ADHD Focus

If there were a way to change your child's self-perception and self-talk from negative to positive would you want to know about it? (Hint, yours will change as well.) How about helping your child learn how to calm her/himself before becoming overwhelmed and “losing it”? My guest today is eartha Powell. She has developed a way for you to do exactly that. Through her determination, curiosity and drive to help her son with ADHD and learning issues she created an approach she calls Transition Awareness Breathing. .



It is not your usual coloring book! Check it out, it is full of great ideas and fun things for kids and families to do.  This show will give you an introduction to an approach to learning, creating and being unlike any other!  Listen and learn! 



Her book TAB Mindfulness, Awareness, and Coloring Activities in a pandemic world  can be found here on Amazon.



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Here you go....Brendan Mahan and the Wall of Awful



“Yup, I failed again, messed it up”. “I’ve disappointed Mom again, she probably wishes Iwasn’t her kid.”



“I’ll be up until 2am getting this report done, why didn’t I get startedearlier instead of watching Netflix again? I’m stupid, that’s why”.



Ever heard yourself saying that? Ever heard your child say that? Ouch! It hurts!



My guest today is Brendan Mahan, Executive Function coach/consultant, speaker andeducator (former 6th grade teacher). And parent. And person with ADHD. He came upwith the concept of the Wall of Awful as the representation of the negative emotions andself-talk that accumulate faster and grow higher for those of us with ADHD than forneurotypicals. Kids, parents, adults with ADHD are very good at adding those emotional“bricks” to the Wall of Awful. Join Brendan and I as we discuss how the Wall gets builtand the 5 ways of dealing with it, 2 of which work well and get us to the other side of theWall of Awful. Listen and learn!



Brendan’s podcast is ADHD Essentials, his website www.adhdessentials.com

Have you ever felt like dealing with your ADHD child is a never-ending series of battles?



Homework, chores, screen time … only a few of the possible sticking points. There is hope!



My guest this week is Penny Williams, author of 4 books** on parenting ADHD and ASD children, developer of an online Parent Training course – 8 sessions go-at-your-own-pace – in which parents learn the different mindset needed to be the best parent to their child with a different-than-usual mind. Kids in tantrum mode are not out to give you a hard time, they are having a hard time…and they don’t know how to make it better. You as a parent can learn how to teach them, and yourself, to do exactly that – stop the battles and move into a more peaceful enjoyable family life. Listen and learn! 



** Boy Without Instructions – her first, chronicling how she developed her own ways of working with her ADHD son and  Hidden Layers of ADHD – the most recent of the four. 



Her website is www.parentingadhdandautism.com ; This has details on her Parent Training course, her blogs and descriptions of her books.  Find Penny and her books on Amazon here.

Everyone is asking, how do we cope with the summer of COVID? Usual activities are gone, everyone in the family is on edge, we can’t see friends or other family…HELP! 



Help is on the way, and it’s here. My guest is Dr. Sharon Saline*, psychologist extraordinaire, author of the book What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew and the just released card deck ADHD Solutions. Building upon the outline she developed for a webinar with ADDitude magazine (www.additudemag.com ) we discuss strategies to help the family deal with the anxiety and lack of certainty resulting from the way COVID-19 has affected our lives. Establish a daily routine, weekly family meetings to sort things out, self-care to fill your tank up again and maintain resilience in the face of the multiple challenges of the COVID Summer (and coming soon, COVID Fall the Sequel) and other practical approaches to reducing stress while coping with the uncertainties we all face. Listen and learn! 



Preview – 



How to set up smart daily routines and long-term plansHow to deal with mental health issues related to COVID-19 (such as feelings of anxiety, hopelessness, and anger)How to go with the flow in a world without answersHow limit screen time without argumentsHow to foster social contact that’s safe and appropriateHow to solve childcare challengesHow to take care of ourselves and what self-care really looks like



*Dr. Saline can be found at: www.drsharonsaline.com, www.facebook.com/DrSharonSaline, twitter.com/DrSharonSaline

Would you want to live in a world without ADHD?

I certainly wouldn’t. How dull it would be! Artists, inventors, explorers, statesmen, actors, musicians – many have ADHD and many who have now passed can be figured to have had ADHD.

My guest today is Kirsten Milliken PhD who together with Kris Mitchell has spun an idea they had into what will be a virtual online exhibit in conjunction with the International ADHD Conference in November 2020. “The intention is to illustrate how much the world benefits from the presence of ADHD in the human neurodiversity ecosystem,” said Kirsten. Visual arts or written word from people of any age will be shown and auctioned off to benefit anyone of three ADHD-supporting organizations.

Go to the website www.worldwithoutADHD (http://worldwithoutadhd.com).com for details. Kirsten wrote the book PlayDHD, a book for adults with ADHD (more on that in another show), she is an ADHD Coach and now a facilitator for an exhibition of ADHD talents! Listen and Learn!

Do you and your ADHD child understand how to work together to solve the time management, task management, emotional management issues that show up daily? These happen in every household of course but they break down more easily and more often when ADHD is involved. Your child is trying the best she or he knows how but the ADHD brain can’t figure it out without help, your help. My guest today is Dr. Sharon Saline, a psychologist who sets out the framework for approaching these challenges in her book What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew, based upon the 5 Cs. Her website is  https://drsharonsaline.com/ (https://drsharonsaline.com/)

Curious to know what the 5Cs are and how they can help families coping with ADHD?  Listen and learn!

Have you ever tried to sort through programs and apps to find which one might help your child with ADHD and/or LD do better in school?

Which ones are included in programs you probably have like MS Word or Google Docs?

Are there others that aren’t too costly and have proven value?

My guest this show is Dr. Brian Friedlander (http://assistivetek.blogspot.com), Associate Professor of Education at the College of St. Elizabeth in Morristown, NJ. He teaches graduate programs in assistive technology (AT), has co-authored the book Engaging the Resistant Child Through Computers as well as several laminated reference guides to AT in a variety of formats. His blog can be found at assistivetek.blogspot.com. Join us for a whirlwind tour of AT for students with ADHD and LD challenges. Listen and Learn!

For quick referral - here are some of the apps and programs suggested by Dr. Friedlander.

Closing the gap: https://www.closingthegap.com/ (https://www.closingthegap.com/)
Don Johnston: https://learningtools.donjohnston.com/support/product-resources/ (https://learningtools.donjohnston.com/support/product-resources/)
Mathpad 2.0: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/mathpad/id435087400 (https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/mathpad/id435087400)
Mathline Abacus: https://www.howbrite.com/ (https://www.howbrite.com/)

ADHD often shows up differently in girls than it does in boys. Usually. How? What factors indicate higher risk outcomes for girls? Consequences of undiagnosed ADHD in girls are much more severe overall, especially in teen years – cutting, depression, anxiety, suicidal thinking, eating disorders. Higher risk for these are 4: Combined Type ADHD, impaired family dynamics, poor peer acceptance and past abuse -physical, sexual and/or emotional neglect.

These topics I discussed with my guest today, Dr. Stephen Hinshaw, Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Francisco and Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley. He has written and co-authored numerous books, among them Another Kind of Madness: A Journey Through the Stigma and Hope of Mental Illness in 2017 and The ADHD Explosion in 2014 with Richard Sheffler. He directs the Berkeley Girls with ADHD Longitudinal Study which began in 2003 and continues. His website is www.stephenhinshawauthor.com.
Listen and learn!

*** Stay tuned for the sequel, treatment – what helps and how.

“He disrupts the class, he argues with me, he breaks the rules at home and at school”. “I have to ask 3 times and she still forgets to do it”.

Does that sound familiar?

These are behaviors which result from the brain differences in people with ADHD. My guest today, Dr. David Anderson, specializes in helping families learn how to turn these behaviors around. As a clinical psychologist at ChildMind in NYC he teaches parents strategies they can use to reduce the stresses of living with ADHD-affected kids and to set their ADHD child(ren)on the path to success at home and in school. Listen and learn!

Resources Dr. Anderson suggests for parents:
The Everyday Parenting Toolkit by Alan Kazdin
Managing ADHD in School (for teachers) by Russell Barkley PhD

Sleep is the most important of all life rhythms. Your brain is not turned off and resting during sleep, it is putting information into long-term memory so that learning becomes knowledge, it is “defragging the disk” clearing out leftover bits of metabolic processes so neural networks don’t get clogged up, it is working all the time 24/7/365 (more in leap years). My guest is Dr. Joel Nigg, a Professor at the Oregon Health Sciences University and Director of the Division of Psychology, researcher and author in the ADHD arena, and an expert in many aspects of ADHD. His latest book Getting Ahead of ADHD is an up-to-date summary of knowledge in all areas of ADHD including exercise, diet, sleep, video games and toxins/pollutants. It addresses many issues including new treatments using technology and behavioral methodologies. Getting to bed and getting good quality sleep is crucial for us ADHDers, and a major challenge in this day and age. Join us to learn how to do it – Listen and learn! (and then sleep on it so you know how to do it )