learn well kids can learn life skills right now really well they can learn emotional management frustration tolerance issues really well they can learn some planning and prioritizing right now i mean there's a lot going on they can understand what an adult what it really means to be an adult right now um because they're seeing your world in a way that they've never seen it before most of you um hopefully you're getting to see their world in a way so it can really improve relationships there is so much opportunity right now if we don't let school get in the way of it and i don't mean to say let your kid all the kids fail out of school you know i'm not saying that but but nobody's going to look at anybody's transcripts from this year and have that be some make or break to what happens to them for the rest of their life even juniors in high school it's not likely because it's just such an anomalous time in the world and so if we can let go of of the worry and embrace whatever opportunity there is bring them into decision making around well what do you think would help like this this kid was asking a little while ago what would help you get motivated instead of telling them what they have to do start asking more questions and collaborating with them and bringing bringing both of you into collaboration with each other when we talk about it in our training whether it's in the book or sanity school we talk about their four stages parenting and a lot of us get stuck in this phase one which is the director mode we're telling them what to do and why they should care and there's this extraordinary opportunity for collaboration right now and to really to try to keep them from being on the defensive which is what happens when we tell them what to do and to really talk with them about how do they think it should work and or or if they might be more successful or really bring them into a sense that they have some say over what is possible to do school because this is not normal y'all this is just not normal yeah so we have to deal with the cards were dealt and you get home do you have any opinion on um i know some parents are struggling with trying to get their kids socialization versus focus on school so let's say their kid really wants to talk with their friend should you know especially knowing the struggles that adhd tend to have with socializing should they allow that or should they say no you know you have to make sure you get your homework done first like do you have any opinion on that yeah i mean i think that if you've got a kid who's got social issues and in this environment the more you can cultivate social stuff that may be the best learning for them i think what's been an interesting learning for us old people has been that all these years we've been telling kids to get off their devices and then lo and behold what happened this summer was all of us are like i miss my friends and the kids are like oh i'm still with my friends because they've been on devices for years with each other so they're kind of fine right a lot of them not all of them that's funny but i mean think about it the world has kind of shifted around to vindicate our kids because this is where their social lives take place and so they're not as stressed as as many of us adults are so so really um giving them permission to be the social beings that they are particularly um you know before freshman sophomore year any kids younger than that that social and emotional development is is probably the most important thing that they can be focusing on um probably more so than academics for for most of them um and again that's not to say don't do school i'm not i'm not advocating that although ned halwell did say take your kids out of school he was just like just don't even go to school this year that's is that really what he said yeah he did um and i'm not advocating that i know that's not realistic for most people but but i do think that we if we can shift our perspective on what's important and really understand that social and emotional development is critically important and problem personal problem solving is critically important those are the most essential life skills for these kids to prepare for adulthood problem solving yeah yeah um way better than calculus that makes sense i mean schools in general are really focused on social emotional learning right now and they're realizing like you're not gonna be able to learn well if you're if you don't have friends and stuff speaking of which i don't know if you have anything about this but i think it was really brave of somebody to share this that they have um a trolling addiction and they don't know how to stop and it's making it so they don't have friends um zero friends i spend too much time online i'm 20. yeah serious trolling addiction is that something that you've come across ellen um i don't know if i've come across it i have to think about that but i think what you know it's kind of the answer similar to the person who's struggling with depression is is get help you know like ask for help look for help there are lots and lots of people who understand how to work with people with adhd and addiction because there's a high propensity towards addiction when you have adhd like we have addictive personalities we are highly impulsive we are constantly seeking stimulation so understanding right understanding you're looking for stimulation right so how else can you get that stimulation what else can can can substitute for you but you'll probably want to ask for some help in doing that yeah and if you're not treating your adhd and you have adhd maybe look into that yeah because there's a lot of things that we do to seek stimulation that if we're getting the stimulation we need from our medication maybe we don't need that as much anymore and it can also help with the impulsivity and um i know for me i started i used to argue with my parents constantly uh and that's part of what led to my diagnosis was i started going through those middle school years and and changed schools and everything was harder and executive function fell apart but also i was just constantly debating and i i was fighting with my friends all the time i was fighting with my parents all the time and once i was on my medication that calmed down because my brain was getting the stimulation that it needed and i didn't have to basically pick fights to get that that stimulation anymore one of the one of the examples i often use for adults who are beginning to figure out if they have adhd or not it's very common for an adult with add to pick a fight with their spouse before they go to bed because that gives them the stimulation to go to sleep right meanwhile the spouse who doesn't may not have adhd is up all night stressed out and pissed and wakes up the next day pissed meanwhile the guy with add or the person with add forgets about it the next morning and wakes up as if nothing happened but this tendency to pick a fight in order to go to sleep is not uncommon i have totally died i was gonna say i see i see your light on that one i hadn't i hadn't quite put that together i thought it was just like that's the time to like have a discussion because you're together you put the world away and now it's like let's work this thing out um which is probably not the best time for your spouse to be or your boyfriend to be working it out no it's not because then yeah he doesn't he doesn't sleep so i i need to watch that it's it's just good in general for us to watch our tendency to do that um a lot of the time if our relationships are going well we'll find something to like to pick at yeah yeah to pick out it's kind of like a scab yep um we have to watch that like is this an issue that needs to be resolved or is is this i'm bored um let's see okay okay how do i stop my oldest son from antagonizing his majorly reactive younger brother i think he's thinking stimulation from the reaction that's exactly what he's doing yep um i used to have a code we we did code words a lot so i have three kids we did code words a lot a code word is you know kind of we all agree that we're going to use this term and when we use this term something happens so one of our code words was broccoli ice cream when somebody said broccoli ice cream that means everything stops until somebody gets food because there was a lot of hangry in our house but another one of our code words was don't poke the bear and we had an agreement because one of my kids was was highly reactive and particularly reactive when siblings like would see that that the kid was about to go and then the siblings would step in and like you know poke at and aggravate it so i mean we had to have an agreement that it's not actually and it may start with a conversation with your oldest kid about you know are you aware that you're probably doing this because it's stimulating because it's kind of fun usually kids know they're doing it for fun the parents are going crazy and the kids know it's kind of entertaining um and so let them know you know and and ask if they might be willing to try something different and work with you a little bit yeah okay um let's see but let them right yeah broccoli ice cream was a good one it still exists today we still use it um oh this is a good question uh in regards to parenting how can stress affect my symptoms you know how stress can make adhd symptoms worse oh yeah kind of in every way possible um i would say you know we get into these stress cycles and they they shorten our fuse and they reduce our capacity to respond instead of react and the more stress that's why i say you know if all if you don't know where to focus focus on self-care because anything you can do to reduce your stress will have a ripple effect for the whole family a positive ripple effect so um i mean jessica you could probably go into more detail than i can on on how you know exactly what the mechanisms are but at the end of the day stress and adhd are not good bed fellows i haven't i haven't done the research on i haven't looked into the research specifically to stress i know if you don't get enough sleep your adhd symptoms get worse like significantly so i'm sure a lot of parents are dealing with that um there was some research a few years ago on because i remember writing an article and i was a little smug i wrote the article like duh parenting teens with adhd is stressful like it was who needed to do research to figure that one out right i know it's still it's still helpful to have the research and sometimes it it brings up things you wouldn't have thought about where it's like oh actually except in this one situation in which case it's helpful um but yeah there are certain things where it's like hey researchers catching up with what we all could have told you figured out right but what happens is if you reduce so so that that points to one of the reasons that parent training and parent interventions is recommended treatment for kids because if you reduce parent stress it actually improves the outcomes for the family that makes sense yeah um i i haven't been seeing this as much but i guess there's like some debates going on i am loving by the way seeing people answering because we can't answer all the questions if you guys have suggestions and you want to help each other out if you're if your parents and see another parent question um but yeah let's not turn it into a debate first of all you've got 200 characters and second of all like it's it's it's really hard um to have an effective debate in a in a live chat so fair um yeah if like the general rule i try to ask people to do is like respect each other's perspectives we all have okay there's this there's this buddhist idea of like there i i don't remember i'm gonna butcher this story but like there's blind monks or something and this is the most adhd retelling of the story ever but there's like blind monks and they're all touching a piece of the elephant and somebody's got the tail and they're like oh an elephant feels like a brush and somebody's got like the tusk and it's like no it you know it feels like it feels like a spear and somebody else's got you know yeah everybody's got a different piece of the elephant we all have different pieces of the elephant um and like nobody nobody that i've talked to i'll say flat out like no adhd expert that i've talked to has all the information i get different pieces from everybody so um yeah just like let's try to respect let's get along let's try to respect each other's perspectives and recognize that um there's also difficulties in encoding and decoding information maybe you're trying to say one thing and somebody interprets it in another way so um just yeah try to be respectful in the chat if you can just to be a little bit easier on our moderators so that we can do this again because they agree to do this knowing that we have a really really like kind community and um it won't stress them out too much uh so thank you guys for that um let's see uh okay ooh tips for kids helping kids develop emotional resilience when working through rejection sensitivity boy rejection sensitivity has really sort of surfaced in the last couple years um so i think it's similar to what we were talking about earlier in terms of emotionality is is to make it make it okay to have feelings right to to make the feelings make it create an environment like we often say create an environment that makes it okay to make mistakes so that's a part of it um a lot of times kids parents who think that they're making it okay to make mistakes aren't really and so some of that oversensitivity comes about because there's a sense that they were just always wrong and nothing was ever good enough right um and so we as parents want to kind of over calibrate to create an environment that says it's okay to make mistakes and that's part of being human and here's how we learn from it we call it failing forward right um so i think that's probably huge is to is to create that environment um and then make it okay to have feelings like and not and don't don't feel like you have to rescue a kid from a feeling just validate and acknowledge the feeling that they have let them know it's real for them it's okay to let them know you don't see it that way or you don't experience them that way sometimes what i'll say to my kids or to client is so let me step back so um do you know who jerry schultz is who wrote jerome schultz who wrote um know where to hide so he's kind of the leading expert on adhd anxiety in school he's amazing okay and um and i used to have this thing where it's like the ten words to say to your kids is i believe in you i know you can do it and what he taught me was you want to be careful not to be building another expectation on top of their anxiety so instead of i believe in you i know you can do it i've sort of morphed that to and i know you may not believe that for yourself yet but i'm going to hold that for you until you're ready because i know that you'll get there and you may not be there yet but i know you will so it's sometimes it's like holding the vision for them holding a future state because they're not ready to buy into it yet but you don't want them to feel like you're disappointed by where they are you want them to know that even if they don't believe it yet that's okay because you you see their future does this resonate yeah people are saying i love that yeah that's cool so holding your vision for your kids is a really powerful powerful tool that you can use to not add pressure on top of pressure right that's neat to basically say i believe in you and that's not going to go away just because like you're still struggling yeah holding the vision for them that's huge yeah that seems to be resonating um okay somebody is asking i can't concentrate even for 10 seconds to keep eye contact during during a conversation please help i'm seeing this one a lot you guys um they're you don't have to ask the questions a bunch of times but um uh are you having trouble paying attention during a conversation are you having trouble keeping eye contact during conversation because those are two different things and a lot of the time especially if you're dealing with adhd and maybe autism um not making eye contact can be a way that you are able to pay attention more but you're not looking like you are so i don't know if that's the issue or if it's that you're having trouble paying attention because those are two different things exactly what i would have said yeah because sometimes not looking someone in the eye like i you notice that i do this a lot is i'm looking up because it's it helps me process right yeah it helps me think about what am i trying to say right and so there's the the autism component if if there's autism involved in that i see both um if there's autism involved in that then eye contact can be difficult or uncomfortable and may not be that necessary um maybe in some social situations yeah but in a lot of situations with your friends you can just be like i i pay attention better if i'm not making eye contact and that's okay um glance out um i think so i when you say the answer is both i think what's most important is in our framework we talk about in terms of taking aim right so those are two very different things and you want to treat them separately right so if you want to take aim on improving your ability to look someone in the eye while you're talking to them that's very different and that's a it's a valid thing to do if it's important to you but it's not the same thing as this other issue of you know paying attention so um so as you begin to tackle anything that you're trying to improve what's really most important is get very clear on the change you want to see and and take aim on that change as narrowly and specifically as possible because that's how you can really see success and that's how you can begin to to build on more successes specifically a strategy there's their budget strategies my first book parenting adhd now has a bunch of strategies that will address that um there's a concept called voice mirroring where while someone's talking you're actually repeating what they're saying while they're saying it um as a way to help you pay attention to what they're saying like an echo in your brain like you actually oh yeah so as you're talking i'm i might be saying or as i'm talking you might be saying to yourself exactly what i'm saying while i'm like a fraction of a second after i'm saying it does that resonate were you able to do it that's really helpful yeah so it's a great strategy it comes from the world of improv actually that's pretty cool i like that and yeah i know a lot of people on the spectrum will actually look at another point on somebody's face like they'll look at their eyebrows or like between their eyes or at their cheek bone or some somewhere else even at their mouth that's that might be a little bit more obvious um and then for me one of the big things i do is i recognize what's keeping me from paying attention to somebody a lot of time it's like i thought of something and and that's distracting me because i'm trying to hold on to that thought until they're done talking so sometimes all if i know a person well enough i'll be like um hang on i have to get this out of my head and i'll just like quickly jot it down so that i can go back to it later or i know somebody else will like actually hold a finger on it and she'll be like oh i have this thought that i want to say so like i'm going to pin it to this finger i have another thought pin it to this finger and then she's able to remember like what the thoughts were my working memory is awful i have to say my working memory is not that good yeah but the other thing i do is i read lips do you really i do and i didn't really realize i read how much i do it until we got into everybody wearing masks and i i really i don't have any problems with my hearing but if i can't see your mouth move it makes it way harder for me to hear it yeah be depressed and for me it's um social anxiety is a big piece of it too this if my anxiety is too bad i i almost can't hear the other person over the anxiety and so for me having a fidget toy is huge huge yeah totally thank you guys thanks for the donations um yeah how do you deal with people who make judgments about adhd who those who still think it's an excuse for being lazy work colleagues teachers etc okay yeah so for parents like how do you suggest that parents deal with people who think they're just making excuses for their kids i i wrote a piece once a few years back i was coming home from a conference and i got into an argument on a on a bus you know on a shuttle to the airport with this person and i was furious by the time i got there um because of course they knew absolutely everything and they knew absolutely nothing and so um you know i've written about it some i think that part of part of how you deal with it when it when it's not people that are in your immediate world is you learn to let it go like you're not going to reform the world my husband i i've been trying to change his job description so he doesn't believe it's his job to reform the whole world to the way that he sees it right um and to let go what you can't control right um when it's somebody that's in your immediate circle there's there's a concept we play with called a design um and and it may be and so the design goes something like this there's a gift and an ask you always start with a gift with an offer because it defuses and takes people on the defense off the defensive and then you make an ask so the gift might be um i i get that you're really concerned about my family or about what's going on with us and i really appreciate your concern and what i want to ask is if you want to talk about this if you'd like to get some education about adhd and then have a conversation i'm happy to or i'm happy to share some resources with you or i mean whatever the ask is that you want of them but start with a gift start by saying i really appreciate your concern i get that you're doing this out from a place of concern or love or caring or whatever it is and then ask what i need from you is a better understanding better education not to give me unsolicited advice whatever it is that you want but design it with them starting with a gift that's that's a very generous way of doing it it works kinder than yeah but it really works because it so my husband i were talking about this last night because because we were talking about a colleague of ours who just came out of like 30 years of corporate and and she always does this in every conversation and and he was saying he thought it was a way to get people to lean in but i don't think it is i think it's a way to keep people from getting defensive and it's a really powerful tool to keep people from getting defensive yeah works great to get your kids to take out the trash too yeah yeah you know um okay so stolen relic asked a really good question for those who are thinking about having kids about pregnancy i don't have kids but i want them one day but i have a hard time functioning without my medication um what do you recommend for trying to live without medication and i will comment i will share this personally i talked to my psychiatrist and we went over all the research and for me for my adhd we decided that what was best would be to reduce my medication but for me to still take it um during my pregnancy and so it's not completely off the table it's one of those like gray areas but it depends on you it depends on your situation it depends on your psychiatrist um but we you know basically i'll be very vulnerable and honest here we talked about how for me it would be so stressful trying to do what i do without my medication at all that it it would basically we don't know the research is not very clear on what the risks are in terms of taking medication during pregnancy and we are very clear on stress and how bad that is for pregnancy and so in my situation she said it would actually be better for me to continue on my meds that may not be true for everybody but i just want to put out put that out there i thought when i was you know when i was going through this and i was ready to have a kid i was like i thought that i would have to i was terrified of having to go nine months and then however long breastfeeding without taking my meds and it was very relieving for me to know that that's not the only option and it was not even the option that made sense for me so that's amazing what a great story um i guess what i would add to that is i mean what you said it's a cost-benefit analysis and it's an individual circumstance per person you want to make sure that your provider really understands the nuances and it's not just one is not just giving you meds but really is working with you to understand where those meds fit in your comprehensive approach to managing your adhd or anxiety or whatever other issues are coming up that you're dealing with because a lot of us take medications for more than one thing and so i would say really make sure and if you don't feel like your provider really gets it and gets you then then seek out another provider before you start making this decision because i think that's probably the most important piece is to know that as you were saying just that you do this in collaboration with a medical provider yeah the other thing i would say is remember there are two other things i would add to it one is um you know exercise has been proven to be significantly effective um if if it's really routine and and and you keep up with the exercise and nutrition can absolutely help and sleep can absolutely help you manage add symptoms yeah um and and if you know that you're gonna have a shift and you're planning to get pregnant then then look at what can i do to modify expectations in my life what can i do to reduce what i'm what else i need to be doing if if i choose to be building this baby um you know your body's going to be really busy doing something else and and something else may have to give as a result of that right and you know and it depends on the medication too so you know the research that we looked at the medication that i'm on was not problematic um based on the the studies that we looked at and there's you know it's a situation where more research needs to be done but the there really was no conclusive risk to me continuing on the medication it was more of a just in case let's lower your dose thing if you can do well on that but there was another medication that i was like i can do okay without that medication i will go off with that one um so it really is just so so personal i i understand like i never would want to do anything i'm i'm like if if there was any chance of it being bad um then i probably would have chosen to just suffer through it and go off of it or whatever but from everything we looked at there wasn't really a significant risk to me continuing to take my medication and there would have been a significant risk to me going off my medication so and i want to reiterate what you said which is from a sort of epigenetics perspective a stressed out pregnant mom pregnant woman um if that stress is going to translate and yeah and there's nothing there's nothing more important that you can do for yourself during a pregnancy than to reduce your stress right okay um yeah let's see um and so people are asking if i'm pregnant no this was this is before i went through my divorce i i'm not pregnant i don't have kids but that was just that was the process that we were going through in in making that decision um and so it's not relevant now but i just i thought that was important to share because i before i decided i was ready to start having kids it was one of those things where i was like how am i ever going to do this like how am i going to go like all this time without my meds and still keep the channel going i'm so stressed out i was stressed out before i even had to deal with the idea of getting pregnant it was just scary so i just wanted to put that out there i think it was great i i need to start watching my time so maybe one more question okay one more question um and then i'll i'll stay i'll hang out for like another half hour after that and answer any questions that i can answer but does anybody have like a really burning question about adhd and parenting specifically about let's say specifically about parenting a kid with adhd when you have adhd and i'll keep going through questions as well oh you know what this one was actually really good um i'm i saw this a few a few times the tips um for adhd parents who find it hard to play with their children right we tend to get bored and let's say your kid wants to play the same game over and over again like how do you do that as a parent um i i just had something happen on my screen so hang on one second i'm having a i don't know what to do okay i think i'm okay sorry about that um what do you do you know i struggle with that so much like there's there was so much only so much like playing house and teacher that i could do before my mind just went numb um i one of the strategies i used was i kept what i called a junk box in our playroom and we would throw scraps into it you know pieces of styrofoam or pieces of cardboard or spiral and edges of spiraled notebooks like the plastic ones not the metal ones um but all kinds of random house things and we would keep a junk box and so when um when the kids needed you know wanted creative outlet or wanted play i'd send them to the junk box to make stuff um and that was a more creative to me that was more creative than coloring it was more interesting because you know we could then get i would do something to stimulate my creativity to engage with them does that make sense yeah so something that like basically suggests things that would be stimulating for you as well you can okay but i could if you sometimes you can't you know i get that but when you can if you can answer one one last question yeah you know i'm good it's my mother-in-law's birthday so i'm gonna oh my gosh okay yeah happy birthday um all right so the routines question so somebody just joined but i know that this is a common thing how do you how do you wait how do you exactly do this the routines yeah oh my gosh you guys are asking me so many good questions i lost it um there's a question about routines but basically like how do you how do you how do you have routines for a child with adhd when you struggle with your with routines yourself so i believe as a parent of kids with adhd who has adhd myself that the word consistency should be a four-letter word so um i just think that it's it's an unfair and unreasonable expectation that that is put on parents that somehow we're supposed to always be consistent um i don't think it's fair and i don't necessarily think i know we we all think our kids need that structure and they need some but our kids tend to need what i call flexible structure um they need like think about a bridge right when a bridge is built over a body of water it's got to have movement if you don't if that bridge can't move with the water or the wind it's going to collapse so it's a really solid structure that's got flexibility in it right a tall building is the same way and so i like to look at structures for our kids as something that's that's a tool but that has a little bend and it has a little give or flexibility in it and we want to make sure that we're treating our tools our structures as a tool towards an end so they're not a goal in and of themselves excuse me i think a lot of times what happens with parents is they it's like i need a routine i need a system i need structures give me some structures for that well for the sake of what so like i want to know what this what you're trying to achieve before you you put a structure in place so if it's we're trying to get everybody to the dinner table by six o'clock that's very different from i need i need a structure for dinner right like the more specific you can be the more targeted your your structure can be and so that when there's something that that shifts you can adjust with it but if you're only trying to create a structure because you need a structure that's not a good enough reason to create a structure or because you think you should right right i do that sometimes i'm like i gotta get better about my routine because routines are good not you know not for a specific goal it's just because routines are only to serve a purpose the only purpose you have is for them to help you achieve something maybe it's it's less stress maybe it's getting somewhere on time maybe it's getting something done but it's but tools and systems and structures are to serve a purpose and so you always want to know why you're using it because otherwise it's just another thing that you have to do right like when my kids were little the reward charts i mean there's i covered this a lot in the book because um i and i showed examples of some of the old reward charts that were terrible and didn't work with like 30 lines and you know plus two points and minus four points and all of that crap and then what i ended up with was the simplest system of all which was three columns one for each kid when they would do something good i'd say go give yourself two points it was that simple and and and then you know they knew we had a way that we could use points and whatever but um but i had tried everything every star chart everything imaginable and i was making myself crazy and i was making them crazy and it's because all the experts think the star charts are the best thing but what i needed was a way to acknowledge them and to reinforce them and it had to be as simple as possible for it to work that's amazing that's that's really good and people are really yeah really resonating with this um and love you one of the reviews on amazon was somebody who talked about oh my god it's the best chart system i've ever seen ever it was simply one column for each kid that was it and you know what they learned how to do tally marks right you know it's great yeah angelina says it's a lightbulb moment you're talking about structure for the sake of other people's normal thank you yeah yes yes yeah okay cool well um people love you um how do they find you after this so you can find us at impactparents.com there's a lot of amazing resources there and you can download free gifts and tip sheets and fact sheets and not fact sheets we don't do a lot of fact we do a lot of you know how so um so lots of cool stuff to join to join and find out more and get more resources we have a really amazing newsletter that's really succinct um that i encourage everybody we we publish three pieces of content every week and then i really encourage hope people will buy the book the essential guide to raising complex kids you can get that on the website i think it's i'm sure as well um if you've got the book please please write a review because i'm i'm working on trying to get to 100 reviews and um and just know that that there's a lot of resources out there um available to support you if you ask for the help you need like i love that you're in this community you're clearly getting amazing support here and just keep asking for it when you ask for help and you teach your kids to ask for help it's probably the greatest life skill you can teach them that's awesome well thank you yeah so guys if you if you want to uh contact elaine or um or thank her uh check out her book it's the i keep forgetting what's what's the most guide to raising complex kids with adhd anxiety and more and it's the it's basically what i wanted to do jessica was when i was raising kids and i kept reading all these parenting books and i kept doing what they said in the parenting books and it wasn't working i wanted a general parenting book for atypical kids you know something that was like the the guidebook for parents whose kids did not fit into the box yeah i think it's great because i think that that a lot of typical parenting books end up shaming us as parents and and it doesn't have to be that way yeah no for sure so thank you thank you so much for coming on i will let you get to your mother-in-law is that what you said yeah yeah yeah that's right perfect and somebody in the chat said tell tell your mother-in-law that uh there's a happy birthday from like 700 plus people i will tell her that and and thank you i'm sorry if i'm if i'm ditching out early i thought we were going to be done a little bit earlier and i apologize if i'm leaving early i don't know we really appreciate it you already went over time i was i was hoping you know it would be an hour but everybody had such good questions and you had such great answers thank you for staying on a little bit longer truly my pleasure love being with you happy to come back and at some point you and i should make something fun happen for for young people just put it out there super down for that yeah i just want your your community to remind you that we should we should collaborate and create something really fun yeah absolutely um oh where can we ask questions not during streams if people want to ask you questions do you have a way of people reaching you yeah we have a facebook community page that people can join if you go to impact parents on facebook um there is a it's called the adhd and anxiety parent community by impact parents and um and it's open to you you do have to submit to get into it but it's it's free and and um and open to everyone and you can absolutely reach us there ask us questions there um diane and i are pretty receptive and available to people wherever you need us twitter instagram you know you'll find us okay perfect all right thank you so much elaine take care thanks again for having me take care thank you for being here thank you guys for being so kind to our special guest i was really excited to have her on uh i know my my mom had a really hard time trying to parent neurodiverse kids without any resources on how to do it um oh hey steven i think i'm outside the box this is the most adhd thing ever uh okay cool already fixing hey guys this is yep outside the box um cool yeah awesome i'll i'll answer yeah you guys found that helpful yeah this will be available on the channel um she had some really great questions right she was really good great questions she had some really great answers and you guys had some really good questions thank you um outside the box there's a box okay yeah um all right so let me see what questions i can answer on my own let's see okay asked what are the best fidget toys for school so i actually got out my fidget toy box um quiet ones ones where you don't have to distract anybody these are great this is called the boink they're super cheap on like amazon you can't get like a bunch of them um fidget land is great these are amazing um they're not super quiet but if if you're doing it like under the table or in your pocket or whatever it's not too bad not too distracting there's also aaron's thinking putty which i lost it of course i did but it's basically it's it's putty it's like yeah but aaron's thinking putty is really good crazy aaron's thinking putty um i somebody talked about doing chain mail earlier somebody who did chain mail made this for me it's really great um but yeah in in in class i'm a huge fan of fidgets but uh a lot of teachers that are more adhd friendly have one rule um it can't distract other people and it can't distract you something is like fidget spinners generally aren't as helpful they can be a good stim but they're not as helpful for fidget toys because you know the whole idea of a fidget is you're moving and you don't have to look at it it's not distracting fidget spinners you have to move it actively you have to move it and it is very distracting um because it catches your eye not saying you can't work for any you know that it doesn't work for everybody but um for me it's definitely a little too distracting um fidget cubes are great as well i don't know where mine went oh there we go fidget cubes uh this is my very first fidget toy that i reviewed on the channel um it depends it depends on the kit too because there's these can make noise but you can rock it silently so if you have a kid that you can trust to be quiet with it a fidget cube is good um if you have a kind of kid that's going to throw it at a teacher not so much fidget toy haul yeah those are the those are the ones that i keep by me but i i also revert to like more everyday fidgets too like just spinning my pen in my hand or i have um i don't know a hair tie that'll snap on my wrist or something necklace is cheese yeah there's chewable there's chewable fidgets too um those are great rubik's cube counted as a fidget toy uh kind of it does it does require a lot of attention at first but if you know if if you're in a conversation i think a rubik's cube can be a really good fidget toy um not so much if you're supposed to be watching something because you kind of have to watch the rubik's cube it depends basically the rule for fidgets is yeah you don't want to distract you you don't want to distract somebody else and it should be using a sense that you don't need for whatever it is you're trying to do so if i'm if i'm knitting something that's a great fidget unless i'm supposed to be watching something because i'm going to keep looking down at my knitting but if i'm on a conversation or like it's a skype call with a friend that we're really comfortable with each other then knitting is a great fidget too okay let's see uh i'm sorry we didn't get to all the parenting questions you guys we got to as many as we could oh age um what is the best age to diagnose a child with adhd can this be helpful in an early age or will it instead be harmful due to stigma um so the experts that i talked to definitely recommend earlier rather than later getting the diagnosis you at least in the us i don't know for every single country but at least in the u.s it's private so you don't have to tell anybody if you don't want to but having that diagnosis is helpful um the you know adhd can be diagnosed as early as like four in more severe cases usually it's diagnosed a little bit later like between four and six um but having that diagnosis can be a really good thing because then you can start putting systems in place and from four to six medication isn't recommended yet it's more behavioral therapy which is basically parents learn how to parent an adhd child because it is different and there are different skills you could be the best parent in the world but if you've never had a parent an adhd child that is going to be a different skill set and so you kind of need to learn those skills um and then from like six to eighteen and they that's when they start to recommend behavioral therapy and medication um i think six to twelve it's still the parent training more 12 to 18 you're you know more having the kid go to therapy too but you can also start putting other supports in place in general every expert that i've talked to has recommended getting a diagnosis as early as possible right you're not going to diagnose a two-year-old but if you've got a child with severe case of adhd that could impact their self-esteem that could impact how they feel about themselves and their first early experiences with school which can make them decide whether or not they're good at school right like there's a great video on the internet that's 80 um i think adhd child versus non-adhd child and you can see already these kids are in kindergarten and the kid with adhd is already hurting her self-esteem is hurting she's already expecting herself not to be successful so it impacts us really young so getting the support we need as early as possible is generally what's recommended potatoes potatoes asks how do you make sure your children are okay if you're too distracted um to check on them regularly i yeah i wish i could have elaine answer that um i i can say i was a 90s kid i i was left alone a lot and in a way that was actually really good for me because i got to develop my own sense of who i am um and there's almost a sense from some experts some parenting experts the kids are a little over monitored these days and they don't get enough free time to explore an adventure on their own so i mean there's that but also of course like you you know their safety is important if i'm concerned about that personally if if i have kids like what if i don't notice that they stuck their hand in a toaster i don't know i wish i i wish i could get elaine back to answer that question is that how you handle it steven steven uh is on the call still and he says he puts cameras all over their house i mean that's that's halfway a joke like i i i got like camera system for the house but like i have indoor cameras and outdoor cameras and the indoor ones i can you know when i'm you know not you know it's a big house so when i'm not down where the kids are because i want them to be independent i can check up on their actual like what they're doing by just loading up the camera you know think of it kind of like a nanny cam so there's not in any personal spaces it's only in like you know living room you know family room area kitchen that kind of stuff yeah he's like he just said oh they okay they can hear you now yeah i'm just it's a gary i'm not talking too much just because you know like your thing i'm the behind-the-scene guy okay cool yeah so yeah if you if you guys want questions from a parent who has adhd who has who has young children um he is here to answer your questions just jen i am a teacher with adhd and what are some suggestions you have for me to keep in mind with my students um what i keep seeing with that is that techniques that elaine touched on this earlier too techniques that work for adhd students work for neurotypical students too and so treating your entire classroom as a neurodiversity friendly classroom is not a bad idea it's not bad for the teacher either um because i've seen what you know what teachers have to deal with with like ieps and 504 plans and everything it gets to be a lot um so if yeah just if the classroom in general and my mom was a special education teacher too so i know i know how hard you have to work i know how hard teaching is um having adhd on top of it can be extra challenging but i would imagine like if there's a way you can just apply the principles that are on a lot of those iep plans for those adhd kids just to the entire classroom then the kids with adhd don't feel singled out too and it's less for you to have to keep track of i don't know if that's helpful let's see oh um keithley said my son has difficulty making decisions even simple ones such as choosing after dinner treats is there something i can do to help is this related to his adhd or more anxiety that that can be yeah a lot of people with adhd and anxiety have trouble um have trouble with that and there's a thing with adhd where divergent thinking exists where we can imagine lots of possibilities we can come up with lots of different solutions and we're really good at that and that can help us as adults be those out of the box thinkers and and inventive and creative and all of these great traits but when when it comes down to making decisions it can be hard every time i go to narrow things down like let's say i've got you know i've got five options right and i'm like i'm going to narrow these down and go to narrow them down which is convergent thinking and it's a different skill and we don't tech we don't like we're not usually as strong at that i go to narrow it down and i just come up with more solutions i just come up with more ideas and it's really maddening um something called forced choice can be really helpful where you give two options and this can be good in situations where the kid has lots of options and it can also be good in a situation where a kid feels like i don't want to do what you say i have to do just because you said i have to do it it can be good either way to like give two options do you want to do this or do you want to do this do you want to have this for dinner or do you want to have this for dinner do you want to do your homework now or do you want to do it in an hour from now like the choice is not like do you want to do your homework it's do you want to do it now or in an hour from now and that boiling down the choices can help do you have any uh do you have any anything to say about that stephen do you have trouble with that with your kids i'm sorry i was adhd and only half paying attention helping your kids make choices oh yeah the two choice thing is actually what i use the most is you know i in order for them to feel like they're actually a bit in control of their life and what they're doing it's like you want this or do you want this you know there aren't any other options it's one or the other but they have the freedom to choose and like food is the one that i think is the easiest to use as an analogy it's like okay what do you want for the main thing for like your lunch do you want a sandwich or do you want you know this instead and then like side like the fruit or whatever or you know anything that's chosen by by me or you know palestinian but other than that it's just like you get a choice on the main thing or you get a choice in like the fruit that you want or things like that so they feel they're more in control of stuff and it it honestly makes things so much honor to do it that way yeah um question do you have a book or idea to help feel like i'm not failing my neurotypical child when i'm a parent with adhd um i mean elaine's book would probably be a good place to start there's also a parent a book i recommend to a lot of parents it's um by dr jolte niggs it's called getting ahead of adhd that's not specifically for adhd parents but it it does talk about um it is meant for parents it's talks about next-gen what next-gen science has to say about uh different ways to treat adhd and he goes in depth into into things like exercise and also goes into things like medication um he goes into behavioral therapy stuff as well just lots of different all these different current treatment recommendations and what the science says about them um let's see thank you hannah hannah said how is this channel knotted already at a million subs thank you that's really sweet we're getting there it feels like we hit 400 000 just uh fairly recently we did we had it in july i believe it's been wow october it's been three months and we've only put out 11 videos since we hit 400 000 and now we're already a half a million that's awesome um question i give a lot of attention to my adhd child but my other child is starting to feel left out how do i avoid this but still ensure my adhd is okay safe yeah so i dealt with this um we dealt with this in my family my brother has adhd and autism and oppositional defiance and uh he he struggles with some other stuff too he's always been more of a behavioral challenge than i that i was and he always needed more support than i did and i did feel left out um i think i didn't i didn't realize what my mom was doing at the time but we actually had a conversation about it later whereas like it felt like he got all the attention and maya isn't important and she said well he you know first of all there wasn't as much support available for you right and second of all um i did try to balance things out in other ways so she gave a lot more support to my brother because he needed a lot more support but she said she pointed out and i just i wish she had told me at the time that that's what she was doing that she was concerned about it and that she was looking out for me i just wish she'd communicated it to me um she would find other ways of supporting me in what i wanted to do so whereas my brother needed a lot of the like let's get you help stuff more than i did she did do things like make sure that i got to join extracurricular activities that i wanted to join and if i wanted to play the flute like she made sure that we went out and got me a flute so that i could play my flute and found other ways to do that and so she was actually aware of it and trying to balance it out but because she never talked to me about it i i still felt really invisible i still felt like oh everything's always about my brother everything's like it's always about like let's try and help my brother and i didn't notice the ways in which i was being supported because i wasn't being supported in that way i guess so um you know again i wish i had elaine to answer that but just from my perspective being the child that got less attention um just let you know let your child know like hey i know that this is the situation and that you're you know the other child needs a lot more help but i want to make sure that your needs are getting met too because everybody has needs every child has needs um and it is easy to feel invisible when you're not the one with you're not the squeaky wheel that's getting the grease it's easy it's easy to feel invisible so i think for me at least knowing that i wasn't invisible and knowing that that was something that was on my mom's radar would have been really helpful okay yeah i've got let's see yeah my situation is the same my brother's autistic i felt ignored a lot yeah but i got to do more activities yeah yeah i got advantages that he didn't have but i i was so focused on like he's getting all the attention that i don't think i noticed or appreciated that um yeah so i've got like yeah i can be a little late so let me do like 10 more minutes and then i gotta jump off um because we're actually doing um if you guys are interested in going the chad conference the intern the 2020 international adhd conference is happening online this year and it's cheaper than it would normally be usually it's pretty expensive in person but i think it's it's 160 for the general conference and it's november 5th through 7th it has a ton of experts like elaine that will come on and talk about all kinds of different things um what they're doing is there's a presentation like a 45 minute presentation for most sessions and then a 15 15-minute live q a so even though the presentations are pre-recorded um so the quality is good the 15-minute q a is live and then there's also peer peer groups there's um you can meet other people it's really cool the chad conference is really cool because you can meet other people who are dealing with the same things you are and and talk it's it's just amazing um so i'm on the committee i'm on the board for that this is the first year we're doing it online so it's going to be interesting to see how it goes but um yeah and chad members adam members they can get a discount code yep yeah so it's even cheaper if you're already a member of chat or atta um let's see okay 60 off dang that's really good okay yeah thank you yeah put the the link if people want to if people want to register i'm i'm going to be there um a lot of the experts that i've had on the channel will be there um and a lot more than that um extra questions yeah if you guys have other questions that i'm not able to get to if you put them in the comments below this video when we when we and the live stream um you can actually comment below this video and i'll try to get to those questions there too let's see how can i advocate for legislative changes for adhd in my country australia currently it's unrecognized as needing extra support in schools and workplaces i've heard um we have a discord through patreon and people will chat and a lot of people from are from australia i think changes are already happening which is really cool i'm not sure about the the exact way to advocate for legislative changes there but um i know that some people in our discord are working on that um that would be cool that would be something cool to get to at some point like if you want to push for like here's how to advocate in different countries it's a resource i'd like to put together at some point um uh let's see how do i stop eating sugar whenever my meds wear off yeah i i get very hungry when my meds wear off too um that's a very good question i'll let you know when i figure it out um i heard people with adhd more likely to struggle with letting go of traumatic experiences i'm not sure what the research says on that but i do know that ruminating is a big challenge for a lot of people with adhd so it tracks um but i'm not sure i'm not sure about the research on that i would not be surprised um clutter conflict oh wait thank you guys thanks for the donations it's really sweet of you um want to join the discord but don't want to pay monthly do i have to pay monthly to stay on the discord yeah the discord is through patreon so it is but we make it available at least the main chats available to even if you do a dollar a month so if that's a if that's doable for you you can join it just that level and that's fine um and we have minecraft yeah steven built out a minecraft server so if you guys want to play minecraft and hang out with other people you see um yeah even even yeah even the dollar level has access to that right steven yeah even if you're supporting the channel at a dollar a month you have access to our minecraft server it's basically so we don't get trolls because if we had if we opened up the discord publicly we'd get a lot of people that would make the environment a little less safe we figure that if people are willing to like donate a dollar a month to to the channel that they're probably not just there to be jerks let's see is it normal to want therapy along with meds also would there be help with accepting your diagnosis really common yeah it's actually um it's recommended yeah multimodal treatment is what's recommended for adhd so that is um a combination of medication and either behavioral therapy or therapy cognitive behavioral therapy in particular is really good for adhd and yeah it can help definitely make sense of a diagnosis um just make sure that it's somebody you click with and somebody who understands adhd i've heard of a lot of bad experiences with people who don't understand adhd or just weren't a good fit for people um ideally you know therapists would specialize in adhd but they don't have to to be helpful but the most important thing generally speaking for a therapist is it has to be someone you click with um that it's called the therapeutic alliance and it's the number one um it's really the number one like predictor of therapeutic success is kind of how much you trust this person to help you on your journey um do you you know are you willing to take risks are you willing to do the work with this person because you believe that they're gonna be able to be helpful to you that's really important how do you deal with outbursts of anger especially during covid 19 yeah emotional dysregulation in general is a really big issue for people with adhd um and for some people it gets expressed outwardly and for some people get expressed inwardly um for me i tend to go inward but sometimes i'll i'll go outward too um but some people like my brother would always go outward with his anger um trying to keep our baseline down so there's the way that it was explained to me and this was in a meditation class of all places but it was really helpful is we have these stressors that that make our stress go up right and then we get a break from the stressors and it goes down a little bit but then there's another stressor that happens and this happens a lot with adhd right like we go to get ready in the morning and we and we um you know and we can't find our keys so like the stress goes up and then then we find them okay we get in the car and stress goes down a little bit but then we spill our coffee on our lap and now the stress is up here and we managed to clean that up but then you know something else happens and and we keep our stress levels keep going up and up right now what that looks like is you know we read the news right and our stress levels go up and then we get a break from the news and stress levels start to go down but then something else happens and our stress goes up and up and up well if our if our we're melting down level is here or we're starting to scream level is here if we're not giving ourselves a chance to come down then eventually we're like right here and it doesn't take much to push us over the edge right and a lot of people a lot of people are dealing with that right now with with grief i'm i'm at that point with crying right like i'm so sad a lot of the time that it's i get a break from it but then something else reminds me of my mom something else reminds me of what i'm going through and so i'm i'm not really getting a break from it long enough to kind of come down emotionally and so i'm really right here and so it doesn't take much to push me over that edge to to where i'm crying to where i'm melting down crying or if i'm you know if something goes wrong right now my tolerance for change my tolerance for anything going wrong is so low because i've gone through so much change so much has been out of my control so much has gone wrong in my life lately that it's something as simple as like you know my like i order if i order dinner and it shows up and it doesn't have the dressing it's supposed to come with like that's enough to make me really upset and so we have to kind of find ways to give ourselves breaks to to be able to come back down and you can do that quickly through meditation you can do that through going for a run you can do that through turning off the news for a little bit like not checking it constantly so we're not constantly like creating more stress for ourselves but basically trying to get our baseline back down if we can one of the ways i do that quickly is by going to get a massage that's not really possible right now um but petting my dog things like that four or five all right so yeah hopefully that was helpful um yeah news is the worst yeah yeah disabled facebook to reduce stress level yeah i mean the here's the thing really like with adhd we need stimulation we seek stimulation and sometimes we don't realize like we're getting too much and we need to step away and let our brains calm down a little bit before we add more stress before we add more stimulation and finding that balance is really a lot of what managing adhd is about finding that balance where we're you know stimulated enough to be engaged but not so stimulated that we're gonna scream at somebody or melt on crying um if any little thing goes wrong it's it's a balancing act so be kind with yourself it's not the easiest thing in the world to do but um yeah tell chloe i love her okay perfect thank you guys seek stimulation but sometimes too much overloads me and i crash yeah so common yeah dope menu yeah all right thank you guys so much if you have any other questions put them in the chat i hope i got to at least most of them um and those uh those that i wasn't able to get to it's trust me it's not because the question wasn't good it's just we did not get through all of them um because he had a lot of great questions so all right um put any other questions in the chat i gotta jump off to the meeting to make sure that the the international adhd conference happens all right bye rain [Music] do [Music]

Channel: How to ADHD

Views: 190,032

Keywords: add, adhd, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, jessica mccabe, how to

Id: LVnO336a8sc

Length: 154min 32sec (9272 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020