New Podcast with Brandon Slade: Students Living With ADHD: Tap Into Your Strengths

Parents, is your teen college ready? Are you feeling overwhelmed, stressed out, or excited about your teen applying to college? Do you know what colleges are looking for? And if your kid gets in, do you know what you'll pay for it? College admission has never been so competitive or expensive. Shellee Howard will take you on a journey to help you and your teen get college ready. Now here's your host, Shellee.

Hello parents, this is Shellee Howard with College Ready and Parents. Is your teen college ready? And today I have a very special guest, Brandon Slade. Welcome to the podcast, Brandon.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here and Yeah, no, I'm— I love the work that you do, and thanks so much for thinking of me.

You're welcome. So the goal today is to share you with our world of college admissions and the families that we get the opportunity to work with. Can you share a little bit maybe about your background or how you got started in the work that you're doing?

Yeah, great question. So, um, actually started at the very beginning, so I was diagnosed hyperactive ADHD at the age of 5. And I had the best type of ADHD, I always tell families, because I was the kid flipping desks and jumping on tables. And there were teams of people coming to watch me, trying to figure out what was wrong with this child. And I have 2 brothers just like myself. But the reason I call it the best type of ADHD is because I got noticed. We meet so many, whether it's middle school, high school, college kids who kind of feel like something's off and parents feel like something's off. But they're not sure what it is. And it, you know, maybe some inattentive ADHD and, or something else, some underlying anxiety or something. But when they figure it out, it's like, oh my gosh, I was struggling for all these years kind of for no reason. That wasn't me for sure. I was an out-of-control child. And so that kind of started my path in all this. So struggled in middle school and high school and then went out to Ohio on a college football scholarship. I'm from Boulder, Colorado and went out there and, just bombed my freshman year. Just, just got destroyed 'cause I didn't have the organizational skills or someone's education, they're called executive function skills. I didn't have those skills to be successful academically, socially, and athletically. So that started my path. I had to, you know, after I bombed, I couldn't blame my mom, I couldn't blame my dad who was states away. I finally had to do the work and that started my path and really had to do a deep dive in all this stuff. And then was able to get through undergrad, worked myself through grad school, became a special education teacher and school psychologist, and taught special education for 12 years. And then started a little practice, what I'm doing now, called Untapped Learning. That's grown and we work with kids all across the country. So a lot of hard lessons in there. I sped through that, but yeah, I've been working on this thing for most of my life.

So of course, the first question I ask as a parent is, how do I recognize that this is something different than just maybe a 3-year-old behavior, a 7-year-old behavior, a 10-year-old behavior. And maybe if I did recognize it, maybe they're not getting good grades, but everybody says, oh, they're fine, they're just a nice normal boy. As a parent, how do we recognize it and what can we do about it?

Yeah, so my specialty is ADHD. We work with kids all across, um, ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, depression— not on the mental health side but on the productivity side. So, um, I guess which, which population are you speaking to?

Would it be more the ADHD or Or, or maybe it's just a child with bad grades. Maybe as a parent we don't know what they have or if they have anything, right? We just have this very either hyperactive child or maybe a child who has some other dyslexia and are not doing well on their test scores. But from a parent's perspective, how do we reach out to a teacher? Do we reach out to— what does that path look like for a family who just can't figure out why their child is not really being successful in school.

Yeah, that's such a great question. So, and depending where you're at, some can be dead ends and some can be really helpful, right? So talking to your pediatrician, they have tons of questionnaires to kind of figure out and narrow down what this, what this thing is. Next would be talking to your school, whether it's your counselor or an interventionist or something, school psychologist. But even if that gets you nowhere, the great thing about improving executive function skills— so when you have ADHD, this is what you really struggle with. It's things like getting started, being organized, maintaining attention, staying on task. So even if you don't know exactly where to go, there's certain interventions we can implement at home to really help those skills, whether it's classified as a learning disability or not. We can really work on these skills either way.

Okay, and in diving deeper into that, is that the work that you are doing now? And what might a parent expect in how, how this would help their student?

Yeah, so before you even get to us, I like to give parents— because we actually work with a lot of parents and, um, universities and doctors— so just a couple like low, low-level interventions that's going to give you a lot of bang for your buck. So the first one is if you struggle with attention and getting started, having a clear academic routine is very helpful. So it's not possible in every house, but same time, same place as much as possible. And if you have a space in your house that you use for productivity and productivity only, and you're disciplined enough to stay off your phone and not browse on the internet there, no matter how poor your attention is, well, it gets really good over time. This is something where if you do have an ADHD like me, It's kind of a non-negotiable, but it's best practice for everybody.

Okay.

The things that really help us more than anything are sleep, exercise. There's, you know, if you Spark by Dr. John Ratey, a lot of this research came out that 15 minutes of intense exercise before doing your academics is performing better than Adderall in a lot of clinical studies for learning, attention, memory, and retention. So sleep, exercise, having clear routines and clear structure around academics and homework and productivity. If we can implement some of those things, and give a ton of positive reinforcements and then have accountability on the back end, these are gonna give you a ton of bang for your buck.

Okay, so, you know, a lot of families, they'll come into College Ready and the student hasn't been diagnosed with anything, but the parent may be questioning or maybe a little concern has come out because of either grades or attention or whatever that might be. And they tried the path of going through the school. Tell me a little bit about how you could help that parent or that child when they feel like they're just not getting the support they need.

Yeah, that's such a hard question, and, and part of it is because the schools are maxed right now. I know this being a former special education teacher, so, um, Going through the school, we can look at getting an academic support class if your student qualifies. And so this could be through a 504 plan or an IEP, but sometimes you have to have documentation. So it's a chicken or the egg thing. If you do have resources to spend, it can be great to get what's called, you know, neuropsych eval or neuropsych assessment. It's a bunch of hours of testing, but we can really figure out what's going on here. So it could be like something like an ADHD mixed with a slower processing speed. Or a very high IQ but struggling with working memory. We can figure out what's going on. We can design interventions around that. That's not an option. I'm a huge fan of taking the fight outside of the house. So I know, you know, we do everything through the Navy SEAL model, discipline equals freedom. So if you're disciplined, you have twice as much freedom on the back end, which is what we're all after. So college students, if I can get a college student to go to teacher office hours with a professor or a TA, that 30 minutes with them will save them an hour and a half to 2 hours on the back end by the time they initiate the task, maintain attention and study what they're supposed to study. Works the same thing in high school, if that's a possibility. Building in structure throughout the day and taking that outside of the house can be really helpful. Another quick side note is, if it's hard for you to pay attention, it's an ADHD or something else, it's twice as hard for us to maintain attention. So when we get home, not only is it hard for us to task initiate, but we get really— take that out on the people. So there's lots of things we can build in around that, but Having as much structure in school really seems to be helpful.

Interesting. It's almost counterintuitive because here's this kid who doesn't want to sit still, who doesn't want to focus, and you're saying you need structure. I wouldn't think that way. I would think, do I love them more? Do I care for them more? What can I do for them? The work that you do, do you work with the parent? And the student, or one or the other?

Primarily the student. So, um, when we work with kids, you know, we see them at the very beginning of the week. So if they're, um, I'll talk about a college kid. So if they're, if they're in college, we see them at the very beginning of the week, whether that's Sunday or Monday, and we look through all of their portals, whether it's their syllabus or something else, because it's really overwhelming right now. So to get everything out of there and get it on a very clear plan mixed with extracurricular curriculars, and break down these large tasks into small manageable pieces is really helpful for our students. Um, so we do that at the beginning of the week, and then we do things, we role play like how to talk to a professor, or we give academic instruction. Um, and then we see them again at the end of the week on a Thursday or Friday, and that's our accountability meeting, making sure we got through what we got— we needed to get through before things become a mess. Um, when I was failing out of college, I was way too far gone before I even knew what was going on. It's like, get from 1 to— and there's like 17 missing assignments, um, because, you know, that's just where we're at. So we can catch things very quickly at the end. And then we also give a ton of academic instruction. Um, if a kid's struggling with writing, a lot of times we want to work on the writing, but what they're really struggling with is organizing their thoughts and creating an outline. Same thing with the presentation. If we can help them title the slides, you know, with their executive function skills, um, that's really helpful. It's that structure again. They can work downhill, just kind of filling comes in. And the great thing about all this is we're not doing this forever. Once you give them the skills, then you can back off. These executive function skills can be skillful.

That's so interesting. Is there any way to first understand for a family member who is just frustrated? You know, I'm sure your parents had moments where they're just like, we're failures as parents. I don't know.

Oh my gosh, all the time.

Yeah, yeah.

No, no, it's easy to parent well-behaved, respectful kids. Some of the best parents I know have challenging kids because they have to be the best parents.

Yeah, I often tease my— I have 4, and I, I tease the firstborn, um, was super simple. And then when I had my second, I'm like, oh, now I understand what those other parents were dealing with.

Quick, quick side note: when I work with parents of only children who have like an ADHD or anxiety, you know, high levels of anxiety, They always think they did something wrong. They're like, you know, I had a Diet Coke when I was pregnant or something. Because they don't have that perspective. A lot of us, you know, if you have more than one kid and one's like super organized and one's just, you know, a hot mess, they, they're like, you know, they are who they are. They get it, right? That they are who they are at this stage in life. But keep in mind, you know, there's research out there between 50 to 80% of our CEOs, entrepreneurs, millionaires have this executive function challenge, this ADHD, this dyslexia at some time in their life. I really believe it can be a gift. And there's a ton of research behind that. If you discipline your gift, it's hard in that 13 to 21 year range, but if you discipline your gift, the fact that you see the world different can be an unbelievable asset.

I love that perspective. That makes me feel so much better for those people who feel that it's an obstacle or a challenge. When you look at it that way, seeing it through their eyes can open up a whole nother world.

Um, and so the World Jobs Report that came out in 2020, it looked at— so it looks for the top 10 things employers are looking for. And if we were to take that back to like 1960, 1970, it would say things like able to follow a task repeatedly at a high level over and over and over. Well, everything's being automated now, and what can be automated will be automated in the future. So what employers are really looking for 2025 and beyond is people who can see the world different think about problems differently. And essentially they're looking for our neurodiverse people. Now it doesn't mean a whole lot of anything if we can't get things done, don't figure out how our brain works, but it has the ability to be an unbelievable gift.

I love that. I mean, I can think of so many of my students who are brilliant, really brilliant. And yet if I ask them, why isn't this done? They'll look at me like, I have no idea why it's not done.

So, so when I started this, I started this as an accident, right? And I started as a selfish thing because as a hyperactive ADHD male, there was nowhere for me to go growing up. So that's what we thought we were starting.

Okay.

However, what we've really seen a ton of is what it was exactly what you're talking about. We call that the twice exceptional student, the student with a gifted IQ, but also there's like an ADHD or there's an anxiety, or there's something else in there that's causing a lot of challenges. That could be a really frustrating cognitive profile because you see these glimpses of brilliance as an adult, but you also see the kid who can't get out the door on time, right? I call it the kid who's going to cure cancer but can't find their stepkid. So, um, what happens is what we see when they go to college if they don't receive some kind of instruction up front is They go to these high-level schools and they haven't needed to study, set up organizational systems, set up studying routines, like how to talk to teachers, professors, whatever. So they have that piece and suddenly it gets so hard. They can't just like be smart and they don't have that piece. But then they also, they have this like identity breakdown where like they've always identified as being the smartest kid in the room and now they're not. Cause they're at this high-level school where everyone's smart. And so, um, there's some instruction we can do around routines and building out organizational systems before they go off to college to make sure that doesn't happen.

And, you know, parents who are listening, that is a very important thing that you can do for your child, setting them up for success. When my son went to Harvard, his first roommate had a breakdown because he was the smartest kid before he got to Harvard, and then all of a sudden he was amongst all the other smartest kids at every other school. And the pressure was immense for this young man. And his parents had done everything for him, and now he was on his own. And my son would call home and say he's having another breakdown. It was almost like he went back to being a toddler. He would have these outbursts, these anger sessions. What kind of work, or how much work can or should be done for maybe a high school student, the parents like, they are so not mature enough to leave the house. Like, I'm terrified, right? Can it be done? Can you take that child and get 'em prepared for college?

So I know we do an 8-hour boot camp before kids go off to school. And so this is like how to talk to your professor, which is the same thing about how to talk to your roommate. It's advocating for yourself. 'Cause a lot of times we tell kids, you gotta advocate, you gotta advocate. Well, no one ever role plays with them. They don't have scripts and they don't have email banks and things like that, where if they have that, they get the skill and it's a lifelong skill. You know, teaching them how to read a syllabus, establishing those study routines before they go off to campus, building out their Google Calendar, ordering books. So, you know, we do a lot of that stuff. If it's not through us, it's a lot of the stuff, you know, that I just spoke about. Like, how can we just even discuss with them what are they going to plan out their week? Sunday night at 6:00 PM at the library is a great time. What does studying look like? I'm at this campus coffee shop from 3:00 to 4:00 PM every single day. What is working out like? And things— and is there reminders in your phone for laundry? So just building out a lot of that stuff ahead of time can be really helpful. We can only do what we can as adults. A lot of times we have to learn hard lessons as well, and it's okay.

Yeah, so then my question comes to— I'm thinking of this one really brilliant student in my program, and I would say he's a bit socially awkward, but I mean, he really— I mean, he's going to be working for NASA. I mean, this young man, like, can compute things in his head that blow my mind. But I do worry about him fitting in socially. How can you set up a student for that kind of situation? He's very recluse. He's very much spends time with his his family, which is not a bad thing, but I just worry about that transition.

A lot of it we already kind of talked about. It's, it's building in the social skill stuff, and we did practice doing that before, and it can feel really weird and awkward, but that's okay. Um, and then whether it's a therapist or a mentor or someone else, having someone back home that they can call when they get into a pinch before things are really wrong is very helpful. I'm overgeneralizing that right now, but this was me as well. A lot of young men that we see, they really hold things inside for as long as they can until things— until they really melt down. So having someone that they can talk to built in ahead of time before they go off to school, like a bridge, someone, um, whether it's a therapist in confidence or something like that, or a friend or an old— or an old athletic coach, is really helpful. Having that bridge to home, someone who trust.

Okay, what about the, you know, since COVID the whole anxiety, depression has become either more talked about or it's just more prevalent. I don't know which the case to be. And these parents are worried about sending their child off to university to fend for themselves, and the, the students are in a place now where they want to talk about their anxiety or depression, but they don't want to talk about it to a therapist. How do you recommend a family help that kind of student, the anxious, the depressed, the one who is just not mentally at their game?

It's a loaded question. I'll try my best. What a loaded question. Just, you know, just a quick reminder, my expertise is in executive function. I work with tons of therapists because they work at like the high end, like mental health, you know, top down, like inadequacies due to having ADHD. And we work from the bottom up. A lot of times our kids are really anxious because they just can't get their stuff done. And that's our expertise.

Gotcha.

But I don't want to dodge your question. So when we look at really what helps mental health more than anything else, so it is having someone to talk to. Reminding our students that the most successful people have the most help. There's this dangerous myth out there that we're all self-made, and no matter how— who they look up to on social media, whatever person in their life, I guarantee that person that they look up to has a team of people around them.

Hmm.

Reminding them of that. And then also you look at, you know, the really impactful stuff for mental health is a lot of the routines that we spoke about before. So having an exercise routine. When are you going to the campus rec center? Having a lot of these clear routines, we see significantly reduced anxiety. Having some resemblance of some kind of bedtime routine during the week, something like that, we're getting up to close-ish the same time. So a lot of these sleep, diet, exercise things we can build in and routines are very, very helpful based on the research. They're kind of, sleep and exercise are kind of the ultimate here for mental health.

Yeah. I mean, I know myself when I sleep well and I exercise, life is so much easier. Easier. So that makes complete sense to me. For a family who is listening and they may have some questions for you or really just don't know where to turn, is there something that you can recommend, a way for them to reach out to you, a website, a, just a resource that they could have?

Yeah, if you go to untappedlearning.com, that's our website, and we do, we mentor college kids across the country Then we actually did that boot camp that I spoke about earlier, that 8 hours, which I'm— I love being proactive versus reactive. And unfortunately, my, you know, my phone gets a little wild in October. Not trying to have a scare tactic, but I would love to be proactive here. And I know whether it's us or someone else working downhill, working ahead of time can be really helpful. I know Lululemon sponsors our boot camp over the summer. So, oh wow, first 50 people that sign up get yoga mats for wellness throughout the school year and things like that. So Um, I know we do it, but there's also a lot of other people in the community that do it as well. So putting these pieces in, even though they may seem kind of ridiculous to your student before they go off to school, we see such a huge bang for your buck, um, long term.

Wow, that has been so helpful. Thank you very much.

I hope so. It's a quick snapshot, but, um, there's a huge passion for these kids because Remember, so some of these kids, even though they may struggle with this, the fact that we're neurodiverse can be very, very helpful in this world. Um, you just got to discipline your gift. And a lot of other people hit a wall earlier on, right? They hit a wall in middle school, high school. Mine was like second grade, right, when I hit my academic wall. Our very intelligent kids sometimes don't hit that wall until later on in life, which can be really, really challenging. So I definitely feel for them. We all hit a wall eventually. There's nothing wrong with them.

And now you figured out how to support them. Probably back when you were doing it, it wasn't quite as available. So again, what was the website that they could go to?

UntappedLearning.com. And there's a bunch of parent blogs and resources. And if we're not the right fit, um, we can also recommend the right fit as well. But if you ever get stuck, um, back to the basics: teens, diet, sleep, exercise, movement, and, and we'll be okay here.

Wonderful. Thank you, Brandon. We really appreciate you being on Teens Is Your— or Parents Is Your Teen College Ready.

Thank you so much, Shellee.