004 The Test That Started It All

In this episode, Kelly shares her personal story about how she first learned that her child had ADHD and answers the question of when is the right time for parents to think about medication therapy as a treatment option. Here at the Parenting Balance Podcast, you'll find simple, science-based tools and tricks for parenting kids with ADHD or anxiety. Although we are both family therapists, this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not replace the guidance of a qualified professional. Join us as we debate and discuss our own experiences as parents of kids diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety and breakdown the latest research into easily digestible portions. We created this podcast to educate, inspire hope, explore new ideas and discover together what we know to be true: you are not alone, and finding a community of support can make all the difference. Please join our Parenting Balance Podcast Community here and sign up here to be the first in line for our new Modern Guide to Understanding Kids With ADHD mini-course.

CTA to Magical Mornings

Transcript

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Hi everyone. Welcome to the parenting balance podcast. My name is Kelly Williams. I'm a licensed clinical social worker and an ADHD parenting expert by experience. I'm here with my partner, Hi, I'm Teresa Vanpelt a licensed mental health counselor and anxiety parenting expert by experience. And for the past 10 years, Kelly and I have had a family practice in Florida. This podcast is for parents who want to really understand what's going on with ADHD and anxiety so you can ditch the chaos and feel confident and happy again. So from a parenting perspective, it's helpful to understand that it's the low levels of neurotransmitters and the different rates of Brain development that cause the problems that we see with the things like managing time, getting and staying organized, managing emotions, paying attention and remembering things, shifting focus from one thing to another. Getting started on tasks and thinking before saying or doing things right so we can kind of logically understand all those things. Um, but that does not make them any less frustrating to deal with as a parent, right? Right. And I know most parents come to therapy because they want to avoid putting their kid on the stimulant. But at what point do we need to start talking to parents about medication? Oh, man, this is such a good question. And, um, I remember when I could not believe how difficult it was for me personally to make the decision to put my own child on medication. And here's the crazy thing. I had been like a family therapist in a medication clinic for, like, 16 years, so you would think it would be a little bit easier for you. Oh, but totally I it was It was, like, bizarre. It was crazy. I couldn't, you know, I was like, Oh, my gosh, I cannot believe this, right? So the head and the heart, you know, it's like in my head I had seen the outcomes the positive out the benefits. Oh, absolutely so many good benefits, you know. But then when it came to me personally, and it was like my child on medication, But, you know, let me add a little bit to this because I experienced something similar in my family. And I'm just like, you know, I'm the anxiety expert. I'm supposed to have this. I'm so but you know, there was me go there. And it was hard for me to accept that there needed to be more. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It was a total reckoning. I mean, no doubt about it, right? So, um so I am always so I really try to be compassionate to parents that we see in the practice, Of course, because the people who are seeking out therapy, let's be honest here, right? If you're gonna take the time to seek out a therapist, it's because you don't want to do medicine, you know, like 100%. Well, you know, sometimes people are already on medicine when they come to see me. But let's say 80% of the people that I begin the work with are doing the work because they don't wanna do medicine. All right. And, um, so I understand, man, do I understand that? But at the same time, um, and here's the funny thing. When it was when it was my turn, what happened? My story is that my son was in first grade at the time, and, ah, you know, he goes to this school. We love the school. It's a out a school with a curriculum based on outdoor education. Because, of course, I knew before he ever even started school that he was not the kid who was gonna be able to make it in a regular classroom. Okay? And that was just my intuition. A couple years, right? As we're like before he actually gets into school. So, um, so he's in the school that has lots and lots of hands on outdoor time, lots of activity. And it comes to the end of the first year of first grade, and they have a standardized test. And this test is gonna last three days. And the teacher calls me up and is like, Ok, um, I have real concerns about your son being able to follow the rules in order to take this test, and she lays out the rules. You have to be quiet, remain seated the whole time. And, you know, basically just sit still, like take a test and then sit still. And she's like, there is no way that your son is gonna be able to do this. Pretty sure you probably knew that if she was talking Well, okay, so Here's the thing, though, is that they had been accommodating him all year. Ah, but they couldn't because it was a standardized test. That's exactly right. But I didn't realize that they were. They were giving him exceptions. Now, remember, he's my first child. I have no other point of reference, you know. I mean, I know, I know that as a parent, things feel hard. It feels like things are harder for us, you know, Um, but I never around that time you saying things like that, I'm trying to ask questions to kind of gauge. I was so tired. We like where I was so tired, and I thought it was like me. There was something wrong with me that, you know, I just I didn't You know, I I wasn't doing it right, you know? Um, so anyway, so the end of this story is that she coaches me on how to have this conversation with him and set up a really nice reward at the end of the week if he can do this test. And I felt so lucky that I had this great teacher, and she's helping me. And, um, and we do everything that she says exactly how she says it. And here's what happened on the first day, the test. I get this phone call that he, like, tried to harm a child on the playground with a stick, like was being violent with it with a stick. But I'm sure there's another story to that. I mean, that's I don't know. All I know is it was unusual. On the second day after the test, I get a phone call that he got in a physical fight with another child and had to be restrained. And when I got the phone call, he was in the principal's office and I had to go to the principal's office and talked to the principal on the third day of this test. They called me in the morning as an emergency, were like he's hiding under his desk and he won't take the test and he's disrupting the entire class. And I had to go get him and we never finished that test. Okay, so here's what happened. My and you know my son, who wanted to do what was right, who never I'm telling you, like friendly, happy go lucky kid never fighting. Never. You know, there was some impulsivity with, like, accident things happening. Okay, fine. But never malicious. Actual intentional meanness, you know, And the pressure for him to try to follow the rules, which are sit still and don't talk, okay, puts him into a state where he crawls under a desk and refuses to participate. My mind was blown literally blown. And boy, was I pissed at that school. You know, like this idea. Did the injustice of it right s so hard to recognize, right? It was their fault. How can you make a first grader take a standardized test? I mean, I still think that, but, um, yeah, and they don't actually do that test anymore in first grade because it was so hard for students, but yeah, I have a whole other podcast about anxiety and kids and standardized tests. But that's for another time. Yeah, Yeah, it just you know, it activates something in them, right? Because the anxiety and the ADHD activation from a neurological perspective, it is the same. Okay, Now, the reason why it's happening comes from different places. But the end result of it is the same. So what you see and what I see is basically the same thing, which is that, you know, we're asking someone to do something that they want to do but that they are, like, developmentally not capable of doing in that moment, you know? And then we punish or we, you know, we do all these things, which is, like, basically shaming them into trying to conform. You know, that usually doesn't work. It never works. And never I mean, look at Brene Brown, right? Like factly. I know. Yeah. Alice, adults, This stunning research, right? You can never you know, just shame. Never, ever works. So Okay, So you the question that you asked me Waas when? How do parents know when it's time to look to medication? Right. Okay. And so for me, we had this big crisis at the school was first grade. And of course, I researched the very best doctors in town and I only would go to the very best people. And so I had to wait, like six months for his doctor appointment. So six months in crisis. Six months of it. Luckily, it was the end of that school year. And so, yeah, you know, um, But what it was for me was six months of, like, researching every single last bit of information I could get my hands on before I got in front of that doctor. And, you know, that was when I read that article about the 500 times more corrective feedback. That was when, um, I started learning about the neural transmitters and about the structural differences in the delay in development. And, you know, luckily, I had my background I had all these years and mental health to be able to kind of synthesize this information and put it together. And I had a, um I don't know. I had this experience from where I could look back on the work I had done with other kids. And I could see what it looked like when we don't treat these problems at a young age. I knew what that was gonna look like when he got older. Not scary. That's so scary. Yeah, well, you know, it was empowering at the time. Good. And it's actually why I'm here, right? This is why you're so passionate. I want people to know. My God. Yeah, you know, there's like it makes me crazy that there's just so much conflicting information out there, you know? So I want Here's the bottom line about medication and we've already kind of touched on this, I think. But I'm gonna say it again because I think it's really important. All right. Um, the the brain differences that exists in a non-neurotypical typical brain is like exactly the same as the differences in eyes for people who need glasses. And we don't judge people that go to the doctor and get glasses and put a prescription on their eyes so that they can focus with less effort. Right? Right. And if we don't go to the doctor and we don't get the glasses, you're not blind, right? You can still see it just takes more effort to do what you have to do. It is exactly the same with medicating for ADHD. Although we are not. We don't have that machine that can tell you exactly the right prescription. Okay, So the other sort of complicating factor is that you have to understand why we're giving the medicine. What does it do and what are you looking for?I always teach parents about You need to know what your target symptom is so that you can measure if what you're doing is working. And this is another part where you know, the prescriber, they don't tell you any of this. They go. Okay, I'm gonna give you this prescription here for Ritalin. Give it, see if you see anything different and call me in two weeks and let me know. I mean, that is like the extent of what the doctor says to write, you know, and parents go home and they give their kid this medicine and either it's like a miracle, right? When my son, when we finally got to the doctor and we put him on that first medication, it was literally, like a miracle, you know, like his handwriting. Like I could go back into his little second grade journal and show you exactly the day, the very first day that he took medicine. And, of course, I was all like, Oh, I'm not going to tell the teacher cause I was still a little bit blaming them. I'm like, I'm not going to tell them. I bet you there's gonna be no difference. Teacher called me immediately was like I don't really I don't know what you did, but it's a miracle. And I you know, we we couldn't deny it, right? So what you're saying is, when you've tried these other supports and these other things and they're still a sickness, it gets problem Where there's somebody waiting for That's right, it's It's the balance, right? And I called this program parenting balance. Okay, this is the balance. It's like if you are doing these extra things and you're accommodating this and you're doing that and all this and you're exhausted at the end of the day, If if all of the joy is out of your life from everything that you're doing toe have to control your own kids behavior, then I think it's valid to try medication because we're not gonna, you know, like we don't want to come out of this unhappy like, you know, like there's Onley. Effort is a finite resource for all of us, for our kids and for the parents. We can't keep operating on a completely empty tank, right, And something that I tell parents is that stimulants are short acting Oh, man. So you're gonna know right away. I mean, obviously there there is likely needs to be some adjustments and maybe need to change medications. But it's not like you, like with a lot of the United Persons, you have to wait 4 to 6 weeks. Yeah, that's not the case. Stimulants are way easier and frankly, safer. We have way more years of research of outcomes of stimulants and Children. Um, they are way easier to work with than like, for example, SS arise, which are the kind of medicines that we use for anxiety. Right? Right. I will, um, always recommend. And it's really interesting, because stimulants, of course, are controlled substance. And so the prescribers will often try to persuade parents to start with a non stimulant which usually doesn't doesn't work. It doesn't. Not only does it not work, but the thing is, you know, whenever you're going to try an intervention, something you want to do one thing at a time and because the stimulant works, you know, within 45 minutes had taken that pill. What is gonna happen here? Um, it's way easier to start with a stimulant and then go to the other things. But when there's all this other stuff on board and then you add the stimulant, you know, it's just it makes it cloudy. It's not as clear cut. So parents when they understand this and they know how stimulants work and they know what questions like what things to say to the doctor. Then they can be their own advocate as faras. No, I want to try this. Then I'll do this. Then I'll do this, you know? So this medication topic, I can talk for hours. There's so much information to know about it. But here's what I want to leave you with today. Your take away for today is that although it seems like everyone has an opinion about what it means to medicate your kid who has a THC, I know that most people and some prescribers aren't actually up to date on how medicines work and why we use them, you know. So there is a stigma. I think, with some people there's this bad, you know, sense. And and I got to admit, you know, every until my son became a teenager. Actually, you know, when he was little, I felt guilty every single time. I took him to the doctor every time, you know, and there was always this question in the back of my mind like, really, do I really need to be doing this? But I had read so much research, and I knew the information, and I had to put my faith in the science and and keep pushing forward. That was my personal choice there. I know loads of people who don't make that same choice, and how they manage symptoms is is different. But that's what works for them. So this question about when do you you know, when is it time to look at medication? It's a really deeply personal question that deserves time and attention to think about and knowing information, you know, like getting candid information about what? What the medicines are, what the experience is gonna be like. What are you in four if you decide to do that. So, um, that'll be it for today's episode, please join us next episode, where Kelly addresses concerns about stimulants and addiction and other medication related topics. Thank you for listening to the parenting balance podcast to doing our mailing list. Go to parenting balance dot com slash podcast. When you join, you will be notified of upcoming live Q and A's. You could help us plan future episodes. We'd love to hear comments and questions. You can reach us by email. Hello at parenting balance dot com. 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