Ep 217: Reducing Screens & Ending Homework Battles: The Parenting Playbook (Part 2) — with Mike McLeod

This is Part 2 of Dr. Jessica Hochman’s conversation with Mike McLeod, founder of Grow Now ADHD — and it’s packed with practical strategies.

We talk about why internet-connected screens can be especially dysregulating for kids with ADHD, how to recognize when screen use is crossing into addiction, and what “authoritative parenting” looks like when you’re setting limits that kids will absolutely push back on.

In this episode, part 2, we cover:

• Which types of screen time are most harmful (and why TV is different)
• The biggest myths parents tell themselves about gaming and social connection
• How to set boundaries without negotiating constantly
• Getting kids out of the house and back into real-world experiences
• Chores and non-preferred tasks: why verbal prompting backfires
• School accommodations that help — vs “accommodations” that set kids up to struggle later
• What the “ideal school” could look like (and why many kids would love it)

About Mike McLeod:
 Mike McLeod is the founder of Grow Now ADHD. He has ADHD himself and began his career as a speech and language pathologist. He developed the Grow Now Internal Skills Model and provides executive functioning coaching and fully personalized parent training for families. Grow Now has expanded to multiple U.S. locations and serves families virtually worldwide. Mike also provides professional development training for educators and shares that his Executive Functioning Playbook books are scheduled for release in January (available for order now!).

Website: grownowadhd.com

Your Child is Normal is the trusted podcast for parents, pediatricians, and child health experts who want smart, nuanced conversations about raising healthy, resilient kids. Hosted by Dr. Jessica Hochman — a board-certified practicing pediatrician — the show combines evidence-based medicine, expert interviews, and real-world parenting advice to help listeners navigate everything from sleep struggles to mental health, nutrition, screen time, and more.

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YouTube channel: Ask Dr Jessica

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Hi everyone. I am Dr Jessica Hochman, and welcome back to your child as normal. I hope you've all had a really relaxing winter break with your families. Now, today's episode feels especially fitting for the your child as normal theme. There are many kids out there who struggle with school and homework, and for many families parenting children with ADHD especially can feel exhausting and confusing. So I'm really excited to introduce to you Mike McLeod, founder of grownow. ADHD. Mike has built a coaching model focused on the internal skills that drive executive function. And he also has two books that are being released this month, the executive functioning playbook for parents and teachers and a companion workbook. So in this episode, we zoom out and we talk about the real goal, and I'll give you a hint, it's not about your child getting straight A's Mike explains why executive function is one of the strongest predictors of long term success, and why so many well intentioned families end up stuck in daily homework battles. I know this perspective will be helpful for a lot of families, so let's get into it. So now I'd like to ask you about some potential solutions. So I'm convinced I would love to have less screens in my life. I'd love to get my kids outdoors more. What is the first step that you would tell parents in terms of decreasing screen time at home? So number one is you need to be an authoritative parent. So you're going to need to fully eliminate the unnecessary screens. You're probably going to need to replace that smartphone with a dumb phone or a flip phone, and if they're overusing or going nuts over their Xbox PlayStation switch or iPad, you need to get rid of those things. It's adding nothing to your life. But really, what your child needs is varied experiences outside of the home. Their entire life can't be wake up, go to school, come home, stay home, where it's just them listening to their teacher and them listening to you. You know, all of us growing up, we had coaches and counselors and teachers and adults and we had an identity outside of our house. Kids today don't have that. They just go home and they raise hell in their house, so you need to immediately figure out how to increase consequences at school. If your child's late to school, there has to be a consequence at school. They're not getting their homework done, there needs to be a consequence at school. Increase consequences. We've gotten too caught up in accommodations, and let's overly accommodate this child so they never gain a skill. Dr Russell Barkley has a great quote, If you want to see an ADHD child fail, put them in an environment with no consequences, and we've pretty much done that. We've removed all consequences and detention from school. They come home, and regardless of what they did at school, they're able to fry their mind in the virtual world for hours and hours and hours. So they live in this non consequence world where there's no repercussions for their actions. When kids need that, kids need consequences. They have to learn conditional. So get your kid in a club, a sport, an activity, make it mandatory, an expectation, not a choice, let the school know they are not to get on the bus. If you pick your kid up, you don't pick them up. That is mandatory. They have to be involved in something. Doesn't have to be sports and athletics. It has to be a club activity, something where they're staying at the school building as long as possible. They're getting their homework done in a different location. Parents need to do less. Contact other parents in your community, utilize your parent Facebook page or your neighborhood School District Facebook page and just write, hey, I'm sick and tired of the screens. I'm sick and tired of the homework fight. I'm sick and tired of my kid never going outside, who's with me, who also feels these issues. And you'll probably get 50 different comments to that post, and you can get a nice community going of hey, every Monday, at six o'clock, let's meet at this playground. Every Tuesday, everyone can come to my house. Every Wednesday, they go to your house, and you just continually flip flop and make sure your child is having a real childhood. Okay, so an important point that I'm hearing from you is parents need to be better at saying no to their kids. 100% You're right. I think so many of us parents were afraid that our kids are gonna they're gonna fight back, they're gonna get upset with us. They're gonna supposed to do those things. They're supposed to like, that's what kids are supposed to do. Like, if your kid isn't fighting back and tantruming, you're doing something wrong, and you're being a permissive parent. You're over indulging them to avoid conflict. If your kid is calm and happy and cool and chill all the time, that's a sign that you're being too permissive. Your kid needs to complain and whine and do all those things, because that shows you are pushing them out of their comfort zone, and you're constantly sending them the message I believe in you. You can do these things if you totally succumb to every complaint, every sympathy seeking behavior, every manipulation seeking behavior, and just continually accommodate them and save them from struggle. You're sending your kid the message I don't believe in you. You can't handle this. You always need my help. So Mike, I want your permission if, let's say, the TV. On the house, and I'm ready to turn the TV off, and my kids say to me, no, I just want five more minutes. Just five more minutes till the show is over. Can't you just give me five more minutes? I can just turn it off? Right? You turn it off. You you put the remote in your pocket, put it somewhere super high where your kid can't reach it, and you walk away. And you say nothing. You don't engage with that nonsense whatsoever. If they're going to complain and whine and act five years younger than their actual age, you're going to show them that I can't engage with you when you act like that. I turn the TV off. When I turn the TV off, and there's going to be no negotiating, no arguing. This is a boundary, and I'm sticking to it by choosing not to engage with you so you never have to explain to your child why you're turning the TV off or why you're making them join a club sport activity. You don't need their buy in. You don't need their motivation. Every day, I talk to parents, and they're always like, how do I just convince him to do executive functioning coaching? How do I convince him to do a sport I'm like, first of all, stop. Get out of the mindset. You have to convince your kid to do things. You're the parent. Who's the parent here. There's no convincing. The best is when I talk to a parent about removing screens and they say, Hey, can you just send me some research that I can show him like your kid wants to see that like they, like they. It could literally be the most damning research ever that can say you will die if you're on screens, and they're going to say, I don't care. I want my screens. They're not going to care at all. Parents are just trying to find the path of least resistance. There's no such thing as the path of least resistance when it comes to parenting. If we really think about this deep down, we know this is true. We know what's better for them in the future, in the moment, it may be simpler to acquiesce and to do what they say, but that's not the kind of adults that we want to raise a kid that just watches TV all day long, isn't interesting, doesn't do interesting things that's not healthy for them. And we know how much and how much of our youth is that? How much? How much of our youth walks around in Minecraft shirts, Minecraft backpacks, and can only converse in memes and can only, you know, and only can make ridiculous jokes and has their face just like down towards their phone, 24 hours a day. And that's really, really sad. And when you have someone that you know, their only talent, their only interest, the only thing that stimulates their brain is a screen, then their grades are completely meaningless. And that's the big heartbreak of being a parent today is, you know, parents are spending 1000s of dollars and 1000s of hours on therapies and counseling and tutors and advocates so that they can be successful at school, but the screen addiction and their varied experiences are never being taken care of. So I've worked with hundreds of families that spent so much money on coaching, training, counseling, therapy, advocates, tutoring, then they graduate, and they're still addicted to screens. They graduate 18 years old. The only thing that gives them Dopamine is a screen, not socialization, not exercise, not a sport, a club, music, art, activities, things like that. If you send a screen addicted kid to college, their grades are meaningless. And also, to be honest, I think if a kid spends their entire childhood on screens focused on doing homework, thinking about school, talking about school, they're boring adults. They're not that interesting. 100% Yeah, you're using the term boring, and in reality, it's, number one, they're unemployable, and number two, they're incredibly not socially desirable. Why would someone want to spend their free time with them when they can't hold a conversation? I think it's so true, this idea that you learn by doing experiences. I was just reading actually Pinocchio, and I found that story so interesting and so applicable to today, because the story is, he's a he's a little boy. He is a good boy at heart, but he has a tendency to get into trouble, and he's constantly getting into trouble, but whenever he gets into trouble, he learns from that experience, and this pattern continues. And then by the end of the book, though, he's brave and he helps his dad, Giuseppe. Giuseppe, yeah, Giuseppe is trapped in a whale, and he's brave, and he saves his dad, and then he turns into a real life boy. And I just thought there's so many lessons to be learned from that story. Yes, he got into trouble. Yes, he was out of his house. Yes, he was getting into mischief. But he lived through experiences, and by the end, he became a brave, mature, experienced young man, yeah, yeah. And that's a great fable, and that's exactly it, you know, at the end of the day, you want to be able to be a storyteller. You know, if too many kids are graduating high school and looking back at their entire childhood and adolescence, and their greatest accomplishment is a fortnight victory or something they built in Minecraft, or hitting their streak on Snapchat, and they're not having real experiences. And if that's not happening, then, then. Said that's a very, very sad thing, and the parents need to, need to take a look back and realize, hey, I should have been more authoritative. And there's hundreds of 1000s of parents in today's world at this time when there's never been a harder time to be a parent, because these massive corporations realized we're going to make most of our money off of our kids, especially our neurodiverse kids, who can't regulate their time spent on these devices. You know, there's enough parents now to tell the parents of today with younger kids, hey, please wait until they're 18 to give them a phone. Please don't fall for the traps of big tech and their marketing. All the information is there. It's just every single individual parent is either going to read it and accept it or turn a blind eye towards it. And I really appreciated the point that you made that parenting feels so hard today because we have our kids in our house all the time, and if only we would encourage them to go outside more, it would be a lot easier for everybody. That is the number one thing leading to parenting burnout. It is not normal for your kid to be home so much. When your kid is in their room, in the kitchen, in the basement, in the living room, they are constantly under your microscope. You hear them, you see them. It's like having a roommate that you don't control that has no skills and is constantly making a mess and leaving a mess for you. That's pretty much exactly what's happening. If your kid is home all the time, you're probably burnt out, frustrated and annoyed. And you look back on your childhood, you were out a lot. You were out doing things, you were at other kids' houses, you were at the park, you were at the playground. If your kid's home all the time, you're probably feeling the stress. That analogy is so true. I'm thinking back to when I was in medical school. I had a roommate who never, ever left our apartment. She was home all the time, and it definitely got on my nerves. And I remember thinking, gosh, if only I could come home and she wouldn't be there one of these afternoons. That would be so great. And you're right, it's just like our kids now. They're always home, always home, always home, always sitting there. And that is a huge problem, and it's leading to a lot of parental stress, and it's parenting burnout. And parenting burnout is a very serious, scary thing in today's world, and that right there is one of the main causes. So what do you suggest to parents who are listening and they're thinking, this is my child, they're home too much. I want to get them out and playing outside. Should they just start by going to the neighbor's house and knocking on the door. Or, you know, what do you recommend? Well, the number one thing is, most parents are a part of their neighborhood Facebook page, their school district Facebook page. Get on there. You can do an anonymous post if you want to, and just get on there and write, hey, we live in this neighborhood. Really tired of the screens, the video games, the way school is going with the laptops. Who's with me, who's willing to get rid of screens at the same time, who's willing to start doing more social play, get the kids outside on bikes playing. We can take turns watching them. Take turns having them at each other's houses, whatever, communicate with your neighborhood. You know that's another thing is, not only are kids inside all the time, but so are the parents. And we don't know our neighbors and have relationships with our neighbors like we used to, where we would trust them to watch our kids for us. So that's a really huge thing. So communicate with your neighborhood, start to understand your community and find ways to get other kids outside. That's one of the most important things. And you know, if you're listening to this and you realize that's my kid, get parent training. Get fully personalized parent training as soon as possible. That's exactly what we do at grow now. Go to grow now adhd.com and fill out the forms and get some parent training. It's meant to be a very short, productive process, not a long term thing where your kids in therapy for years and years and years with no progress. This is all about empowering you as the parent, so you have the skills and no therapist, counselor or coach is needed, because you know what to do. It's so true. We've gone on this hamster wheel now where kids are going from school to feeling frustrated, to homework to worksheets to conflict at home, to screens to sleep to waking up, to doing everything all over again. And I do think we all know their childhoods could be so much richer, so much better, 100% now question for you about chores, because this is something that I struggle with with my kids at home. When you talk about getting your kids to do non preferred tasks, do you have any strategies for parents to implement at home? So what you want to do is you want to step back from verbal prompting. So especially if they have ADHD, language makes dysregulation worse. So if you say to your child, go empty the garbage, you're giving them two choices. They can go empty the garbage and hear a quick Good job, or they can say no and have you keep prompting them for the next three hours, they are going to choose the more prompting, because that keeps the focus on them, the attention on them, the stimulation and conflict on them. So verbal prompts give kids a 5050 shot, and they're always going to choose the path of least resistance, with more negative attention and conflict. So replace verbal with visual. Get a picture of them taking the track. Out, present them that visual, put it in a certain place. Whatever they see it, they know what to do without you saying a word. And really make these things an expectation and not a choice. You need to do these chores to be a member of this family. If you don't do for me, I don't do for you. So if you don't do your chores, you don't get our Wi Fi. You don't get to watch any TV. We talked about how TV is okay. You don't get to watch TV. I'm not going to buy your favorite snacks when we go. I'm not going to bring you to your favorite fast food place. I'm not going to do your laundry for you. All of the things that you do for your child stops until they do for you. So we really have to parent. Yeah, yeah. You got to be a real parent. Yeah. Stop being your kid's friend. Your child is not your partner in parenting. And that's one of the biggest things that too many parents allow, is their kid to have all the authority, and they have none. I also think when you do contribute to the household and you do do chores, you feel good about yourself at the end of the day, you don't feel good about being a taker all the time. You want to give back. It's it feels good to serve your family, correct? And there's literally hundreds of years of research to back that up. Now, when it comes to schools, that's the other sticky point that I talk to families about. They get into battles where the teachers want more from the kids. They point out that their kid has ADHD, and they bring it up to the families that medication may be something worth considering, that the parents should do more. How do you recommend parents have these kind of conversations with their schools? Well, like I said earlier, it's not about accommodating and letting your kid turn things in late with no points off, because that's going to make things worse. It's about increasing consequences. So it's a lot of misinformation out there about over accommodate because of their anxiety, when in reality, it's increase the consequences. That's what they need. And you need to look at all of the areas here. Are parents attacking the teacher because homework is so stressful, and all of the stress that parents are feeling because of homework gets them to feel bad towards the teacher. It's not the teacher's fault that homework is so hard and it's such a stressful thing. You know, it's just your child having that relationship with you where they can, you know, sort of be at their worst and have no repercussions towards it. But overall, you need to work you know, have a good relationship with your school teacher. Don't try not to get into a battle with them, and let your frustrations from homework trickle into a relationship with them. And make sure that you know they are holding your child accountable, and they are, in essence, another member of the parenting team by having them have independent lunch, maybe stay after school. Maybe have to stay after to get some work done that didn't get finished. Or there's a consequence for not getting their work done, or a consequence for being late. You know, when it comes to parenting, it's morning routine, homework, evening routine. Don't let the stress from those three things affect your relationship with your child's teacher, getting the school on time. Morning Routine, homework are not really the responsibility of the teacher, like I said earlier, find other ways for your kid to get homework done away from you, away from the home. Work with the teacher, to find ways for them to get homework done at school before they go home, and find a way to be collaborative with the teacher, instead of it being a contentious relationship, and the consequence should never be take recess away. Correct, correct. Well, they can't have an independent lunch. Instead of being at lunch with their peers, they can have an independent lunch. That's shown to be successful, but recess should be three, four or five times a day, and the fact that they're getting it so little, we're not removing recess. Recess is not is never taken away. It's a right, not a privilege. So we're never taking away recess, but they can stay after school for detention, for bad behaviors, or they can stay after for, you know, numerous other things. So I understand when you talk about not accommodating when it comes to things like not turning in their homework, missing assignments, but on the other hand, I do have a lot of parents that request accommodations to help their child with an ADHD brain. For example, have them sit in the front of the room, have them sit in the front of the classroom. Have them run outside for 10 minutes before class starts, or take breaks to do jumping jacks or use fidget spinners. Are you on? Are you a fan of those kinds of accommodation? Of course, of course, because those are applicable in college and career. So being able to preferential seating, you can do that in most colleges. You can take tests in a separate, quiet room in most colleges and most workplaces, if the accommodations are applicable to college and career, I'm all about it, but you can't turn things in late with no points off, like a lot of high schools and middle schools are allowing now, that's not going to fly at college, that's not going to fly at work, you'll get kicked out of college, you'll get fired from your job. That's not going to fly. But being able to take movement breaks. Adults take movement breaks. For those of you who work in an office or work in a cubicle, you get up and you move around. You work from home. You get up. And you move around, so we expect a little too much sitting and listening and conformity at school, which is nonsense. Kids are not meant to sit in uncomfortable desks all day, so move in. Breaks are one. Every kid should get moving breaks. So true. Even adults, our backs will hurt if we sit for too long. Good for us. Now, my question for you is, if you could design the perfect school? What would it look like to you? There would be absolutely zero technology number one. That'd be the number one thing. Ed Tech would be gone. We would be back to pen and paper and books. Instantly. That's number one. 100% it would be a project based learning school that does not use the lecture listen model of education where kids have to sit listen to a lecture, regurgitate all the information onto a test, forget everything, move on to the next test, rinse, recycle, repeat. Basically, it would be more project based learning. It would be more community based where kids are going to the fire house and learning or the police station, the grocery store and learning things and doing more community based things. It would look a lot like school does over in Finland. So there's a great book called Finnish lessons by posse Solberg, kids don't get standardized testing until 12th grade. That's another thing is I would eliminate all standardized testing which is not helping anybody. So it would be, you know, triple, quadruple the recess time, more project based learning and child directed learning, and it would be full elimination of Ed Tech and technology. Have you ever heard of the documentary about High Tech High in San Diego, the project based learning school? I believe so. Actually, I watched this with my kids, and it's about a school that is completely project based learning, and I thought my kids would watch it and not be interested in a school like that. And it was the complete opposite. They said to me that that school looks really fun. I really like that, working with other kids, doing projects, that school looks great, and I agree. I wish there were more opportunities for our kids to do project based learning. That's That's what really works. That's how they learn. They learn from hands on doing things, not listening to a lecture and then taking a test and then forgetting that material two weeks and then forgetting it instantly. Right? Better. Better to learn how to work with people, how to get something done, how to accomplish something. A lot more to be gained from project based learning. I agree you got it. Now I would love to hear what you do. You offer so much to families, to families, to help with executive functioning, to help with kids. Tell everybody what you do, sure. So So grow now really runs on our internal skills model, a very innovative model that focuses on strengthening the internal skills for the student. So we do one to one internal skills training for the student, and we combine it with fully personalized parent training. So within every hour session, maybe it's like a 3030, split, 4515 full hour with the parent, full hour with the child. Some parents like to start with Parent Training only, and then bring on their kid when they feel they're ready. But that's really the foundation to the program. Is internal skills training for the student of all ages. So we work with very, very young kids, which obviously is a majority of parent training, and we go all the way up until, until. We have a college success program, a young adult Independence Program for failure to launch kids. And we have job coaching and healthy interest for young adults. We have a reading confidence program for literacy skills. We have a school partnership program where we partner with schools all around the world. I personally provide professional development trainings to school districts and private schools all around the country and all around the world, where I travel out and train the entire staff of of how to it's very practical where it's you know how to change the way you teach the very next day and bring executive functioning principles into the classroom. So it's executive functioning coaching, parent training, professional development, and my two books are coming out in January. I have the executive functioning playbook for parents and teachers and the executive functioning playbook in action, which is the complimentary workbook to the book for parents and teachers to help them create the structure and bring executive functions into their classroom, their home and their daily lives. You can go on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles and what are those books? Now, definitely really excited about that. I'm so excited for you. It's no easy feat to write not just one book, but two books. Yeah, that was one of the craziest experiences of my life. Having to write those two books, it was pretty nerve wracking. Good for you, good for you. And I also heard you did something in the summertime to help kids experiences in the summer where they learn how to do money management. I'm fascinated by that, because I do feel like schools do not teach our kids how to manage their money, and then they're adults that have very little education, and it's so important, yeah. So that is our super successful executive functioning summer camp, our EF camp that we do in the summer, and that started as a literally, like during covid, like the very first summer of covid, back in 2020, just a bunch of kids going to Valley Forge Park, going to the mall, doing this, doing that. Getting them outside when they were stuck inside. But it was just so successful in terms of the outcomes of the kids and setting them up for a successful summer school year social relationships, that it's really expanded now where we have a full summer camp, 678, weeks in Philadelphia, a bunch of weeks down in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, North Carolina and New York. So now we have multiple locations all across the country where we run our summer camp. And it's an experience based camp. So we take the kids, we get a nice bus that takes us all around to, you know, the mall to practice money management, delayed gratification, future planning, future thinking. We go to, you know, a local park we go to, there's always a swim day, of course. So it's really focused on social executive functioning, life skills, executive functioning. So I describe it as a real executive functioning experience based intensive that really gets them the experiences they need to set them up for future success. So if you go on my website, grow now, ADHD, com, right on the drop down menu, you'll see links to all the different programs and offerings we have, between coaching, camp, parent training, professional development, the book, everything's listed there. Do you wish that you had your services when you were a kid? I think that it might be the very first sentence in the book that I wrote is create something that I needed. I definitely could have used an executive functioning coach, a neutral third party, someone when I was a kid, like, you know, I graduated high school in 2005 so, you know, were there IEPs back then? Were there five? Oh, fours. I have no idea. Like, like, like, were kids going to therapy and counseling back then? It like, after school. I have no idea. These things weren't talked about. It was too taboo. It wasn't like, you know, every other kid is getting therapy or counseling or coaching, like today. So it was a totally different time, and I really, really struggled, especially socially, all throughout my years. And I could have used a lot more support and a lot more direction, and it was, it was really tough, and if I could have had the support that grow now offers as a kid, I think it would have led to a much greater outcome for myself. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for what you do. I can't wait to watch you continue to grow, and I'm so proud of your continued success. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast and for your time. Thank you and thank you for everything you're doing. This podcast is phenomenal. I think the message of your kid is normal is something that a lot of kids and a lot of parents need to hear. You know, we get in the mindset now of pathologizing kids too much and getting every little bit of alphabet soup after their name for diagnoses. So I think the work that you're doing is so incredibly sorely needed, and I would love to continue to chat with you and collaborate with you and be as much of this mission as I can possibly be. So you're doing incredibly work, and it was a real privilege to be here today. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of Ask Dr Jessica. Also, if you could take a moment and leave a five star review wherever it is you listen to podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it. It really makes a difference to help this podcast grow. You can also follow me on Instagram at ask Dr Jessica, see you next Monday. You.