Empowering Parents: Innovative Strategies for Raising Children with ADHD: 36

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. I am joined today by my guest Abigail, and hopefully this works a little better because we've been having some technical difficulties up to this point, but I'm really excited to share her, uh, knowledge and her background with you. She has been working and teaching, uh, all around the world dealing with children with ADHD, and she's going to give us some more insight about that today and things that we can do to create better relationships, uh, with people that are struggling with that problem and just how to get through, uh, your daily life when you have children that have ADHD, right? So anyway, welcome Abigail, and I'll let you give a little bit of your background so that we can let people know where we're going with this conversation.

With pleasure. And thank you so much for inviting me. It's really a pleasure. It's a pleasure being here, a pleasure meeting you, and you are so beautiful and young and it's remarkable. And you mentioned to me that you're a yoga I— what do we call those? Yoga instructor, yoga teacher.

Yeah, I'll answer.

Like, there's a better name for that, but okay, we're gonna go with yoga instructor. My— I have a 19-year-old daughter who's also a yoga instructor, but I feel like that is definitely the secret of your absolute beautiful young looks, because we just discovered that you're younger— that you're older than me, which is slightly insulting to me.

Oh, not bad. So be real.

Back to the ADHD story. I will begin as a young teacher when I was 20, and I started teaching in a school actually for, in Queens, New York, for Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. So in my classroom, the Russians and the Ukrainians were together. Imagine that now, right? Anyhow, we didn't have any language in common because the kids had just literally gotten off the boat and, and they were acclimating to America, but it was English as a Second Language class. And I had a few students who were incredibly fantastic because they were smart and energetic and curious. I managed to understand what they were saying a little bit, and, and I loved them. I was just crazy about them, but I could not get them to behave at all. And interestingly, at the same time when I was teaching a lot of these kids, Most of them boys at that time, although in my family it's equal opportunity ADHD. I met my husband at the same time, and it's very clear that I like these very energetic people because when I, when I was dating him, it was like, wow, this guy is super energetic. I'm wondering why that's so interesting to me. And so in the classroom and at home, clearly energetic people is my style. I find working with ADHD to be quite fascinating and a lot of fun. Fast forward a couple of years, we were living in Moscow and my oldest was in a class where she was learning to read and write English, Russian, and Hebrew, and succeeding at all three of them. But while she ran around the classroom and took little trips into the hallway and the teacher let her take her shoes off, And she was just flying high, amazing student. We get back, we then we traveled to Israel. And we like to kind of confuse our kids with foreign languages and stuff and keep them on their toes. And she gets put into a classroom of 30 kids. And in Moscow, we— it was a smaller classroom, it was quieter, they had much more resources. And the teacher immediately within a couple of days is like, you got to take this kid for an evaluation. I was stunned when my child was diagnosed with ADHD despite being a special education teacher. You'd think I would recognize it, but we tend to not recognize things in our own kids. And she was— and the teacher, the doctor diagnosed her and immediately gave me a prescription for Ritalin. It didn't sit right with me. Something was bothering me. I'm looking at her, I'm saying, she's intelligent, she loves to learn, she's not disordered, and she doesn't need a daily medication. To keep her going. There's something else going on. And at that point, I really started get it, taking a deep dive into what the ADHD story is, what's causing it, why are these symptoms happening? And that's when I really started to discover health, fitness, diet, exercise, nature, and their incredible effect on our children's behavior. So that's really the beginning of the story.

Yeah. And I mean, obviously there's so much more to this story, but one of the things that you mentioned there that I think is really relevant to people, and maybe this is why you mentioned it, is that in one sort of classroom situation, your daughter was thriving and it was because she was kind of allowed to be more herself, for lack of a better word, or just to kind of get out her energy a little bit in different ways. Or again, having her, having her shoes off, like just connecting with the earth, that grounding idea, like that maybe those things were intuitively helping her and, you know, she didn't even know it yet or hadn't identified it. And then going into a different kind of classroom where it's very regimented and you're expected to, you know, sit in your desk for 8 hours a day or something like that. I mean, that would make anybody kind of, kind of crazy after a while. So you started— so you identified this in your own children, and after deep diving into it, I would imagine that that gave you insight into your previous experience as a teacher where you were probably dealing with that and just didn't know it yet.

So, well, I actually did know it. Yes, I actually, as a teacher— and that's, that's what's even more ironic about this, is that As a teacher, I developed an entire program for kids with ADHD in a regular classroom, in an inclusion setting. And, uh, so I really knew how to deal with ADHD in the classroom, which is why when my daughter was in first and second grade, I was saying, great, they're doing great. This is fantastic. She's really thriving. And, uh, so, so I, I did have the background and, uh, but it didn't occur to me that this, what they were describing as ADHD, and my kid was the same thing.

And can you maybe go into a little more detail there? Because I do think it presents in different ways in different children. Some have more of a hyperactive component, some have— and I only remember like the basics of this from back in my psychology degree, um, but I'm expecting that it has evolved even vastly so much more since then. So could you go into, you know, you said you didn't like kind of recognize that in her initially, maybe because you're her parent, you said, number one, but also maybe just it presented differently, or How do people know that they should be looking for that, or what do they look for even?

Let's begin by saying, first of all, it probably hasn't evolved that much since your degree because it's really the same list of symptoms. The symptoms we're looking at is hyperactivity where a kid is living on the edge, doing more dangerous things, very spontaneous, not thinking things through. Which burns relationships and gets the kid into a lot of trouble very often, breaks into conversations between adults, will have a tantrum in the supermarket for not getting the candy that he wanted and the other candy and the other one. And it's very much a— and there's also the dreamy aspect of it. There's the more quiet kid who's going to be, you know, sitting and looking out the classroom window And you have this beautiful window behind you, and I'm kind of like wanting to look out there myself. But, uh, they, they're looking out the classroom window, they're dreaming, they have all sorts of ideas. Um, so what we're seeing really is socially, they are— tend to burn bridges on the one hand with the hyperactivity and, and spontaneity, and on the other hand from being too withdrawn and not really knowing the cues socially. And then we have the academic part where kids have a very hard time with follow-through. If they're not interested in what you're teaching them, you've lost them. There's, there's nothing to talk about. They don't engage in things that bore them, and they have a very hard time with transitions from one class to the next, from, from class to recess, then recess back to class, and follow-through, which would be homework, getting fully responsible homework. They tend to be much more disorganized And, uh, and then, yeah, that's, that's emotionally, we would see them being much more emotional on the one side, being more sensitive to what's going on around them. I'll have clients who say, I can't shut myself off. I'm just aware of every single emotion that everyone in the house, everyone in the room is having. And on the other hand, they're also very emotionally sensitive about themselves. They get hurt quickly and they carry that emotional stress around with them all day long. So that's in a nutshell what we're seeing with kids with ADHD. But, but I began by saying that it's a list of symptoms, which means that these are challenging symptoms, but they're being caused by many different, uh, things. There's different reasons. So the, the list of symptoms is kind of simple to identify. What's much more challenging is why, why are they having these symptoms? And there is not one answer to this. And we, yeah.

In your work, have you started to identify reasons that are slightly more common than others, or is it really just all across the board?

So there's actually, in my book, I identify and really break down and work through the most common causes. The, I would say the most common cause is an instant gratification personality. And right. So that's the kid who wants things now and fast and interesting and fun and dangerous. And novelty is the name of the game. But here's the problem. That doesn't work in our society because, or anywhere, it doesn't work anywhere because even though it's a healthy personality, And the truth is that this kind of healthy personality really can lead to super greatness. Like, the kid could really go far as an entrepreneur, as an inventor, as a— I don't know, there's so many things that this person can do. And my husband, who is definitely an ADHD instant gratification personality, he travels a lot. Right now he happens to be in London, but for his work, he works in high tech, and that's perfect. He travels from place to place, and everywhere he goes, everything's interesting to him. And, you know, drop in middle of Rome, in middle of Milan, he knows the city within 15 minutes. So that's— these kids engage their environment very quickly. But what's missing there, and this is a big missing, is they don't develop habits. Because you, as a yoga instructor, know that you have to do something every single day. You use it or you lose it, and you have to keep repeating it in order to get strong at it and strengthen your brain. And these kids do not like the repetitive behaviors. They want to just be running and having fun all the time, and therefore they, they are slightly immature. And we as the adults have to help them create behavior from create habits, sorry, by imposing it from outside, but in an instant gratification kind of way with prizes and things like that.

Interesting. Yeah, that's, um, I would say one of my favorite topics is on creating new habits, healthier habits. And, you know, it's not easy for anyone that doesn't even have ADHD to necessarily implement new habits in a way that kind of makes them stick and makes them consistent with them. So I can only imagine, you know, dealing with children with an attention problem, that's got to be even more more challenging, but I'm assuming because you wrote a whole book about it, you must have identified some ways, and you mentioned in there like prizes or other incentives. Can you use those with any— does it work with, with any child, number one? But number two, obviously these are things that you've identified specific to the more, um, the attentive one or the hyperactive one, or does it work for both?

Yeah, it works for both, and every child needs help with developing habits as well as every adult. And we know that like, yeah, I've been, you know, I go out jogging every single morning. I don't right now, but let's say as an example, I used to. And then you have, you get sick for a couple of days and you kind of drop off and then getting back into it is so hard. So habit formation and maintaining habits is something we need our entire lives. And when I say to parents, when I meet with them, is that for a child with ADHD symptoms, they must learn this method. They must. For every other child, it's a tremendous benefit because we all need to develop habits. Some kids will develop habits through osmosis, through just being okay with doing something every day. And, and the habit just develops on its own, but we all need that help. And yes, the program works for, for every child.

That's awesome. So any— like, even if you're listening to this and you don't— if you're— you know that your child does not have ADHD, or you think they might, or you know that they don't, it doesn't matter. They could really use these methods as just general healthy behavior adjunct to whatever else they're doing with their kids for education or for habits or sports or whatever it is.

Yeah, so, so definitely what, what I have parents do is write a list of the behaviors that need improvement. This is not a list of criticism of your child, right? And it's important that parents know, especially for a kid who is an instant gratification kid, that that child wants your attention and wants your attention strong, which means that if you are yelling at your child and trying to get your child to behave or develop a habit by yelling or criticizing, then they just want you to yell and criticize more because they want your attention. So before we even start planning on, on helping our children with habits, we have to kind of get a grip on our own behavior and bring it down and figure out why we're feeling so critical. Sometimes we're disappointed that this is a child we got that just doesn't behave well like the neighbor's kids. That's human. And that's fine. We have to work through that and, and realize that this child is exactly the right fit for us. And, and be grateful for that. But that's a process for us. Once we've gone through that process and we've shifted over to positive communication with our child, then we're really ready to make that list and choose one of those behaviors to work on first. When we choose all of them at once, then everything falls. If, if you're gonna try to eat your paleo diet and exercise and, uh, visit with friends and have time for yourself while you're being a fabulous mom, Forget it. You're just gonna be like cuddled in the corner, you know, with your thumb in your mouth and your bed because you, everything failed. So don't do that. One at a time. And, uh, let's say, uh, going to bed at night. I like to start with that because we get up better in the morning when we've slept. That's a little trick I've learned. And, uh, so we would take going to bed at night and divide it into 4 parts because the more divided it is, the easier it is to follow it. There's also more to celebrate. And a child can do some of it and still be okay. And, and that's something that— so we divide into 4, sorry. And we put it into— we put it in a chart. And the child knows exactly what, what's expected. And we also have a practice. So during the day, I would, I would stop my child and I'd say, let's say Joseph, I'd say, What are we going to do tonight? And how does it work? And what time do you get into bed? Or I'd even play make-believe and say, oh, it's 7 o'clock, what do we have to do now? And he would kind of have to run to the bathroom at shower time, and he would get— and he would get points for just participating in the game or problem shooting, seeing, you know, what, what we did wrong yesterday and how we could do it better. But I'm engaging my child so that my child has in his or her mind that we're doing something important. And therefore, when it's happening, I'm marking it off on this chart. I'm doing it for at least a month. So this is a really important tip for parents. If you're not great at being consistent, that's fine. And if you just don't have a lot of time, that's also fine. But you have to be honest. You have to see what you can do and what you can't do. If you can do a program that's half an hour, do half an hour. It's much more important that you do what you can do and not what your child needs, because we need this to be consistent. And only you can make it consistent. And if you make a very large, elegant program, but you're falling on your face halfway through, you haven't accomplished anything. So make it, fit it to you, uh, according to what your child needs, but fit it to your abilities. So throughout that hour or half an hour, whatever it is you're doing, you're checking off what the child's done with a sticker or a star or whatever it is you're doing, a check. Well, and you're giving a lot of loud positive feedback, but if the child doesn't do it, you just put a line there. Nothing's happened. That's it. And, and what we do to prepare is we give our children a menu of prizes. We write down a list of the prizes that we would offer to our children. We choose some of them, and then we open the floor to the kid. Go ahead and tell me what you'd like to have as a prize. And then we put a value on it because these, these points, these stickers are your child's money. So therefore, they can go visit the shop, which is you, anytime and get their prize when they want to. And the reason we do that is because this is an instant gratification kit, right? If he gets more feedback and is able to cash in right away, then he's going to stick with it. He's going to do great. And we also want those prizes to be more experiential than a prize that he can play with, because those prizes he will lose. He'll step on and break all that stuff. But an experience stays forever. So going out with a kid for ice cream, to play ball, to a football game, any of those things, those are the prizes we're shooting for. Even the child choosing dinner tomorrow night or a small hike, something like that, that, that is bonding time between parent and child. These are worth a million dollars. And so a small hike might be 10 points A football game might be 30 points, and, and we're doing that with our child. And as the program runs, keeping in mind that it's at least a month, sometimes we have to add a little bit more excitement. Like if you have 2 days in a row that are perfect, you get an extra point. So you have to kind of read your child and see where he or she is holding and up the excitement as you go. But after a month of doing this, your child actually develops new neural pathways and, uh, and has these habits. And then you will maybe either take that habit that he's already developed and move that to be one of the things he has to do, and then add new things, another 3, uh, another 3 behaviors that you want to strengthen.

Wow. So there's so many actionable pieces of advice in there that you have that—

wait, wait, wait, I want to add one more thing because I really love this part as a teacher. Extra credit points. So besides for the practice, we also have extra credit points. You could actually get this chart on my website. And so you don't have to recreate it on your own. But the extra credit points, the reason it's important is because the points that the child's getting is what the child does. The extra credit point is how he does it. Let's say he's like, drags along and like, oh, I hate this. So you want to give them points for energy or for beating the clock or something like that. And that's often more powerful than the actual behaviors because we're linking new behaviors to a positive feeling so that the child gets even more feedback from us. Okay, now your turn.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. So the one thing I wanted to highlight that you said was, because again, I think this is relevant for not just working with kids, but only pick a few things. We're not going to try to change our whole life in a day. I mean, we'd all love to, but that's just not, not practical and not sustainable and not something that you can be consistent with. Taking small little chunks— and people have heard me talk about this ad nauseam— but starting small and just being consistent with that for a while and then building on those habits. So I love that, and I just wanted to highlight that. Um, also the resources on your website, that's amazing. People don't need to re— create the wheel. They're already stressed out enough trying to manage a child with us, a condition that they're not maybe totally comfortable dealing with. Um, and the last thing is, is this point system. So I love this so much, and our boys are, uh, how old are they now? One's 17, one's 17, and one is about to turn 15.

And I can see you've got your hands full there.

Yeah, I can see that this would have worked amazingly well with them when they were younger. But I'm just wondering about, do you have any tips for parents? Like, as children get older, when their rewards start to be, you know, spending time with the parent, even though they're— they want that attention as a teenager, that's probably not hitting with them the same way that it did when they were younger. So any advice as a child gets older? Hopefully, if you're doing this program, they're implementing a lot of new skills. They're learning these habits that are going to help bring them to those next levels. But What becomes the reward as they're older, or what becomes— does it become more innate where it just gets ingrained?

Um, how does that play out? What do we love for it just to be innate? Yeah, it just happens. And you're talking about teenagers. I actually have— I have 6 kids, thank God, and I've got a good bunch of them that are teenagers right now. And the fact that you and I are both smiling is really a miracle of nature. But no, not an 8. What we have to do is we're still doing the same thing. Sometimes at that age, kids are like, don't give me a chart. Very often. And that's age appropriate. And when they want a chart at that age, I kind of worry that the child's a little bit immature. Like, you know, please reject my chart. What I do more is agreements where they— so with an agreement, first of all, we have to add something negative. Let's say my son, I'll give you a real life example. Yes, my son, who just entered teenagehood. I'm not into phones. I'm not into smartphones. I'm not into screens. Because they really kind of rob our children of their free abandon, curiosity, fun, play with friends, spontaneous, good childhood stuff. But then it comes to a certain age where you kind of can't say no anymore. Because all the friends have it. And that's the way they communicate. So your son will become the kid who doesn't know anything and never goes anywhere, because he doesn't have a phone. So I've agreed to it. But the reward is the phone. And there are certain things that, you know, certain things that he's allowed, certain apps that he's allowed to have, certain he's not, certain hours and all that stuff. But with that, if he abuses that privilege, which is a privilege, and he earned it, then, then the phone has to be taken away and stuck in the safe for— for— we have a gun safe because we live in the Middle East. But so we would stick it in the safe for a couple of days. And it's very clear. So on the one hand, we're giving our teenagers rewards, either money or electronics or other things like that. And I obviously, I still want things together. Like two of my teenagers went out camping with their father for two days, skiing. Notice how I say their father. I don't, I don't like camping. You know, when I get there, it's okay. But, but, or a skiing trip, once again, with their father. And so those are things that a teenager will be excited about. But we have to ask our teenager what they want. Usually teenagers are fairly clear on what they want. They're not shy. So yeah, we're shifting the, the prizes over. And what we're doing, since we're doing an agreement, we're kind of keeping track of it in— not in chart form, but in like a daily— I would just write down in my calendar or, or my Google Calendar, I'd write down like, well done, like per day. And if we have one day at a time, then that would be rewarded maybe with money. Or, and then if we have, again, I would discuss that with my child. Would you like to add to that if you have a string of days, one week, two weeks? How about if we discuss something bigger? The football game is still going to be good. Even more money is going to be even better. But there are a lot of experiences that our teenagers want, scuba diving, things like that, that they really would like to have. And we're not necessarily going to just on a regular old Tuesday, take them to scuba dive. So we add that.

No, those are great. And I think it's important to like know what's age appropriate, because you did mention that phrase in this. And I think, you know, every couple years, I mean, they change so quickly, right? So you got to just reevaluate what motivates them and what's the reward. And like you said, money is always a good one for teenagers. They're pretty motivated by that. I guess I wanted to also, since you've been doing this work and getting deeper into it, one of the things that I ran across In, you know, so when I got my psychology degree, that's a very long time ago now. And one of the things I remember thinking about at the time, I was working with kids at Children's Hospital doing this internship. And my concern was that, and this has proven true over the years, that ADHD is just getting more and more, I'm going to say prevalent on one hand, but more and more diagnosed on the other hand.

That's the argument. Yes.

And I just am curious, having this very concrete experience that you've had with your own children and with people that you've worked with, do you think that it is sometimes overused, or that kids can struggle with this when they're younger and maybe grow out of it? And then if that's the case, maybe they didn't truly have like that ADHD to start with, but they had something else. But, um, I think you know where I'm going with this question. It's just like, I'm just curious if you think it's for the most part accurately diagnosed and if there's anything for parents to kind of watch out for. Like, I think some teachers are kind of overly anxious to put kids on medication when they're just having behavior trouble in the classroom. So I just think there's like kind of two sides of it, and I'd just be curious as the expert on this where your thoughts fall in line with that.

So that is a great question. And there is so many answers to this. Let's start with ADHD as a diagnosis in itself. So I, I compare it to, let's say a woman would go see her doctor and say, listen, I've got a headache all the time from the morning till the night, and it's always bothering me. And I even wake up in the middle of the night and have a headache. And the doctor would listen and do some evaluating and checking and then say, I know exactly what's wrong with you. You have chronic migraines. And it's like, you didn't tell me anything just now, doc. Like, I just— I said to you that my head hurts all the time. You're just packaging it in new words, which, thank you very much. But really, what ADHD is, essentially, it's a descriptive diagnosis, and it doesn't necessarily connect with a very specific brain disorder. They're still looking for it. 2017, there was a huge study where they were still trying to prove that ADHD was a neurological disorder. Even there, they only found that 5% of kids maybe had some kind of varied brain. So they've been looking for this, uh, cause of ADHD and exact diagnosis of ADHD since, uh, 1978, '79. Like, so that's a lot of years. So since they've had so much time, I'm gonna go with ADHD is a descriptive disorder. And therefore we have to focus on is it diagnosed correctly or not? It's hard to diagnose descriptive things. If you have a sore throat and the doctor says you have a sore throat, then the doctor's diagnosed it correctly. Okay, that was easy. Now what? You know, why do you have a sore throat? Is it COVID? Is it strep? Is it because you didn't sleep very well or you were screaming all night long? Like, it was so many reasons. Why your throat's hurting. So is it— first of all, let's go with yes, it is way more ADHD now than there was when I started teaching, and that's not even a question. So ADHD diagnosis and actual ADHD symptoms in the classroom, out of the question. Out of the classroom has definitely gone up. The question is why, and there's a lot of answers for that. And I would say that first of all, since you are into healthy lifestyle and proper diet, Let's look at our diet. Our kids are drowning in chemicals. Their environment is just getting dirtier and dirtier. Very few kids eat clean. They are eating processed food. My daughter was helping out at a kindergarten the other day, and she said she's feeding them, uh, these little cute, cute little kids. And, and she said they all have runny noses. And then the, the, the head kindergarten teacher gives her the food to give the kids. And she's like, oh, that's why they all have runny noses. She's giving them like white soft pasta with cheese on top. And yeah, now that's why they have— so our environment, the way the kids are eating is atrocious. We also have a disconnect between nature and our children. They just live in buildings with air conditioning and heat nowadays. The best way to get focused, to find your center, to learn new things in a natural way is to get out in the forest. As a little kid, I was outside all day long. I'm blessed that my kids also like to be outdoors a lot, and we take them out on, on hikes very often, but that's not the standard. And, uh, so those are two reasons. Also the screens, and this is why I'm so anti-screens because we've basically handed a poison to our children. And it's like saying, like handing your children pot or opening up the alcohol cabinet and saying, go right ahead, be my guest, and then they're not going to get addicted to it. So we've handed our kids something that's addicting them, that's also changing their behavior. And unfortunately, emotional and physical sexual abuse and trauma, as well as bullying, is going to add to it. We have a tremendous amount of bullying now, which is way up from what it used to, because we have cyberbullying, and the, and the kids are suffering. From, from cyberbullying as well as the regular old bullying that you and I grew up with. And I, I didn't suffer from bullying, but, but many, many children did. So yes, there's more ADHD. We're not better at diagnosing it. We're better at poisoning our kids. We're better at making sure they don't move too often, and, and we're better at filling their minds with, you know, stuff from a screen as opposed to real life lessons. So our kids are not doing great, but diagnosing correctly would, to me, mean— and this is something, this is my call from the mountaintop— a correct diagnosis is answering the question, why is this child not flourishing? And no doctors do that.

No, that's a very— in my space and in nutrition and being focused on a lot of weight loss stuff, I mean, we are starting to get more functional medicine doctors that are, that wanna find the root cause of things.

Right.

So to your point, what you're saying is like, why do they have all this? And why do we even need to call it a disorder or a disease? But I feel like, you know, one of the things that you hit the nail on the head, and I'd almost be willing to go and further and say that it is probably a direct correlation that now that doesn't mean causation, but if we just looked at the data, If we just looked at the data on screens, and I'm including in that social media because you mentioned the bullying, and I think the social media is a huge part of why there's more bullying and cyberbullying. But the screens, you just look what they do to adults, grown adults that know way better. I was going to say like a more strong statement there. But see what devices have done to humans, humans in general, but adults. You can't even get an adult to focus and have like a conversation without them all of a sudden, you know, looking at something on their phone. And half the time they don't even know, they're just looking for that, you know, in psychology where you get that intermittent, like it's Pavlov's dog, 'cause the notification rings or you get a text or something. It's this intermittent reward system that comes from—

You hear that little ding and there's a prize at the other end of it.

Exactly. And so I'm thinking, appeals to kids that do have these attention things. You're talking about that immediate gratification thing. You put a screen in front of them where it's like, how many likes am I getting? And how many people have looked at my photo? And ooh, who's texting me now? No wonder they can't focus. And put all the other stuff you said about the environment and not grounding and connecting to nature. I mean, that for me is huge. I can just tell it myself. I mean, I'm not as good at being outside as I once was. But like, you're right, when we were little kids, you were gone all day running around outside. You were never in my—

I used to collect garden snakes and salamanders as a little kid. Salamanders were my favorite. I remember when my first child was born and I looked at her, I'm like, hmm, she looks a little like a salamander. Gorgeous. But when they're first born, they kind of look like that. Yeah, I had a frame of reference. If you ask kids today what a salamander is, no idea.

No, it is. Oh, it's so sad. But I think you hit on so many great things there. Now, what would be your advice? And to be respectful of your time, we'll probably start to move towards winding down there. But I think this is a really important question based on what you just said, and, and that I echoed that. Once parents have gone down the road, whether it's with a, like, a child without— with or without this diagnosis, because I think it's all kind of really related actually. Yeah. But, um, How do parents that have already gone down this road of the kids have devices, they have video games, they, they've never kind of implemented this reward system before. Is it possible to make changes to move more in that direction for their mental health and for their just overall wellbeing? And if so, how could you start to move in that direction when you've been so far already with the other thing, like kind of letting them have whatever they wanted or all that?

Right. Oh my God. This is such a relevant question, because that's where so many parents find themselves. And I think the root of that problem is that parents are terrified of their children. And so if they— and they feel like if they— and parents really need their child's love, and they want to be the cool parent, and they want the child to be happy. And somehow, like, the training went off at some point for us parents. And like, we are trained now to like have our child be this kind of fragile, made out of glass thing that if, if he doesn't win the soccer game, then he's going to fall apart. So we're going to give a participation trophy. And we're gonna, you know, and we treat our children like they're, there's such fragile and, and not resilient people. And the more we treat them that way, the more that becomes reality. So we have to start by saying our children need leadership, no matter what age they are. They need leadership. And another cause of ADHD symptoms is leaving a child to make decisions on their own. I remember reading about a parent whose child had like this dream of flying an airplane. And the child was really, really young. Unfortunately, the end of the story is that the airplane crashed. But here's the thing. I know this is a terrible story to tell. But here's the thing. You're the parent. Your child has a dream. That's really nice. So now let's get to an age-appropriate time where your child can fly an airplane and let her go for it. She should fly an airplane when she's 19, 20, 21. Not when she's 7. And when you let your 7-year-old handle something that she's not capable of handling, that 7-year-old is terrified because that child cannot make the right decisions. So number one is we have to know our kids need our leadership, and we don't need to be popular, and we don't need to be their friends. As a matter of fact, it's better that we're not their friends because they need a confidant. They need someone to turn to for advice. And, and that's us. They have enough friends. So let's start with that very clearly. Number 2 is, yes, you can pull things back. You can say, I made a mistake and now I'm repairing it. But that has to be something that works together. For example, we all got sucked into our phones during the COVID lockdowns. I, you know, we all became addicts. And I know that with my 6 children and trying to balance who has Zoom when and finding computers. I'm running from computer to computer, writing to the teacher, checking WhatsApps every 6 seconds till I became that parent where there was a ding. I'm like, oh, oh, I wonder what's here. And that's me. And I'm, and I'm the one who's telling everyone to get off their screens. So I actually handed my phone to my husband one day and I said, take it and block it so that I could only have, you know, No more, no more surfing the web for me. If I need to look something up, I will go to my laptop, but I don't want this in my hands anymore. I need to be consistent with my children. And I actually have a program in the book that, that helps parents walk through getting their children on board for the things that are important to them. What happens usually is that once you set the rule, your children will go crazy. For about 2 weeks. And why does it take that long? Because we're reprogramming them to have faith in us. And the minute they know that we really mean it, and we're not backing down, and we love them, and this is for them, and we care, then everything calms down, and they come back to their senses. So I help parents of kids of all ages work walk through getting the screens out of their lives for a little while, like doing a total detox, and then coming back to it. This is not my program. This is Dr. Dunkley. She has Reset Your Child's Mind. I think this is the book is called— love it. It's great. And I highly recommend it. And so I help them, but I warn them in advance, you have to be a strong parent here because no, no matter, no level of begging, pleading, and threatening can shake you here. But be reasonable. You sometimes you have to take it one step at a time. And first start with shrinking the amount of hours that children use, but be with them on it. Don't be inconsistent. If you tell— take their phones away, and then you're sitting there watching a football game or worse, then, then you're not a good leader of your family.

Yeah, that and that probably is probably one of the harder things for parents because they, you know, do as I say, not as I do, doesn't really fly. You've got to set by— lead by example. And, um, so I think that first of all, I just appreciate this conversation so much because I think anybody that listens to it will take some things away, not just people that are— that have children with ADHD or are dealing with those things, trying to work through like, is this real? Is it not real? It doesn't even matter. It just matters, like, go back to the root. And get people healthier in general, which is what I'm all about. And that affects everything positively is kind of what I've taken from, um, the things that you've mentioned and working with them. Where can people find more about you online, learn about your book? You have another one coming out. Just talk about how you work with people and, um, where they can find you most easily.

So people can reach out to me through my website, which is hyperhealing.org. That's a very easy way to reach out and they can send me a message, which I'm always happy to respond to. I'm also on Instagram, which is hyperhealing.adhd. Those are really the two best ways. And of course my book Hyperhealing is on Amazon and I'm right now working on the audio, but right now we have the softcover and the ebook. So anyone could definitely, and if you purchase the book and you want to get in touch afterwards with questions, or comments, then please, by all means, I'd love to hear from you.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And all, all of those links will be in the show notes for everyone so that you're easy to find. Um, but again, that's hyperhealing.org. And did I say— did I say that right, that you have a new book coming out, or did I—

yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I didn't mention it. Yeah, my second book. Thank you. My second book, which is called Hyperhealing: Show Me the Science. That's right. Yeah. So it's, it's, uh, my first book is not controversial at all. Well, maybe I don't think it's controversial. It's really just a program that every parent can follow, whether your kid has ADHD or doesn't have ADHD. It's a very good program for raising children in a healthy way. And it, and it's not very highly demanding. Maybe I sound like I'm expecting so much,. But it definitely is a process, and you're raising your kids anyway, and you're spending all that time with your children anyway. It might as well be good, high-quality time that, that everyone feels good from the connection. So that really is what the first book is about. The second book, Show Me the Science, is much more going through all of these, the studies that I referred to before from, from, uh, 1979, '78, that, that they were already starting to look at the brain— CTs, MRIs, fMRIs. And, and what became of all of that? Is this dogma? Do we know that ADHD is a brain disorder? And I go into the medication. What's the story with the medication? I have myself have medicated children, so I'm not one of those purists, but I am very curious and I want to know what the story is. And I really think that in order to have informed consent You and I and all parents have to get every piece of information. You want to know the short-term effects, the long-term effects. Is this really helping my child become stronger scholastically, or is it just keeping my child quiet? All those questions are answered in Show Me the Science so that it really gives parents a guide to making the right decisions for their children in terms of a treatment plan.

I love that, and thank you for that, because I know that anytime that there's something like that and people, you know, are struggling with doing all this research themselves, it's always wonderful, especially since you've experienced this not only from a teacher perspective, but you have children that you've gone through with this. I think that people will see this as like a very trusted resource, and you're siding with science, and it'll just make their decision-making process that much easier. So I know I'm sure that was your intention.

Yeah, for sure. And the truth is, I I add to that that I'm completely agenda-free. No one's paying me to be on one side or the other. And, you know, and I took a journey myself. I've been on both sides until I finally actually combed through everything and really was able to come to much deeper understanding. So I'm not bought off by anybody. And as a mom, I'm really looking at it for the the well-being of your children, of my children, and that's what's most important. We've got to put— reinsert the children and their well-being into the story and not other, other things that distract us.

Yes. Well, thank you so much. I have appreciated this conversation immensely. I know that people are going to love it and get so much out of it. And thank you for taking the time today and sharing all your wonderful knowledge.

My absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a really fun conversation.

All right, we'll keep in touch. Thank you.