This week, I welcome special educator, family practitioner, author, and mom of six children diagnosed with ADHD, Avigail Gimpel, to discuss her experience working with children all over the world and her research about ADHD. Our conversation today ranges from Avigail's childhood growing up with 7 siblings and a single mother which greatly impacted her attention in the classroom, to her eventual research into the nature of ADHD and the book this research inspired her to write. It's a fascinating and informative journey that I am so excited to bring to you all.

Together, we look at how many children are misdiagnosed with ADHD and put on medication before ever treating the origin of the problem. Recounting her experience as a teacher and a mother in both Israel and Russia, Avigail also discusses the similarities and differences between students in different countries, as well as the moment when her daughter was diagnosed with ADHD, and how she inevitably medicated three of her children. We talk about medication in relation to the fact that it leads to lack of curiosity in the child, and review ADHD manifestation and how it differs in children and adults. Avigail notes that she only started to research ADHD when she did so with her father-in-law, and finishes up by sharing information about her book, Hyper Healing, that succinctly includes her research and a guide for parents with children who exhibit ADHD symptoms.

The Finer Details of this Episode:

• An introduction to Avigail
• ADHD diagnoses
• How Avigail got her start in the Israeli school system
• How Israeli students compare to those in the US
• Her move to Moscow and her husband's business in Russia
• Experience teaching English in Russia
• How ADHD manifests itself in a child vs. adult
• Doing research with her father-in-law
• Avigail's book: Hyper Healing

Quotes:

"When you marry a guy with that much energy, your life becomes a little bit of an ADHD experience. Yeah, like a constant roller coaster. I'm a little bit dizzy all the time."

"Because Israel is a little bit behind America with technology, the Israeli kids are slightly less addicted to their screens."

"So then, when I got back to Israel, I actually started working with my father-in-law, the same person my husband really wanted to work with, because he went back to psychiatry, and he started working with ADHD."

"ADHD is just a list of symptoms that are caused by so many different things. So in my case, it was emotional overload. But in someone else's case, it's going to be a gut dysbiosis or, or lack of sleep. There's so many things that cause ADHD– a lot of kids who are struggling with so many different things are being diagnosed with ADHD, medicated–and the root causes of their problems are not being dealt with."

"It's just that we're not looking at the child, we have no curiosity for what's going on with the child."

"We have to assume that 95% of kids with ADHD symptoms have a perfectly healthy brain."

"​​At some point, I stopped really getting them an official diagnosis, because the diagnosis is only useful if you're going to medicate or if you're going to need special accommodations in school."

"This is a list of symptoms that give us guidelines to know the child's suffering. And then the very next thing we have to do is ask the question, not what diagnosis a child has, but rather, 'Why is this child struggling?'"

"So actually, that's why I wrote the book, because I wanted to be able to present all of the causes of ADHD–as many that would capture most children of ADHD symptoms like the causes, and then a solution for each one of them. So a parent can really use the book as their coach."

"And when we don't discipline our children, and we let them act like wild kids, then what we're saying is, 'I don't expect more of you. I know that you can't do better.'"

Links:

She Doesn't Settle Podcast

Instagram: www.instagram.com/shedoesntsettle/

Hyper Healing

Avigail Gimpel Instagram

Avigail Gimpel Facebook