SEND Parenting Podcast

EP 132: Mother and Daughter Navigate ADHD Together

• Dr. Olivia Kessel

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Discover the often-missed signs of ADHD in girls — so you can spot them early and get the right support.
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Ever wondered what ADHD actually feels like from the inside? In this intimate first episode of our special summer series, I'm joined by my daughter Alexandra who courageously opens up about her experience living with ADHD before and after diagnosis.

The morning battlefields we once faced will sound painfully familiar to many parents – shouted instructions, missed cues, and escalating frustration on both sides. Alexandra brilliantly articulates why seemingly simple tasks like "get ready for school" became impossible mountains to climb for her ADHD brain. "I would get distracted by my Alexa, my dog toys, even the slightest thing that made me out of place," she explains, painting a vivid picture of how environmental stimuli hijack attention.

Her description of entering the "red zone" – those moments when emotions become uncontrollable storms – provides rare insight into emotional dysregulation that often accompanies ADHD. We explore how strategic supports from understanding teachers and breaking down instructions into manageable steps created turning points in Alexandra's journey. The transformation from our pre-diagnosis struggles to her current independence is nothing short of remarkable.

Whether you're a parent suspecting your child might have ADHD, already navigating a diagnosis, or simply want to understand neurodivergent experiences better, this conversation offers both practical strategies and emotional resonance. Join us next week as we delve into Alexandra's experience with medication – the fears, questions and life-changing results that followed. And don't forget to download my free guide "The Five Most Misunderstood Signs of ADHD in Girls" through the link in the show notes!

www.sendparenting.com

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Send Parenting Podcast. I'm your neurodiverse host, dr Olivia Kessel, and, more importantly, I'm mother to my wonderfully neurodivergent daughter, alexandra, who really inspired this podcast. As a veteran in navigating the world of neurodiversity in a UK education system, I've uncovered a wealth of misinformation, alongside many answers and solutions that were never taught to me in medical school or in any of the parenting handbooks. Each week on this podcast I will be bringing the experts to your ears to empower you on your parenting crusade. Welcome to this special summer bite-sized series of the SEND Parenting Podcast.

Speaker 1:

Alexandra Unmasked A Teen's Journey with ADHD. Over the next four episodes, I'll be joined by someone very close to my heart, my daughter Alexandra, as she shares what it has really been like to live with ADHD from her own perspective. Together we will explore what it felt like before her diagnosis, what medication was really like for her and some of the challenges to taking it. We'll also look at sleep, or rather the lack of it, and finally we'll look at friends, freak outs and figuring things out. But before we dive in, I want to share something I've created just for you, if you're a mom like me, wondering whether your daughter might have ADHD but keep getting told she's fine or just sensitive. You're not alone. I've put together a free guide the five most misunderstood signs of ADHD in girls and what you can do about them. It offers clear, practical steps to help you move from confusion to clarity so that you can advocate with confidence. At the end you'll find a simple red flag checklist to help you spot the often missed signs in girls, like zoning out emotional outbursts or people-pleasing. So just click on the link in the show notes, enter your email and I'll send the guide directly to your inbox.

Speaker 1:

Now let us begin today's episode. All right, well, welcome, alexandra. This is our first bite-sized podcast that we're doing for the four or maybe five-part series this summer, and thank you for coming on. Send Parenting Podcast to share the perspective of a kid who's actually has ADHD. Yeah, yeah, well, I remember, and I don't know if your mind can go back this far, but when you were 11, it was actually just around this time before your 12th birthday, and now you're just before your 14th birthday, which is in how many days?

Speaker 1:

Five, five days, wow, so very exciting. So can you think way back to when you were just 11 years old, before you were diagnosed with ADHD? And let's talk about some of the things that were, you know, a bit of a struggle for both of us, I might add. I mean, I remember getting ready in the mornings as something close to a battlefield and such chaos. So it was really difficult. If mommy said to you Alexandra, could you please go upstairs and get ready, brush your teeth, brush your hair, get dressed, make your bed, and you'd go upstairs and what would happen?

Speaker 2:

I would not do it because there was loads of instructions that I struggled with, them being so many instructions that I couldn't even focus. I would just want one instruction and then, when I was done with that instruction, I would ask for the next instruction.

Speaker 1:

But let's be honest here there was not even one instruction being followed, because when you get upstairs, what would happen?

Speaker 2:

I would get distracted by my Alexa, my dog toys, even the slightest thing that made me out of place, then I would have to fix it or do anything like that.

Speaker 1:

So it was very easy to get distracted, and then Mummy would scream.

Speaker 2:

Are you ready At seven o'clock? And I would be like, ah, and then I would have to run.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that was another challenge right as well, the time limits. You didn't really understand that we were in a rush, that we had to get ready at a certain time. So, yeah, and then what would happen to Mommy? Would she blow a gasket?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you would get angry.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I would, and I'd be like why aren't you ready yet?

Speaker 2:

And then there was an anger me of me being really angry because I'm not ready yet. And then there would be an angry moment of me being like, ah, why are you not downstairs?

Speaker 1:

And then it would clash. Yes, yes, such fond memories, such fond memories, such good times. And then you know sometimes like also another big problem, if I remember correctly, is when you just completely lose it, like have a meltdown. I know you don't like emotional dysregulation. It's too fancy of a word Flash anger. We don't like that one either. We have to think of a new word dysregulation it's a too fancy of a word flash anger.

Speaker 2:

We don't like that one either.

Speaker 1:

We have to think of a new word. No, it's red zone, the red zone.

Speaker 2:

Okay, like there's loads of different zones. Maybe we'll make a podcast of it, but um and what's the red zone? It's basically when you're angry, when you see red kind of you, you're out of control. Nothing can stop you. You don't want to be in that zone yeah, because you can.

Speaker 1:

You can, you can be screaming down buildings you can knock down buildings? Yep, that's true. You can kick, you can throw stuff. It's just a. It's a. It's a volcano eruption, isn't it? Yeah, and sometimes that would happen at school too, which was be make it a bit challenging with friends, sometimes when you felt when, sometimes when it happened there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like I remember once another child who wasn't really in my friend group came up to me to ask me a question about something and it was a touchy subject for me and I just broke down crying Seriously, no, like I don't want to speak about that, just broke down crying just went straight into that, yeah yeah and so who helped you at school?

Speaker 2:

my teacher assistant in year seven, who just would not just ask a question like Alexandra, can I speak with you please? She would say, alexandra, would you like a drink of water? And we would go outside and have a drink of water and that would just distract me. And then we would talk about when I was in a better mood, talk about what was wrong. She knew me very well at the end of that year.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so she didn't try and talk to you when you were in that red zone, she just distracted you, got you to do something else and to calm down she sounds very clever.

Speaker 1:

I like her? Yeah, and I found that way as well. But it must have been kind of frustrating that, first of all, mommy asking you to do all these things you found really challenging in the morning, and then going to school and also having challenges, and then when you came home we'd have homework and that was fun Homework, horror stories. So it was really challenging, wasn't it?

Speaker 2:

You couldn't just sit down and do your homework, could you? I would get distracted by something, then I would get distracted with the log, then I would get distracted by anything that was around me, and I would have to have someone next to me, otherwise I wouldn't get the show, you wouldn't stay there, would you?

Speaker 1:

Good times, alexandra, good memories.

Speaker 2:

Especially in lockdown, when we had to have like, when we had to have just online and the teachers would say go get your work done and come back to lesson five minutes.

Speaker 1:

And I would be like You'd be out in the garden. Yes, I think I had PTSD from that period which is post-traumatic stress.

Speaker 1:

But so you know, all of these things we didn't really recognize. But then it got more and more hard and the more mommy kind of tried to think, oh, you're getting almost 12 now, you should be able to get ready, you should be able to do this. And you were really struggling. And mommy had started the podcast then and I started listening to people and I started to think to myself, could she have ADHD? And I was like, well, you know, maybe that could explain some of these things that are going on.

Speaker 1:

So I decided and because of the long waiting listening when I decided that, you know, I would invest the money, my savings, to get you a private assessment. So mommy called up and interviewed a couple of clinics and found a clinic that I thought was, and still think the Giroli Center was a very good place for you to get diagnosed. And so we were given all these forms to fill out. You also had interviews with the clinician as well. But do you remember taking? Do you remember when we had to fill out all those forms, you sat at mommy's desk by yourself to fill them out.

Speaker 2:

I kind of remember it. I kind of remember it and what I thought of it was basically this because basically, what you're giving me is a sheet of paper with tick boxes and the only thing that I would kind of remember that as as a test in school, when you would have a test and you had to get the right questions.

Speaker 1:

You mean answers.

Speaker 2:

Answers to the questions and get it correct and then get your mark. And to me, this sheet of paper in front of me was like I've got to get these all correct. It wasn't about what is ADHD. I don't know what it is and blah, blah, blah. And it was actually afterwards that I actually found out what that was, what that meant. Yeah, I didn't really explain actually afterwards that I actually found out what that meant.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I didn't really explain it too well to you, which maybe that's something with hindsight. I could have done better, but I didn't want to put the cart before the horse and I wanted you to answer the questions honestly, which is super interesting because you answer the questions without mommy's input. I answer the same questions by myself, and then two of your teachers your class teacher and your ELSA teacher also answered the question, so we all answered them separately, like kind of like blindfolded.

Speaker 1:

We didn't know what anyone else had answered, and you know what we all answered exactly the same, within one to two differences of points. So, and we all know you very well and you know yourself very well, so to me that really validated that. Those questions got to the heart of it and those questions, along with your interview with a clinical psychiatrist, a meeting said you had ADHD and that was. You know, what did you feel when mommy? You know, do you remember when mommy told you that you had ADHD?

Speaker 2:

You were sitting down at the dining room kitchen uh-huh, you got home from school and I got home from school and you had an amazon package with three books and one of the books that really stuck out to me was all dogs have adhd.

Speaker 1:

Yeah and I'll include that in the show notes, because it's a great book and I forgot who yeah, who wrote it? That's all right that's all right, and maybe we could describe it a bit so for each, each page there's a dog.

Speaker 2:

For each page there's a dog with a little bit of words that are under the picture and it would just say I have full of energy. I blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1:

Kind of describe what it's like to have ADHD with each of the dogs. Like you know, I like to daydream or I find it difficult to concentrate, but it was really good, wasn't it? And that kind of explained that you had ADHD, attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder Okay so it's mouthful.

Speaker 2:

That's why they call it.

Speaker 1:

ADHD. And did you? How did you feel? Like, was it were? You like, oh good, now I know, or like was it scary or was it a bit of both? How did you feel? I know it's a long time ago.

Speaker 2:

I guess it helped me to realise what was happening in the mornings and what was happening in the evenings doing homework at school times, when I was having meltdowns or rage and it was happy to hear that I had it and to know what was this.

Speaker 1:

And it was also really good to actually find out what ADHD was. Yeah, and I think you know, like when we were going through that book together, you're like, oh, that's me, that's me, that's me, you know. And so it kind of it was like looking in the mirror in a way. You know what I mean. And for mommy it was like, oh, my goodness, that explains everything. Well, no, actually at that point it was still a big question mark.

Speaker 1:

I have to be honest, Just like you, I knew about ADHD, kind of thought it was just hyperactive boys.

Speaker 1:

So I had a lot of research that I had to do a good year or more of research to figure out, like, what does this mean? What's going on in this brain, and then and then how we can, how, how I could help you best with it, and I mean, now we're. I mean, okay, this is fast forwarding a bit and we've got a couple more episodes, but now when I tell you to get ready in the morning, you get ready in the morning and in the morning, and there's a lot of steps that we to get to that place, but it is. It is pretty amazing now that you are, you're a self-starter and there's many things that have come into that. So we've, you know, had support, we've had medication, we've had all sorts of stuff. Now, before we end this podcast, because I know we're just over the 10 minute mark, if you were to say to another kid who was, you know, maybe their mom or their dad, or they were kind of wondering if they had ADHD is there anything that you would say to them?

Speaker 2:

What you did at the beginning when we found out that we had ADHD?

Speaker 2:

when we found out that I had ADHD, we did like little um post-it notes kind of which said get dressed, brush your teeth, brush your hair, do this, do that so broke it down and yeah and then I would look at the first step get dressed, and then did that, and look at the second step and then that would make it easier for me to do it and also to have a movement. Breaks like to clear your head, do something that you enjoy, exercise, as you always say, no, I know, and that's you know.

Speaker 1:

I think that that's great and that's something that people can actually try, even before they have an ADHD diagnosis, if they find that their kids are really struggling to follow lots of steps. And we made it fun we had Post-it notes and then you could scrumple them up and throw them away and it really helped and we still have it at the address.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, now we have them pinned up, but you don't need them anymore because now you've done it so many times, you don't need to use the front of your brain anymore. It and how to get ready. So that's brilliant. I think that's a really good tip. And what would you Maybe I'll answer this one, because maybe you can chip in as well Like, what would you say to other mommies who maybe are struggling with these kind of things?

Speaker 1:

And I think you know, and I think that my expectations and what I was expecting you to do weren't meeting up with what you could do. So if I could go back in a time capsule and be able to tell myself hey, you know, maybe there's something else going on here, maybe she can't manage these things, maybe I need to try to support her and her brain, I would have you know, instead of getting upset or getting frustrated or thinking that you were being naughty or that you just wanted to play, which is kind of what mommy was thinking. I wasn't understanding how challenging it was for you. I wish I could go back and tell myself that Um, would you say anything to to to mommy, if you could go back in time.

Speaker 2:

Um, take a minute.

Speaker 1:

Take a minute to relax take a minute to calm down and chill out. Yeah, well, thank you so much for listening to the first episode of our mini series and if you're a parent navigating the early stages of ADHD journey, I hope that Alexandra's honesty and mine have helped you feel a little bit less alone, because I think we both felt very alone. And in our next episode we're going to talk about a big moment and really a life-changing moment, I think, for Alexandra and I, and that was starting ADHD medication, which has really, really, really helped. But there was a lot of fears, yeah, and not. I mean, the first one was just, I can't take a pill, mommy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I would try to chew it and I would try to do lots of other things with it. But yeah, well, we'll see.

Speaker 1:

So we'll see you next week and we'll talk about medication. We'll see you Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. Thank you for listening to this first episode of our Bite Size series. If you're a parent navigating the early stages of an ADHD journey, I hope Alexandra's honesty has helped you feel less alone. In our next episode we'll talk about a big moment in Alexandra's journey starting ADHD medication. We'll talk about the fears, the questions and the remarkable changes that came with the addition of medication into our lives. So stay tuned for next week. Look forward to you joining us, thank you.