Parenting an ADHD Child When You Have ADHD, Too with Dr. Amy Moore and Sandy Zamalis
About this Episode
On this episode of the Brainy Moms podcast, Dr. Amy and Sandy get real about raising a child with ADHD when you have it yourself. See, Dr. Amy is not only a cognitive psychologist and brain training researcher, but also an ADHD mom and a mom with ADHD. Touching on subjects like self-regulation, nutrition, the effects of ADHD on relationships, and the cognitive skills that often tend to underperform (beyond just attention!), you’ll learn about some of the strategies Dr. Amy has implemented in her own life, as well as what she’s learned about adult ADHD in her research.
About Dr. Amy Moore
Dr. Amy Moore is a cognitive psychologist at LearningRx in Colorado Springs, Colorado, at the headquarters of the largest network of brain training centers in the world. She specializes in cognitive training and assessment for neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD, brain injury, learning disabilities and age-related cognitive decline. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed medical and psychological journals and presented at conferences around the country. She has been a child development specialist, education administrator, and teacher of teachers with a PhD in psychology and a master’s degree in early childhood education. Dr. Amy has been working with struggling learners for 25+ years in public, private, and government organizations, so she knows a little about thinking and learning. She is also Editor-in-Chief of Modern Brain Journal, a TEDx Speaker, host of the Brainy Moms podcast, a licensed pastor, and a board-certified Christian counselor. Dr. Amy is married to Jeff Moore, a retired Air Force fighter pilot now working as a surgical nurse. They have three incredible sons (ages 19, 23, and 25) and a very mischievous but soft Siberian cat. Originally from South Carolina, Dr. Amy has called Colorado home since 2006.
Website: www.AmyMoorePhD.com
Watch her TEDx talk, Lessons Learned from Training 101,000 Brains
Read her research: https://www.learningrx.com/brain-training-research/
About Sandy Zamalis
Sandy is a brainy mom of 2 who loves co-hosting our show! She’s a Board Certified Cognitive Specialist and the owner of LearningRx Staunton-Harrisonburg in VA where she spends her days improving the lives of struggling students through brain training. Her diverse background includes being a USA Swimming Coach, probation officer, homeschooling moms, and small business owner in 3-D printing and scanning. Sandy has been married for 26 years and is her passion is helping families understand learning challenges so that children can find success and confidence. Find Sandy on TikTok @TheBrainTrainerLady.
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Read the transcript for this episode:
DR. AMY: Hi, smart moms and dads. Welcome to another episode of the Brainy Moms podcast brought to you today by LearningRx Brain Training Centers. I am your host, Dr. DR. AMY Moore, joined by my co-host, Sandy Zamalis. And we’re going to do something a little bit different today. We just got back from a conference in Virginia, and I had given my 5 Pillars of ADHD presentation there, and after the presentation, I had a line of parents asking me questions, and some of the questions that I got related to, “Hey, what if I have ADHD myself? How do I raise a child with ADHD at the same time?” And considering I am an ADHD warrior who has raised two ADHD warriors, um, I think I might be able to help a little bit in that area. And so after talking to these parents and answering some of those questions, I decided to even add a chapter to my upcoming book about this topic because it did seem so important and it wasn’t something that I had really spent a lot of time thinking formally about, but had enacted all along the way of raising my kids.
SANDY: I think it’s a great conversation. So, listeners, in addition to hosting Brainy Moms, Dr. DR. AMY is a cognitive psychologist at LearningRx in Colorado Springs, Colorado, at the headquarters of the largest network of brain training centers in the world. She specializes in cognitive training and assessment for neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD, brain injury, learning disabilities, and age-related cognitive decline. And her research has been published in peer-reviewed medical and psychology journals and presented at conferences around the country. She’s also a counselor who works with parents of kids with ADHD too, as well as being a human with ADHD, trying to function and do all of those things. So let’s start by identifying some of the challenges that parents with ADHD have.
DR. AMY: Well, I love how you said humans with ADHD, right? Because many of the challenges that parents with ADHD have, are the same challenges that human adults with ADHD would have, whether or not they are parents or not. And I think one of the biggest challenges that we have as adults with ADHD is disorganization and chaos. So, you know, we think a lot about disorganized thought processes and chaos in thinking and learning, but I’m talking about chaos and disorganization in the home. And so, you know, it’s kind of scary because research actually shows a link between this ADHD chaos that parents contribute to, right, parents who have ADHD, and inconsistent parenting practices in general. And so we know that inconsistent parenting practices cause a lot of stress in the home. So it’s super important for us to recognize as ADHD warriors that that disorganization and chaos in our homes is having a domino effect on relationships, parenting strategies, behavioral outcomes, and not just that we’re trying not to step on Legos barefoot.
SANDY: Can we define that? Let’s define chaos and disorganization, because I’m sure you mean, both figuratively and literally, right?
DR. AMY: Yeah, I kind of do. Well, disorganization is the idea that not everything is in its place, not everything has its place, or we fail to put things back in their place.And so our homes literally can be disorganized. I used to joke that the secret to a happy marriage, when you’re married to someone with ADHD, is separate closets. Because my husband, for example, color codes his clothing and he has them divided by short sleeves, long sleeve pants, and then color coded it all at the same time. So his closet would be beautiful and mine always looks like fireworks just went off, right? Just an explosion of colors and rarely can you actually see the closet floor. And so for the first few houses that we lived in, in our marriage, we were able to have separate closets. And so my disorganization did not affect him. Well, our current home that we’ve lived in for the last five years, we don’t have enough closets for me to have my own. And so we share a closet and it’s a nice size walk in and I’m really careful to keep my fireworks explosion of clothing and shoes and purses on my half. But he still has to walk in and see it. And so it causes this sense of chaos in his life. Because he has to share this disorganized space with me. And so it creates some tension. Well, when we’re trying to parent children who also struggle to stay organized, then they have their own challenges of trying to live and work in their mess. And if my mess happened to spill over into their space, then that would just compound the mess. I mean, compound the challenge. So that’s what I mean by disorganization, right? Just literally that stuff isn’t put away in an organized manner, or we haven’t created a space for organization. And chaos can also refer to the schedule being chaotic, or not having a set routine, or not remembering what the routine is, or what appointments we have on a certain day, or what time people need to be where. And that can create chaos, especially if you have more than one kid.
SANDY: Right. And poor time management, right?
DR. AMY: Oh, time management. Yeah. So we ADHD warriors typically have something called “time blindness,” and that’s this inability to A, keep track of time. Like, we literally lose track of time, right? It’s 10:30 and then all of a sudden, we look up and it’s 1:30. And we’re like, “What have we done with the last 3 hours?” But the timeliness is that is most impactful to me as an adult with ADHD is this lack of ability to accurately estimate how long it’s going to take me to do something. And so I’ll say, yes, I can do that project in four days when really I need 12 days to get that project done. I’m just unable to think through all of the possible variables that will impact my ability to get something done. Or we can’t necessarily remember how long it’s taken us to do a similar task in the past. So time management and time blindness is a real struggle.
SANDY: I think sometimes it leads to procrastination too, right? Because you might look at something and think, “Oh, my gosh. That’s going to take forever.” And really it takes you 10 minutes. And if you had just done it when you thought about it, it wouldn’t have, you would have been done and it wouldn’t be overwhelming and looming in the background.
DR. AMY: Right. But also, you know, the dopamine reward system doesn’t work the same way in the ADHD brain. And so we actually do our best work at the very last minute, right? Because that is when we have this rush, this rush of neurotransmitters that say, “Go, go, go, go, go!” right? Like we get this norepinephrine explosion. Interesting thing about norepinephrine, it’s also called noradrenaline. And if you think about adrenaline, it speeds up your body. Well, noradrenaline speeds up your brain. And so, you know, this last-minute rush to do something is sort of what makes us be able to meet deadlines at the last minute, but that isn’t really the healthiest way to avoid chaos.
SANDY: Well that’s gotta be super stressful, right? So let’s talk about stress management. How does an ADHD warrior parent deal with stress management? Do they, I’m assuming it’s going to be one of those things that it might be a little on the weaker side.
DR. AMY: Yeah, it is. So if we’re not intentional about managing stress, then it will create a lack of patience. And a lack of patience then really creates problems with relationships between us and our child. And so, you know, it’s stressful to have ADHD. It’s stressful to raise a child with ADHD. And when you have ADHD and raising a child with ADHD, you’ve got this, not just double the stress, but this exponential amount of stress that occurs when you pair two people in the same household with it, which happens frequently, by the way. There is, a genetic component to ADHD. And so we do see, you know, a decent number of parents and children in the same household that suffer this plight. So that stress, you know, puts us into that fight, flight, or freeze mode. We can’t think and reason through all of the possible possibilities and outcomes, and then that creates conflict. And so if we aren’t intentional about managing the stress that not only comes from being a human and being a parent, but also, juggling those challenges that we have with ADHD, then we do end up with some, some conflict. You know, I, I really struggle with this whole “ADHD is a superpower” movement that we’ve seen on social media recently. Because in no world, in no world, is a neurodevelopmental disorder a superpower. I think we have to be completely realistic about the struggle if we’re going to find ways to manage it, to overcome some of the struggle, and to be able to accept that this is the plight. And so there are changes that we have to make in our lives in order to be happy.
SANDY: What are some other challenges that a parent with ADHD might have?
DR. AMY: Yeah. So, because our brains can be disorganized, our parenting strategies can be inconsistent. And so we might have more patience one day than we have the next. And so we might allow certain behaviors one day and say, “That’s okay, I’m going to let that go.” But the next day we might have low frustration tolerance. And so the same behavior that we tolerated stress free on Tuesday might trigger us on Wednesday and set us into a big emotion, a little explosion. Right? And that’s hard for children to know. If they don’t know what the limits are, what the rules are, what your boundaries are, what your expectations are. then they can’t meet those expectations. And so if we aren’t consistent from day to day, right? If we don’t hold boundaries, if we don’t say that this behavior is okay every day, or this behavior is never okay, then that’s a recipe for disaster, too. So, this inconsistent parenting can be a real struggle for parents with ADHD. And then also, if we’re struggling ourselves, then we could fall into a trap of not being very supportive. And so, you know, our child is struggling. Our child with ADHD is struggling, and if we are also struggling at the exact same time, we might not have the capacity to be supportive to their plight. And so again, that’s one of the challenges that we have to overcome.
SANDY: Well, it becomes hard to model in that moment, right? Because if you’re struggling, you can’t model or co regulate and help them work through the moment. I’m assuming it turns into a very combustible situation.
DR. AMY: I’m yelling, you’re yelling, we’re all yelling. It’ll be anarchy. Right. Exactly. Well, and how do we model chore completion, for example, right? If I’m not organized enough, if I haven’t managed my time well enough, and so I’m running behind on meeting a deadline for work, and so I’m not able to get, you know, the kitchen cleaned, then how can I expect my child, who was also unable to accurately estimate how long it was going to take him to do a school project. How can I expect him to have his room cleaned by 5:30 if he’s rushing to meet a school deadline, right? If I’m mismanaging my time or underestimating the time it takes me to do something and then I’m not able to follow through on my household responsibilities, then that makes me a poor role model for household responsibilities.
SANDY: Let’s talk about higher comorbidity for other mental health diagnoses.
DR. AMY: Yeah. So, the latest statistic I saw was something like 80 percent of people with ADHD also have a, another comorbid disorder. So whether it’s depression, anxiety, maybe a learning disability. You know, something on the spectrum.So about 80 percent typically don’t just have ADHD. So not only are we, you know, juggling the struggles that come inherently with ADHD, but we might also be juggling our child’s struggle with another diagnosis, right? Anxiety or OCD. Or we’re trying to manage our own comorbid diagnosis, like depression or anxiety. And so again, that just creates this exponential effect of the stress that comes from having this diagnosis or diagnoses.
SANDY: So, it’s interesting to me because I, I hear all the time that a lot of, you know, I think there’s just more awareness now for these things and just for neurodiversity. issues in general.But I hear all the time that parents will get their kids diagnosed and then realize they also have a problem and that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. So let’s talk about that a little bit. Let’s talk about late diagnoses. Cause you were diagnosed late. You weren’t diagnosed as a child. You were diagnosed in college, right?
DR. AMY: Yeah. Yeah. So I think that a couple of things are happening there. One, we begin to recognize as our child is going through the diagnostic process and we’re completing the checklists and the surveys that are rating the different symptoms, we begin to recognize those types of behaviors in ourselves if we also have ADHD, right?So we start thinking, “Oh, wait a minute. I do that too. Oh, I do that too. What do you mean I’m impulsive? What do you mean I don’t have patience? What do you mean?” Right? And so, you begin to recognize it, so it raises some awareness of what ADHD looks like and begins to bring a new light to it, right, to, “Oh, I really struggled the exact same way, I had no idea that that might be why. “So I think that’s one of the reasons why we see late diagnoses or parents of children with ADHD also getting diagnosed. But there’s not just a genetic component, but there’s an environmental component as well. And so if some of those environmental contributors to a child’s ADHD are also present, in the adult’s environment, you know, that could certainly explain why we would see that as well.So exposure to toxins, You know, exposure to pesticides in foods or lead, really, diesel fuels, things that not, not don’t necessarily cause ADHD, but are recognized as contributing to some of the symptoms that we see.
SANDY: Well, and you talk a lot about just inflammation, because that can really exacerbate the issue for those who have a true ADHD diagnosis.
DR. AMY: Absolutely. Yeah, I talk all the time about how important nutrition is for helping lower the temperature on ADHD behaviors and ADHD symptoms that we see. And so I talk all the time about, you know, undiagnosed food allergies and food sensitivities are a huge contributor, contributor to ADHD symptomology.And so, you know, if you’re allergic to dairy and you’re eating dairy, then you might experience brain fog, and that brain fog could look like ADHD inattentiveness. Or it can exacerbate ADHD inattentiveness. And so that’s a super important part of, you know, being aware of what your lifestyle looks like in terms of how to lower the temperature on some of that.
SANDY: So we’ve talked about some of these challenges. Let’s flip it and let’s talk about tips we would have for parents with ADHD and how they can overcome some of these challenges.
DR. AMY: Yeah. Well, I think the number one thing that we have to do if we are a parent who has ADHD and we’re parenting a child with ADHD is to address and treat our ADHD symptoms first. You know, every time you get on an airplane, you hear the flight attendant say, “Hey, in case of emergency, the oxygen masks will drop. Place the oxygen mask on your own nose and mouth first and then place it on your child’s nose and mouth. We can’t take care of our children if we aren’t taking care of ourselves first.And so that means we have to take a good hard look at what our symptoms are and what we’re doing about our symptoms. And so whether that means medicating, whether that means therapy, whether that means cognitive training, whether that means all of those lifestyle influences that we can talk about later,we have to take care of ourselves first. We have to address, we owe it to ourselves. We owe it to our spouses or partners and we owe it to our children to treat our own ADHD first. That’s number one.
SANDY: What’s the, what else would you say?
DR. AMY: Well, I think that we have to show ourselves some compassion. We have to recognize that there are documented differences between an ADHD brain and a non-ADHD brain. So blood flow looks different if we look at it on a spec scan. Connections in the brain look different. We can see that on functional MRI imaging. Electrical activity in the brain looks different. We can measure that with quantitative EEG. We know that there are volume differences, that the ADHD brain is slightly smaller in a couple of areas than in a non-ADHD brain. And so we have to recognize that there are differences, and when we have that “Aha” moment, then we can show ourselves some compassion and go, “Oh, okay, that explains why I’m not able to do some of these things as easily as my spouse or my sister or my best friend who doesn’t have ADHD.” So, I think that that’s part of maximizing our ability to function well as a parent with ADHD is to show ourselves some compassion. Right? That that struggle is real, not to let ourselves be gaslit by people who say ADHD is not real, because we have plenty of evidence, plenty of neuroimaging evidence to show that it is.
SANDY: So how do you recommend communicating that with your partner or even with your kids? It’s because, again, you know, I could hear some naysayers just talking about, you know, all the excuses, right? Get it together. So, but if you are having compassion on yourself and giving yourself that grace, you also then have to muster the ability to communicate that when you’re struggling and also maybe even asking for help or, or expressing your needs, right?
DR. AMY: Yeah, absolutely. So, we use the word normalize a lot. And so I, when I say we should normalize this, I don’t mean we should normalize ADHD. I mean, we should normalize that the struggle is real for ADHD, right? That that is something that we should expect if we have ADHD, that there will be struggles.And I think it’s important for us to be open and honest about our own ADHD struggles with our spouse and partner or and our child. I think that to be able to show vulnerability is a great way to model what it looks like to say, “Hey, I’m not quite getting this and I could use some help.” And so, kids who are able to advocate for themselves are the most successful in school.Most successful when they can advocate for themselves. And so, for us to be able to model that, “Hey, here’s where I’m struggling, or this is what I’m struggling with. And this is the kind of help that I could really use,” I think that’s an important life skill really for any child. That’s a great life skill for any parent to model for their child, but particularly with a child who has an ADHD brain to be able to recognize what their struggle looks like.And if the parent is saying, “Hey, this is something that I’m struggling with today,” then the child will go, “Oh, I’m not the only one.” Or, “Oh, that’s what that looks like to other people.” I think that can be super helpful.
SANDY: Well, it helps you connect, right? It gives you that connection point. Your lifeline.
DR. AMY: Absolutely. So, you know, we talked about how sometimes our parenting strategies and that parenting dynamic can be inconsistent when we both have ADHD, and so any opportunity that we have for connection with our child, we need to nurture that. So, I say over and over again, “connection is the number one buffer against mental health crisis.” And so, every word that comes out of our mouths will either strengthen the connection with our child or weaken the connection with our child. And so, a child with ADHD is stressed and struggling in some way. And so, to be connected to someone who gets it, someone who absolutely understands and has empathy for that struggle, is so important.And if that’s one of the people that you love most in the whole world, your mom or your dad, how special is that?
SANDY: I love that. So we talked about modeling, you know, that connection piece that communication piece. What about self-care? How would you model self -are? Because that’s a piece that can get lost with ADHD.
DR. AMY: Absolutely. So, I think that we have to make self-care practices a part of our everyday lives. And again, this is applicable to non-ADHD, you know, families as well. But particularly when you have a parent and a child, both with ADHD in the home, that self-care practices should be just a part of our everyday routine.And so, working on mindfulness and stress-management exercises, maybe, “Hey, this is how we spend the first five minutes of our day.” You know, we do some breathing or grounding exercises so that when we are suffering from the big emotions that we typically see in ADHD, those are more easily accessible to us.And so, I think that it’s important if a parent is medicated for ADHD and the child is to that we model the importance of maintaining a consistent medication routine, right? So, in the morning, when we get up, that’s the first thing we do is take our medication and brush our teeth or whatever that timing looks like. Again, so that we normalize that, “Hey, this is part of how we’re caring for ourselves.” You know, we know that omega-3 fatty acid supplementation is super important for people with ADHD. We know that our dopamine receptors are misshapen when we are low in omega-3 fatty acids. And because dopamine is implicated in the ADHD struggle, we want to be able to maximize as much dopamine as we can. And so, modeling the importance of supporting our brain, you know, with those omega-three fatty acids, should be something that kids see, you know, mom doing as well. And not just saying, “Did you take your fish oil today?” That’s all self-care.
SANDY: Okay. Yeah, what about structured things like, you know, chores, household tasks, things that might be hard for a parent with ADHD?
DR. AMY: Yeah, you know, I wish that that was the one area where I could say, “Here’s what it takes to be successful.” And because I haven’t been a hundred percent successful in the chores and the home organization piece, what I will say is that we have to manage our expectations well.And so we know, as an ADHD warrior, how hard that is. And so that gives us empathy to know how hard that is for our kid. And so I think it then becomes, we have to have a conversation as a family and say, “These are the 10 things that need to get done. These are the non-negotiables that need to get done. Who likes doing some of these?” Right, so that we can couple the chore with a desire or an enjoyment or a like, right? Because you never know, if you’ve got more than one kid in your house, there might be one who actually likes to walk the dog, right? Or who doesn’t mind taking the trash out. And so you’d be surprised that when you throw it all out there and say, “I need volunteers,” you know, you will have someone say, “I’d be happy to do that.” And so, letting the child with ADHD be first to choose what they think they have the capacity to do would go a long way. You know, and then you got the other two who are screaming, “But that’s not fair.” Well, that’s the time that we remind them fair doesn’t mean everybody gets the same thing. Fair means everyone gets what they need. And so, in terms of household organization and upkeep and chores, the person with ADHD needs some additional support.
SANDY: What about like, I love how you were sharing your closet example. We all, and my husband, you know, he’s got his spaces where he can, you know, he can put stuff everywhere. But I love it how important is it to have the clutter-free spaces versus also letting them, letting them have a messy room. Let their space be cluttered.
DR. AMY: So, I think that there are two camps on this. I think the one camp says that kids with ADHD already struggle with enough chaos and disorganization that they need a space that is clutter free in order to function optimally to do their schoolwork, for example. And I think that it depends on the individual child.If your child is functioning well in school, if your child is meeting his responsibilities and does not appear to be struggling, even though his room is messy, then why would we ask the child to implement a system of organization that clearly isn’tneeded? So that is where I say manage our expectations. We have to sometimes let go of the idea that our homes have to look like model homes while we’re raising our kids.We have a kid with a neurodevelopmental disorder, a mom or dad with a neurodevelopmental disorder. Choose your battles. Now, if your child is struggling to be in their room and get their homework done, if they’re struggling in other areas, and it looks like maybe it’s the disorganization that’s contributing to that struggle, then that’s when you get to have a conversation and go, “Hey, it looks like this disorganization in your room is keeping you from being successful in completing your homework or doing this project. How can I help? That is the greatest gift that you can give to someone with ADHD. Telling someone with ADHD, “You need to get organized,” is like telling someone with a broken leg to run faster. No. The greatest gift is to say to them, how can I help you get organized? And many times that’s going to have to come from the non ADHD parent because the ADHD parent needs their own help getting organized.
SANDY: So my kids are very different. I’ve talked about this before, but my son who, nobody in my family has ever been diagnosed with ADHD, but we know there’s certainly if I went through the checklist could be like, “Oh.” And my son is the disorganized, chaotic one. And my daughter is the neat and orderly one. And I’ve noticed with my son that he doesn’t necessarily need calm, you know, he does in, in other places, but like his room, his space, it could be a total disaster and that doesn’t bother him. He actually would prefer to be out in the calm area where the rest of us are to get that, that, you know, I don’t know what the word I’m looking for. But just to get that rejuvenation of like, “Okay, I’m in this space.” And then he can go back to his room and he sleeps fine. It’s not a big deal. Where’s my daughter? No way. Her room, everything’s put away. Everything’s got to be in its place. And that gives her comfort and care. So I love that you kind of highlighted that it really depends on the person, right? What drives them, and to pick your battles, to choose wisely in how you engage and help them support themselves because they’ve got to, you know, be in the world and figure out what works for them too.
DR. AMY: Absolutely. And also, you know, recognizing that when they are out in the world, if they haven’t learned some sort of order and organization that that might impact their future relationships. Just like it impacts, you know, the spousal relationship, you know, when one of you has ADHD. It drives my husband nuts that I am so physically disorganized, you know, with my, with my closet, with my office. And so, you know … And many times I’m like, “Okay, it’s fine. I can function.” And then I’ll have this moment of going, “I can’t work like this anymore. I can’t sleep in here anymore.” And I will spend the next 17 hours doing nothing but cleaning it up, organizing it. And it’ll stay that way for three days. And then it goes back to the explosion of fireworks that it was less than a week earlier.And so I, it’s interesting. So I have a client who is married to someone with ADHD. And as I listen to this client talk about a similar struggle, I start thinking, “Oh, my husband. I need to thank him more.”And so I’m intentional about saying to my husband, “Thank you. Thank you for loving me even though I’m a little bit messy. Or a lot bit messy.” Right? And to remember to recognize your husband’s got a plight here too. Your husband is struggling or your wife, right, is struggling too because of your struggle. But I think there’s something beautiful to be said for having a clutter-free space that even if your child’s room is messy that they can go to for that respite like you were just talking about, right? Like, so if there is, you know, a den or a family room or, you know, a dining room or an area that is calm and serene where if they need to come and do their homework there, because they’re struggling with their own mess, then great.
SANDY: Choices, right? It’s good to have choices. You talk about Ross Greene’s system of behavior support.Let’s talk about that a little bit.
DR. AMY: Okay. So, I love Dr. Ross Greene, psychiatrist who wrote the book, “The Explosive Child.” And he originally wrote his first one late eighties, early nineties, and he has since revised it a couple of times.But the premise is that as parents, we need to choose our battles. And so, we can put behavior in three categories. One category would be behaviors that are non-negotiable, and those are typically things like safety. You can’t run into the street, non-negotiable. You can’t touch a hot stove, non-negotiable.Safety and health. Right? You have to go to the dentist or your teeth will rot and fall out. Right. That’s a non-negotiable. You can kick and scream the whole way there, but you’re still going. Non-negotiable. The next category would be negotiables. Right? Well, you have to wear clothes to school, but how you combine those clothes can be negotiable.Even if they don’t match, even if they don’t look good, If that’s what you want to wear, then that’s probably okay as long as it’s age appropriate. And parents, your school-agers are not buying their own clothes. You’re buying their clothes, so they would probably be age appropriate. And these are things that you have to look at your family values and decide, “What am I willing to negotiate on?”And the majority of your time is going to be spent in this category. Right? Of what does negotiating look like? And then the third category is let it go. What are those things that annoy me a little bit that I wouldn’t do myself, but is it really harmful or inappropriate? And if it isn’t, let it go. We have enough stress as parents, compounded by the fact that one of us has ADHD, that let’s let some things go. So three categories of behaviors. Ross Greene’s system fundamentally changed the way Jeff and I parented and I teach it to everyone I counsel.
SANDY: Would cognitive testing or cognitive training be helpful for an ADHD parent? We’ve talked about it being helpful for a child, but what about a parent?
DR. AMY: Yeah, I love that question. You know, so frequently by the time we are adults, and by the time we actually, if we have gotten a late diagnosis, we have probably developed a lot of coping mechanisms that make us think we’re doing just fine. Right, make us, we’ve got this. But when we look under the hood a little bit, we see actually, this is taking me a lot longer than it should, or this project is taking me longer than it’s taking my coworkers. Or, you know, I have to be looking at you for you to for me. Let me say that again. I have to be looking at you in order to process what you’ve just said to me. Well, that makes it really difficult when your child is in the other room asking you a question, right? But you have to be making eye contact in order to understand what your child is saying. So, there are these things where we’ve just adapted. These things where we’ve said, “I can cope with that. It’s not a big deal” that when we really take a hard look, we realize, “Hey, there might be an easier way.” And so, getting a cognitive skills test, you know, that shows us, “Hey, do we have a weakness in processing speed that keeps us from doing things as quickly as our coworker? Do we have a weakness in auditory processing, you know, where we just aren’t processing language the same way everyone else is? Or a weakness in attention where we feel like we have to not have any distractions in order to understand what our child is saying to us?” They’re distractions all in the real world, right? And so, the reality is we cannot expect to work and live in complete silence with no distractions, right? So absolutely finding out if we can quantify those cognitive skills, those skills we use for thinking all day and every day, if we have a weakness in one or more of those, that’s good to know. Because then we know there’s something that we can do about it. Because a brain with ADHD would respond to a cognitive skills intervention, just like a non-ADHD brain will.
SANDY: That’s a great point. That’s a great point because skills can move. They’re just skills, right?
DR. AMY: Absolutely.
SANDY: It doesn’t change the ADHD per se, but it can help. You phrased it before of just helping relieve the burden a little bit. Make the make the weight of it less heavy.
DR. AMY: Yeah, absolutely. It doesn’t take away your diagnosis. You know, it’s interesting. 70 to 80 percent of people with ADHD have emotion dysregulation and they report that that is their most debilitating symptom. Right? Emotion dysregulation. And so, strengthening processing speed or auditory processing or memory isn’t necessarily going to help with emotion dysregulation. But if we can take some stress away from those other struggles, right, then there are less symptoms that we’re focused on. There are less symptoms that we’re stressed about from day to day. And so absolutely, cognitive training would be one of those ways that we could reduce that burden, that symptom load. You know, we did this really cool study. I’ve talked about it before, where we looked at more than 5,000 children and adults with ADHD. We gave them cognitive skills, gold-standard cognitive skills IQ tests, and then we plotted their performance on a graph. And what we found across the lifespan with people with ADHD were that working memory, long term memory, and processing speed were low. In fact, those skills were lower than their attention skills. And so those skills, we need those for driving. We need those for working. We need those for remembering why we came into our bedroom from the kitchen. How to make this complicated dinner, right? So, if we can lessen the burden by strengthening some of those skills, wow. Imagine.
SANDY: And they get worse as we age. Your study showed that as well.
DR. AMY: Absolutely. In the absence of in an intervention, I’m struggling to talk today. In the absence of an intervention, those skills typically continue to decline.
SANDY: Well, this is probably a good point to pause and let’s read a word from our sponsor and then we will wrap this up for our listeners because this has been jam-packed full of information.
DR. AMY: All right. Sounds good.
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DR. AMY: All right. You got any more questions for me?
SANDY: I think we hit them all. What do you want to wrap us up with? What didn’t we get to say that you think would be helpful to the ADHD parent out there struggling to do, you know, all the parenting tasks?
DR. AMY: So I think that, you know, we automatically look at this as, “Oh, my gosh, this is a compounded struggle because I have ADHD and my kid has ADHD.” And so, we’re just a bundle of chaos and nerves. But there’s actually something beautiful there. We have an empathy that a non-ADHD parent can’t possibly have.While they can have sympathy, while they can love their child in spite of the struggle, they don’t know what it feels like to struggle with an ADHD brain. But we do. And because we know that struggle, that empathy and support and validation that we can give our child with ADHD is so valuable. And so, recognize that your ADHD can be a gift to your child with ADHD.I’m not calling it a superpower. I don’t agree with it being a superpower. But what it is, is it’s a way for you to connect on a level that very few people can connect on. And so, use that. Use that empathy. Use that understanding of what that emotion dysregulation feels like, what that memory struggle feels like, what that disorganization struggle feels like, to be your child’s biggest advocate inside the family and outside the family.
SANDY: I love that.
DR. AMY: All right. Well, this has been a fun conversation as usual, Sandy. Listeners, if you would like more information about my ADHD work, my website is AMYMoorePhD.com. If you would like more information about cognitive testing and cognitive training, please visit LearningRx.com. You can also call brain 1-866-BRAIN-01.We will put links to LearningRx and some brain training information in our show notes as well, so that you guys can check that out. And we’ll put my links and handles, @AmyLawsonMoore on Facebook @theBrainyMoms on Instagram. You can find Sandy at the Brain Trainer Lady on TikTok. Anyway, find us, interact with us, send us some questions. Let us know what else you want to know so that we can meet your needs best. So, thanks so much for listening today. If you liked our show, we would love it if you would leave us a five-star rating and review on Apple podcasts. Do it now before you forget so that we can reach more smart parents like you. That is all the smart stuff we have for you today. So, we’re going to catch you next time. Have a great week.