Coffee+Conversation ADHD

- Thing. So we're gonna start by playing- - Hey, Mel. - Oh, go ahead, Kat. - I'm so sorry. I just wanted to let everybody know 'cause I usually have a disclaimer in the beginning. We are going to record this session and like I said, send it out. But what we'll do is if you have any, like more personal type questions, we'll save them for the end. Are you okay with that, Melissa? - Absolutely. - Okay. Feel free to use the chat box and I will try to man the chat box as much as I can. All right. - I

'm gonna get you guys to jump into the chat box right away 'cause we're gonna start our process by playing a little true-false game. So I'm gonna show you some questions and then just jump in the chat box and type if you think it's true or false. And then Kat, I'm gonna count on you to tell me kinda what the theme is. Are we ready for the first one? - [Kat] Sounds like plan. - All right. True or false? People with ADHD can get bored faster doing ordinary things than people without ADHD. What do

you think? Seeing some thumbs flying across our screen. That's a great method of voting too. - I'm seeing a lot of truths. - Absolutely. So it's true. People with ADHD often get bored faster doing mundane, routine, repetitive things then people without ADHD. All right, true or false. Medication can make a kid with ADHD behave. Medication can make a kid with ADHD behave. - I'm seeing false, thumbs down. - All right, super. I'm so glad you guys know this because it's so important to how you help y

our child understand and manage their diagnosis of ADHD. So what I like to say is that medication is to a child with ADHD what glasses are to a child with a vision problem, right? And so a child with a vision problem has difficulty focusing on, right, the words on the board. Is that because they're stupid, lazy or dumb? No, it's 'cause they have difficulty focusing. All right, if they put on their glasses, it can help them focus. So for kids with ADHD, same thing. It can be true for kids with AD

HD. We wanna make sure they understand that while their brain might have a difficult time focusing, it's not because they're stupid, lazy or dumb, right? And medication can help a child's brain to focus better. It can't make them behave. And so to illustrate this with kids, I say, "If you wanted to, could you be running around this room right now? If you wanted to, could you be punching me right now?" Absolutely. You're making a choice, right? And so "the medication is just a tool" as I see Brit

tany said, right? It helps make it easier for them to make decisions, but it is not at all, it can't make a kid behave one way or the other. All right. People with ADHD tend to be intelligent, creative and sensitive. True or false? Lots of truths. I was talking to a mom that got on here earlier and I said, "You know, there's really tends to be these fabulous characteristics that go along with kids with ADHD." So they're intelligent, they're creative, they're sensitive, they're full of ideas that

those others of us don't think about. And we wanna make sure as we're parenting our kids with ADHD, we focus on these positives and we help them to showcase these strengths while we're helping them to manage the things that might be harder for them. ADHD tends to run in families like hair color, height and weight. True or false. - [Kat] Lot of truths. Lots of truths. Yep. So you guys are exactly right. We know that there is strong genetic component to ADHD. So even if we can't identify another

family member who's had a diagnosis of ADHD, we can also say, Wow, he acts just like Uncle Paul, right? And so that there's a strong genetic component. This emphasizes the point I already made to you once, ADHD is not about being stupid, lazy or dumb, right? Just like hair color, it might run in your family. And so that's something we wanna make sure we're not stigmatizing ADHD. All right. Most people with ADHD are just too lazy to pay attention, listen, stay on task, use self-control, be organi

zed, I don't remember things. - I feel like you gave away that answer. - I did give that one away a few times. I just wanna be really clear on it, okay? So definitely false, right? And we're gonna talk about what are the common characteristics of people with ADHD. How does their brains function differently than people who don't have ADHD? And again, as you can tell, it's just so important to me that we take the stigma out of this, this diagnosable mental health condition. All right, awesome. You

guys did great. So I don't even know if you need my workshop. - Woo! - I think you guys got 100%, but I'm gonna go ahead and give it to you anyways. So let's talk about what ADHD is. There's three common buckets of kinda symptoms for people with ADHD. Some might be predominantly inattentive, some might be predominantly impulsive, hyperactive, but these are kinda the three core things. So the one is inattention. So this might look like being easily distracted, inattentive, losing things, a lack

of attention to detail. The next is impulsivity. So all gas, no breaks, right? Acts or speaks without thinking, hard time waiting, interrupting others. Just that high level of impulsivity. I have an idea, I execute it. I have a thought, I say it. And then hyperactivity, which is being in constant motion, seeming like they're run by a motor. Maybe they talk too much. They are squirmy and fidgety. We've come such a long way in managing this in classrooms, right? Cause nowadays every kid has a fidg

et spinner and a pop toy and a ball, right? But we know for kids with ADHD, it's actually that internally, it's not that they're overstimulated, they're actually understimulated. And so that if we can give them a fidget, fidgeting actually helps 'em to focus, right? It brings them to a baseline that allows 'em to focus. - I think the inattention is one. I feel like impulsivity and hyperactivity, like we classically link those to ADHD. But I think inattention is one that maybe not everybody is aw

are of. Would you agree, Melissa? - Yeah, and I will say, and I know that one of the questions we got in advance was about a young girl that women are more likely to have this more inattentive, predominant type of ADHD. So let's talk about what children with ADHD might look like. What might our experience with them be like? If you've got a kid that meets this criteria, feel free to give us a little, you know, acknowledgement with your emojis if you want to. So for our little guys, we tend to see

them being very impulsive. These are the kids that are saying every thought that pops into their head, but also they might be likely to have a lot of injuries because they're jumping off of things and they are running into the pool and just doing things. They get an idea and they do it. They want something and they grab it. I'm seeing some acknowledgement of that. They tend to be these little guys, non-compliant or they look non-compliant, right? So we're giving them instructions and they are n

ot following them. And I'm gonna talk a little bit more about why that might be. And then fearless in the face of danger. So our preschoolers with ADHD need a lot of supervision because they tend to really have an idea and do it and they be thrill-seeking, right? "So it sounds like a good idea. It sounds fun. I'm gonna go ahead and do it." Okay. Our elementary school kids with ADHD, this is when we're asking kids to focus a little bit more. So they often have difficulty completing tasks. So they

get started but not finish with things like an assignment or a chore or even a conversation. They tend to have inconsistent performance on work. So often, one of my true or falses is related to kids with ADHD's intelligence level. Kids with ADHD fall in the full spectrum of intelligence. Many of them are very, very highly intelligent, but they tend to have difficulties showing what they know. So they have inconsistent performance on work. So give me a thumbs up if you've ever helped your kid st

udy for a test. You know they knew the material and then they come back with a bad grade, right? Oh, an explosion there. Yeah. So that is related to this inconsistent performance and work, the difficulty showing what they know and we'll talk about it in a little bit that's related to the filing system in their brains generally. They tend to, elementary school kids with ADHD, tend to have difficulty in social situations. That's in a couple of ways. One is that kids with ADHD tend to have a two to

four-year delay in social skills. So often they will do much better with kids that are a little bit younger or a little bit older than them, than they do with kids the same age, right? So they're on par kind with the social skills of a younger kid. An older kid can tolerate them better, right? But they have difficulty with kids that are their own age. So we really encourage you to get kids with ADHD involved in multi-age sports like youth, or activities like youth groups and scouts and things l

ike that where there are kids across a variety of ages to be involved in. And again, the pieces about the impulsivity can be a barrier in social situations. With girls, it might look more like impulsivity in what I say than in using my body, right? And so I have a thought, I say it. Everyone's thinking the same thing, right? But your child with ADHD is gonna say it out loud and that causes a problem. Seem emotionally immature. That fits with what I was saying, two to four-year delay, kind of in

those social skills, social emotional skills. And then difficulty with rule-governed behavior. That means difficulty following the rules of the situation. All right. And then adolescents with ADHD, and I tried to cover kinda the span of the school system. So I'm gonna give you broad brush strokes on all of these things. So it tends to be that in adolescence, the hyperactivity actually decreases. But adolescence is an age of risk taking, right? And so we might see a lot of risk-taking behaviors.

We wanna be really proactive in providing education and supervision of our adolescents related to substance use. We wanna really think about how we teach them to drive and how we allow them to drive and what skills we need to see before they drive because the risks get bigger as they're older and their thrill-seeking might be more dangerous things, right? They tend to be more subject to peer pressure, again, because they're more impulsive in the decision-making and might not think things through

as much. They can have difficulty with their peers and parents will report that normal rewards and punishment seem to be ineffective. So whereas your neighbor maybe grounds their kid and that works, it doesn't necessarily work for an adolescent with ADHD. - Melissa, we did have someone raise their hand. Is this a good time for us to take a question or would you like to wait till the end? - Let's wait till the end 'cause I just have so much content. - Okay. - I wonder is there a way to private,

like in Zoom they could private message you the question? - Yeah, Chavis, if you want to private message me the question that might help us facilitate your answer. - [Melissa] Super. - I just didn't know if it was timely or not, you know, that kinda thing, so. - So I just wanna talk about some common struggles with ADHD. One is working memory. So working memory is how much information I can hold in my head at a time. So I raised my kids in the, like my kids were little in the two thousands. So t

hey watched a lot of "Dora," right? And so Dora would always have three steps, right? It will be like, bridge, pathway, grandma's house. And many of us can hold multiple things in our head at the same time, but kids with ADHD tend to have a really hard time holding more than one piece of information in their head. And so this becomes super important in parenting because we need to give one-step instructions, right? So if we say, "Take your backpack, go upstairs, brush your teeth and bring me you

r permission slip." If they get up the stairs, right, they're not gonna remember the other three, not likely to remember the other three things unless we've given them a visual prompt. So the amount of information they can hold in their head at one time tends to be limited. So we need to do a lot in their environment to provide them with visual prompts and reminders when we're asking them to do multi-step things. And we need to be breaking multi-step things into smaller parts. The next is timing

or pacing. So people with ADHD, kids with ADHD tend to do things slowly that we want them to do quickly, like get dressed in the morning and quickly that we want them to do slowly, like carry the bowl of cheers with milk into the kitchen. And so once we know that, (chuckles) we can help them with pacing, we can help them learn skills with pacing, but their default is often to have their pacing a bit off. So we need to externalize that. We need to help them break things down to small parts. We n

eed to help them pace their work. They have difficulty controlling their emotions. Now the truth is they probably feel their emotions the same as most people, but kids with ADHD tend to do on the outside what other people are doing on the inside so that you see all of their feelings. And so if they're mad, you see they're mad, and if they're sad, you see they're sad, but if they're happy, you see they're happy and they're excited. So there can be some really good sides to this too, but this ofte

n gets them in trouble, right? Because if the teacher says, we're having miss so-and-so for a sub tomorrow and every kid is thinking, oh she's so awful, I hate her, the kid with ADHD is gonna say, "Oh, she's so awful. We hate her," right? Because they are feeling it on the outside. And so that's common characteristic. They tend to have difficulty with internal motivation, a really, really, really, as you guys know, I have this passion about kids with ADHD not being called lazy. So I really want

you to think about this is part of their diagnosable issue is kids with ADHD tend to not be motivated on the inside. So we need to motivate them on the outside. And you might say, well, what about when they become adults? Well, adults with ADHD learn how to motivate themselves on the outside too, right? So they learn how to pace their work so that, hey, after I clean the kitchen, then I'm gonna stream some television, right, after I do such and such. So you can be taught to reward yourself, but

for kids with ADHD, we really need to help them with that on the outside. And I really, and my colleague Valerie's on here too, we like to emphasize that incentivizing something, providing external motivation is not bribing someone. We bribe someone to do something wrong. We positively reinforce something right, okay? So if we are helping our child with ADHD to learn a new skill or accomplish something that is routine and we are incentivizing that, that's positive reinforcement. You're not bribi

ng your child. You're not doing something wrong. All right. And then the last piece is people with ADHD, kids with ADHD tend to struggle with problem-solving when something doesn't go as they expected. So if it's time to do my homework and I do not have a pencil in my backpack, I don't go looking for a pencil, I just don't do my homework. If I am working on my trash routine, 'cause I have a little checklist and the next thing is put the new garbage bag in the trash can and I don't know where a n

ew garbage bag is, I just stop. So they tend to have difficulty with problem-solving. And so we need to remember that's part of the ADHD and we need to help them to problem solve. I'm seeing lots of thumbs up and so lots of identifications with these things. So important to know that these are common ADHD struggles because again we don't want to be punishing things that are part of a diagnosis, right? We're not gonna punish a kid with diabetes for having low blood sugar. So in a similar kinda wa

y, okay. The good news is I don't wanna make this all negative. We can teach skills, we can teach skills. ADHD just like diabetes is manageable with a variety of factors in place. Okay. So I wanna talk a quick second about ADHD exceptions because when we're parenting a child with ADHD, a lot of people like to give us their opinion on our child and they like to tell us that it's related to our parenting. So kids with ADHD often do not display symptoms of ADHD in situations that are novel or new,

that are interesting, that are intimidating, and/or that are a one-on-one interaction with someone. Now interestingly, all these things are true of visiting a psychologist for a psychological evaluation. So sometimes kids end up underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed because they're in a setting, really, that doesn't show their symptoms. But this can also be grandma's house, right? And so just thinking about those things. Oh, sorry. I saw a grandma, ugh. (chuckles) Not necessarily all grandmas, but, so

just thinking about that, that inherently someone with ADHD's behavior is going to be up and down based on situation and setting, and these kinda settings, kids tend to do okay. So here's what we know. Again, ADHD, just like diabetes can be managed. There tend to be three essential kinda domains involved in that management, and one is individual. So with the child, helping the child to build skills and strategies to be successful. Oh, that should say individual, family and school. So individual

will be the child, second would be the family. So how do we create a user-friendly family environment? What does our family do? And then how can we work with the school to have effective management? All right. So I wanna talk about that individual child layer, okay? So medication is often, but not always, a part of effective management of ADHD. Most parents I know who end up using medication as part of a management plan, wish they did it a couple years earlier because they see how much more comf

ortable their child is and how their child is so much more proud of how they've succeeded. But that certainly is a decision to be made in conjunction with your doctor and the values of your family. Again, we wanna emphasize though that pill does not equal skill, right? So if I give a child with ADHD medication and it helps 'em to focus better, it doesn't teach 'em the math they didn't learn last year, okay? And it doesn't teach them how to enter a social play situation. So it can be really helpf

ul, it's a great tool to make the rest of it easier, but pill does not equal skill. Then comes skill training. So we can train kids with ADHD in skills related to how to organize. Innately, a child with ADHD tends to prefer piles to files. And often, like you look at their room or you look at their backpack, they can find whatever they want in there, but you can't, right, because it's part of how they structured things. But we can teach 'em organizational skills. We can teach them social skills.

We can teach them how to pause before entering someone else's play. We can teach them how to take turns and share. We can teach them how to schedule a social interaction versus just barging in. And of course, we can teach them study skills. And this is something that can be done. Your school counselor can help with this. It's something we can train parents to do with their children. It's something that therapists can often do too. And then there can be counseling. Counseling is most necessary i

f there is a co-occurring condition, which is not uncommon. So if there's a co-occurring anxiety or depression, then the counseling can be particularly important, the mental health end of the counseling. Otherwise counseling is most likely to look like skill-building. So people often ask, "Should I tell my child about ADHD," right? And so this is what I advocate for. It's telling them what it is. So ADHD is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder with little kids. I just almost always use the g

lasses analogy I already used with you earlier. Hey, is there anyone in your class that wears glasses? Yes, Johnny. Why does he wear glasses? So he can focus on the board," and then have that whole same conversation. We want to help them understand how it affects them specifically, again, because their little minds are thinking, I'm stupid, lazy, dumb. And we want them to know, "Oh, it makes it so you have difficulty concentrating. It makes it so you have difficulty staying in your seat," that k

inda thing. We want them to know that there are ways of coping. So "I, mom, dad, grandma, am here to help you learn ways of coping and there's other people that can help too." We super want to emphasize that they have many strengths, right? And so they are not their ADHD. They have many strengths and we're gonna do an exercise about at the end. And then we wanna encourage them that to understand that ADHD is an explanation, not an excuse. So it might help us to understand why we behaved, but if

we hit our friend, that's still not okay, right? If we didn't do our homework, it's still not okay. And so we need to figure that out. Someone asked in the chat, "Can a trauma reaction mimic ADHD?" Absolutely. So we've had this explosion in people showing symptoms of inattentiveness and hyperactivity and impulsivity since the pandemic, right? And so that whole just communal, that whole communal trauma that we experienced has led to this as well as during the pandemic, people didn't have a chance

to practice these skills. So they just don't have 'em because they didn't have the opportunity to learn them, some of our little kids. But more than that, yes, like in the example, parents' death, absolutely, immigration, all those things can mimic ADHD. Okay. So let's talk about effective management of ADHD 'cause like I said, this is something we want to help our child to manage. And I love this quote by Thomas Phelan, and if you wanna read more about this topic of ADHD, he's a great author o

n the topic. So here's what he says: "Thinking ADHD means not expecting a regular dose of typical, age-appropriate behavior from your child with ADHD. Thinking ADHD means expecting regular doses of hyperactivity, noise, disorganization, and sibling rivalry, while at the same time trying to manage these problems as best you can." And if we start with reasonable expectations, right, we're gonna have a more productive journey than if we are expecting something that we know can't occur. So just like

with managing a child with diabetes, there's things that we're gonna do, right, as a family. And there's things that we're gonna teach our child to do. As our child grows older, we're gonna give them more control over managing themselves, right? So I wanna talk about what I call user-friendly environment. And Kat is gonna send you guys all a handout about this after the workshop. So we wanna create an environment that helps maximize the likelihood that our child is going to be successful. And s

o there's four main components of that: clarity, structure, predictability, and supervision. So clarity is really clear instructions and instructions, what we call in prevention, start instructions, right? And so it's not, we're going into a restaurant, behave, right? It's, we're going into a restaurant. Remember at restaurants, we stay in our seat and use an indoor voice. So clear instructions about what we do want to see. And then again, clarity in instruction-giving by focusing on one thing a

t a time, right? So it is bedtime. Go upstairs and put on your pajamas, and then I'll meet you, you know, so we can go to the next step. Structure. So the less a kid has to think about, the more likely they can kinda go into autopilot. And so we wanna have some structure in the way we do things in our family. And I know that in this day and age, we can't necessarily have a schedule where every day at 5:30 we do homework, and at 6:00 we eat dinner, and at 7:00 we do such and such. But we do wanna

have a routine. So predictably this follows this, follows this. So we wanna think about morning routines, homework routines, and bedtime routines particularly. And then we want to give our kids a heads up when something's gonna be different so that they can adjust to that. That fits right in there with predictability. And so again, following those routines as much as possible. And then also developing a predictable rewards and consequences for behavior, right, so that they know when I do this,

this is gonna happen next, right? So that they can do that. And then supervision. Kids with ADHD tend to need more supervision than kids without ADHD. And we like to help them, again, go on a journey towards independence. And so I like to say we start with doing things for them, right? So maybe with my little one, no matter what their age is, right, I'm gonna help, I'm gonna dress them. Then the next thing is I'm gonna get them started, right? And then watch them finish. And then the next might

be, I'm gonna have them get started, and then I'm gonna check in on them. And then finally, we move to independence. But doing that, like in the little baby steps there can be important. For elementary school kids with ADHD, if they have some difficulty with play dates, I like to still sneak a little baby monitor into their room (chuckles) so that you can, or the playroom, so you can listen in and you can get in there and intervene, intervene at an earlier juncture, right, before things get full

y escalated. So just another idea related to the supervision. And again with our adolescents, we just wanna think about, we're supervising based on our child's behavior, not based on their age, right? And so if all of our neighbors are leaving their 13 year old's home alone but we know our 13-year-old is likely to do a lot of impulsive things, maybe we're not leaving our 13-year-old home alone. And again, same thing with those transitions to driving and things like that. We wanna make sure we're

building their self-esteem. So we want to think about what are the things that our child does well and we want to really super highlight that role in their family. So if they are good at computers, every time you have a computer problem to be like, where's my tech expert, Michael? I really need his help. If he's really good at taking care of the dog, really emphasize that. If they're really creative, put their artwork all over your whole house so that we're really helping to emphasize the thing

s they do well to build their self-esteem. And then we want to use a variety of behavior management techniques focused on kind of two kinds of categories of activities. So the things we want them to start doing and the things we want them to stop doing. So I'm gonna just do a quick brush stroke here and then I bet the speaker that Kat was talking about earlier will cover a lot of these, or you can reach out to my staff and they all know all these tricks and can help you specific to your child. B

ut we never want to try to stop a behavior without also teaching a new behavior, right? Because if you just stop a behavior, the kid's left with nothing, right? So when we're trying to build positive behaviors, we want to use that shaping concept that I talked to you about earlier. So small steps. So if ultimately we want the kid to take out the trash, we do kinda, the first step of taking out the trash, and then the second, and then the third. We build it up to the whole task. Modeling. We wann

a make sure we are being a good model. This especially, especially important for the controlling emotions part. And so we want to say, "Oh, I'm feeling really mad right now. I'm gonna take a deep breath, I'm gonna go for a quick run, I'm gonna do" whatever. "Oh, I'm feeling really sad right now. Can I have a hug?" So really modeling how we manage our emotions, modeling how we enter conversations without interrupting, modeling how we stay focused, like if we're paying the bills, right? "Ugh, I re

ally don't feel like doing this right now. I wanna take a break, but you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get through these bills and then I'm going to have a piece of chocolate" or whatever. Lots of skills can be learned through game playing. And someone in here is saying, "No, my kid always throws the game when they lose." That's okay, keep playing. That just means you need to play with them some more. So lots of skills can be learned through game playing. Just think about something like Conn

ect 4, right? I have to think about the next step. I have to take turns, right? I have to think ahead. So there's lots of games, Connect 4, checkers, that really practice thinking ahead and patience in taking turns. So definitely find some time. - And that's a skill for everybody. All of our children need to learn that, for sure. - Yep, yep. And then also practicing, right, being a good- - A good, gracious- - and a good winner, yeah. - Losing graciously, yes. (chuckles) - Yeah, yeah. So taking t

hose times, and I mean, video games, you can use video games. I prefer if you use a board game or a game, a physical, you know, a physical game. Fine, okay. So let's say that our kid tends to leave their dirty dishes and all over the place when they're done and we want them to start putting their dishes in the sink. And what we know is we can't tolerate those dirty dishes all over the house. It really, really bothers us. Then we can use fines when they don't do something and we're gonna do it fo

r them, right? So if you didn't put your dishes in the sink, you're fined 50 cents because I had to put your dishes in the sink. Also they didn't get through their morning routine on time and now they've missed the bus and you have to drive them. Oh, you have to pay a taxi cab fee. That kinda thing, right, to motivate positive behavior. A natural consequence is just let what already is gonna happen happen, right? We have to be really selective about this. We don't want our kid to be in a situati

on where they are in danger or their education is threatened, but sometimes we just gotta let that school-based consequence happen, right? Oh, I'm gonna lose my whatever privilege at school tomorrow if the homework doesn't get done, then that happens. Or if they don't put something away, then they can't find it, right? We just let those things happen instead of saving them from those things. And then reward charts can be really useful for building a start behavior. And that is just creating a ch

art where you're marking when they do what you want them to see and it's tied to a goal of the child's choice. Super important that the goal is of the child's choice and that we ask them, Hey, what do you wanna work towards? 'Cause Val and I have seen things like, I wanna have a candle-lit dinner. I want to... You know, often it's time with you. So think about what they want and then build a chart where they can earn that. - Melissa, do you think for a child with ADHD, do you think like the rewa

rds are more... I'm thinking of extrinsic and intrinsic reward. Like is there a balance there? Like we're trying to build that intrinsic because they're more extrinsic. Like how does that go for the- - So we've gotta start with the extrinsic, right? - Right. - And then, like I said, over time they might still need intrinsic, but they can reward themselves with it, right? So you can help them think about what are they gonna do to reward themselves. - Right. - And they also need to be... The nice

thing about a reward chart is that they can get like a sticker or a mark on it pretty quick and then build to the, you know, bigger reward. So they're still getting something kind of immediate close to the behavior. 'cause otherwise they might forget about it. - So we're not gonna always have stickers and rewards. Our goal is to- - Yeah. - work past that. But in the beginning, you're saying that this is a good transition - And it's a tool in your toolkit, right? - Right. - You've got a lot of to

ols. I'm pointing over here 'cause that's where my slide is. You've got a lot of tools in your toolkit. We're not gonna build a chart about everything. I only want a reward chart about one behavior. I don't want the reward chart to be, here's the 10 behaviors I want you to improve. It's, Hey, here's Morgan's good listener chart. A good listener means doing what they're told with one reminder or less, right? - Right. - And then I divide the chart into periods of the day and I see how many periods

of the day Morgan is a good listener. - Right. - And if she generally is a good listener, not at all, then and she's gonna get a little reward if she gets one sticker, right? And then we work it up to two, then three, then four. And then eventually, she's so good at being a good listener, we don't need that chart anymore. - Exactly, or you can have a chart for something else, but I think for a person like me and we're talking about structure in children's too, like I'm a person that loves a lis

t and I love marking things off the list. I like to see that. So I can see that for a child, a reward chart might be a really good tool. And a parent did ask if there was a site that they could go to to get sample reward charts. And I'm sure we can find something to send to- - [Melissa] Sure. - That would be (faintly speaking) too. - [Melissa] Yeah. - But the other thing is it's gonna be specific for that child. You have to think about that too. - Yeah. Yeah, Canva has some for free. I see someo

ne says, "Listening seems broad." Yeah. I define it as, a good listener does what they're told with one reminder or less. And then when I give the reminder, I say, Morgan, I know you're... Morgan is 23 by the way, (chuckles) but Morgan, (chuckles) I know that you really want to be able to watch such and such tonight. Remember, to do that, you have to be a good listener, so. But you're right. We don't generally wanna say, be a good listener, behave, because that's too broad. Okay, stop behaviors.

So when we want a child to stop doing something, sometimes we stop that by ignoring. So that is things that are not safety threatening, right? There's generally things like whining and using a baby voice and throwing temper tantrums and things like that. Here's what I need you to know. There's a phenomena called extinction. And that means that when you start ignoring, the behavior gets worse. And you gotta know you can tolerate that and keep ignoring it, okay? 'Cause the worst thing that can ha

ppen is that you decide you're gonna ignore the whining, but the whining goes on and on, it gets escalated and then you give in. Now you've just taught them to whine longer and louder, right? So yeah, thank you. Someone said that "It gets worse before it stops," right? So be really strategic and know that you can ignore it and know that other people in your parenting life can ignore it as as well, right? So again- - I'd say my number one thing with my kids has always been like, you have to be ab

le, like you said, to tolerate it and be firm, be fair and be consistent. You have to have that 'cause it's not gonna work if you're not, - Right. - 100% agree. "1-2-3 Magic" is a book video. You can shrug it on YouTube, it's Thomas Phelan, and he just talks about a strategy called 1-2-3 magic. There you go. Someone's saying "it's available on Audible." Yes, Barkley's books. Lots of our presentation is based on Barkley too. Two great resources. So it's a method that kind of moves towards a timeo

ut, but it's not counting, "If I get to three" blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's a very specific method to it. So it could be its own workshop. In the meantime, Google it. Loss of privilege. So taking away a privilege, right, so that you lose your screens or something that they enjoy doing. It's super important for kids with ADHD that consequences are short. Neither you nor they can tolerate a really long consequence, right? And it's gonna be meaningless to them over time. It's gonna provide

them opportunity to act out more. So we wanna make sure we have short consequences. So loss of privilege for a day, a week, not a month or a year. Response cost is basically you start with something like, let's say three poker chips or three marbles or three sticks and you remove them if the child misbehaves and those items represent something. So they represent a certain amount of screen time, let's say. And so you've got three popsicle sticks, they represent each 15 minutes of screen time. An

d then when a misbehavior occurs, you remove one, and then whatever's left is their screen time for that night or the next day. Another one you've gotta be super cautious about because if your kid has a meltdown every time you remove a stick, that's gonna make the situation worse. You gotta know your kid. Yes, Kat. You would need to be specific with all of those. And over-correction is the all teacher favorite, right? When you run down the hall, what do you have to do? Go back and walk. But it's

practicing doing things the right way. It's a great tool for kids with ADHD 'cause it helps them build a skill that they might not already have. It helps 'em like create those pathways in their brain. So it's really just prompting them, "Go back and do this the right way. Go back and do this the right way." I know that's really broad brush stroke. Again, Kat will provide you with contact information. I have staff that can do individual consultation around your kids. Just some overall general ru

les. And from the chat, I'm seeing lots of you are well aware of these. Act, don't yak, right? Most kids, not just kids with ADHD, can tune you out if you yak or they know that nothing's really gonna happen or you'd have to escalate, not until mom gets that voice, right? So act, don't yak. Don't give a lot of chances. Model calm as much as you can. If you need to take a parent time out, do it. It's okay to say, Hey, I'm feeling really upset and frustrated. I'm gonna take five minutes time out an

d then we'll come back and talk about this. As much as possible, for kids with ADHD, we want consequences and rewards to be immediate. 'cause remember they have that trouble with the working memory. And so we want them to be able to connect it to the behavior that just happened. And always, always, always, if we're giving a consequence for a stop behavior, as soon as we see the opposite positive behavior, we want to celebrate it and reinforce it, right? So if they have been very mean to their br

other and you notice them being nice to their brother, Wow, I love the way you're playing with your brother. If they have been very loud and they use their inside voice, Wow, I love the way you used your inside voice, that kinda thing. So look for and reinforce the opposite behavior. Again, that helps with the self-esteem. Kids with ADHD hear a lot of, "no, no, no, bad, don't, why didn't you, why did you?" And we wanna make sure they're hearing exponentially more about their positive behaviors a

nd the positive aspects of themselves. - Melissa, it just sounds like that relationships are so important in talking with your child 'cause you may get frustrated obviously with your child, but that relationship is so important and if you do have a moment where you explode or you lose your patients, I think it's just important to come back and model and say, "Hey, I was tired, you know? And go back in and, you know, retrace your steps and get on the right track. But yeah, the relationships are s

o important for any parent with their child. - Yes. See a couple questions about IEPs. I'm gonna do a quick run through about school, but I am not an educational expert. Kat, who would you suggest to contact within schools about IEP suggestions? - I would talk to their classroom teacher. You know, I would start there. If you have a worry for your child, if there's something that's bothering you because between yourself, your child's doctor, your child's teacher, I think that's where you start un

less there's already an IEP in place, and that would be totally different. Then you would talk to your child's case manager. - Thank you. And I see there's a question about high functioning child with ADHD. Like most disorders, it's on a spectrum, right? And so yeah, people are gonna have more or less of these various characteristics. And again, as we learn to manage them, they become less evident over time. - [Kat] Right. 'Cause some children could have just a 504 too and like, because that wou

ld be OHI, other health impaired, if they have a diagnosis of ADHD, and some children might have an IEP and the ADHD too. So there's so many different avenues that that could take. - So why is school so difficult for kids with ADHD? Well, the typical demands of school, sit still and pay attention, think before acting, finish everything, (chuckles) remain calm, are kind of the opposite of our list of ADHD symptoms. And so it's hard and we know that the symptoms tend to be most prevalent if the ta

sk is difficult, if we're required to sit still and work for extended periods of time and if there's little direct supervision. So someone asked the question and that you might have also emailed about this, about memorization. Yeah, so kids, people with ADHD, just like I said, they tend to like piles instead of files. They also tend to have a pretty inefficient organization system in their brain. So it's why they sometimes can't show what they know because it's in there but they can't get it out

. And so I do know that for kids with ADHD, it can be helpful to use some memorization strategies like mnemonic devices or other things that might prompt them to be able to access the information that's filed away in their brains. So again, just a quick overview of effective management at the school level is making sure you're having frequent communication with the school. Sometimes a school doesn't reach out to you until they kinda are at their wits end. And so maybe being proactive in your com

munication. If you've had a teacher that's worked really well with your child before, have them share that information about what they found that worked with the new teacher or with you to give to the new teacher. Making sure that you are asking the teacher, let me, you know, if they start to not finish their work or miss assignments, that you want to know that. And so I'm not saying hound them every day with a text, but a weekly email or such, something like that. And then as Kat was saying, yo

u can get classroom accommodations. That can be informal or formal, right? So a teacher can agree to things like "Stand at your desk and work," right? Or a fidget toy or sit on a ball or kind of a preferential seating arrangement. And then there can be the need for those more formal accommodations through the school system. There are some things we can do at home to help our kids increase their school success. One of my favorite strategies is making sure that we have a homework survival kit. So

I gave you that example earlier about when it's time to do my homework and I can't file my pencil, I'm not gonna do my homework. So make sure you've got something at whatever location your child does their homework that includes everything they could possibly need to do their homework. So pencil, pencil sharpener, eraser, whatever those things are, crayons, markers. It stays at home, it stays in this very specific place. It comes out at homework time. It is only used for homework time. That can

eliminate so many barriers to getting the homework done. Another is to schedule a daily homework academic time. So here is my trick for the kids that say "I don't have any homework," but you know they secretly do is, "Okay, you don't have any homework. Oh, I happen to have this workbook. Oh, read this book," right? So have something else for them to do that would help with their academic success if they don't have any homework. And then again in our file versus file organizational system, schedu

le a weekly book bag and binder cleanup. So once a week go through that book bag and binder. It might need to be more often depending on how often your kid is bringing lunch, right? But take out anything that doesn't belong. (chuckles) Help make sure like the binder and the book bag close, that things are in the right place, helping them to be organized in those ways. And then I know we had this question in advance too, about "how involved should I be?" And so again, that's gonna be a shaping th

ing. So with a younger kid or a child with severe impairment, we're gonna sit with them, help them make a plan, break it into small parts for them, one assignment at a time. And we wanna make sure we're having breaks, right? So any kid, particularly kid with ADHD, is gonna accomplish a lot more in 15-minute intervals for an hour and a half than they are if they sit for an hour and a half straight because they're gonna lose their focus. So 15-minutes break, 15-minute break, 15-minute break. You g

uys decide for yourself, what is that point? You know, when does your kid need the break? Quick break, right, in the room, jump around, jump rope, some kinda little movement. So help them make that plan. Sit with them. Then you're gonna, once they're doing pretty well, you're gonna back up a little bit, get them started, "Hey, what's your plan? Okay, how's it going with that plan?" Then we're gonna move along to just checking behind, "How did it go with your homework?" So we're gonna shape them

with that. Also, encouraging them to identify a study buddy at school if they're a middle or high, one in each class so that if they forget what the assignment is or forgot to write something down or didn't bring something home, they can call that study buddy and get that information rather than just not doing the assignment. Okay. So I think that is my main content. I did want us to just kinda focus on this Island of Competence activity really quick. Again, we focus on a lot of the deficits of

ADHD, but our kids with ADHD all have many, many positive aspects. So I want you to just think for a moment, what does my child with ADHD do well and how can I make sure I'm highlighting that at home? So think on that and then, if you're willing, pop it in the chat box, and I bet we're gonna see some similarities in things that that your children do well. - Everybody, lots of folks are sharing resources in the chat too, Melissa, and this is fantastic. I know that somebody mentioned a Facebook gr

oup 'cause I went online for Chesterfield too 'cause somebody asked if there was a group for teens or parents in the area and I did find some support groups on Facebook and they looked quite good. And also I had listened to several podcasts and one was by Chad, and that was pretty good too. So those are some other resources that parents might use. Oh, these are great. "Caring and kind, math, drawing, building things, math." - Lots and lots of creatives. So that's where we go do, Hey Michael, you

are so good at thinking about things, ideas other people don't think of. Can you help me think of an idea about how to do this, about what to buy for this person? And then again, if they're artistic, showcasing their stuff all over their house, especially if they have like an academic sibling that's like papers, you know, work papers are around. Make sure you're showing all their creative stuff. Help them if you have a special occasion. Hey, you're so creative. Can you help me make a card for g

randma? Can you help me make a banner for this event? That's super creative drawing, building things, yeah. Because with ADHD, people with ADHD are often much better at doing this kind of engineering, Lego-y building kinda tasks. And they tend to really thrive in academic pathways and jobs that include hands-on stuff. And so there's great assets around that. "Easily figures things out." Yeah, they don't get confined, right, by rules. "Compassionate." Lots of "compassionate, loving, sensitive." M

ake sure we're highlighting that, we're giving them opportunities to showcase that. Fabulous, good. All right, Kat. I know we have just a couple minutes left. Did you have some questions that you've collected? - So the one person I wanted to give a chance to ask their question was Chavis. Would you like to unmute yourself and ask the question if you're still on here? We've been doing so much in the chat and then I had somebody else email and say they couldn't get in and I was trying to help them

troubleshoot. (chuckles) So is Chavis still in? Anybody else have a question they would like to- - I see Britney's and I wanna talk about that one. "Is it common- - Okay. - to have a lot of obsessions too?" Okay, so I didn't cover this one. - Totally missed that one. - Kids with ADHD tend to hyperfocus. That's another one of those exceptions, right? And so why can't they pay attention for 10 minutes to their math homework, but they can play a video game for 45 minutes? Well, they tend to hyperf

ocus on things that are interesting to them such that they're truly locked in, right? So if you've got a kid who loves to build Legos or loves to play video games, especially like tends to be really highly stimulating things, then we need to recognize when they're hyper-focused, they literally cannot hear us, okay? So if we want them to transition from Legos to dinner and we call out to them, Johnny, come to dinner, Johnny, it's time for dinner. (grunts) you're losing your video games forever 'c

ause you didn't come to dinner, they look at you like, what are you talking about? Right? So we've got to blinders on, yeah. So if we know what our kids hyperfocus on, we need to, if we want them to transition from that, A, I recommend giving them like a warning. So, hey, in five minutes it's gonna be time for dinner. I'm gonna set this alarm, and literally walk to them and you've gotta touch 'em. You gotta touch them to get their attention, to get them to break outta that kinda trance and that

hyperfocus so they can hear you, and again, as much warning as possible to help them, yeah. Oh, they ignore your warnings. As much advanced notice as possible, and then you just gotta execute, right? So regardless of they're having a meltdown, that's it. You know that- - Right. - that time is ever, but we do need to make sure they have actually heard. And then the other thing- - You know what my son does? - is predictable routines. - You know what my son does that I think is cute, - What? - he m

akes the kids be in charge of that timer. So like at his house, he lets him play video games and he goes, "Okay boys, you've got 15 more minutes." And he says, "Tell Alexa." So the boys have to say, "Alexa, we have 15 more minutes." So he has them physically do it, the timer or whatever. And for some reason, because the boys are in charge of it, they will do that and follow suit, so. - And it confirms that they heard him, right? 'cause they're telling Alexa. - Right. Yeah, I love that. (Kat fain

tly speaking) and it's a skill for life, right? - Yeah. - I love that. Yeah, "and touch my shoulder. I make him look at me." Yes. Beautiful, Kelly. Love it, yeah. All right, three minutes, Kat. Anything else? "Curious about how to advocate for younger children with sports coaches." Yeah, this is a tough one. It's gonna depend a lot on the sports coach 'cause those guys are mostly volunteers, right? And so it's gonna depend a lot on them about their receptivity, but I think it's helpful to provid

e them with as much information as you are comfortable with, about what you know works for your child. We know kids with ADHD tend to do better with things that are more active like soccer than with baseball where they're standing in the field, right? So something that is more constantly stimulating. That's a tough one. - Yeah, and sometimes I think, I see a few things in here and it's like you're dealing with ADHD, but you also might be dealing with teens and hormones. Like there's multiple thi

ngs going on, so. Well, I know there's a lot more that we could talk about. It is on 1:58. I want to let everybody know this is a brand new session because we had so much interest in this session, on April 24th, we have Emotional Regulation Strategies for ADHD and Executive Function Challenges. So please sign up for this. Amy Davies, she was a former special education teacher here in Chesterfield County Public Schools. She now has a business called New Agenda and it's executive function coaching

. She's gonna be on and she's going to talk about challenges and difficulties regulating like with big feelings like anger and sadness, that type of thing, and on strategies to help manage stressors at home and at school, and all those big feelings. So that's gonna be on April 24th and it's another Coffee and Conversation. And to let you know too, we have a face film series that's going on in the next month. And one of the films that we are showing is going to be "The Disruptors" and it is about

ADHD. So look in your Friday Family Update and there's a link to sign up for this via Eventbrite. And I will also send a link to the Eventbrite sign up in a follow-up email too, but "The Disruptors" will be free and it will be held right here at the CTC at Hull in our auditorium. And we hope to have a guest speaker after that too, like for a small panel discussion. I believe the movie is one hour long and we're gonna have a short panel discussion afterwards too. And another opportunity to engag

e too is we're going to be having a Spring into Wellness Resource Fair on April the 29th here at the CTC Hall. And I will send out more information on that shortly. So lots of opportunities to engage. Hopefully a lot of supports for you out there. But I really love the idea of support groups and just to let families know you're not alone in anything that you do. Everybody struggles with something, right? So I will send out all the information that I can within the next two or three days as soon

as our recording of this gets up on our YouTube channel. Anyone else have anything else? Yay. Yes, we had to figure a lot of this stuff out all by ourselves. You're exactly right. Well, thank you all so much for being here. And if you have (claps) any friends or family that could benefit from our Coffee and Conversations, please, please, please let them know about it. We're so glad you were able to join in today. Thanks, Melissa. We love everything you guys do. Thanks for all the support. Oh Jul

ia, did you have a quick question? - It was accidentally, she accidentally raised her digital hand. And Kat, do you have our list of what consultants are assigned to what schools? - I don't know if I have the list list, but I- - I'm gonna send it to you so that you can send it out. Just, I do so many things outside of this building that your best bet is to reach out to the person on my staff that's assigned to your school. - Okay. And so, I mean, you can reach out to me too, but I'm just not ver

y available. And so I'm gonna make sure that Kat sends out those lists so you know who is the consultant for your school. - Perfect, all right. Thanks, Melissa. - Okay, thanks. - Thanks everybody for being here. - [Angela] Thank you. - [Brittany] Have a great day, everyone. - [Angela] You too. - Bye. - [Angela] Bye. - Melissa, I think we ended up with about, I think at one time I saw 74. - Hey, that's a definite record. That's exciting! - Woohoo! Yay. Thank you. - Good, yay! - Bye everyone. - By

e everyone.