Always Look For The Why

In this episode, ADHD Parent Coach Melissa Bildner describes childhood ADHD and some of the problems this neurobiological condition can cause when unmanaged. She encourages parents to always look for the why behind their child's behavior.  With empathy and understanding, she discusses how her work as a coach can help families live a more harmonious family life.

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When talking about ADHD and people who have ADHD, I really encourage parents to refer to their kids as a person with ADHD or a person who has ADHD, not ADHDer, which is a phrase that I've heard or an ADHD kid.  because it doesn't need to define them and it's up to them if it defines them. It's not up to us as parents to define them , to define them by their ADHD.

They have so many other amazing qualities and characteristics and intelligences and interests. It's not necessary.











That was Melissa Bildner, a certified ADHD and Executive Function Parent Coach. If you have a child with ADHD, or if you think you have a child with ADHD, then this episode is for you. Melissa's role as a coach is to help parents understand the diagnosis and to offer support . She's able to help the families function better   helping them work together as a team. 

So stick around listeners. Believe me. I can tell you with confidence that Melissa knows what she's talking about. I can say this because I have ADHD. So I know what it feels like. I'm also a special educator and I've had over 20 years of experience. So I can tell you lots of stories about what ADHD looks like and sounds like, and yes, feels like

Melissa is also going to be able to give you some examples of how living with a child with a ADHD can disrupt the family home life and can impact the marital relationship. She's also going to tell you how she can help bring more harmony and happiness to your family. All right, let's get to it, listeners.

 















   

 

Welcome to Chats With Two Dyslexics. I'm your host, Jeremiah I have my co-host Andrea. 

Thank you for coming, Melissa.

Thank you so much for having me. 





  Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to be an ADHD parent coach?

So my journey started about, I could say like 20 years ago when I met my husband, but it really started almost 18 years ago when I had my first child and I noticed that she was different. I noticed right away.

And as soon as we had her evaluated when she was five, which is young, and we got the results, I just really started researching and learning and educating myself and going to conferences. And over the years I learned more and more about ADHD, what it was, how to manage it and ultimately found a coach for myself, a parent coach for myself to help me further understand my own kids.

And through that I became a life coach with a specialty in parenting parents who have kids with ADHD. 

I love being able to now impart my knowledge and strategies and information to other people and help other people succeed with their different kids.

Oh, wow. That's great.   What was the training like to get your  certification? Did you have to go to college or do it online? 

The coaching world is an interesting place.   There's a lot of different people who have certification programs.  I've taken one,  that's purely a life coach.

And with that, you could do anything. Like some people take that coaching certification and become an executive coach, which is like helping people in business . And then I also have specific parent coaching training and there's an organization called the International Coaching Federation and  they are trying to be, and hopefully will be a regulating body.

And so I'm in the process of getting my credential through them, which will then raise my level of training up. So there's lots of places to get training. It's really interesting.



How did you come to find the particular program?

So in my search for a coach for myself, Cindy Goldrich

opened my eyes to all of this stuff and she does coaching training. She's the one who trained me in the ADHD parent coaching. And I am licensed to teach her workshops. So that's part of what I do is I teach parenting workshops.  

  I'm teaching parenting strategies.

I'm teaching about ADHD and executive function skills and what it means to have these things, what it's like to live with it and how to help your kids gain these skills. 

For our listeners who don't know anything about ADHD,  could you just give  an elevator speech, 

  What it is,  what does it look like? What does it sound like? how would a parent even know, like you said, you knew early on,



Something was different.  So how would a parent know? 

Yeah. So let me back up and answer the first part of your question of what it is, right?

So ADHD means attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and side note, there's a big discussion in the ADHD world that it is not a disorder and it is a difference. And some people actually think it's an advantage, so we can have that discussion too. But , it turns out there are three types. There is inattentive, which is one type.

Hyperactive, which is a second type. And then the third type is combined type where you're inattentive and hyperactive. So in 1987, when they redid the Diagnostics Statistical Manual, they took away the term ADD and it's just ADHD type one, two and three. 

 

And we still say ADD because those of us who kind of grew up in the seventies and eighties, really eighties, that's the word we knew.

That's when it started. And, and then we're raising our kids now. Right? 

It's even in songs, "Blame it on my ADD"  

it's kind of  like you have a good voice. It's easier to say ADD than ADHD 

Yeah, it flows better. 



Yeah. But it, I think it's a clearer understanding, right? Inattentive type is the daydreamer.

Is the wallflower is the kid in class. Who's sitting there  hearing Charlie Brown's teacher "wah-wah" "wah-wah" and they're looking out the window and they're not even looking at the beautiful flowers they're thinking about something else. And their brain is working and creating things.

And the teacher's like Jane top tap, tap Jane, come on. Back to earth, we're teaching science.  And then the hyperactive type is the kid that, you know, that's climbing the walls. It's the kid in school. Who's starting fights. It's the kid in school who won't sit still in his seat and it, and is like, I have to go to the bathroom.

I have to go to the bathroom. I have to go to the bathroom.  it's that kid, that's the hyperactive type. And so when it's a boy, it's so much more obvious because boys are so much more physical than girls. Hyperactive girls  often have incessant talking and you're like, oh my God, take a breath.  , It's the girls who  can't stop talking

and the teacher's like, stop talking, stop talking, stop talking. And, and the girls like but but but, but . And so then when you combine them, you have a daydreamer who is  then running around the classroom and it's  a little nutty.  



 



So, so what I do is I help people understand what

this difference is, and it is a real brain difference. It's been proven that it's a neurological disorder. When they do brain scans, the brains look different. And so it's always, and Andrea and I were talking about this for a few minutes before. It is always shocking when there's still practitioners out there who don't believe that this exists because it really does.

And so a large part of what I do is help parents understand what ADHD is  and what's going on with their kids and that they have,  this impulsivity, they can't think before they act or speak. And so like where a parent might think a child is being manipulative to them, they're not. The kid just didn't think about it.

The kid's just focused on  trying to not get in trouble and all of a sudden they're in trouble. And so what I try to help parents understand is let's look beyond that. Let's look at what really is the root cause of your kid impulsively throwing something , Jane throws a shoe at Johnny. Like why? People don't just randomly throw shoes.

What I help parents do is question it, not take it so personally and try to see what skills, what things in their brain are holding them back from that ability,  for Sally to say to Johnny, "Stop! You're in my space. I need you to move out," instead of throwing a shoe. .

It sounds like there might be higher levels of conflict in families where

one or more kids have ADHD. 

There are  but I believe it's because of a lack of understanding.  I believe it's because they're just seeing  the shoe throwing. They're not,  seeing all the stuff underneath, that's really causing so much angst.

And then you have children who just feel so badly about themselves because they know they shouldn't be throwing a shoe and they're throwing it anyway because they can't stop themselves. 

Wow. Yeah, it sounds like parents need to learn how to have perspective taking and empathy, , for  the way that the brain is wired.

And then they're going to also need skills to either be proactive or how to deal with it when it does happen. 

Probably really exhausting cuz being a parent is so hard to begin with.

It's all so hard and right. And we all come to the table with our own issues and our own baggage and  how our parents raised us,  how the teachers treated us, we all come to it.

Even those of us, without ADHD, we come to it with different things.      It's helping parents,  put that aside and say, okay, who is the parent that I wanna be?

And what kind of family life do we wanna have? And I also believe it's not defined by having your typical nuclear family.

It's just, if both parents are happy  then you have happier kids, 

Do you have any funny stories of how ADD shows up?   , if you don't, I have kind of a funny one reflecting upon my own son, growing up.  He and his best friend went to Pumpkin Preschool in Bridgeport, which was right across 

the name of that preschool is so cute.  pumpkin, 

Pumpkin Preschool. And it was right across the street from the Home Depot

on the Fairfield Bridgeport line, where I worked when I was in grad school and they were outside on the playground. And I guess he said to his friend, Hey, my mom works at that Home Depot. And somehow they decided it would be a good idea to climb the fence and come visit me at work. 

Excellent.  Excellent. I love it.

Not even thinking about, uh, we're three and a half years old. How are we gonna get across the street safely to go visit mom? 

No, they don't think about any of that.  But how brilliant is that? Right? So, so what I try to help parents see is the brilliance in that   and how funny that is.

Other parents will go, oh my God. Oh my God, my kid, I can't control him. Right. And so what I do is be like, all right, wait. Let's first. Look at the humor in this, like he's three, is he really gonna do that? 

They probably would have, if they could have scaled the fence. These are the same two boys that tried to send their hamster over the banister with an army parachute.

So they just, oh, I love it. I love it. That's awesome. You didn't need my stories. You have awesome stories. 

They thought it would be fun. I think the hamster was fine. I think it was a really good parachute, but that could have ended badly. 



When you go to a nature center, it's more like a farm than a zoo. Right.

So it's like wooden fences and you turn around and the kid is in the pen with the goats.  

Or bringing home a penguin in his backpack. 

Yeah. You know,  the best is getting a call from school. I can't find your kid. 

Oh yeah. 

And the kid is so smart. The kid is in the bathroom the whole time. Like, why didn't anyone look in the bathroom?

  I lost a kid once I'm not gonna lie full disclosure. He was hiding under the desk.

Yeah. I mean  and you got all these other kids you're you're looking at, and you're like, I don't have time to look for this kid. 

Yep. 

So a lot of these kids also, they do stuff.  You'll say. "Why'd you do it" and they go," I was bored".

Yep. Or they don't 

think.  As a teacher, some of the nightmares I had to deal with, I didn't know, just, you don't give glitter to a kid with ADHD because it's gonna end up in his eyes or her 

eyes. 

And then if you have multiple children with ADHD. 

Yeah, no, I learned that too. As a teacher, I gave some, somebody, a bag of flour. We were doing a project and she somehow exploded the flower all over everyone and all of my students, 

she thought it was so cool. Right?

Yeah. 

They all looked like ghosts. You couldn't see anything, but these little blinking eyes through the flower  so yeah, I learned the hard way that.

With kids with ADHD, you have to be very, very careful because it can be dangerous. I broke my tailbone in fifth grade. I would go to the bathroom, but I wouldn't just go to the bathroom. I would swing from the stalls. 

Well, that's so much, much more fun. 

Right?

And I needed to move.  Recess once a day was not enough for me.



I know, I know. Well, I think one of the,  hardest things for parents to understand is that ADHD is really a symptom of an under stimulated brain. Right? And all people are seeing, are the kids swinging from the bathroom stalls?

They're not, they don't understand that the kid is doing that because their brain is understimulated and they're looking for stimulus. That's why the fidget toys became so popular. Right. And that's why you have to be careful when you're a teacher. If you have a kid that's doodling, you gotta assess is the kid doodling, cuz they're really not paying attention or are they doodling because that's helping them pay attention because that's the fidget.

Oh, I love 

that.

The fidget helps them pay attention. Right. On one of my,   workshops, , I have a slide that says, can't you just sit still and pay attention dot, dot, dot. No, you can't sit still and pay attention. You need to move around. And there's so much irony in that, right? We now have standing desks and we have treadmill desks and we have all these things telling people to exercise all the time.

And, and yet we're not translating that to the kids. 

Yeah, that's a good point. And the only time I've seen those things is at like therapeutic schools. , I don't know if that's making its way. I had a very progressive,  vice principal once who did believe in ADHD. And I remember her coming to me and saying, you know, could you help support some of these kids because you understand it?

Can you take them for movement breaks, you know, every few hours and throw a baseball or let them go on the monkey bars. I even had one student. I took a rolling cart for library books. And I put boxes with very heavy weights that my husband lifted in the box. And then I put a whole bunch of fake mail on the top and I gave the kid a map and their job was to go push the cart up and down the ramps all around the school and deliver fake mail to the teachers.

So they were getting a great, you know, great proprioceptive input, movement, map skills, you know?

Yeah. 

Learning how to knock on the door and say, "Excuse me."

There's so much evidence showing that when you exercise, you stimulate your brain, which makes your brain work.

The understimulated brain needs even more exercise.  I recently read a book. There's a guy named Dr. John Ratey, and he is one of these top guys in the ADHD world,  researching and educating people about it. And his focus has been exercise. So he wrote a book a while ago called Spark, where he makes a whole brain body connection.

And the first section of the book, he talks about this school in Illinois, that basically did this experiment with all the kids.   The coach there, like the head PE teacher got all this fitness equipment and they made exercise and they got heart rate monitors and the whole deal, and they made it part of the program and they have so much evidence showing the success of the kids.

Like the kids that were failing were no longer failing. 

Wow. I wonder how much exercise, 

It's about elevating your heart rate. So that's important. Like if you just casually walk around the track,  you're not gonna get, as much benefit if you do a light jog, for instance. 

Based on my knowledge exercising in the morning before you start your day is the best time to do it because it gets you going. And then once you have the momentum you can keep going.

And you have a background in, exercise physiology, right? 

No, I have a personal training certification.

Okay.

I don't wanna be mistaken for having a degree. I do not. 

Okay. , 

I'm an avid exerciser and I've been working out all my life because it helps me balance my brain.  It's totally therapeutic for me. And now I'm reading all this stuff , and understanding why, and it's just brilliant. My kids happen to have gone to a school where they actually did take a walk around the track every morning, or do a little run to get the kids going.

Because also when you think about these kids, Getting ready for school. And Jeremiah you'll relate to this because it's closer to your life.  Is the,  go, go, go, go, come on, get your shoes, get your bag, eat your breakfast, brush your teeth. Let's go get in the car, get on the bus, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And it's like all this craziness. And then, and then the kids have to go start school.  There's so much value in getting to school and being like, I'm here. Now I have to refocus myself. So the exercise can help you refocus yourself, right. Or sometimes in a religious school of some sort, they might do morning prayers.

It does the same thing because it's meditative and you're sitting there resetting yourself.

I like that. 

Right?  When you talk about a movement break, it's almost like all the kids could benefit because it's a resetting of yourself. And think about , even yourself as an adult, when you take a, like you're focusing on something and you're really working hard on something, and then you take a break, it could be an hour, it could be a day from that project, whatever it is, you come back to that project and you're like, oh my God, I figured it out.

Or I'm able to continue. That break helps you like refocus your brain. So it has a, a kind of a exponential refocusing with people, with kids, with ADHD.

Do you have any strategies,  for parents, do you help them communicate with the school about strategies that their child might need? Or do you let the school  take the lead with that?

It's  a good question and important to talk about school. The number one thing that I share with parents that we forget is that we are the only people in charge of our kids. And it's very hard. Parents like the break of sending their kids to school for  , seven to eight hours a day and think, okay, now I don't have to deal because it's so challenging.

However, the truth is is that when we do that is when we get into trouble because we are in charge of our kids. The stuff that goes on in each of our homes, how each of us and our partners wanna raise our children is unique to us. And while we want them to go to school and get educated, they are still not in charge of our kids.

So that is the first thing I tell parents about working with the school. So you, as the parent are in charge of the kid, you're in charge of the team. So you are the team captain. The teachers are on your team. So they're not adversaries, they're on your team because they're helping you raise your kids, cuz your kids are spending 7 to 8 hours a day there and they are talking to your kids.

We wanna know what are they saying to our kids? Right? Some teachers think that they're telling the kids, all these good things and the kid is coming home saying, this teacher doesn't tell me anything good. My paper is redlined. I have red  marks all over my paper. Where's the good that I did. I just see that I did bad.

Meanwhile, the teacher thinks, well, I'm giving her all these red lines because she's doing great. I want her to correct all this stuff. I want her to learn more, but the kid is saying, I see red marks. I did it wrong. So that's why we have to be so on top of it and be the captain of the team, because that gives us an opportunity to say, Hey teacher, what's going on.

I wanna share with you how my child is interpreting your red marks. The teacher doesn't even know. So it's our job as parents to educate the teachers and help them understand who our kids are, but we can't do that until we know who our kids are. Right. So,  in terms of telling teachers about and the school about ADHD, sometimes the school will say there's something going on with the kid, right?

, But if you've gone separately outside of school to get your kid diagnosed or evaluated, and you want the school to know. I would suggest if you already have a nice relationship with the teacher, then talking to the teacher and saying, look, we got this diagnosis, here's the story, you know, and, and even collaborating with the teacher about how do we move forward?

Cause the teacher might go have an aha moment and might say, oh, you know what I do notice when Johnny's sitting in front of the classroom, he's paying more attention a lot of the teachers do rotate the kids. Right. They change the tasks all the time and stuff so they can see the kids in different positions.

So the teacher might then go, oh, I didn't realize it. Okay. Okay. And then the teacher might suggest, let's go do the PPT .Often the  practitioner where you had your diagnosis will recommend getting   an IEP  or a 5 0 4. So you have that guidance from a psychiatrist or whoever did your diagnosis.

The other thing is, is that you may only want to let the school know if you want special services, like a one-on-one reading class, or like a mandate that your child always sits in front of the classroom.  I find that most of the people that I work with, the school knows. If they have a diagnosis, the school knows. Cuz often by the time the people get , to getting a diagnosis, there's been so many issues in school.

They've had PPTs and they've just had to go down that road. 

I just wanna interrupt real quickly for those of our listeners who haven't listened to any of our other previous special education episodes. A PPT in the state of Connecticut  stands for planning and placement team. And it's a, a meeting where,  decisions are made such as is the child eligible for special education services.

And like you said, there are, legal documents. So the IEP stands for individualized education plan, and it's a legal document that spells out the treatment plan for the student. The same thing is true  of the 5 0 4, ,  that falls under the,  Rehabilitation Act. , and so for example, if a child has diabetes or ADHD, they can have that plan that stipulates unlimited access to the bathroom or their water fountain,  as opposed to the IEP is more, from my understanding,  intellectual things like academic goals, social goals, emotional goals.

That's my understanding too.

I think you're, you are correct.

And it's important to note that a 5 0 4 is about,  equal rights for people with disabilities. So  if a kid,  is hard of hearing that they have a 5 0 4,  I'm familiar with a cochlear implant and the teacher has to wear a thing around their neck so that the student can hear them better.

Right. So that can fall under a 5 0 4 that all the teachers that, that student has, has to wear this thing around their neck. So the student can hear them.

Mm-hmm .

Yeah. So I know we're throwing around a lot of acronyms, 

which can be confusing for people 

, who are new to this whole world of, 

, special education, which, 

ADHD may or may not fall under, like you said, if it has caused, you know, problems with the student's ability to access, , I think it's two or more areas of life functioning, then they would qualify.

So if, like you said, if they were getting into fights a lot and it was impacting their social, emotional life, or if they were having difficulty making and keeping friends, these are skills that the student is going to need to learn because it's interfering with their ability to function, , within the school setting.

And very often the schools, , have social skills groups or counseling or services that are available, where these things can be explicitly taught and the student can be supported in a way that  they might need, or they might need their assignments reduced,  or extra time. There's all kinds of things that can be done, , by the school to support these students.

Which you and I know Jeremiah having,  worked at the same school 

I think it's important to note that, private schools do not have to follow IEPs. They have to follow,  5 0 4 S because that's a federal law,

that's under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Yes. I believe they have to follow that. My experience has been,  and I guess I wouldn't suggest that anyone with ADHD go to a school that's not interested in seeing the IEP.  So my experience has been that schools are amenable to looking at IEPs and trying to do what they can. And some private schools, it happens automatically because like, if a parent has a kid in a school with 25 kids in a classroom and they have the financial ability to go to a private school.

Now, all of a sudden that's gonna be cut in half. So they're already, , virtually in front of the classroom, in front of the teacher anyway, cuz it's such a smaller classroom and sometimes you'll have two teachers in the classroom with 12 kids, stuff like that in private schools. 

Okay. 

So it's just important to note.

Could you tell us a little bit about how coaching is different from therapy? 

Yes.  I love talking about that. It's not uncommon to have a therapist and a coach at the same time.

It can be really confusing



because coaches work in a similar model to therapists. It's one on one it's highly confidential. It can also be group and therapists do group also.   As an ADHD parent coach, I provide education and information about ADHD in parenting and strategies.  We don't

analyze, we don't  say, ,  why are you doing that? And let's fix that. It's more about what you want to,  accomplish and then how can you get there? So, whereas like a client might vent to me similar to how they're venting to a therapist, but my response is  going to be different.

I'm gonna say, okay, what out of that venting is actionable? How are we going to put strategies against that so that you can move forward? And the thought that the individual puts to it is up to them. 



And it's important to note.  You asked the question earlier, Jeremiah, about, did I go to college for this? So, because coaching is like this kind of weird field right now, there's no regulating body. So we are not required to follow the HIPAA laws. 



Mm-hmm 

Is that the privacy laws?

Right.

For health protected information?

Right.

That therapists are required to follow. A psychologist, even I think a social worker is required to follow them a licensed social worker.  But because I'm involved with this International Coaching Federation to stay involved with them, I follow a code of ethics that somewhat mimics HIPAA. So I think it's important for people to note when they're looking for a coach that they find somebody like that.

Also part of my code of ethics are, , If I have someone this actually happened to me. So my husband is in a professional group and his,  colleague was interested in talking to me. So they took a workshop, which was fine,  the couple, but I'm not gonna coach them because there's a conflict of interest because there's a socialization piece with his relationship with the, this couple and stuff like that.

Right. So it's stuff like that, that I'm that as a coach, I'm very careful about that's similar to a therapist and, and a medical professional. 

Okay. That makes sense. That's comforting to know. 

Well, and it's important when we're talking about parenting too, because we really are talking 

about like the most intimate thing in our lives is our kids.

Yeah.

And yeah. And we're talking about,

  Things about them that you wouldn't tell other people because there's still so much stigma about ADHD. And that's part of the reason I do this too, because I want to remove the stigma. I want people to know they're not alone and that, 

We're talking about this intimate topic and that it's important that the clients feel safe and it's important. They can say things like I hate my kids. Right? People say that. 

As a coach, I'm able to help them parse that out. Right. Well, you don't really hate your kids. You don't understand them and you wanna break. I recently wrote a blog post about camp, cuz to me, camp is for the parents because you get a break and no one's calling you saying, you know, the homework didn't get turned in.

They got an F on a test. They got in a  fight in the playground. You're not getting any of that at a camp. So you really get a break and that's often what the parents need. So as a coach, I often sometimes am, , for lack of a better term, the voice of reason.  right. I can give the objective.  I'm an objective observer and knowledge provider.

That makes sense. I wanna go back earlier. I remember you said  exercise is important  for everybody, especially for people with ADHD. So do you believe in medication? And if you do, what age should parents have their child start it?

Okay. So medication is the tricky question. It's a very sensitive issue.  And it goes back to people not believing that ADHD exists and also people not understanding ADHD. So the question you asked was,  what was the first part again?

I just wanna make sure I address your question.

I think the first part was like, should parents  look to medication?  And then I said , what age should they start at?

Okay. So  I'm not going to answer. Should parents look to medication?

Okay.

But I am going to say that it's very important that parents educate themselves about medication, just like learning about ADHD.

So once you learn about ADHD and understand what it is and how it's impacting and affecting your child, it's easier then to learn about treatments. And there's a lot of treatments out there. The,  most evidence based treatment is medication. And , I fully believe like with everything in life, you can't make a decision about whether or not you should medicate unless you know, the good, the bad and the ugly.

You need to know what it means to medicate. You also need to, find the right doctors. Doctors who know about ADHD, doctors who know about medicine. I mean, people don't even know if there's new ADHD medicine coming out, like almost daily, like it's coming out so quickly. I can't even believe it.  It's important to understand what it means to take medicine and what it means to not take medicine.

So what I help parents do is I guide them on the research because there's lots of information out there and it's important to get the true and valid evidence about medication 

mm-hmm .

Does that help answer your question?  

That does help. Um, do you think, it should just be the parents' decision?

What if this child kind of like, I don't really like taking it should their opinion kind of matter. I feel like it kind of does 

but everybody's different. 

I think the child actually absolutely has to be involved and

okay. 

The child, like if you start and there is no specific age, you ask that question.

If the parents choose medication and the child is young, it's harder to know if, to know what's going on. Cuz they don't  always have the ability to communicate correctly. Right. They don't know. And it's also important as a parent that if your child says I'm done, I don't wanna medicate.

That the child also needs to be educated. And if you have a good doctor, the doctor is going to be able to parse through that also and say, well, what was happening? Why does Johnny not want the medicine anymore? And let's see, maybe there's a different medicine or a different avenue to go down. So, and that's kind of my overall philosophy, how I work with parents altogether, which is always look for the why.

Jeremiah, can I respond to your question too? From my perspective? 

Oh yeah. 

  I am a big believer of ADHD medications, and I'm saying that just as somebody that has taken them, , however, I'm also a very big believer in,   treating the whole person. And so one of the books that I've read recently,  I really wanna give a plug for this book.

It's called finally focused by James Greenblatt. And he is an MD. , he's had 30 years of experience as a child psychiatrist and, , he's an integrative psychiatrist. Who's treated thousands of children and adolescents with ADHD.  A lot of people that have certain symptoms, some of those symptoms can be,  reduced with certain supplements.

 

That is my plug is that parents need to research.

They need to educate themselves. And,  depending on my relationship with the person, I will tell them whether or not I, I think they should go that route if they ask me. But I try not to give my opinion. I, I just think it's so important because there are so many factors to your point, Andrea, that influence how your body reacts to medication and,   beliefs about medication.

And not only that, but you're often dealing with the grandparents and how they feel and what's their reaction. And it, it, you know, and there's a lot of myths out there. I think one of the biggest myths and I wanna bring this up so we can dispel it a little bit is,  that if my child takes ADHD medication, they're gonna become a drug addict.

Oh,

that's a huge myth. It's actually the opposite. They are more likely to become a drug addict if they don't take ADHD medicine. It doesn't mean they will. They're just  statistically, more likely because what's happening. And I see Jeremiah making a curious face  what's more likely is that by not providing the ADHD   prescription medicine, the child may seek out the relief that the stimulant medicine provides.





 



Children absolutely need to be involved and they need to be involved at any age.

So if you start medicating your child, when they're five, then you need to tell your child in five year old language, we want you to take this medicine. You know  how you just run around the classroom in kindergarten. And you're just doing circles around the teacher's desk and you can't stop yourself.

And the child will often say, I can't stop myself. And you can say, let's try this medicine and see if you can stop yourself. from running around the teacher's desk. Wouldn't you like to do that? Like this kid is at kindergarten, right? They're always getting in trouble. I don't wanna be getting in trouble when I'm  5.

So it's important to involve the kid all along. And I see posts on Facebook and stuff. People are like asking, when do I tell my kid? And I think you tell your kid immediately. Your brain is different. Your brain is awesome.  

Yeah, these kids have the ability to think about things outside of the box.

Okay, well, check out Jessica McCabe, her her program is called How To ADHD. And, she also has a Ted Talk and she has a great segment in her Ted talk where she says she  ended up in this YouTube thing by accident.

And she says  she was  down and out and looking, trying to figure out what to do with her life. And,  everyone told her to think outside the box. And she said, what she realized was, was that people with ADHD don't even know there's a box  and I love that. 

That's funny. 

So when you think about that, if you don't know, there's a box, think about how freeing that could be.

, it can be overwhelming, but it also can be freeing. If you don't have the confines of the box, then you really have this ability to, to think about things that in ways that other people don't.

Yeah. Which puts you in a whole different place.  so important to tell our kids that.

And also it's important to tell our kids that sitting in school for seven hours a day is not the only way to learn

I'm a special ed teacher and I have my own business now.  I have a lot of students, , that are homeschooled. And I love working with these kids.

I have one guy he can actually build engines on cars.  He's absolutely brilliant, . I can't picture him sitting in a classroom all day. I think that would, would totally put out the spark in him.  He's got some mad skills and that's not something that they address in schools.

Well, they don't encourage it. You have to be in the factory.

Exactly.

It's an assembly line. 



Tell us about a common family conflict.

We talked little earlier about rewards and punishments. That's why people like rewards and punishments, cuz they feel like it's a quick fix.



But if you're trying to incentivize your child to brush their teeth and you say, if you brush your teeth, you get a quarter. If you don't brush your teeth, then you lose your phone and the kids not brushing their teeth , the parent  doesn't know what to do with themselves. And there's yelling   because they're not looking past, why aren't they brushing their teeth?

Is it a sensory thing? Why, what is it? 

So my feeling about teeth brushing with kids with ADHD is that personal hygiene in general,  is an executive function issue. So I'm not going to the dentist right now. I don't need to brush my teeth and  it's not understanding  short-term pain for long-term gain.

So it's, that's the time management piece, the executive function, understanding time, right? Time. This is a thing I say a lot when I work with people and in my workshops, but time is now and not now. 

Yes  



Self care is about executive function skills. Self care is about self awareness.  So if you have limited self-awareness and it could be, oh, my kid always loves to take a shower, but they won't brush their teeth. Like it's so uneven. 

How would you address something like that? Does it depend on the individual kid ?

So I use a method called collaborative problem solving that was developed by two  psychiatrists.

I think they're psychiatrists,  Ross green and Stuart Avalon. More people know Ross Green. He wrote The Explosive Child, which true confessions I've never read. Uh  um, but they split.  They're both practicing it, but they kind of do it a little differently.

You can use that to have your discussion with your child. And it's a discussion it's collaborative. It's being together with them to empower them and have empathy for them. I know at nine o'clock at night, you don't wanna brush your teeth. You're tired. You're done. You're  watching a show.

You're playing your Rubik's cube. You're reading a book. You're involved in something else and you're not on medicine anymore. And you know, I know. It's hard. It's hard to take those two minutes and brush your teeth. And give your kid the understanding that you agree or not agree. You just know it's hard, you know?

And so that opens doors for them to be like, well, I don't wanna brush my teeth. I don't understand why I have to brush my teeth. Or , now you find out, I don't like my toothbrush. Well, you never had this conversation with the kid before, so you didn't know. Well, why don't you like your toothbrush?

Well, because I'm a boy and I don't like, purple, why do I have a purple toothbrush? Okay. You could be something like that. So it's opening doors to have these conversations with them. So that that's one piece of it. And then the other piece of it is letting them know your concern about why it's so important that they brush their teeth, why it's so important to you as a parent, that they brush their teeth.

And so then you're starting to have the conversation about self-care and, and leads into self-awareness. But once they trust you and know that you empathize with them, it makes it easier to express your concern. And they know they're not in trouble. Right. These are kids who are used to being in trouble.

So they might just say things. They might say things impulsively because they know if I say that I'm not gonna get in trouble. 

. 



,  One of the keys of, of what I coach parents on is not giving their child the solution,

ah

, empowering them to come up with, because if you come up with it yourself, I see Jeremiah smiling, cuz he gets this.

Yeah.

If you come up with it yourself, you are more likely to do it. 

Yes. 

Right. If someone tells you to do it, clean up your room, you're like "Uggg" cleaning up my room.  So then as someone with ADHD, when they have a messy room, they stop seeing the mess. The mess is not there. So that's also, that's part of self-awareness.

So that's also why it's important that us as parents have these conversations with our kids, where we give them the why. Right. And it's not to say that there aren't times grandma's coming over, you have to clean your room. So that might not be a time for this collaboration, right? So this might be a time when parent mom goes into Johnny's room and says, come on, Johnny, we're gonna do it together and says, Johnny, you pick up the Legos.

I'll put away the clothes and then grandma will be happy. And we can talk about this more later. Right. So it's not, there's not always that moment. Or you get home late from, you know, you went to a play or something or movie and you get home late. That's not the time to have the conversation about why you're not brushing your teeth.

And so, so maybe you just let it go. So this is what, what I coach parents on is understanding. Like it's a process, it's not a quick fix and we have to choose.  We also can't do it all the same time. Right. You can't help them fix their messy room and brush their teeth at the same time. It's too much.

Yeah. That would be hard for even an adult to, I mean, they say not to change too many behaviors at once. It's just too difficult. You're gonna fail you. Can't quit drinking, smoking and coffee and sugar all the same day. 

Oh, right.  right. And when you're working with a coach because you wanna stop the yelling, you wanna stop the screaming, you wanna stop punishing your kid.

It's a process. It's not instant. And also as parents, we're human also. And you know, sometimes you just need to go into the bathroom and stop your feet and lock the door and scream without anyone and, and get the, the stress out, cuz it's stressful to you. And you have to be, be able to figure out brushing off the he's not manipulating me.

Right? He's not doing it to me. He's doing it because he can't communicate.



A lot of what I teach parents is that  it's the, can't not the won't that they're not trying to not do it. And so then we get into, when we talk about the definition of ADHD, we talk about executive function skills and there's, I think, eight that we specific core executive function skills that we talk about.

And so I teach parents what these executive function skills are. And then what you do in this style of parenting is you're looking at what skill is missing, lagging, lacking   that we need to teach so that they are start to regularly brush their teeth. Right? So in that example, so this skill, I think mostly is self-awareness. Could be time management. Could be that by the time you say to your kid, it's time for bed, they didn't brush their teeth because they ran out of time.

So you have to look at it. What is it? And then you can start to say, okay, how are we gonna teach our kid time management? How are we gonna teach our kid self-awareness? And that, it's also important to understand that our kids want to take care of themselves. Nobody wants cavities. 

Once we understand that then also as parents, it helps us back down too. Cuz then we're looking at our kids in a different light. Then we're looking at our kids as, as  people with developing brains who don't know how to do things.  Cuz you're thinking boy, my 12 year old knows how to brush teeth.

I've taught him how to brush his teeth. But that's not the issue. That's not what he doesn't know how to do. 

Good point.

Yeah. 

I love the teeth brushing example because sometimes when people find out about it, I had someone go, wait, what? You mean that's a thing with ADHD? My kid's not the only one not brushing his teeth?

I'm like your kid is not the only one, not brushing his teeth.

Another strategy is I always kept a toothbrush and deodorant in my desk at work ? Cause you're gonna forget. 

But you figured that out on your own, no one told you to do that. 

Yeah. You're right.

Right. So we have to remember that. .   Sometimes they won't come up with the solution.

So once we have this open dialogue with them, then we're able to say, we have a different way of talking to them. And we're not saying you should do this, or I want you to do this, cuz this is how I do it. 

Mm-hmm  

right. We still might want them to do it this way because that's how we do it, but we're gonna communicate it differently.

So we're gonna say, I have an idea. Would you mind if I gave you an idea? Can I tell you an idea about how to get your teeth brushed? And then they can say, okay. So if you can do it in a nonjudgmental way, then   they become more open to it. They might not do it right away. Or they might take your idea and change it a little bit and still do it.

But at least they're doing it.

Do it on the bus.  I'm gonna spit it in my sports bottle. 

I know, you know, true confessions. I have deodorant, not for me in my car.

um, well, 









Something Jeremiah and I wanted to ask you was, are there other coexisting conditions? ? And if so, how do you handle that?

Do you refer the parents to other support personnel in addition to your services? 

So yes, there are several coexisting. They call them comorbid, issues. Some of the most common are dyslexia, anxiety, depression,  dyscalculia, which is kind of like math dyslexia. 

Mm-hmm  

That's actually not a real term in the diagnostic statistical manual.

Like a practitioner would say you have a math learning disability, which is not really specific. So they're still getting there on that one.

I notice handwriting is really poor in a lot of my students with, ADHD.

Yeah.  Right. Motor skills are a challenge that can be attributed to executive function skills.

Okay.

But it also can be attributed to dysgraphia. Right. Which I think is a writing disability, um, sleep disorders. There's all kinds of stuff. So  then to answer the second part of your question, absolutely. I will send clients to any practitioner that I think would help them. And also if they feel like their practitioner, like say they come to me and they already have the diagnosis, sometimes I get people who are in the process of the diagnosis, you know, , or they suspect their kid has ADHD.

Often people come to, my workshops are suspecting their kid has ADHD, but they haven't had diagnosis yet. , If they suspect the practitioner missed something, then  I'll suggest going to another practitioner.  I do try to refer people. Sometimes the kids need need therapy and they wanna go to play therapy or they wanna go to occupational therapy for the motor skills,   stuff like that.

For dyslexia, as you know, Andrea, cuz you specialize in this, you need to specialized tutor because they're not teaching it in school. 

I try to help guide my client to getting the right help that they need cuz   I know my limitations and I want my limitations. I don't wanna be an expert in everything. I don't think that's helpful. I don't think that's helpful.

Exactly. 

You mentioned that you do workshops . Where can parents find your workshops? Are they online or in person? 

I've been doing a bunch online. But they can find information about my workshops on my website@livebettertraining.com.  I do a couple free workshops and a few paid ones.  This fall, I have a few scheduled in person already in Stamford.

I don't have 'em scheduled yet, but I'm supposed to do some with Westport, Continuing Ed. I think those are gonna be all online. 

Okay.

So I do both. 

So parents would just go to your website and they would be able to access your schedule so they could participate? 

Yes, yes. And they can also book a 30 minute free consultation with me.

Oh, great. 

So I, I give that 30 minutes so that, , whether or not you've been to one of my workshops. It's an opportunity to see if we're a good match. Because back to the conversation before about  therapy versus coaching, you still have to have a good match, cuz you're one on one and you wanna feel comfortable with the person that you're working with.

So that 30 minutes gives us a chance. And that's on Zoom. I do all my one on one appointments virtually. 

Okay. Me too. That's how I do it. 

Yeah.

Mm-hmm  

, I should mention my website too. It's wordbiz llc.com. Just in case we have any listeners who do have a child with both,  ADHD and dyslexia diagnosis.

So Melissa can help you with the parent coaching part and I can help you, with the tutoring. 

Absolutely. 

Where else can our listeners find you you're on LinkedIn? 

I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook and I just started Instagram. 

Yay.

Yeah. 

We're learning how to do that too.

I'm working with someone that's helping me and she's really encouraging me to do videos. So look out!

Oh yeah.





, So you also asked me, I know you didn't like verbally ask me, but you asked me for some book recommendations and resources.   I like to tell people about Taking Charge of ADHD by Dr.

Russell Barkley. That to me is the number one book that every parent should read, who thinks that either they themselves or their children, one of their children or multiple children have ADHD. It tells you the real deal. Dr. Barkley  he's been groundbreaking in his research and he's dedicated his entire life to this, to ADHD and learning about it and understanding what it is.

This book is, I think, is a game changer when you start learning about ADHD.



. 



 







Yep. Well, I really appreciate your time.  Thank you so much for  sharing your gifts, with our listeners. I'm hoping that you can reach some people and give them some relief. 

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And I'm so glad we met. 

Me too. 

Yes. 

It was great meeting you too

Jeremiah 

mm-hmm   same to  📍 you.  

Okay listeners. Now, you know how to connect with Melissa to get some valuable ADHD knowledge, nurturing and solutions. So what do you think? Leave your thoughts, questions, and funny stories on  our voicemail  to join our conversation. We'd love to feature your insights on a future episode. You can find our voicemail, email, show notes and transcripts @www.Chatswith2dyslexics.com.

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