welcome everybody um so why don't you put into the chat you know what are some ways that you notice that your teen puts themselves down and if you don't have a teen but you're here for just for yourself what are some ways that you might put yourself down i think i can say that sometimes i put myself down like by saying i'm too much or perhaps by saying i'm not enough so i get both ends of the spectrum kind of coming and going hi andrea and nice to meet you um so please add to the chat what are s
ome ways that you notice that your teen puts themselves down and for those of you who are here for yourselves how do you put yourselves down um because you know our kids are watching us all the time and the ways that we put ourselves down even if we're not you know verbalizing it or aware of it or is something that they pick up so what are we here we i'm getting some wonderful comments hi ayesha from chicago ayesha says my team feels like she is ugly dumb and she hates that she is different adhd
depression and anxiety [Music] rachel my daughter 14 is constantly saying that she's fat she's tiny and that her friends are skinnier so we have beauty standards of beauty oh we have also intelligence you know being different let's see brandy says my son says i don't know what's wrong with me why can't i remember to turn in my assignments he says he feel like he feels like he's not going to graduate because of the struggles he's having now paula wasn't skinny as all the girls never got dates i
felt like crap by in my college something my daughter's always comparing her physical features with her siblings so one of the things that happens with this pattern of compare and despair and we see that i see this a lot with teens with adhd and i think teens without adhd do it but because kids with adhd often come to the to come to the drawing board with a legacy of being told that they're different or feeling that they're different or perhaps feeling misunderstood um they they're hard on thems
elves they're really hard on themselves and you know we know that you know as many of you attended my perfectionism webinar which was i think in january now and if not i encourage you to check it out so we know that adhd and perfectionism can travel together and the perfectionism can be both motivating like oh i really want to do a good job and it can also be debilitating whatever job i do is never enough marsha says our 20 12 year old routinely calls herself stupid whenever she doesn't succeed
at something new for the first time and gives up easily you know i have a client right now who actually won't go and practice you know at um at the batting cages because he believes that you know prac he doesn't want to practice i think because the belief is that he should already know how to do it or doesn't see the link between practicing and improvement that they should already be perfect and understand how to do that mia says my son thinks that he needs to be good at everything this is exact
ly what i was just saying such high expectations for himself perfectionism and when he can't meet those expectations he feels such a sense of failure even if he didn't have the ability really have the ability to meet those unrelaxed expectations in the first place so these are all ways in which teens are telling themselves i'm not good enough i don't measure up now who are teens let's talk a little bit about adolescence because i think if we're talking about compare and despair we want to see wh
o we are who we are um so teens have um many times you know maturing or perhaps a more of an adult body but a younger brain there's movement away from family bonds into society at large with continued reliance on adults for safety and happiness which can create a lot of tension in families and make things tough for parents as well as for kids teens are examining their identity they're trying to figure out who they are and there are these are issues related to sexual identity gender identity raci
al and ethnic identity as well as neurodiversity identity they're asking questions who am i where do i belong what do i believe now a lot of parents ask me well what is adhd and what is adolescence when we're talking about different behaviors or beliefs and honestly you know it's hard to tell this desire that kids have for autonomy creates conflict parents of teens with adhd actually have been found according to research to be more stressed than their than parents of neurotypical kids teens who
have teens who struggle with executive functioning skills because of their adhd or a learning dis and a co-existing learning disability or maybe an autism spectrum disorder or anxiety and depression they have weaker organizational skills naturally they struggle with time management they struggle with prioritizing and planning and as well as you know focus and recall goal-directed persistence sustained attention and emotional and verbal impulse control and so this means that they require greater
parental involvement for longer amounts of time than their peers and they're aware that they need this help they honestly can't stand themselves a lot of times because they need this help and since they don't like themselves for this issue they're going to be projecting that onto you i don't like you because i need you to help me and that's a really hard position for a parent to be in to be actively disliked when you're just trying to help and so there's this push pull you know from dr doolittle
that push me pull me uh animal this kind of what raising a neuro divergent teen is all about a neurodivergent teens also express frequent negativity their first response can be no one of my clients no matter what you ask her her first response is no and her parents have wisely followed my suggestion which is to just wait let's wait and see because what happens is that the teen actually needs to come to the decision on their own so they feel like they're exercising their autonomy rather than say
ing yes immediately they want to feel like oh i've thought about it and yes i'm going to do that so i have some agency here one of my clients my former clients used to call this automatic no as shoot them up and knock them down um are they being and we want to ask questions like are they being contrary or do they actually need time to think and reflect before responding and that's what i see is you know i see both of these things you know in in kids who struggle with oppositional defiant disorde
r we see that contrariness just because you know sometimes kids who have pathological demand avoidance they're just going to say no over and over but for a lot of kids they need a little time to think about it reflect on it and somehow make it their own one of the challenges of this age group is that they really want to have their privacy they want to have some say in what kind of information you know about them but they also don't always manage their choices very well or their responsibilities
one of my clients once said to his mother in session mom you are on an as needed to know basis if i think you need to know i'll tell you and and we and we sort of all sat in the room and kind of stunned for a minute and the mother started laughing and i was relieved because i started laughing too because the problem is that adolescence and i would say say even extended adolescence those kids who have finished high school and moved on to the next chapter still rely on adults on their caring adult
s for safety security and well-being so um one i one of the things that i'd love to hear from you are you know what is the fine line for you between hovering or um or being or snow plowing or being a bit of a drone parent and helping where do you get stuck because it's so s it is very tricky you know that you know when am i actually helping when am i um sort of hovering above to make sure things are going okay and when am i following my child around you know as a in this drone parent kind of lin
go to to make sure they're doing what they need to do rather than giving them a chance to try it stumble perhaps even fail and learn from that experience so if you could put into the chat you know what what's happening between you and your teen right now um teresa says my teen won't tell me anything and this is a very difficult situation i've been in this situation myself as a parent and i want to say it stinks because you're so shut out and you can see that things aren't so great or you know yo
u're worried that things aren't great or maybe you're getting a report from the school that there have been too many absences this this semester and yet it's hard to discuss so what i like to encourage in families raising teens is to have an agreement that you as a parent get to ask one question per day and they have to give you an honest answer so that there's some some type of communication that's happening you could do it at the table you could do high and a low of the day or as someone once
said to me a happy and a crappy and everybody can do it and that can be something that we do as a family there has to be some information that's exchanged and and part of the reason that you can advocate for that and say this is what we're going to do in our family is because you are still responsible for their health their well-being and and their safety so let's see what some of these other comments are fan i'm i'm looking forward to reading them susan says i'm so glad my kids grew up just as
cell phones were coming in and there was no facebook um yes i my kids grew up they bridged that uh they got cell phones and facebook came into their into the life of one of my kids more than the other helen i feel so sorry for teens growing up now they grow up too fast and experience pressure at much earlier uh than i did at that age yes so with the you know you know intrusion and dependence and um role of social media on the lives of teens they're they are sort of thrust into maturity often bef
ore many of them can handle it cognitively and emotionally and it's hard to sort of manage that because you're parenting in a sea of parents who may whose kids may not struggle in the same way that your child struggles with devices or who just are more absent and may not care in the same way thank you julie and evelyn and dana nice to see you teresa my team won't tell me anything so we spoke about that helen i try to explain to the parents of the neurodivergent children i work with that boundari
es are fine and healthy but they also need to accept that their child needs some autonomy too right so that's you know what we're talking about is a level of engagement where there's autism there's some autonomy but there's also some knowledge about what's happening in their life and what we want to do is to create a situation where kids can share um something that of their choosing rather than feeling like they're being interrogated and then that helps them feel that sense of agency which is so
important for so many teens kathleen my teen tells me most things fantastic mia he used to paint a rosy picture which was completely different from reality thank you for saying that mina mia because a lot of teens will kind of um gloss over the struggles that they're having either because they're embarrassed because because they're embarrassed socially or they're embarrassed academically they don't want to disappoint you a lot of teens that i work with really feel very strong sense of avoidance
of of of avoiding disappear of disappointing a parent and instead just want that to know that things are fine and then what happens is things unravel to a point place where they're not fine and they haven't talked to you and that's when you know things kind of go down the train kathleen my big struggle is telling me the truth about their school work whether it's done correctly and finished up to par this is an interesting question because one of the things that i feel like is a constant battle
between teens and parents it has to do with homework and schoolwork and what parents expect of their kids and what kids actually want to do themselves and and and it's it really is a challenge because i do believe that kids homework has to be their own and i also can understand that as parents we don't want our kids to fail and so i think that what what has to happen is actually really a conversation around where the neutral territory is um some kids with particularly younger teens will do the h
omework but then they'll forget to press the send button or turn it in when they go into class in which case that they're showing you that they need more scaffolding and support what would that look like in a way that isn't going to make them feel infantilized um so that's a an important conversation to have and and you you know if it's hard to have that at home without an argument perhaps that's something to have at school with a school counselor or if you have a therapist that's a great conver
sation to have with them evelyn my pre-teen gets irritated when i ask or try to help he will eventually share on his time not mine thank you for saying that evelyn because that kind of backs up what i'm talking about that kids really want to be able to come to you rather than feel like you're in charge and you're holding the container of their academic performance there we have to as parents sort of let that go over time hand it over to them and you know maybe that means your child won't go to o
xford if you live in in the uk or to princeton if you live in the united states that's okay they'll end up at the school that actually will fit them the best and many kids i work with go to community college for a year or two to you know mature get those executive functioning skills more mature and then transfer to the state university or somewhere else when they have matured and they have those skills dana gosh i'm 48 diagnosed in my early 40s sitting back thinking i was like that when i was yo
ung interesting thank you dana for sharing angelica my teen doesn't tell me anything either this is very common and this is very common if i ask i get intense pushback to put it mildly i walk on eggshells constantly for fear of triggering an explosion thank you for saying that angelica that is so difficult and you are not alone many parents of teens with adhd teens who are twice exceptional teens who are neurodivergent walk on eggshells they're afraid of saying the wrong thing because of the um
the dragon breath that they're going to get in response to it and and you know in some ways what i want to say is you know let's put on your teflon suit and not take these things personally um our team's job is to push back and particularly if we are competent strong independent women or men our children may may see us as who they want to be and they also may see us uh may see us as things they themselves will not be able to achieve and so they want to create space and they're doing that with th
at pushback again i think what we need to have is some sort of family agreement about you know a level of of information i remember that when my daughter was um 14 she didn't want me to know anything about her life um and that really didn't work and so we had an agreement with um we came to an agreement that i could ask one question per day that she would answer honestly and so um the day that we started this i said um hi what can you tell me a high and low of your day and she looked at me and s
he said no that's two questions which do you want and i was like darn you are right you caught me and so you know i went with a high because i didn't want to deal with the walking on eggshells about the about the low so i really get that angelica marsha our 12 year old therapist says i care too much and there has therefore assigned me to be completely hands off of her schoolwork and that we have to let her fail in order to get her attention it is so difficult to watch her grades just tank but at
least we have a professional guiding us in general she says everything is fine or nothing is wrong um i i i really respect your therapist and you know we often do care too much particularly our generation of parents um and that would be you know generation x and older millennials um and some younger boomers as well and i i think though if you could if you could you know somehow institute you know one sentence about something that happened in their day you know who they sat with at lunch or what
ever you're opening the door to a little bit of a conversation but not about homework or school lots of great comments and questions brandi yes i have the same issue with my teens regarding schoolwork and telling me it's done and we find out later there are zeros and then he's behind so in in in this situation where kids say yeah i've got it i'm good and then actually they're not good and they're failing then then i think it calls for a different type of intervention and that would be a conversa
tion with the school about um the school counselor about you know what kind of role you can play or what kind of support your child could get at school that wouldn't involve you but would involve helping them you know do they need a a a you know a supervised study hall where they're actually getting help or a supported learning classroom where they're able to do their work um uh or um you know is there a way that you can you know connect turning in the homework and earning some screen time or so
me other privileges tina help i'm just learning about my adhd it's so difficult being 53 and having these same characteristics i often often ha i also have an almost eight-year-old with so many symptoms a book suggests perhaps um well i'm going to suggest my book because why not what your adhd child wishes you knew i also would suggest any books by sari solden or linda rogley or kathleen nadeau or patricia quinlan these are meant there are many books about women with adhd ellen lippman so you kn
ow check on the attitude website there's also a lot of great resources there as well aisha i try to ask questions and trust that she's telling me the truth i try to keep calm when she tells me things even if i don't agree now i'm working on correcting things on her i'm working on her correcting things on her own when she makes a mistake for example she set up an amazon account and attached her debit card info amazon took money from her account and she came to me to fix it i gave her suggestions
to try to fix it herself and she was able to do it she comes to me now because i respond differently i want to say bravo for you aisha that is fantastic and i love that um that you're working on her correcting her own mistakes because ultimately in the course of life you will not be there all the time and so her learning how to correct her mistakes is really important um let's see uh there's more comments here he's home schooled i love community college margaret i'm worried about what happens af
ter high school i used to keep him on track and thank god now he now has an iep with study skills instructor who keeps him on track but do colleges offer ieps this is a great question margaret and if i had uh planned better i would have the cut and paste to put in a slot because i'm actually offering a webinar on life after high school in a couple weeks i think it's on may 11th so please go to my website and sign up because this is exactly the topic i'm talking about how how to get support for y
our child in college how to prepare your child for the transition if they're going to try to college and what to what are other options if that's not in their future so i hope you'll join me eggshells brandi i'm having a hard time with my oldest teen playing the victim rather than being responsible for their actions it's always someone else's fault that is really hard brandy and i'm sorry that you're having that um i think that uh you know there might be some ways to kind of gently say okay well
this person did that was there anything that you think you might have contributed to this situation and just put that out there and they might be like now it wasn't me at all and they might see and they but they might think about it you know you can just say just something to reflect on because we can't control what other people do we can only control our response to that and that's really the position that we want to take um i'm sorry janice maybe if you could leave and come back you'd you'd h
ave a better reception thank you annie um great thank you annie dana my mom was too caring like that wish she'd let me fail sometimes because failure was hard to deal with when i got out on my own jamie i'm a computer community college professor and i don't know the answer to that great i will thanks you're welcome margaret ah thank you annie for posting that okay so let's talk a little bit more about adolescence so this is a generation generation z screens are a defining feature of their social
life their entertainment consuming material goods and their education in 2018 95 percent of 13 to 17 year olds said they had access to a smartphone what we've found since covid is that screen time has increased across the board and it hasn't actually uh retreated at all so that's something that we really want to think about also teens are really um identifying and looking for their peer group and um and they they they are are self identifying i'm part of this i'm part of that and of course tick
tock has been a really important and some would say detrimental way the kids are self-diagnosing um there was actually a really interesting article on attitude i think it was this week about by a psychiatrist who was on tick-tock to try to counter all the myths and falsehoods about adhd with real information i do want to say that i colleges do not offer ieps because colleges are not mandated on in the united states under the same law that high school and elementary schools are middle schools wh
ich is the idea laws but um because which and the idea law says every student should um is entitled to a fair um and equitable education the um when you go to college the laws are different and they're governed by the americans with disabilities act and that means that everybody should have access to an education and that's different so we want to really really look into that so it's natural when you're a teen and sometimes when you're an adult to compare yourself with others and look for simila
rities and as in contrast as part of identity formation social comparisons can be motivating and inspiring or dispiriting and judgmental um they've also been associated with depression so um social media for this pro in this process of social comparison has been found to have a significant downside in terms of self-esteem self-image and well-being resulting in envy blame and lying um teenagers who are suffering from lower self-esteem or mild depression are more likely to make frequent social com
parisons and put themselves on the the downside of those comparisons now comparisons can really create a competitive outlook and a feeling like you never met measure up and people tend to compare themselves to people they think are better than they are or happier than they are not worse than they are and um and so the interesting thing is that you know on social media people don't post their deep dark you know demons or when they've had you know really they're feeling horrible about themselves o
r they have terrible breakout or you know they're in the middle of their menstrual cycle they don't post then right and so we don't have we have we have a comparison to an outside image or created persona that actually may or may not be related to who the person is inside so this is what teens are doing all the time they're comparing their insides to other people's outsides okay we adults do that too we compare our insides to other people's outsides so what are some interventions that we can do
one is to identify islands of competency so what does your team like to do and feel good about doing we want to grow this good so that they can spend more time doing it so that they can pay more attention to their strengths we can shore up their challenges but we want them to walk away from their adolescence with a sense of what's good about them what they feel like yeah you know what i'm i i am i am sharing these parts of myself that are unique and and wonderful we want to notice what's going w
ell when where what and how and make a little casual statement not a whole big party about it not a you know shining a a spotlight on it but just a little casual statement like wow you know thanks for clearing the table or hey you know your t your history teacher said you've been turning in your assignments high five that's awesome just low-key we want to talk with our kids about what real friends are how do you identify a true friend and how can we help them spend more time with these people an
d listen to what they have to say about you than the people who are the popular kids or the kids you're constantly going after who don't actually know you um and who don't particularly care about you and this is true i think for teens across the board because it's very tempting to want to be noticed by those so-called popular kids to be included in them and um and we all have memories i'm sure from our own adolescents where we were snubbed or left out or just you know operating on a different pl
ane than some of these other people so how can we help our kids for middle schoolers and younger teens you know and i think somewhat for older teens if you know parents who have children who are your children's friends get together with them have you know have dinner the weather's is improving in most of the world right now we're coming out of winter lots of people have plenty of vaccines you know have little get-togethers where where it's casual to help kids socialize appropriately pay attentio
n to what triggers the comparisons in your kid and address those and and talk with them if you know about how to avoid some of those triggers or respond differently limit time spent on social media or get rid of apps that make you feel bad about yourself and that's the thing it's like the kids will keep these apps on even though it makes them feel terrible about who they are what would it be like to say you know i'm gonna get rid of this for a month and then if i want to i can go back on it as a
dults we want to model how to accept ourselves for who we are warts and all no one is perfect it's a myth so we want to talk with our teens about the process uh the the issue of perfectionism excuse me and this process of comparing you who are your real self to some mythical persona that people have created on instagram or um or tiktok and finally we want to nurture an appreciation of what's working in their lives and who and who cares about them to look at where they've come from to get to wher
e they are rather than looking sideways at what they're not so i would really like it if you would share with me a little bit about how you can help your kids notice what's going well and define friends and identify who they are based on you know similar interests or um or just family bonds what are some ways to help your kids notice what's going well and what they like about themselves so that they could reduce those comparisons that lead them to feeling bad about themselves so if you'd put int
o the chat some of that that would be great i'd love to hear that i'd also love to hear from you how you've come to accept yourself warts and all this is something that many many of us struggle with i struggle with it too i have to remember that you know sometimes that i'm doing the best i can with the resources i have in any given moment and there have been times in my life where i haven't done a very good job and i've had to live with the consequences of that as a parent or a friend or a daugh
ter so you know how can we hold on to those parts of ourselves and the way we're going to do that is with some self-compassion we're gonna put our hand on our heart and we're gonna say it's okay everybody makes mistakes how can we pivot um helen says i get the kids where i work with to write down or say out loud something that went well that day or they feel good about that's great i love that idea i think um you could we could have parents take a post-it and every day have a kid write something
that um that went well that day or they feel good about and put it up on the wall for like the panel of positivity um that would really help or put it up on their bulletin board in their room or keep it in a journal there's been a lot of research that shows if you can you know pay attention to three good things at the end of each day that will really shift your perspective into one um that's that's more content um susan you want to hug your kids sometimes but they don't like hugs moms and teens
problem sure you know kids are very clear you know they're sort of struggling with where you end and where i begin and they may not want to have that physical contact that physical contact might be triggering for them and maybe you could use some words to express the same thing as a hug which is to say i'm giving you a hug right now even though i know you don't want to be touched um or i'm i'm sending you some some warm uh loving thoughts uh you're what something like that your way um kids will
might you can also ask your kids you know would you like a hug they may say yes they may say no um that's okay so how have you been able to accept yourself for who you are and model that for your kids and how are you able to help kids notice what's going well can you sit down at your dinner table and do a happy and a crappy or just a happy you know what has gone well today because you know the neurodivergent brain will tend towards what hasn't gone well what hasn't been working because that's u
m a lot of the feedback that they get you know what isn't okay with me instead of what is mia says i have openly accepted the fact that i am neurodivergent quirks and all but my kids roll their eyes and say not everything is about adhd i wish i knew how to let them know that it's okay and they are different but all they want is to be the same as everyone else you know i think that's really so profound mia because that is what kids want every child whether you're neurodivergent or neurotypical wa
nts to be the same as other people they may feel shortchanged when they because they're compared to others um you know it's it's disheartening to see someone pick themselves apart um because all they you know all the kids are consuming are you know idealized and doctored images of how women are supposed to look or how men are supposed to look um that can be really really challenging for my family we often talk about our innate god-given talents and strengths and how we use them daily and how it
makes us unique awesome we often talk about the strengths we notice in our friends and other family members and reflect on how that makes them unique that seems so healthy because so many people are are not doing that so many people are talking about other people's limitations and what they could do better and what's wrong with them and there's a gossipy aspect to it so the fact that you're doing this really is shifting the conversation and creating a positive mindset you know to to pay attentio
n to the things that that are are working in a person's life instead of the things that aren't working so i would love to know what what else you do in your families to try to nurture um that self-acceptance i think it's helpful to be able for us to say when we make a mistake it's like okay i made a mistake how am i going to change it kathleen says we talk about that it's okay to be different it is most kids feel like being different is not okay you know who wants to be different we all just kin
d of want to be the same i don't want to be the person who's different i want to be accepted for who i am i want to be popular and well liked and sometimes being different means that you're not those things sometimes it can be that you're the cool kid who is very funny or um or somebody who is you know really artistically talented um and that that's great so it's okay to be different and sometimes kids may not want to be different like everyone else kathleen i think that's very true i'm sorry th
ey may not want to be like everyone else they're happy with being different there are plenty of kids who are like yeah i'm different and i'm so cool with that that's good um and so i think it's important to um to support that you know it's okay to be different it's okay that you you know that you don't want to be like everyone else and if you do want to be like everyone else how can i help you accept that you're different all of those things are all okay and they're all part of the process of fi
guring out your identity as a teenager and einstein was pretty different that's right and and it's great to have some role models for our kids to think about you know i'm sure kareem abdul abdul jamar was different because he was very tall i and i'm and i'm sure that um uh you know you know einstein or jay-z or uh beyonce they were all different in some way and they've you know basically you know benefited from those differences in their chosen fields and that's what we would hope for our kids t
hemselves that they will ultimately be able to app use those differences and apply those differences to create a life that is satisfying to them to create to be able to live fully with their uh you know uniquely wired brain that is our goal so thank you so much for joining me today it's great to have you i hope you have a wonderful weekend i have um written on my website an article about the teen compare and despair so i hope you'll check that out as well as other resources that i have on my web
site www.drsharonselene.com and please check out my my upcoming webinar on life after high school thank you have a wonderful day and a great weekend bye
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