Something Shiny: ADHD!

David and Isabelle explore the myriad injuries and ponder the links between clumsiness and ADHD--is it because we're clumsy (which there are some fascinating links) or do we try and do too much? And speaking of doing things we don't want to do, but we care about doing, how does chunking help? All this, plus how we try to win by getting all the groceries in the house in one trip.
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Isabelle recounts a series of minor injuries, a bum knee, menstruating, and funny bone elbow stuff, and as she was sitting down she hit bone on bone throughout the day and sit down and had no self-regulation and was crying and then taking a ice pack that she is rotating to every injury. Is this clumsiness/injury-prone-ness ADHD? Or is this just her life? David names that there is a real thing about ADHD and clumsiness, and also some times you just have a bad night. Way more common to injure yourself with ADHD. Both clumsy and not clumsy exist in ADHD; there is some data around balance and your cerebellum and ADHD.  David taking in all his groceries in one trip is maybe the dumbest thing in the world. He has a bag of cat litter on his head, bags up and down his arm and they’re both in front of him and then facing the obstacle of the door, he is trying to get the key in the door, but then the door explodes open, and he lands on cat litter—and that’s just taking in the groceries. You have to elbow pinch, and using your whole body to align the key with the keyhole, it's a whole thing. But this whole thing is not clumsy—he’s doing way too much in a moment.  But is it really clumsiness, or going for the win, or the lack of response cost—it would’ve been shorter to take two trips, but it was about winning and he had to do it in one.  Isabelle witnesses this in her kids—neurotypical, neurodivergent, all kids—the way you do the task is the way you decided it needed to be done to get the win, rather than what would actually be simplest. And sometimes you step in, and sometimes you just let it fly. While she was just in the doctor’s office where she was getting her knee checked out, and she brings her foot up to tie her shoe, the time it takes it takes for you to do this, just take two trips—and that’s what her kid does, too, and of course, because she does it, too. Six years ago, David said, fuck laces. No more laces, too much time, can’t do velcro professionally, but professional shoes you can’t just step in because you'll ruin the heels, so now he's doing this sequence of kicking up his heel to try to jack the shoe in while standing without ruining the heel...and now he is resisting the urge to jump up and show that he does this. Makes David think of chunking, taking two unlike or like items and smashing them together. So every time David takes out the garbage, he cleans the litter box—pairing two things together, he won’t forget to take out the garbage. When you can put multiple things together, it makes you feel more effective with your time, why not take care of future you a little bit and make a transition more effective?  Isabelle tries to take an object from one room to another, like anything that you need to rehouse to that room you take with. David names we all do this in our morning routine and going to bed routine — we have "hitting alarm, stretching, brushing teeth, getting dressed, get coffee" and it becomes “wake up routine;” we have "take shower, brush teeth, put on pj's, read a book" and becomes "going to bed routine," all those steps into one chunk.  Isabelle tried this with a client during packing, and actually physically chunking to make a bunch of things just one category of thing, so you don’t have to remember all of it, you just have to remember the category (like here is your bag of toiletries). David would chunk together his sequence of actions upon arriving home after travel—initially it was hard, but now it’s a reflex—he immediately takes all his clothes and puts it in the laundry, and puts his suitcase away (all right away). Isabelle thinks of the game “my name is Joe and I like to Jump” (she was Isabelle who ice skates and she hates ice skating for the record)—it’s like a memorization technique. You’re trying to outsource the working memory, so you’re building a habit so you don’t have to think about it so much any more. Takes six weeks of consistency to build a neurological habit. It’s a long long time, but not a long time. But once you’ve built the connection, any time you justify not doing the thing, everything is broken. When you’ve been on vacation, and then you return, and then everything’s awful for two weeks. Working memory is hard for all of us, but anytime you can outsource it you can. Isabelle hates changing the sheets on beds, especially her kids’ low loft bed. The feeling of a clean sheet, maybe top five sensations, after you’ve freshly showered or bathed, and you have clean sheets—and she takes the thing where she cleans already every week, she adds in changing the sheets. Is it also giving a bigger norepinephrine something, or momentum, or a sense of productivity (and David is furiously thumbs upping it). David affirms: we have to find a way to do the things we care about. When we’re able to do the things that make us feel better, even when we don’t want to do them, that’s norepinephrine— “look at you, you made the bed, stripped the bed, changed the sheets, etc." check mark for the day!

Here is just one of many articles on clumsiness and ADHD - essentially, the cerebellum, which is the part of the brain we understand is responsible for learning to move your body in a sequence, etc. is also structurally different and may be connected to the executive functioning and motor sequencing differences in neurodivergent folx (Source: NIH article)

You can continue down a whole long rabbit hole ADHD/cerebellum rabbit hole:

 Cerebellum hypothetically tied to impulsivity and compulsivity (Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2019)

Also, (from 2011 article) children with ADHD are more likely to have dyspraxia, or differences in performing motor skills like writing, playing sports and games, tying shoelaces, and eating with a knife and fork. 

DAVID’S DEFINITIONS

Chunking: taking two unlike or like items and smashing them together. We all do it a ton in wake up and go to bed routines—all those things get chunked together into one thing “night time routine” (eg. Brushing teeth, putting on pjs, getting into bed, etc.)

Proprioception (from ScienceDirect’s Encyclopedia of Neuroscience): “Proprioception, or kinesthesia, is the sense that lets us perceive the location, movement, and action of parts of the body. It encompasses a complex of sensations, including perception of joint position and movement, muscle force, and effort.”

Response Cost: a neurological skill that helps you know the consequences of your actions later on down the road. This is a forebrain skill that is often harder for folx with ADHD.

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Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez

In honor of summer travel plans and it's own type of holiday magic, we revisit this classic (Episode 038): How do you survive traveling with ADHD? What about traveling with children, particularly small children? And what happens when you find yourself rushing, leaving things until the last minute, and forgetting your charger once again? David and Isabelle swap stories and share specific tips to traveling and also discuss WHY ARE THERE SOCK NUBBINS AND TAGS. Seriously.
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There can be so much pressure to have a Hallmark, picture-postcard perfect holiday and it’s so important to revise those expectations and think about what you actually want to do, for example, maybe it’s “we go to the this house, tolerate everyone for 45 minutes, you grab the turkey, I grab the mashed potatoes, and we leave.” And what about the uncomfortable holiday clothes? Isabelle laughs and mentions a brilliant SNL fake ad for Macy’s that’s all about children’s clothing and how uncomfortable it is. David describes this might be where task meets emotionality (for definition, see below)—is the task of the holidays spending time with family? David remembers the holidays being hard, everyone fighting on the way there and then fine when they got home, and wearing uncomfortable clothes, and just wanting to leave and it being awful. Isabelle remembers coming home so late and it was freezing and trying to sleep in the back seat, freezing. David had the experience going to his partner’s holiday celebrations and—they don’t have ADHD—everyone got along, hung out, sang songs, played piano—and this is real? Friendsgiving is a thing, and you can make choices, what you do for holidays is a choice: like winter is a choice. Anytime you feel trapped or caught in something, changing the language to “I’m choosing to do blank because blank…” with what needs your meeting with it, changes it from you “have to go see Meemaw” You can take the shoulds, musts, and have-to and change it to choices. And maybe Meemaw doesn’t care what you wear, she just wants to see you. WHY ARE THERE TAGS IN CLOTHING? And NUBBINS ON SOCKS? We have evolved so many incredible things, we have AI, we have genome sequencing, and we have sock nubbins, and who invented pantyhose and shapewear. David likes shape wear because the underarmour stuff he wears is nice and tight. Isabelle describes that it’s more designed to smush you in and sometimes it’s great—this is maybe Isabelle’s trauma after being a 6 ft woman at 14 year old, so she was fitting into shape wear and pantyhose as a kid and hated it so much and it was so uncomfortable. David always got all these hand-me-down socks that were in a constant state of yawn—now David gets the really tight socks that stay up all day, “look at you sock, staying up all day!” And transitioning back to travel—and sometimes travel is really hard because we’re pushing ourselves harder than we should. Having the toolbox is just as important on the airplane or airport, or knowing how long you’re waiting with a toolbox. Whoever’s doing the traveling, your self care is the most important: you can’t control your kids being miserable, they will be, you have to put your oxygen mask, go at your pace, go at your tolerance. Kids will fall apart. You need to be there for them when they do. So what do you need to be there for them? Maybe it’s a treat, maybe it’s slowing down—take care of you. Pack the day before. And always include an extra day back at home before transitioning back. You can change the day back—the end is always going to be the end of the vacation, but you being able to have a different re-entry ritual into your day to day can be game changing. Isabelle shares some tips from her own front line experiences, such as when driving from Indianapolis from Nashville as part of moving, when she forgot the iPad…and everything else, and her kid was stuck in the way back for hours bored out of their mind. Needless to say, iPads are last steps, so it’s a plan B, but it forces them to have lots of plan A—and on this trip, she forgot all the plan B’s and A’s. And everyone is going to have a meltdown—Isabelle, as mom, will also have a breakdown. It doesn’t matter how prepared you are, travel will break you at some point. Travel with kids is courting brilliant memories of chaos, so she anticipates and plans on her having a breakdown. So she tells herself that “I’m a good mom who’s reached her limit.” You’re trained from babyhood to meet their needs all the time, but it’s a set up, the game is rigged, and part of the rigging is us thinking we’re never going to lose it ourselves. Maybe it’s the rule, not the exception. What about outsourcing, like checking your bags curbside, strapping your kid into the carseat on the plane (because they’re used to it and airplane seatbelts do nothing). Be kind to yourself. There’s also this idea that a vacation and a trip with kids are two separate things. The labor does not change, but increases, but the expectation for fun and frivolity is also increased, but maybe change the expectations inside. Also okay if it’s extra hard because it actually really is. Take the wins. David names that it’s very hard to hold dialectics, to opposing truths: you can love your kids and they can be too much, really hard, really frustrating. You need to find yourself a support group that can validate all the truths. For David, being a child who had ADHD, and seeing people with kids travel, and typically things feel better when there isn’t as much pressure, when you’re not rushing at the last minute, and have everything you need. Accepting that all of those things are going to be harder with ADHD and smiling when those things don't happen is the key. Accept that win, when you actually remember the charger. We can also flip the shame spiral into gratitude because you can maybe get the thing when you arrive, and David has needed to buy pretty much everything on arrival. Anything important, the things you can’t live without, phone stuff, medication, certain items, should be carry-ons. If ever possible, don’t check a bag, have a very compacted carry on. David is so grateful for you shiny people out there that send us really incredible messages, and he’s really excited for our next season, as is Isabelle. We’re going to bring guests on next season, and Isabelle is super excited and grateful, too, that it’s building into an actual conversation, and so cool to be able to have that moment. Let’s all raise a fist in the air as Judd Nelson in Breakfast Club at the right pace and the right angle. We’re closing out this year with these holiday episodes, we’ve gotta turn around practice self-care, taking a couple of weeks off, and coming back in the next year with a new intro, new guests, and same ol' David and Isabelle--we can't wait to talk more, Team Shiny!

SNL Fake Macy’s commercial for children’s uncomfortable clothing

DAVID'S DEFINITIONS

TASK V. EMOTIONALITY

• Task: what you’re trying to do - the ‘work’ of a group or a person.
  • for example: I am finishing my project this weekend.
• Emotionality: what you do to prepare to do a task - beliefs/fears/assumptions about what you’re doing
  • for example: I’m doing it wrong/right, I always procrastinate, big fear you’ll never get it done, dream that someone will come and save you from having to do it, etc.

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We replay one of our favorites (Episode 022): Are folx with ADHD made to be night owls? Or early birds? Or does your early bird/night owl setting, which feels so engrained in your personality, actually have more to do with giving yourself distraction-less time? David and Isabelle explore myths, misperceptions, and truth bombs about the nature of sleep and ADHD, including tips on setting up your morning or evening (or all day) routines, dropping the shame, and embracing what you may be doing right in staying up late (or waking up early).
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Isabelle is super tired and is tired of her own choosing. She has been waking up earlier than usual in an attempt for her and Bobby to each get some alone time in the morning to get situated and start their routines and transitions differently. She does yoga, exercises, meditates, and can see that it gives her more energy. She wonders if folx with ADHD are actually night owls by nature, having spent years waking really early, then sleeping in—but is it ADHD? Delayed sleep phase is one idea, but David mentions that folx with ADHD seek out a distraction-free environment, and where you get that time (whether in the morning or in the night time) is the kind of person you become (early bird or night owl). So you adapt to achieve the distraction less time in the morning or at night. We carry so much of a load for all the things we’re not doing (I still need to call this person, I still need to do all these chores, etc). the escape of things being too late or too early to do also gives us distraction-less time. Being up early or staying up late gets really simple, it takes away choices. What happens when you are hyper vigilant all the time that you’ve made a mistake and someone is going to call you on making a mistake before you realize you’ve made a mistake? Or that you’ll later be embarrassed for doing something impulsively? This connects to how often is anxiety used by us to drive things, the anxiety of being an imposter, being seen as incompetent—there are lots of these themes for people. Certain environments shut off the anxiety or the drives. How much shame we have determines the intensity of the anxiety, hyperfocus, hyper vigilance. One of the reasons we are doing this podcast is to reduce that shame: there’s no shame in your night game! If you are still getting up and doing the things you need to do in the morning, go for it. If you like to wake up super early and run for hours—we can self-authorize to do the things we like and need. And shoutout to new parents, from David, that in between all of the unsolicited parenting advice, you need to believe in yourself and your needs, and not have shame for your needs. There can be so much anxiety for the ongoing assault of judgment about how you should be doing it; or how you should be spending your evenings. Or how you should be spending our mornings. Or how neurotypical you should look, how you should ‘do’ ADHD. There is no right way. If the task gets done, drop the how. Isabelle points out that early birds are often praised while night owls get the shame. David names that it’s more about finding mastery over your behavior. The answer is yes, there is no better, the real question is: are you getting up for the things you need to get up for? It’s the metacognition (see definition below), that gives you awareness that you have some mastery over your behavior (eg. Like waking up early easing your morning transitions. Isabelle is so tired she realizes her tangents are in slow motion and David names that he sees her turning on her blinker to make her tangent. Isabelle remembers reading a book about sleep that mentioned a method used by the military to fall asleep in two minutes (see article below), that includes relaxing your jaw. David names that sleep training often relies upon fatigue, and fatiguing your body. Weighted blankets can help (but with a word of caution, they are quite heavy, so if you try to throw it across your bed like a regular blanket, you will throw your shoulder out). It’s tough to plan what time to go to bed without factoring in what time you want to wake up, nor that you need to wake up earlier the day before so that you’re actually tired and fatigued when you try to go to bed early. Isabelle experiences this every time she tried to go to bed early before a trip. David is trying to actively do this now by waking up earlier the day before and drinking lots of chamomile tea. David names: we often do the right things but we don’t know why. When you’re staying up later, you’re getting the alone time that you need, but you’re not allowed to have it. Or if you’re listening to music all the time it’s helping you tune the distractions or scary noises out. Sleep hygiene is a place where we should all over ourselves (stop ‘shoulding’ on yourself). Sleep hygiene is creating routines: does it help? Does it help you get sleep? It’s also effective to chunk time together, going to sleep could connect to when you wake up, what you do in the mornings. David names that he needs to lay on the sofa breathing and thinking before he goes to bed. Sometimes he doesn’t make it to bed, but it’s not because he wants to avoid his partner (it’s the opposite of sitcom plots). Isabelle can feel that she’s getting too tired, her face feels dead. Isabelle goes on a tangent where sleep is a reflex or a drive that happens, and you have to get out of the way or essentially distract yourself. One way to distract yourself is to play categories, where you pick a category and then try to name something that starts with the letter A in that category, then the letter B, and so on—essentially bore yourself to sleep. Another trick that David and Isabelle both reveal is that you can scratch your pillow to be your own DJ or hear your own heartbeat like it’s a train—and in a final twist, that a chip crunching in your mouth is actually a miniature sonic boom (source below)! 

Falling asleep in 2 minutes military (navy pilot) hack

More on sleep and how it’s a drive/reflex rather than something you do (Source: Johns Hopkins Medicine):

“Your body can’t force you to eat when you’re hungry, but when you’re tired, it can put you to sleep, even if you’re in a meeting or behind the wheel of a car. When you’re exhausted, your body is even able to engage in microsleep episodes of one or two seconds while your eyes are open.” 

Chip crunches are tiny sonic booms — check out the book “Gulp” by Mary Roach, or her shorter NY Times article in 2013, “The Marvels In Your Mouth” 

DAVID’S DEFINITIONS

Delayed sleep phase: Specific to some people whose bodies don’t produce melatonin at the same level, it's very difficult to go to sleep and notice tired signals (not necessarily ADHD). 

Metacognition: Thinking about thinking. Understanding and awareness of why you do the things you do. When you reach this point with any behavior, you’re more than halfway there. 

Sleep Drive: Your body craves sleep like it craves food, except your body can put you to sleep if it needs to, whenever it finally needs to, which is why driving or operating heavy machinery or making big decisions while very tired are usually...

David and Isabelle are joined by two fellow therapists who have ADHD, Caily & Sarah. They talk about how much shame we carry around our bodies and how that impacts so much of our wellness, the way women's pain and experiences are minimized and questioned, the need to stop protecting men from discomfort, and what advice they would give their younger neurodivergent selves. (Part IV of a series)

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Full Show Notes:

Sarah names we do not talk about bodies—as women, we are sexualized, but we don’t talk about our bodies, we carry so much shame around our bodies. How much about her body she didn’t know until pregnancy. This is a systemic issue, that we are not informing about things we need to know.  For example, one of her friends was embarrassed to share a story about poop. But we all poop! Everybody poops, that’s a good sign when we poop. But there’s so much shame around everything related to bodies, it’s not surprising that then we don’t talk about ‘hey my period seems off,’ and ‘this one day I feel so low’ because no one’s talking about bodies. Or it falls under this ‘mystery’ of PMS or menopause or postpartum—there’s a ton of needless suffering, including the way endometriosis is treated, and the way our pain is minimized. When Isabelle was birthing both of her children, she was not on painkillers, and these doctors—who were women—did not believe she was having contractions, and she was saying ‘I’m about to push” — it’s an unmistakable feeling. To demystify it, it’s the biggest poop of your life and you can’t stop it from happening. It’s ostensibly a very different poop and location (because it’s a baby), but it's that sensation nonetheless. David makes a great joke that it is a “holy shit.” Isabelle was conscious and there and happened to be in pain, and nobody believed her pain or experience. The resident replied, “I just checked you, no you don’t have to push, there's no way." The moment when Isabelle started getting angry and not overriding whatever anyone told her with what she knew in her bones—the “I will never betray my own knowing” kind of feeling is the moment that she felt her womanhood. The resident checks for dilation again when Isabelle insists, and goes ashen and states “I see a head" and suddenly everyone is mobilized for a very imminent delivery. This is just one example of how women's experiences are minimized, and doubted, and the internalized misogyny and minimization we carry within ourselves.  It relates to minimizing and dismissing ADHD as well; Isabelle notices a pattern where the men who come into her office state they have ADHD or suspect they do; the women typically go around and doubt themselves so much—which comes from a lifetime of being doubted. David acknowledges that this is so big, there’s no way to have this whole conversation in one go—so it’s a lot of little conversations that are so important to have. David states that we cannot take care of men in having these conversations: if a man can’t handle having a conversation about a period, that’s a threshold measure—if you can’t pass a driving test, you don’t get a license. If someone cannot understand hearing about a menstrual cycle, which are things that happen with frequency to people we care about, we (as dudes) project that we are fragile, and that we put that out into the world. That’s all of our learning in a pretty toxic system. He describes how with his colleagues and friends, isabelle, Sarah, and Caily, they often talk about trauma all the time, we share the most intense stories, but we keep this real lived experience of something like a period in a gendered silo? It creates a lot of opportunity to marginalize people. David has bought tampons before and is now the dumb dude talking and recognizes this is so complicated—Isabelle points out that the tampons cost x amount of money, and that the costs of being a woman in the world, the so-called ‘pink tax’ is real. And what’s marketed to women and upcharged? And David hates that as a man he gets blue and only blue as his color choices. In some grocery stores, Caily shares that tampons are listed under “luxury items.” The amount of years it took for people to realize that scents and chlorine found in tampons could be harmful to our bodies—the layers of the anger you could sit with this, is real. David gives the time machine question, to their 9-12 year old self, to do it in a short amount of time, with lasers and chaotic lightning. Sarah had heinous periods, and was the latest to get it in among her peers, and she wants to say to herself “you’re going to get a period.” And also “be prepared, you’re going to have a very heavy period and you’re going to need lots of supplies, and it’s okay to carry a pad to the bathroom and for people to know, because bodies are normal.” Isabelle: “people exist because of periods! We all exist because of periods!” Sarah would also go back to pre-having a child moment, and “FYI, your estrogen levels are going to go up and down and you have ADHD, and this will be exacerbated…” Caily would go back and say to herself “as long as it gets done, and nobody gets hurt, and you don’t get hurt—you got there! And also, it’s okay to procrastinate.” How many Sundays she couldn’t get a start on homework and wasting time procrastinating. She would normalize procrastination, and being in touch with her anger in a healthy way that’s self-protective, and “it’s not your fault you have a hard time paying attention sometimes, you’re not lazy.” Sarah realizes that she wants to redo her answer because she was hyperfocusing on periods, but then Caily thought she was mishearing the question. Isabelle would go to her pre-pregnancy days or preadolescence, she’d say some combo platter: “it’s not your fault, I got your back, you’re not alone, you’re not crazy, there is help, and the world’s absurd.” She holds a deep appreciation for her younger self, and is so grateful to little Sarah, and little Caily, and little David—it’s not certain if she would’ve understood what ADHD was before she reached the age she did, it feels like the most important thing is you’re not alone. And that you will find your tribe. We are here for you, we get it, go Team Shiny!

Pink tax - gender based price discrepancies, so that products marketed toward women are typically more expensive than similar products marketed to men (and that basic needs for women, like menstrual products, are so costly and considered "luxury" items) For more on this, check out this article by the World Economic Forum and the UN call for countries to end the pink tax.

Menstrual Care products with harmful chemicals and toxins...what? See below:
Tampons and other products and vaginal routes of exposure to harmful chemicals (NIH Paper)
Cleveland Clinic: Why scented products aren't great for your vagina and health
Sanitary pads and diapers have higher levels of toxic chemicals (2019 Reproductive Toxicology study)

Menstrual cycle hormonal changes (in a nutshell): "Estrogen levels rise and fall twice during the menstrual cycle. Estrogen levels rise during the mid-follicular phase and th...

David and Isabelle are joined by two fellow therapists who have ADHD, Caily & Sarah. They talk about how we don’t talk about hormonal changes and their impacts on ADHD enough: in short, your hormones change your ADHD symptoms during your menstrual cycles, pregnancies, post-partum, and into menopause. They cover PMDD, postpartum depression and anxiety, and a whole host of ways neurodivergent—and all—women’s experiences are systemically invalidated, and what we can do. (Part III of a series)

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How do we start a conversation, say about how PMDD is a real thing for women with ADHD—there’s a vacuum in conversations and normalizing this. How do we start that kind of conversation? It blows Caily’s mind how little we talk about hormones related to ADHD. Estrogen and dopamine are interrelated; when estrogen is highest, women will report thinking clearer, less hyperactivity, etc. and in the luteal phase of their menstrual cycle, when estrogen dramatically drops and progesterone rises, estrogen is important in up regulating dopamine levels, and so when it drops, it exacerbates your ADHD symptoms.  Also, progesterone rising can inhibit medication effectiveness.  Doctors don’t talk about dose titration, and so little research on it, but it would make sense, if you look at the hormonal changes across your menstrual cycle, you would titrate your medication and take more before and during your period. The connection between dopamine and serotonin and estrogen and progesterone also makes it much more likely for women with ADHD to have PMDD. It’s incredibly invalidating to have this not be discussed. What is PMDD? We all have PMS (premenstrual syndrome) to a certain degree, but it’s exaggerated in PMDD, PMS symptoms that become clinically significant for a short period of time. Caily noticed and pinpointed the day, per month, where she feels like she’s going to lose her mind, she feels really depressed, off, irritable—her best friend could pinpoint that day. The most validating thing was getting a period tracker and being able to anticipate that day. Nobody ever explained to Isabelle that upon becoming a mother, she learned a lot about her periods in 6th grade for a half hour. So there’s much more to learn. You go through a big hormone change with pregnancy, and the idea of “pregnancy brain” or postpartum “mommy brain” is real. Your progesterone levels shoot up during pregnancy and your estrogen levels (which go up to, but it's a combo platter cocktail) and also you are discouraged from taking stimulant medications (please talk to your doctor) but it means you have less accommodations that usual. Then, you throw in that postpartum when your periods return, they are really changed up, and pregnancy throws your body into a 2.0 or 3.0 version of itself, where you suddenly develop eczema, or your thyroid levels are different, and voila, your periods are different, too. And then covering the postpartum period, with the baby blues, postpartum depression or anxiety—your postpartum time is also marked by a dramatic estrogen drop, so your ADHD symptoms also can be exacerbated. We are also much more likely to have postpartum depression because of the drop of estrogen. Also, your hormones fluctuate prior to your period returning, you will maybe not even notice it’s PMDD.  Please seek your own medical guidance, and talk to your people and know that some of this information is harder to come by. Another thing to name is that a number of women don’t get diagnosed with ADHD until they reach menopause because it’s another time of estrogen drops and hormone fluctuations—if you already have a dopamine imbalance, it’s super exacerbated. In particular the brain fog, tiredness, and inattentiveness. And then there’s invalidation, “I can’t have ADHD, I’m just getting older!” If you’re a menopausal women just getting diagnosed, we see you! There’s so much support out there for you. Sarah is so enraged—as someone who has two children already, it explains so much, but why is this information more accessible? She didn’t know any of this. The SYSTEM!!  You feel so much shame, thinking there’s something wrong with you versus it’s something that can be explained. Caily names that ADHD wasn’t added to the DSM until 1960 and it’s unbelievable looking at the research how little women are represented, and it’s so important to understand how intensely hormones impact medication. Isabelle names that it is a known factor that hormones impact medication effectiveness, which is why so many studies on medications were originally normed on and studied on men. Thinking about how people listen to their patients and clients—and the way the word “hormonal” is used to dismiss, discount, and pathologize women. It’s a biological part, it’s neutral, it’s part of a cycle. And furthermore, you can appear to have depression, anxiety, or be a new mom who’s stressed and tired but it can be a symptom of serious conditions like PCOS, thyroid conditions, autoimmune conditions that carry real consequences down the road if they are missed. It can be deadly. David reaffirms that there is a massive gap in our information about medications and also we can silo too far—men need to listen up and ask better questions. There’s a way to be supportive, understanding and then there’s a way to be a part of the problem. For anyone with ADHD, male, female, trans, nonbinary, it’s hard to know when to ask for help and it’s hard to know you can ask for help. For so many people with ADHD they’ll be like “it’s raining nails and I’m stepping on glass, oh well, four more miles” and they’ll just go, or they’ll lay down and take a nap. We will accept the most intense, hard conditions because “other people have done it, so I can do it, too.” You don’t have agency if you are offered no real choice, there’s no agency in that. How do we have agency in helping women in asking questions of their prescribers, like “I need to account for more hormonal fluctuations—how do I do that? Do I need to see an endocrinologist? Do I need a second opinion?” There’s also a lot of supplements marketed to women to “calm” us, and to stress just how much these things are dangerous without medical supervision. Also, women have a higher pain threshold, ostensibly because we have to bear children. Isabelle honors that she has been socialized to think that if she talks about her period in front of men it’ll make them squirm, and Caily, too. All the women in your life have different conversations about their periods or the pain they feel and how regularly they feel it. Isabelle references the amazing show “Fleabag” and how women are born with pain built in. 

Fleabag quote (written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, performed by Kristin Scott Thomas): 

“Women are born with pain built in,” she says. “It’s our physical destiny: period pains, sore boobs, childbirth, you know. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives, men don’t. They have to seek it out, they invent all these gods and demons and things just so they can feel guilty about things, which is something we do very well on our own. And then they create wars so they can feel things and touch each other and when there aren’t any wars they can play rugby. We have it all going on in here inside, we have pain on a cycle for years and years and years and then just when you feel you are making peace with it all, what happens? The menopause comes, the f***ing menopause comes, and it is the most wonderful f*...

David and Isabelle are joined by two fellow therapists who have ADHD, Caily & Sarah. They talk about how ADHD and anxiety can go hand in hand in women with ADHD, how anxiety and discouraged anger relate, how gender norms for women set up neurodivergent women to mask, and the value of just TAKING AWAY THE CHAIR. All this in twenty-some minutes? Believe it. (Part II of a series)

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David and Isabelle continue their conversation with colleagues Caily and Sarah, two therapists who identify as women who also have ADHD. David names that there are some sexist structures that women are supposed to be ‘daydreamers’ and ‘forgetful’ and when someone fits those norms (misogyny) and they are also fitting inattentive ADHD norms that impacts their ability to build self-esteem, an identity, why am I different? Why am I deficient? Etc. Caily names that so many women with inattentive ADHD go undiagnosed or get misdiagnosed with anxiety, because there are many overlapping characteristics. And women are socialized and feel the pressure to perform tasks that require high levels of organization, executive functioning, and task switching, all of which are super hard to do when you have ADHD. This is true of women and mothers, and it can feel like it’s okay to be messy or disorganized when you’re a man, and it’s okay to get help from someone, but if you’re a girl, the message we get is you can’t be messy, because then we’re told “you’re lazy.” There’s a layer of rage Isabelle is noticing rising up, and also she wants to go 100 places with this and picks one. With the anxiety piece, there’s a way where you walk around with this high bar for moms that is not as high for dads (see Jimmy Kimmel’s asking dads info about their kids). Imagine you are walking around with a higher bar, and Isabelle, for example, is not great at any of these things, people judge you as not only a person who is struggling with some things, but you’re seen as not a good mom, because your role as mom is to run the constant ticker tape of all the things, not just keeping your kids alive. But also single women carry more of this burden and pressure than single men, too—how would this not promote anxiety? And then Isabelle doubles down on the soapbox of how an emotional component that is often missing in women she works with is a healthy sense of anger.  One of the reasons Isabelle looks up to Sarah is that she has a fight in her, because we’re so socially conditioned to be peacemakers, to be nurturing, to carry the emotional load and not ruffle the waters. And it all combines to SUCK. Sarah seconds this, how could you not be anxious if in the message you do something and you’re told you’re bad—how does that not create anxiety and an urge to hide these things because you feel like you’re doing something wrong? In her case, Sarah was not very anxious, because her anger got to come out at the injustice of the system itself—internalized anger can translate to anxiety.  But if you express your anger, if you get to externalize it and depersonalize it, you also get to know that you’re not the problem. She wants Isabelle and Caily to know that it’s not you, you were set up for failure. Everyone with ADHD is set up for failure. Sarah recounts a moment when her and Caily were both on a zoom call and they both stood up to recross their legs to sit back down because neither likes to sit with her feet on the ground, and this was a moment of connection and shared understanding that can be so rare. Sarah has been shamed her whole life for not keeping her feet on the ground, hearing phrases like “Can’t you just sit with your feet on the ground”—and even the ways we talk about  “getting grounded” is the opposite of how she gets grounded.  She sees this with her daughter, who also has ADHD, who has a hard time focusing while sitting at dinner, so Sarah takes away the chair—take away the chair, take a bite, twirl in a circle, do whatever you need to do to attend to the thing I am asking you to attend to. That would  have been so lovely growing up. And she heard her own parents’ voice saying “can’t you just sit down and eat your food?” Sarah realizes that her daughter cannot, so let's actually take away the chair, because the system is what’s setting you up for failure. David names that when you’re authorized to fight, things are different. Get it done, not about how—there’s a lot more HOWs applied to women, rather than men. Having anxiety is different from having healthy fear responses to threats, and the threats are everywhere, and is how the world tends to articulate experiences. David starts to explain that there’s this relationship researcher guy John Gottman, of the Gottman Institute—which Isabelle points out is actually founded and run by the Gottmans, (it’s not just John, it’s Julie and John Gottman)—which David checks himself and names he is regurgitating another societal narrative that leaves women out. (Isabelle also names that Erik Erikson’s wife (Joan). David references the Gottmans’ work on the four horsemen of relationship apocalypse (see below) and that there is a significant difference between a complaint, which is not great, and contempt, which is worse. Complaint is about a behavior; contempt is about a person’s character. An example is “you didn’t take out the garbage today” v. “you never take out the garbage.” With the criticism leveled at women is contemptuous stuff, it’s not “i’m not good at organizing” it’s “I’m disorganized and a mess.” Take away the how’s and let yourself be: be messy, take away the chairs, who cares? Caily brings up how if you’re taught to not be angry, we pathologize anger, you are going to ignore the signals and messages that a need has not been met. If you are going to tune out those signals, or it’s not allowed for you to express those signals, then it also then sets you up to go along with a system that is wrong or not healthy. Sarah chimes in that then the anger is stuck in your body, if you can’t let anger out, it gets stuck in her body. And that as much as you can personal take away the chair and challenge these norms and systems at home, you are still navigating a world that is not set up for you and doesn’t know enough about neurodivergence. There is still a lot of judgment and stigma and workplaces that are not going to allow the accommodations you need. Compliance is a big thing, and compliance comes with a lot of privilege. You get compliance privilege if you do the thing that everyone else is doing. I don’t know know anyone who doesn’t fit in, it feels good, and privileges come with that. Sarah got in trouble a lot, but was also an entertainer, that gave her a sense of fitting in, or set up a place for her, but she would also get if she doesn’t fit in, she saw it as the wrong place for her. She didn’t care what people thought, including fashion trends and other markers of ‘fitting in,’ and that made it hard for her to fit in with her peers, and even if she didn’t care, the people around her did care, and it’s layered in families. David names what LeDerick Horne (see Episode 042: A Conversation with LeDerick Horne - Part II - “Being seen by somebody like you”) said about near-peer mentors, and it’s so important for us to talk about this and for women to talk about it. It’s incredible to hear someone speaking to you that knows your experience in a different way. It’s also going against the image of ADHD that was propagated for so long which was a white teenage boy—there is so much more to gender, sex, biology and more that adds layers ...

David and Isabelle are joined by two fellow therapists who have ADHD, Caily & Sarah. They talk about how they came to feel something was wrong with them, or the system around them, how girls are often socialized to mask impulsiveness or hyperactivity, and how stereotypes around ADHD impact all gender expressions. (Part I of a series)
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After a technical difficulty, David and Isabelle reintroduce Caily and Sarah, two therapists who identify as women who also have ADHD. Caily had shared how when she was little, she wanted to be the teacher’s pet, and remembers a math manipulative (say that five times fast)—these little teddy bear toys, that were colorful—and the moment when a strict teacher said you have to have a calm body, sit still, and not touch the teddy bears until she said so. She was speaking slowly and using the manipulative to do a subtraction problem, and Caily was staring at the teddy bears, and what she wanted to do with play with them, their life stories, and she ended up saying “Caily, write your name on the board” and that meant she had to sit out for recess, and remembers thinking “I’m so bad, I’m so awful” but also “I didn’t mean to, I was focusing so hard on not touching them.” David points out that she got in trouble for playing with a toy as a first grader. Caily names that it was something new and novel, which makes it so much harder not to do—and refers to Sarah, who just talked about how she knew the system was off. Sarah's story was one where she was ditching class, acting out, getting into trouble, and struggling in school. Sarah remembers being in first grade and was sent to the principal’s office after discovering where the ‘leprechaun left candy’ around St. Patrick’s Day—when it wasn’t her turn, but she knew it was dumb to get into trouble for something that she was supposed to find. It wouldn’t occur to Sarah to not touch the teddy bears, she would have immediately touched it, rather than sitting on her hands or resisting the impulse the way David and Isabelle would have wanted to. The set up is wrong: you don’t want 7 year olds to touch teddy bears? Don’t bring them out until they can touch them. She was so impulsive and did things that she wasn’t supposed to do, she broke rules because she thought the rules were dumb. Growing up, the dress code was that all the girls had to wear skirts or dresses, and so she wore pants, and got sent to detention every day for wearing pants. One day the principal even drove her home to change. This was not the 1950’s, this was the 1990’s. Her dad thought it was ridiculous and called WOW, a women’s rights organization—who contacted the school and indeed, the dress code was changed overnight. It was pivotal for Sarah to know she can change the system, and this continues to this day. Her dad was a political activist who encouraged this, but her mom was compliant and trying to fit into her suburban world as a divorced mom. David names that hyperactive (or impulsive type) ADHD, and true hyperactive type is rare, rather than a combination like David or Isabelle. So often people aren’t seen as having ADHD, but rather are seen as obstinate, oppositional, etc. and then there’s an expectancy effect, teachers see you that way and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and often times you need to start over. In 8th grade, Sarah was labeled as oppositional, no one in her elementary school was talking about ADHD, and in high school, she only saw boys with the diagnosis, and didn’t know that girls could be diagnosed with this. Her paths to high school were catholic all girls’ school, or military school, but her dad encouraged her to write a letter of recommendation for herself to get into a selective enrollment school. The principal had never read something similar and gave her a trial year and gave her an extra class and a chance to prove she can read; previously she had tested at reading at an 8th grade level, after a year of hyper focus proving she could, she was reading at a 13th grade level (college level). No one previously thought she had capacity before, and it made a world of difference. David names it’s a hard thing to recognize how healing or destructive labels can be. So many people with hyperactive ADHD are labeled as bad, or need to be broken in (like a horse? Getting the wild out of the horse?) Punish it enough, be strict enough to not be wild anymore. This is similar to Sarah being pushed to a military option—it takes a special thing to teach a kid to lean into their strengths, and we don’t teach them how to fight. And meanwhile Sarah was taught how to fight, and they were not ready for you. Isabelle resonates with Caily’s compliance growing up, and was scared of getting in trouble, and spaced out and daydreamed a lot, and talked a lot, and would get a lot of feedback about her distracting the other students. Also, this was Catholic school and she had to wear jumpers and skirts and walk through Chicago snowy winters in knee socks, or wearing pants underneath and them taking them off. In 2nd grade, she would be doing SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) and her teacher would take her to the back of the classroom and she would bring her coloring supplies and extra books (lots of Jack London). Isabelle struggles with the idea that the system is messed up, and there’s something in feeling more inattentive part, she would walk around feeling like I missed something. The sensation that getting into trouble was not after standing up for herself, it was more, “I know I’m wrong and I can’t fight back because I didn’t hear what you said the first time.” If she’s driving, and a car beeps anywhere, it’s “that’s my fault.” Isabelle describes how eventually the teachers didn’t know what to do with her and were suggesting she skip a few grades, which her mother advocated against because it would mess her up socially. Isabelle always felt years behind socially, much younger than her peers, even into puberty, still thinking “let’s play with My Little Pony!” When the other girls were getting into makeup and dating. And so she was tracked into a gifted program where the ratio of boys to girls was 3 to 1, and likely 9 out of 10 students were neurodivergent. The girls all turned on each other and were really mean, but there was a new transfer student who Isabelle befriended who had an ADHD diagnosis and was unmedicated during a playdate—and Isabelle loved her. She was energetic and couldn’t stop talking and was so excitable and there was this sense that they could play together all day, but she also sensed that that was not okay, that how the girl was behaving was somehow judged as wrong. And boys were those stereotypically diagnosed as having ADHD, so if a girl had it...that must be really bad?  David talks about social conditioning, and he knows that being a guy, there was a lowered set of expectations for him: of course he couldn’t settle down, pay attention, use too much paste, etc. “boys just being boys.” He got into so much trouble in high school, and no one was surprised, because “you’re a boy.” He got kicked out of high school and went to a specialized high school for kids with learning differences, and about 18 or 19 people—and only 5 women, and they were like classical stereotypes of “bad girls,” getting into trouble with boys, or hating everyone. We are all looking at the same dilemma with very different expertise. David has learned that his perspective of “it’s a mess, no big deal” means a big deal to a women who has been socialized to not make messes. Emotions are validated for women (because we’re “irrational,” heavy on the air quotes), whereas of course guys don’t have feelings, because they’re “idiot robots.” Or they can only show a range of anger or assertiveness. Sara...

David and Isabelle continue their conversation with poet, speaker, and activist for people with disabilities, LeDerick Horne—and get to hear him recite some of his incredible spoken word poems. They talk about how songs taught them to spell, the power of oral traditions, and an incredible school in Kenya that expanding education and access for those with disabilities. Seriously, his poetry will give you life. (Part IV of IV)

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LeDerick continues sharing some of his poetry, describing his father’s record collection and his mother’s love of music—he recites his poem, “Alice Street Soundtrack,” Alice Street being the street where he grew up. The website understood.org (see below) shot an interview with them and how in one of his last lines, he spells out the word “FRESH,” which is one of the first words he learned how to spell, and it’s also how David learned how to spell it first time. LeDerick and David share how they learned to spell Common from his songs, too. David feels so seen, having symbol recognition disorder, he has a 4th or 5th grade spelling level and learning how to spell words was always hard, the power of songs to be able to help us learn to spell (like Gwen Stefani with “Bananas” and Fergie with “Glamorous”). LeDerick describes how the written word (thanks, Gutenberg!) Has become such a big force in the world, which he respects, but he has a deep love of the spoken word and the necessity of the spoken word, with rhyme, with rhythm. He describes the Griots (for more info, see below) being the first MC’s in Africa. LeDerick shares one more poem he wrote in 2020, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the ADA and also the national uprisings related to social justice and policing—and he wanted to write something about the beauty of those with disabilities. He recites “Until Every Barrier Falls.” David hearing LeDerick talking about the things he does in his poetry changed his understanding of LeDerick. Isabelle sees all the images as LeDerick is speaking, as does David. LeDerick describes the African word, “nomo,” which refers to the magic of the spoken word. We need to speak it into being, and like his Aunt Kay said, as long as we say someone’s name, a person who has passed, they live. He comes from strong oral traditions, his dad was a cross-country coach, and his grandfather was President of his chapter of the NAACP, and LeDerick aspires to continue those traditions, and continue their work. If he’s doing his job well, you can see it, poetry doesn’t say, it shows. Isabelle and David are so honored that LeDerick has been Something Shiny’s first guest (upon David’s insistence, and LeDerick’s generous sharing of time and energy), and we are here to promote whatever LeDerick wants to promote. He mentions the Rare Gem Talent School in Kenya that supports students with disabilities, and right now they’re renting an old hotel and providing education for about 120, and were able to raise funds to get through the pandemic. Now they’re trying to raise money for the land they’re on and to eventually create a complex that will support 500 students with dyslexia, ADHD, etc. and have a huge waitlist. Nancy was just at the International Dyslexia Conference—you can’t do it on your own (for more information and how to support this amazing school, see below!)

Songs we mention that help us spell words

“Fresh” -  Fresh 3 M.C.’s “Fresh” 

“Common” - De La Soul’s “The Bizness” 

Bananas - “Hollaback Girl” by Gwen Stefani 

Glamorous - “Glamorous” by Fergi 

More info on the amazing school in Kenya:

Rare Gem Talent School

Video from understood.org featuring LeDerick

Video for “Until Every Barrier Falls” (WATCH THIS RIGHT NOW) 

More on LeDerick Horne

(here's a brief bio)

(here's his amazing link tree)

LeDerick and Dr. Margo Izzo’s book, Empowering Students with Hidden Disabilities: A Path to Pride and Success 

Black and Dyslexic Podcast (hosted by Winifred Winston and LeDerick Horne)

Celebrating Black History and People with Disabilities - Youtube series 

A glimpse of LeDerick's live events - from the Nevada Student Leadership Transition Summit (NSLTS)

The vision boards LeDerick talks about appear in this video at 18:45 - December 14, 2021, Humboldt County School District School Board Meeting - The Lowry High School NSLTS Team presents on their efforts, including self-directed IEPs

New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education

All in for Inclusive Education
 

DAVID'S DEFINITIONS

Disproportionality: the racial or ethnic differences that exist in how students with learning differences are identified, placed, and disciplined—for example, how black and brown students with ADHD might be labeled as having Oppositional Defiant Disorder or “behavioral issues” while white students are identified as having ADHD and thus treated very differently.

Griot: a West African ethnic group dating back to the 14th century that act as storytellers, mediators, royal advisors, and bards, the keepers of oral histories and stories for families and tribes. For more, check out this wikipedia entry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griot

Learning Difference (LD): Because learning disability is a crummy, inaccurate term. For example, David does not have a learning disability, he has a sitting still disability.

Inclusion/Inclusive Education: This refers to the idea that all students should have an equal opportunity to learn, and relates to parts of the law and education system that attempt to achieve this by acknowledging it is more effective and socially beneficial for all students (as research and endless evidence shows) to be in classrooms and experiences together, rather than segregated into different tracks or programs.  For a much more thorough description of all of the nuances around this, check out:

David and Isabelle continue their conversation with poet, speaker, and activist for people with disabilities, LeDerick Horne—from how the LD/ADHD community often generates it’s knowledge base from peers and social media, to losing resources by ignoring people, to recognizing that the suffering is real and the urge to help someone not suffer as you did has a big fancy psychology term for it (transmuting internalization, PHEW). Go further into the depth of how you’re not alone and also hear one of LeDerick’s incredible poems - Dare to Dream. (Part III of a series)
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LeDerick talks about a multimedia approached to activism, making a Youtube series on Celebrating Black History & People with Disabilities, and starting up a TikTok account (see links below)—and the importance of recognizing that for most people with disabilities, the information is transmitted peer to peer, rather than parent to child. At most of his events, he notices that parents are sitting on the sidelines, and the kids are interacting about the best apps to use for accommodations—we’re not going to read the book, access the study, but we can listen to a podcast. David jumps in about a shared oral history and the access to that oral history is geography—and now podcasts can overcome that. Given the history of segregation, and New Jersey being the 6th most segregated state in the nation, and living in a blue color, primarily black and Latinx community—you need to be able to cross over to other parts of town and communities to access information. Segregation cuts us off from resources, from information, and the power of having these conversations for everyone to be able to find out in the world. The power of sports or other activities to bring people together—he was able to meet folks that were not in special ed because he ran track and cross country. If he had just stayed in those classrooms, he wouldn’t have had access to them professionally. LeDerick was invited to Harvard, the UN, the White House—connecting to others with a shared passion and from all walks of life. LD/ADHD crosses all lines, and it’s important to recognize, and there is privilege that comes in there and makes the experience of being LD/ADHD so different. David names—when we’re talking about people in this world, whether the color of their skin, their neurodivergence, their gender—there isn’t one way to receive a message in this world.  And there’s no way for a message to become universal, and it stretches, and we need to have these conversations more often, not just the right way. It’s important to honor choice and agency—and with LD and ADHD, we’re looking at exceptional people that are being missed. There are people who could be potentially curing major diseases, changing the world, we’re losing resources by ignoring people. LeDerick went to school with some folks who he looked up to intellectually, artistically, and who were in the same classrooms as him—and whether it was resources at home, luck—the story ended very differently. The three of us—LeDerick, David, and Isabelle—we’re the survivors, we’re the ones who made. As he takes his last breath, LeDerick wants to know he’s made the world a better place, so no one has to go through the same sort of suffering. David drops the transmuting internalization—it’s the quantum leap of psychology, you don’t want others to suffer as you do and you go back and try to the right the wrong that was done to you, for someone else. David doesn’t want people to suffer, but he wants people to suffer (not as a jerk)—but he is what he is because of what he suffered. But what are the right ways to suffer? There’s a lot of needless suffering. There’s a lot of bad returns on investment, so being able to right these wrongs, and wanting to correct something that’s wrong in the world, they can feel it, because they can tell that you’re not correcting them. This makes Isabelle thing of trauma mastery, and how we can be unconsciously drawn to scenarios and relationships that reenact the trauma we suffered because we want to rewrite the script this time. And also the difference between pain and suffering, and there’s some disease (leprosy or Hansen's disease) that numbs your ability to tell you’ve had an injury, so you keep going and keep going and this leads to infections and loss of fingers, etc. (See below)—the idea of pain as a messenger, as something that indicates you need to notice something so you can change it, versus suffering as feeling isolated and stuck in that pain and aloneness. Trauma work as requiring community, and connection and vulnerability, and how trauma can’t be healed in isolation. David loses his thought around how this connects to inclusion, and the three pause for an insert, and then he thinks of what he wanted to say! He pulls up the example of PTSD rates and how countries that are facing war, like Israel, might be assumed to have the highest rates of PTSD—and yet Israel has the lowest rate, which relates to how when people return from being in military service, everyone gets it (because it’s required and thus more commonly experienced). David is not listening to LeDerick and Isabelle’s story trying to figure out what’s wrong with them, they’re just listening and sharing and gaining that common experience. Trauma reenactments can be scary, and around inclusion, everyone can have an accommodation and individualized education. Who wouldn’t benefit from an individualized education plan? What if everyone had it and it’s not a weird thing. LeDerick talks about his friend Mark McLendon. He had an emotional breakdown in his early 20s, leaves a family event and lays down in the car, going through it. Through the glass, his friend Mark knocks, and he said “you know, I don’t exactly know what you’re going through right now, and I know in this world that has a lot of suffering, but none of us has to suffer alone.” There’s the idea of the dignity of failure, and there’s a desire to wrap kids in a protective bubbles, and it’s not treating you like a human being, we fall, we get our knees scraped, mistakes happen-you don’t want to be so fragile that when that happens you break. It’s important to go through the experience with words. David asks LeDerick if he could gift us with some poetry, and he graciously does, sharing the poem he wrote to high school kids: Dare to Dream. It’s incredible, please listen to it now! It speaks to 10 year old Isabelle, and David was sort of expecting poetry (womp womp) and instead he saw him grabbing his hand and getting him out, and then wow. He tried for 8 years to record LeDerick speaking this poem to no avail. LeDerick remembered going to a Dare to Dream conference out of the New Jersey Office of Special Education and Bob Haugh, was encouraging him to put to words the specific experience and communication to the kids at the conference, witnessing these panels--and like so many things, the specific became more general and resonant. 

More on LeDerick Horne

(here's a brief bio)

(here's his amazing link tree)

LeDerick and Dr. Margo Izzo’s book, Empowering Students with Hidden Disabilities: A Path to Pride and Success 

Black and Dyslexic Podcast (hosted by Winifred Winston and LeDerick Horne)

David and Isabelle continue their conversation with David’s dear and incredible friend, LeDerick Horne—a poet, speaker, and activist for people with disabilities. From vision boarding your IEP, to the importance of near-peer mentors and role models who have walked a little further down the LD/ADHD road, to accommodations and frustrations in LeDerick’s multiple roles (as businessperson, activist, poet, writer, tree farmer, etc.). Go deeper into recognizing an inclusive view of success, and what success can look like for each of us individually. (Part II in a series)
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David describes how in education, it might be helpful to facilitate extra resources and have other eyes on schools and supporting the staff and professional development, just as therapists need supervision, eyes on their work. LeDerick points out that nobody builds a building or a car or anything by themselves, most problems get solved in teams professionally, so when it comes to building up and supporting a child, it takes a village, too. When we say we want to educate all students, it takes a team effort to actually create the diversity needed to honor the students. Inclusion is a richer experience for most educators, too—the first two or three years for teachers is burnout city for teachers, and it’s important to come to their support and help create this environment. LeDerick got his start being a motivational, assembly-style speaker in college, when he was part of a group of a support program for tutoring and accommodations to have community to celebrate surviving another week of college together. Someone suggested going back to their high schools—and it was great PR for the program he was a part of, but it also had a lasting impact on him and these young people.  When we think about this work from a civil rights, from an activitist point of view—young people should be the ones leading the work and informing and forming the voices of it. Training people to be better self-advocates, to run their own IEP meetings, to understand their rights under the law, to use their voice as an agent of change. Its important to give a voice to those who are overlooked, or being used—how important it is to make sure you’re listening, not just directing. David names how LeDerick’s experience is shattering expectations; we’re taught to mask, to hide our LD’s, to not talk about how hard the road is, to not talk about what to avoid, everything is good enough or not good enough — but we needs what’s an inclusive view of success? What can success look like, because it’s not going to look the same all the time. What’s a model people can go to? Isabelle references Lawrence of Arabia—the potential of youth (see full quote below). There’s something so important about people seeing someone who has actually walked the path be able to talk about the things we’re not supposed to talk about. LeDerick wrote a book with his colleague, Dr. Margo Izzo (who also has ADHD -- see link below), and the use of narratives as well best practices for kids transitioning from high school into their next steps. The importance of near-peer mentors—the people who have recently been where you’ve been, the need for that. LeDerick talks about how the State of Nevada hired young adult facilitators going back into their high schools, and they make a vision-board/dream-board that speak directly to the IEP sections, and they teach cohorts of students how to capture the IEP sections in this board and present it in a visual way. Once the pandemic hit, the vision boards became PowerPoints and using social media images to help tell the story. One school created a club for people who are feeling marginalized, some students want to do teacher education, or getting on the loudspeaker at school and sharing a new disability diagnosis, to raise awareness. There’s a video LeDerick mentions showcasing this: HERE IT IS (VIDEO OF VISION BOARD/STATE OF NEVADA).  What if we could make dream boards for work? How could we break some of the neurotypical molds we’re caught in, sometimes without even realizing it. What it might mean to not have to constantly translate yourself to be understood by this neurotypical world. Being seen by somebody like you is so key. David appears to be paying attention but he is totally not—and the moment somebody gets that, they understand each other on a new level. He quotes Ruth Bader Ginsberg (see quote below) and describes how it may not be their fault, but the world carries a neurotypical gaze and it dictates what transitions should look like, what IEPs should look like.  We want kids in schools who are on IEPs to advocate and know what’s on their IEP—because when they know what’s on their IEP and how it works, they do better in school and more importantly, feel less shame around that. When IEP’s were rolled out, parents were not given this instruction—kids were told to not come to the meeting, seen as something to be embarrassed by. It can mean a lot of have differences seen and validated—and more importantly, shared—it starts normalizing people’s experiences and makes vulnerabilities understandable. It’s like getting punched in the back of the kneecap, you don’t have to make that part strong, you just have to acknowledge that it hurts. David’s first exposure to not having to be perfect, it was through LeDerick’s work—and they’re still carrying the torch. Isabelle wonders what is nourishing LeDerick in this mission and what are some of the hard parts—LeDerick describes how sometimes he goes into a school and it feels like a prison. LeDerick and his co-host, Winifred Winston, on the Black and Dyslexic podcast (see link below), they interviewed Dr. Julie Washington, this researcher and expert on literacy, and she said how dyslexia and ADHD is a label of privilege—black and brown folks are labeled with emotional or behavioral disabilities, that leads to more restrictive environments our schools or society has, as opposed to the academic supports. Once in a while, LeDerick gets into one of those environments and has to really care for himself within those environments. Another hard part can be all the emails he has to write, and bookkeeping—and his wife Samyukta is incredibly supportive—she handles a lot of supports as far as business management, and he has hired other people with other professional supports. LeDerick is still trying to hack how to stay on top of email, and he’s got a lot of stuff around his LD, but to break down emails into small and actionable steps instead of being overwhelmed—and how to ask for help! That is so important but also so challenging. LeDerick’s work has pivoted in 2020, at home and seeing the murder of George Floyd, the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery—and people started coming out to LeDerick to come and do Diversity and Inclusion work. He said no a lot, because people weren’t necessarily prepared for the work—like not giving their Diversity and Inclusion board any power or say. He wanted to make sure his work was really making a difference for people of color, particularly black folks. His work on the Black and Dyslexic podcast—it’s really an intersection of pain points—Winifred came up with Black and Dyslexic parents (BADass parents!). He received a grant to increase access with folks with developmental and intellectual disabilities in New Jersey’s black communities to the resources—that work has been so rewarding, but also carries so much administrative work. It’s about how we show up in spaces, how to be your authentic self,  the head of a project, and someone with LD—and how to leverage technology, accommodations. Sometimes he needs the first three lines/bu...