007 - An Interview With My Neurotypical 14 Year Old Son

My son was going to do some artwork for me for my book Descending to the Top. I love how he draws and so he read my book so we could discuss the art afterward. Upon reading the book, he shared some insights with me about how his brain works, and it was just too good not to share!

Here is some insight, through a conversation between a neurotypical son and his ADHD dad.

Here is a link to the book we were talking about: Descending to the Top

Try the FREE ADHD Big Brother Episode Finder!  Type in your struggle, get two matching episodes. No emails, no sign-ups. Find your episodes →

For those of you that are wondering why nothing is sticking, why you read things and don't do the work, why you have epiphanies about what could work but it goes nowhere...Join myself and others at ADHDBB.  There is a 'team' component to managing ADHD. Join our team. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Wouldn't it be amazing to get inside the mind of a neurotypical person? Like, how does their brain work? How are they able to get started? How are they able to do the thing and get it done and remember and be on time and the? Turns out I know somebody. Today we're talking to my 14-year-old son Noble. I want his brain. You are listening to ADHD Big Brother, the podcast for adults with ADHD. I'm your host, and ADHD Big Brother Rush Jones. Nice to meet you. We are going to talk about some stuff, laugh about some stuff, learn about some stuff, and ladies and gentlemen, here is some stuff. Guys, today is gonna be an exciting new type of ADHD Big Brother. I have a very special guest today. This is a special guest that I created uh about 14 years ago. Would you welcome my son, Noble Jones? Hello. Uh here's what what we know about you. You have a normal brain. Sure. Right? And when uh we Noble and I were having a conversation uh recently because he's gonna be doing some artwork for the book, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

For the book descending to the top, and so you read the book, and then you were telling me about how our brains are different, and it was driving me, it was blowing my mind. It was driving you, it was it wasn't driving me crazy because I love you and I think that you're smart. So I it was driving me crazy in that I made such an amazing and smart son?

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Yeah. Okay, I was expecting that answer.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

So talk to me a little bit about uh your insights that you got from the book and f uh and just talk about that a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

In terms of what I took away from the book?

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Yeah, yeah, and the and the difference between how your brain works and how my brain works.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Um I got that the the book told me that there's a clear difference between ADHD and which is neuroatypical, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:13

If that's yeah. And then we'll throw in for all those terms, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

And then uh neurotypical or the normie, which would be me.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Um The normie.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

There's a clear difference between that and it's tough when you first realize that you have ADHD. But once you do figure it out, you kind of are stuck. Uh that's what I kind of got. You kind of get maybe you don't know where to go with that information. Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Well, I think historically we feel stuck. Uh and that's the light is like, oh, there's a reason why I've been stuck. That's kind of what I get.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Um, and then I took away that even though you might get slightly stuck or like um like I said, you don't know what to do with that info, this book is here to help you kind of you know carve your own path for how you can get things done and still function like uh I could I guess I could say function like a neurotypical brain in using the methods of an ADHD like of your ADHD book. Right. Um and so Well, let me ask you something.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Based on that, so the uh what did you notice about yourself in reading about uh people with ADHD?

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Oh, I noticed that um it's a lot easier for for me to get things done and it it oh, and then tasks don't seem as crazy and impossible uh to me as an ADHD person, for example, like you know, cleaning the living room isn't isn't that bad. If you tell me clean the living room in 15 minutes, okay, I'll clean the living room in 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

So what you're a gosh darn genius, how do you do it?

SPEAKER_00 3:58

But then an ADHD person um uh would maybe be like, oh god, I gotta clean the living room. Okay, okay, so maybe I should I'll just I'll just clean it, I'll just clean it up, I'll clean it a little bit, you know, so I can just work on this for now, right? And which, I hate to say it, but I could see that in you sometimes, right? You'll kind of What? You'll get up from your work and you'll be like, Oh, I gotta do the dishes, and most of the time you'll do the dishes, but sometimes you can kind of, you know, maybe you'll steer away from the dishes and be like, oh, I'll do that tomorrow. I'll do that tomorrow. Um, and obviously that's not a terrible thing because you know, dishes and it is when the fruit flies come.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

The fruit flies is when it starts to smell like an old garbage can. What tell used you had an analogy about that difference. Do you remember what it was? You took you were displayed. Future you. Yes. Because that kind of plays into an episode that I did about procrastination and how ADHD, we are, you know, everybody procrastinates, but people with ADHD, we keep delegating our tasks onto a future version of ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

And saying you'll do it later.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

I'll do it later, but then we're never in the mood when later comes. And you had a great analogy about how your brain works.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Ooh, tell us.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Oh my god, I want it. Um, you were talking to me about how um how No, you were talking to me. We were bouncing ideas off of each other. Okay. Um, and you said that how sometimes ADHD people can just put things off and move it to later. Um, yet again, like I said, the dishes, right? You know, oh, I'll do it later. And what I said was, for me, I don't find that very difficult for things like that, like cleaning homework, which is my uh, that sucks, or just any tasks like that, right? Big or small, because um, say I'm given, oh, homework for three of my classes, then instead of putting it off and being like, you know what, I'll be in the mood for it later, which you'll never be in the mood to do a task like that. You'll never ever ever ever be in the mood for something like that. You're a dame genius. I mean, unless you're you're like some lover of cleaning, which I don't think I've ever met any clean cleaning lover.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Um, I bet they're out there. You're talking about future yes, okay. Future noble.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

So what I do is I think of it as me being best friends with future me, right? Uh-huh. Now, obviously, us in the pa us in the present can always set ourselves on course to for certain things in the future, right? We can we can uh do things that will affect our future, like say you do something bad, right? You go to jail. Well, that instantly affects your life in the future because now you're gonna be in jail for three years. Now, say you didn't do that bad thing, obviously you wouldn't go to jail for three years, and a different thing would happen in those three years.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Yeah um I'm really interested in what what the crime was. Like what what crime got you three years?

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Um the hell did you do? Not cleaning the living room.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Your honor. I really don't think three years in jail.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Sorry, I thought I would do it later.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

For me not cleaning my room.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Three years. Really?

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Wow, future.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

I was expecting no media on the weekend. Um so what I do is I can affect my future, but my future can obviously not affect me, because you know, that's impossible.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

I mean, maybe in the future that'll be possible, but like let's not go down the time travel wormhole.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Yeah, yeah, let's not do that. Um and so what I do is we're me and future me are best friends, so I'm gonna do anything I can to help him out. And so just getting my homework done when I can, and just you know, oh, I got homework, I have lunch right now, let me get it done, let me just get it done, and then I won't have to do anything. Then future me is now you know, 45 minutes less homework has to be done for future me, right? And even though I have to get it done right now, for me, I don't know. I can just sit down and I'm like, oh my god, this sucks, this is so boring, I hate it, but I can just get through it knowing having this like image of oh my god, 45 more minutes of being able to watch TV or YouTube or play video games or skate or anything like that. So I high-fi feature me, you know, and he's like, Thank you, 45 minutes less of homework. Yeah, and that goes for everything, cleaning the living room. Yeah, and so now, you know, why not get your homework done right now when you have the time? Why would you I guess that's technically wasting time by not doing something that you need to get done, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Like And that's the hard part though. That's the hard part with for people like me with ADHD. It's like that we can know all that. We can know, oh, I need to do this, would be great for me. I could totally set future me up, but because we're not in the mood, and and I hate saying because we're not in the mood, because that makes it sound so simple to be like, yeah, but well, none of us are ever in the mood. So, you know, what makes you so special? You know, why can't you just do it? And I'm like, well, that's like telling someone, well, you it if I don't have the ability to do it, I can't do it. Yeah, if there's some kind of a thing in the brain, that that executive function issue where if I know I what I have to do, I know what I need to do, but because there's not some kind of a spark, yeah, I can't. And so that's what we're trying to figure out how to do. How do we do what you do? How do we get that high-fiving of the future us in into our particular makeup, into our brains?

SPEAKER_00 9:49

You know what? I like how you said the little spark because sometimes I can have that where it's like I will, you know, sometimes I won't do my tasks right away, right? Say I'll I'll watch TV before I clean the living room. I'm like, you know what, I'll just watch TV for 30 more minutes and then I'll clean the living room, right? Yeah. Um, but then sometimes I'll be in the middle of that 30 minutes, I'll just get a spark in my mind. I'll be like, let's just do my cleaning now. Let's do it now, let's go, right? And I'll go and for some reason, even though I know it sucks, I just get a spark of like, oh, we need to get this done now. What are we doing? Well, what are we, what am I doing? Yeah. Um yeah, but like, I don't know, that spark just randomly will come. And whether I have the spark or not, it I always feel like you know, I I always feel like I can't get to the fun stuff until the grunt stuff and the uh is done, right? Like homework and cleaning. I feel like that's all that fun stuff isn't fun until that's done. I don't know why.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Do you have that in the back of your head, like that's lingering?

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Yes, that's what it is. Okay. Oh god. It's lingering in the future, and the more seconds that I watch TV are is another second closer to me having to get that stupid stuff done, right? Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

And so stupid meaning your education.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

My education, yeah. Exactly. And so what I end up doing is I'm like, well, if I just you know pull that homework over onto present me, then I can just get it done. Just even though and all these tasks, they only take you know up to 45 minutes, right? Clean the living room 15 minutes, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Cleaning, you know, the whole house is a bigger task, right? But still, that's only like two hours of work, right? You can get it done in the day. So once you get it done in that day, you don't have to do that anymore.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Yeah, it's done. Dude, I fight that all the time. I I know that conceptually. So those are the things that like an ADHD brain, like, yeah, I get it. Just get it out of the way and then you're good to go. And I think what the issue is, is that for ADHD, the the spark that is required to to you know fire the engine to get going, we have that's why the the idea is like a last minute well that's that's a force-fed impulse, right? If there's the urgency of like a deadline, and then the deadline is already there, then you it manufactures a spark. Yeah. But we're trying to figure out how to get a spark when there's no spark to be found. And that's what the whole, you know, that was the point of the descending to the top, the book. Oh, yeah, which was giving yourself a little tiny nudge, which is like a little a 10-minute thing, something that's manageable and doable, yeah, which is just ugh as the worst. Because a lot of times, once you start that awful task, it you work up a spark. It's sort of like you know, you're building the campfire.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

And like it starts smoking, and then all of a sudden the fire's gone. Yeah, people like you, you normies, you regos, you uh neuro, you neuro undiverse typical types. Okay. I don't know. The you could you have lighters.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

We have lighters.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

So if you you just like and there's your fire.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

There's a fire. Well, actually, I wouldn't say it's like a lighter. I would say it's a lighter that just kind of randomly lights. And I guess sometimes you can light it, and sometimes you can't. It's like you get one try to light it, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Okay, let's say it's like on a windy day, and you kind of have to cup your hand around. You have to figure out the angle. You can still light it.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Yeah, no, on any day, if I wanted to light it, it I could light it if I wanted to, right? But most of the time, I'm not thinking about it, and it'll just boom, pop in my head, and I'll be like, let's do it, let's go, right? And I obviously will never like it. I'll never be like, oh my god, I really want to clean. I'll be like, oh my god, I have to clean. Like, like there is a deadline. It'll just all of a sudden shoot into my head. And for ADHD people, like you said in your book, you said for you, that's your little just nudge. It's just like finding out how you can just kind of start just a tiny bit, like even 10 minutes like of doing your homework, right? Which for me would be like answering five questions, right? Right. And then once you answer those five questions, you're like, why don't I just keep going and let me just finish the whole thing?

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

And then you will. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

That's cool, man. You know, you had another uh you had another example, which I thought was great because so often people uh of my ilk, of my kind, we come up to the first roadblock and then we're screwed. And they're like, oh, screw it, I can't do it. It's not gonna work. Right. And you had a great analogy about uh coming up.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Yeah, yeah. So what I said to that. Let me turn the heater off. Oh, okay. What I said to that, um to what you what you said about how ADHD people come to this roadblock. I heard you say roadblock, and so my little analogy makers in my brain got to working on. Oh, we'll call them Leroy and Troy. Leroy and Troy. Leroy and Troy, the analogy makers. Yeah. Um They have a theme song too. That's that's awesome. I'm so happy for them. Um they got to working on an analogy, and it popped into my head. I was like, well, I don't know, whenever I get to a roadblock or I get to a block, and I'm like, I don't I I can't start this, right? I just need to find a way to get around it, right? And not necessarily get around it. I need to just back up and I need to find a different way to get to it. And so my analogy for that was say you're on, you're going on one big main freeway to get to work, right? And then it turns out there was some like some earthquake or something that split the road and created this massive split that is just impossible to get over, no bridge, and you can't go around it. It's a chasm. It's just, yeah, it's a huge ravine that randomly popped up in the road, and you're like, you know, what do you want me to do? Jump the ravine? I can't just like drive up and just go for it.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

I can't go for it, or I'm gonna quit.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

I would die and I would fall deeper, right, if you just went for it with that block or with that uh, you know, massive crack in this case. So why don't you back up, you know, make a U-turn and go the other way, back through that freeway. Um go back to the start, right? And you may be at the start, but now you can find a new road. Just take a new road or a new freeway, and if you hit a block on that one, just back up. There's infinite more roads. You can always find another road, right? Or another way for for um you know, cleaning or homework, you know. Say I can't start I can't start cleaning the living room. I just I don't know why. I just don't want to start it, I can't do it, right? So why don't I just back up and be like, okay, let me find another way, let me do it for 10 minutes, and then I'll go take a break and watch media.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. I love that because it's it so oftentimes we'll come up to the roadblock and we'll think that means that we failed and therefore we're no good. And with ADHD, there's a lot of that self-loathing of like, well, I guess I suck as a human being.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

And instead of just stopping and being okay with going back and trying a new route. Well, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Yeah, you got you gotta be okay with the fact that sometimes you'll and I know it sounds cheesy, you gotta be okay with the fact that sometimes you'll fail. Cheese ball! I know that's cheese with that sounds something that a fa let something a famous person would say. You gotta be cool with yourself. You gotta be cool with yourself, yeah. You gotta know that every single human being on earth has failed the way that you failed before. Not exactly the way that, but they failed in that sense. Like, you know, it for me it might be, oh, I I didn't clean the living room today. I I didn't get to it, and I I just never could push myself to get to it. You know, for some other person, it might be something huge, like I invested in the wrong company and I didn't make any money, right? But for both of us, we have to back up and be like, well, we did it wrong. We need to figure out another way to get ourselves started again, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

That's awesome, dude. You are very, very, very smart. That's you have smart. You have smartness. Um well, thank you for coming into uh this interview.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Very welcome.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

What are you doing later? Maybe the dishes?

SPEAKER_00 18:52

No.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Maybe cleaning the living room?

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Uh unfortunately. Your beggar? No.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Uh homework?

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Homework, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

How are you participating in this household? I'll tell you what, we'll play a game of magic. Loser does the dishes.

unknown 19:09

No.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

You scared, dude. No, I don't want to do that. No, I don't want to clean the dishes.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

You just gonna call it no? I have the authority to say yes, to just demand it. Magic for the dishes.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

But we get to choose our decks. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Guys, we have an intense game of Magic the Gathering that we're about to play uh for the dishes. And if you saw the sync right now, you'd know that this is not gonna be a fun task. No, it's gonna suck. Guys, thank you for listening to the ADHD Big Brother. This has been a really fun episode with my son Noble. Yeah, yeah. I'll see you next week. Bye.