WEBVTT
00:00:00.119 --> 00:00:22.820
Welcome back to Your Child as Normal. I'm your host, Dr. Jessica Hochman. Today we're talking about kids with ADHD and how we can better support them at school. Parents want to help their kids, and teachers want to help their students. But how can everyone work together to support the child? I'm excited to have Mike McCloud back on the podcast. Mike is the founder of Grow Now ADHD, and he's an important voice when it comes to helping kids with ADHD build the skills they need to succeed.
00:00:23.359 --> 00:00:56.649
Today, we're talking about practical ways that parents and teachers can get on the same team, communicate better, and help kids with ADHD become more confident and independent. And if you know any parents or teachers who may benefit from hearing this conversation, it would be great if you could send the episode their way. And as a reminder, before we begin, if you enjoyed this podcast? Please take a moment to leave a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Reviews really help other parents find the podcast, and I truly appreciate it. Mike McCloud, thank you so much for coming back. I so enjoyed our past conversation, and I'm really looking forward to talking to you today.
00:00:57.280 --> 00:00:58.780
Yeah, thanks again for having me. I'm so excited.
00:00:59.679 --> 00:01:02.399
How have you been? Tell me, how is Grow Now ADHD going?
00:01:02.939 --> 00:01:05.579
Grow Now is going very well.
00:01:02.939 --> 00:01:25.579
We're working with families in all 50 states, all around the world. It's just such a different, unique service. We have our college success program, our young adult independence program. We have a homeschool program now for our homeschool families, and we work with all ages. And I do a lot of professional development for schools. We do our fully personalized parent training, our summer camp. So staying busy.
00:01:26.269 --> 00:01:30.498
Amazing! It sounds like full service to help parents who have children with ADHD.
00:01:31.219 --> 00:01:39.349
That's exactly it, and it's all about just always taking a never a one size fits all approach.
00:01:35.390 --> 00:01:45.250
And there's no two kids that are the same. You've met one kid with ADHD. You've met one kid with ADHD. They're all different, unique individuals.
00:01:46.030 --> 00:02:18.449
So, what I wanted to talk with you about today, I thought it would be helpful to talk about how parents and teachers can work together to help children who have ADHD, because teachers need to teach to the class, and they want to help the child, of course, but realistically, they have to teach to their class, and then it can be difficult for a child with ADHD to learn in a traditional class setting. So I wanted to go over with you ways that parents can advocate for their kid and talk to their teacher and help come up with a plan that might best suit the individual child.
00:02:19.139 --> 00:03:09.810
Of course, absolutely, and this is what you tend to see: is right now a lot of that pseudoscience online is get the biggest 504 plan, the most accommodations, get the biggest IEP with the most services, and sometimes that ends up backfiring and promoting prompt dependence. You know, the whole point of getting an IEP or a 504, the number one goal is to no longer need it because you now have the skills to no longer need those accommodations. You now have the skills to no longer need all those services in the IEP, and that's what ADHD is all about. ADHD, you can gain these skills. You know, social media talks about lowering the bar and over accommodating. When in reality, Dr. Russell Barclay says, if you want to see an ADHD child fail, put them in an environment with no consequences. And in so many ways, we've done that at school.
00:03:10.199 --> 00:03:46.060
We've tied so much funding to passing rates and disciplinary measures that schools are pushing kids through. We've all seen the highlights of kids graduating high school. They get their high school diploma. They realize they're still completely illiterate, and they go back and they sue their public school district because we're over accommodating and not challenging these kids. So really, the best accommodations, accommodations like sitting in the front of the class closest to the teacher, or being able to take tests in a separate room, those are great accommodations because you can do that in most colleges and most workplaces.
00:03:41.710 --> 00:03:49.780
It's realistic beyond the age of the IEP and the age of the 504.
00:03:46.300 --> 00:04:03.479
But being able to turn things in late with no points off, having test questions read aloud to you, and all of these accommodations that are not realistic in college, we want to make sure these are fading accommodations, fading prompts, and not sticking from kindergarten to 12th grade.
00:04:04.319 --> 00:04:07.889
So, are there any homework modifications, in your opinion, that are actually useful?
00:04:08.400 --> 00:05:31.879
Oh, 100% And this is the huge part of it: is when it's ADHD, the best setup that we've been able to do successfully with hundreds of families is keeping home and school completely separate. The ADHD brain tends to be very black and white and rigid. They are never going to see mom and dad as school employees. We need to set it up where the child is getting their homework done at school, whether it's before school, after school, during a free period, supervised, whatever. We don't want that child going home and having to do homework, so keeping home and school separate is the best possible accommodations because they're going home, they're getting into three-hour fights with mom over 15 minutes of homework, and it's a whole battle. And now with ed tech and laptops, the worst thing to ever happen to education for ADHD kids. Is just bringing the internet into everything and asking ADHD kids to resist the internet and do schoolwork. Parents feel like they need to sit with their child and make sure they're not watching YouTube videos, they're not playing games, they're actually doing their homework, and it's a losing battle, and it's toxifying their relationships, and it's keeping the kids prompt dependent because the ADHD brain gets stimulated by the negative attention. They'd rather get into a three-hour fight. They get more dopamine from a three-hour fight than doing boring homework. So we got to keep home and school separate.
00:05:32.629 --> 00:05:51.850
So if there's a child with ADHD who, let's say, doesn't finish their homework at school or they need extra help to grasp the concepts that they learned in math, for example, for the day, would you then recommend that child get tutoring at school or goes to a library? Basically, what I'm hearing you say is learn that concept anywhere else aside from being at home. Is that right?
00:05:52.360 --> 00:05:59.439
You know, it's not the parent's job to help make sure the child becomes mastery of the content.
00:05:56.439 --> 00:06:11.370
It's the parent's job to make sure the child has competent roles in the house, has varied experiences, has limits on technology. It's not the parent's responsibility to make sure the child knows their math facts and their math formulas and those kinds of things.
00:06:11.939 --> 00:06:25.728
I'm so glad you say this, by the way, because so many parents feel like they need to relearn the new way that math is being taught nowadays, and it's frustrating for everybody. And you're right. It just leads to more fights, more conflict in the home, and it just helps to know kids' math.
00:06:26.329 --> 00:07:00.370
In all my years of doing this, I have never once ever seen a parent ever, literally never ever seen a single parent be successful in helping their child with homework and things like that. You know, every once in a while, you'll see some parents help with studying and quizzing them on flashcards or whatever it may be. But no, we put it on the child. We put high expectations, raise the bar. You have to reach out to your teacher and say, "Hey, can I come see you after class? Who's holding the child accountable to actually go meet with that teacher and get that extra help?
00:07:01.269 --> 00:07:17.939
Okay, just to summarize what you're saying, for parents, our job is to be the unconditional voice of support, to be a place of love for the child. But when it comes to schoolwork and learning, that should be at the school. Or if the child needs extra support, they should find other ways to get support without involving the parent to become the teacher.
00:07:18.600 --> 00:07:22.339
100. So parents need to keep their parents' hat on, like Dr.
00:07:22.550 --> 00:07:26.360
Russell Barkley says, parents are shepherds, not engineers.
00:07:26.810 --> 00:07:59.259
It's parents' jobs to shepherd their kids into varied experiences, so they can try as many different things as possible, figure out what they love, figure out their passions, figure out their talents, and reach that bar. So the parent should be communicating with the school. I need you to hold my child accountable to meet with their math teacher before school, after school, during a study hall, and make sure non-educational sites are blocked on their laptop. Opt out of that laptop entirely. Get the Wi-Fi removed from the laptop.
00:07:59.379 --> 00:08:41.200
Whatever you need to do to make sure asking an ADHD child to resist the internet and listen to a lecture is completely insane. I've worked with ADHD kids who have had the police call to the school because of things they've looked at on the internet, and it's not their fault. You know, we're giving them open access to the internet. They're looking at those sites on a school-issued laptop on school Wi-Fi. So parents need to communicate with the school and make sure there's someone there meeting with my child. Maybe they meet with a counselor on Monday, set goals for the week, meet on Friday, review the goals, set new goals, and make sure the child is meeting with the appropriate people and not just taking that ADHD path of least resistance.
00:08:37.610 --> 00:08:46.330
It's not the parent's job to be a tutor. It's their job to make sure that there's a tribe holding my child accountable.
00:08:47.169 --> 00:08:55.330
Okay, that advice definitely resonates with me, especially as a parent myself who really doesn't enjoy doing homework with my kids. I really, of course, why would you?
00:08:56.110 --> 00:08:58.059
You're validating my feelings, so thank you.
00:08:58.450 --> 00:09:20.250
There's a great book called The Homework Myth. You know, homework really doesn't improve information retention until much later high school. So, homework in general, it's really not the parent's responsibility. Every single parent needs to understand your child's homework output is in no way, shape, or form a reflection of your parenting. Those two things are not tied together. School is school, home is home.
00:09:20.610 --> 00:09:33.529
Absolutely. Okay. A common question that they hear from parents is they want to know should they be advocating for their kids to get longer test time or quiet testing, movement breaks, accommodations of that sort. Any of those accommodations, do you agree with?
00:09:34.159 --> 00:09:52.629
Oh, movement breaks, 100% Asking kids to sit still and listen to lectures all day, especially for our older kids that are going class to class and just it's very lecture based, movement based 100% Think of all the adults who work from home or work in an office. They get up and move constantly. They're not sitting in their cubicles the entire time. They have to move.
00:09:52.779 --> 00:09:56.559
Movement is necessary for ADHD.
00:09:52.779 --> 00:10:53.200
That's why we never get rid of recess. We need more gym time, more phys ed time. It should be in their 504, in their IEP, that they're able to get up and walk to the main office, take a lap, come back as much movement as possible. This is why a lot of the PD I do at schools, I really coach the teachers on how to do more project-based learning and more group-based learning and up and movement and decreasing that lecture-listen model. When you learn more about education in Finland, the number one country in the world for education, the biggest difference between Finland and America is Finnish teachers do 75 percent less talking, less lecturing. And with American teachers, we talk and we talk and we expect them to process every single word we say. That's not how it works. A movement breaks 100% Tests in a quiet room, absolutely. You can get that in most colleges and most workplaces. That's totally fine to ask to have no distractions when taking tests.
00:10:53.529 --> 00:11:13.620
That's a huge anxiety piece. Is what like someone next to you turns in their tests because they're done and you're still on question two. Like why deal with that anxiety? You process it at your own pace. So that sort of thing, yes. I remember feeling exactly like that. Oh yeah. When Erin was the best test taker, she'd be done in 25 minutes, and I was only halfway through the test questions, and it was anxiety provoking.
00:11:13.919 --> 00:11:54.129
Yeah, and it causes you to forget all the stuff you studied, and you lose your confidence. You start freaking out. It's horrible. It's a horrible feeling, especially when you're a young kid with a half-developed brain. But this whole concept of extended test time, extended test time actually backfires for ADHD kids, where it increases the dysregulation towards that test too much time. Really, what you want to do is have one page of the test sort of timed, and then you finish that one page, you get a movement break. You come back for page two, and then you have a movement break. Come back for page three. Chunk it out with the movement breaks. Give them limits so they can get it done, but mix in the movement breaks.
00:11:54.668 --> 00:11:56.408
I've actually never heard that before. I like that idea.
00:11:57.009 --> 00:12:01.559
Yes. Yeah. The ADHD brain and extended time on tests does not mix.
00:12:02.129 --> 00:12:07.200
I also feel like, me personally, to know that I have double the time to take a test-that sounds horrible.
00:12:07.679 --> 00:12:08.789
Yeah, that's exactly it.
00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:21.950
Who wants to sit and take a test for hours upon hours? No, you want to have that deadline, and if that deadline triggers a movement break to get up and move around and clear your mind, and you can come back and work on it again for a set of time.
00:12:22.340 --> 00:12:29.360
You don't want to just have all day long to get it done because that's going to further dysregulate and escape their mind from the actual content.
00:12:30.049 --> 00:12:37.639
Okay, so extended test time for the ADHD brain. It may seem like it's helpful and beneficial for them, but the reality is it's not the case.
00:12:38.629 --> 00:12:48.999
The evidence is not there, and you can hear a lot of great experts like Dr. Russell Barkley, Sarah Ward, George McCloskey. You can hear them talk about how extended time on tests really doesn't help.
00:12:49.870 --> 00:13:13.169
The other thing that I think is tricky is once there's a few kids with accommodations for extended test time in the classroom, all of a sudden the other kids notice it and they want the extended test time to take a test. So once there's a few kids in the class that have extended test time, then all of a sudden I find there's other parents that are asking for their children because they feel like their kids at a disadvantage, which I understand. But it doesn't teach the child real life skills.
00:13:10.350 --> 00:13:28.039
There's no guarantee that they're going to go on to college and have the same accommodations, and then they're going to be more anxious for tests in college, which are harder than in high school. So I think it's one of those concepts where, in the short term, it feels like the nice thing to do, but for the long term, we're not serving the children.
00:13:28.519 --> 00:13:47.620
In general, yeah, the majority of our students definitely do not need it, and it's okay to be held to those standards. But you know, we've taught to overaccommodate. We've been taught to blame the teachers, blame the school for sort of those things that are happening, and not allowing our child to struggle or take accountability.
00:13:43.870 --> 00:13:49.389
A lot of different things can go into it besides accommodating.
00:13:50.289 --> 00:13:54.309
Yes, the older I get, the more I really believe that grades don't matter.
00:13:54.909 --> 00:13:55.240
Of course.
00:13:55.539 --> 00:14:13.740
And if the idea is let's give this child extended test time so they can get a few more points on their test, in the end, what a waste of time! You know, waste of time for the teacher to be sitting there for a longer amount of time. For the child, they could be out having fun with their friends during that time instead of sitting and taking a test. It doesn't actually provide them any benefit in the way that we might think it does.
00:14:14.129 --> 00:14:20.509
Exactly, the vast majority of homework now is not testing their knowledge of the content.
00:14:17.580 --> 00:14:42.399
It's testing how good are they at copying and pasting into Google? Executive functions are always going to be a greater predictor of success than grades. Always, just look at our ADHD kids. Their IQ is through the roof. They're gifted. These are the kids that hack their school Chromebooks. They're playing Minecraft all day in class, and they're still getting pretty good grades. But do they have friends in real life? Can they do non-screen-based tasks?
00:14:42.789 --> 00:15:18.059
Can they follow through on task of daily living and hygienic tasks without 1000 prompts? Can they do a varied experience? Can they do a new thing? Can they regulate and motivate through discomfort? Executive functions are always going to be more important, especially in this age of AI, when all that memorization of content is becoming less and less important. We need the executive functions. We need the people skills. Employers are not going to be looking at high school transcripts. They're going to be looking at people that I want to hire this person because I want to be with this person in the office. I'm not going to hire the straight A kid that never gets off his phone at work or can't handle the conversation.
00:15:18.629 --> 00:15:25.940
I'm going to take the C kid from a not so known college, but is really fun to be around, and is a good teammate, and the people like him, and he adds to the morale of the team.
00:15:26.720 --> 00:15:41.529
So, just to review, when you were talking about some of the things that may make a classroom more ADHD friendly, you talked about how movement's really important, breaks are really good. We can't get rid of recess. It's okay to have a quiet space while taking a test.
00:15:38.450 --> 00:15:50.679
Sitting in the front of the room you had mentioned might be a good place for the child who has ADHD. Is there anything else that we've left out? Anything else that may be worth a parent talking to a teacher about to help their child?
00:15:51.460 --> 00:16:48.399
Yeah. So what I talk about a lot in my professional development with schools is so often we give kids work to do or we put expectations on them and we just expect them to sit there, do it, and that's it, and hand it in, done. We don't do enough of the prep work, enough of the mental gymnastics, enough of the executive functions. We have to remember this is a whole new species of child we're dealing with right now. These are kids that are not getting play, boredom, and struggle. They don't have the nonverbal working memory and the verbal working memory foundation to be successful at these new challenging tasks. So they're not sitting on the bus ride home completely bored, thinking about what they learned today, thinking about what they want to do later. So we need to have them visualize what it looks like to do this task. You know, make a little bit of a mental movie, and think about what this task entails. What are you going to do? What are you going to need? How is it going to feel?
00:16:45.519 --> 00:17:13.049
You know, what does the end result look like? Like that book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Number one was start with the end in mind because that's executive functions, nonverbal working memory, and the visual imagery system. What does it look like to be done? How does it feel to be done? That is so incredibly important. And then once we grasp that concept of what done looks and feels like, because that's emotion and motivation.
00:17:13.500 --> 00:17:32.240
All motivation is is emotion of the future. Like if I set a goal to lose 15 pounds, I have to be able to visualize myself in the future looking better, feeling better, and that's what's going to help me resist all the Oreos today. That's what's going to give me the strength to do that.
00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:46.210
So we have to be able to look into the future, know what it looks like to be done, how it feels to be done, and once we have that, we can have the internal dialog to coach us to that point, because now teachers report to me, I'm repeating directions 1015, 20 times.
00:17:46.569 --> 00:18:09.210
They're asking questions that I already explained. I'm repeating myself constantly. 10 kids get 90% of my attention, and the rest of the 20 get 10% Because if we take 510, minutes to do a little bit of what does it look like? How does it feel? What do we say to our brain when we get stuck? And we do a little bit of that before we ever ask them to do anything in front of them.
00:18:09.869 --> 00:18:16.019
Ask them to do it here first-a mental dress rehearsal-and then do it here. Then we set them up for success.
00:18:16.650 --> 00:18:22.670
Are you referring to the way the school day is going to look, or the way the instruction is going to look. What are you actually referring to?
00:18:23.359 --> 00:18:38.269
To the way the instruction is going to look. So when the teacher is asking them to do some independent work or do a task, do an activity, whatever it may be, because that's the problem now. Kids just aren't starting, persisting, and completing. They're saying,"Hey, can I use the bathroom?
00:18:38.630 --> 00:18:46.930
Then they're gone for three hours. You never see them again, or school refusal, chronic absenteeism, all these different things. Because kids don't feel good about themselves in school.
00:18:47.319 --> 00:19:54.819
Their fight-flight response is heightened higher than it's ever been. So we need them to be able to see themselves being successful at these school tasks before we ever plop it in front of them. Because especially these ADHD kids, they're time blind. We put something in front of them. It might say two plus two, but to them, this is going to take me seven hours. I'm not even going to start. And us as adults, we look at it and we think it's two plus two. Write four and you're done. But to them, it's this is forever. How can we get them to visualize themselves being successful? How can we get them to build their inner positive inner monolog to coach themselves through these challenging tasks because school is the biggest non-preferred task you have in your entire life. Work you're at least getting paid, and all these other things end up having some sort of return. School is one massive non-preferred task that makes you feel incompetent, and kids are always going to care more about their social standing than their grades, and do people like me than my grades? Am I cool or my grades? We have to help them feel good about themselves at school, and we do that with executive functioning and working memory.
00:19:55.299 --> 00:20:09.180
So you had mentioned instructions and school instructions for children that have ADHD. Do you? That there's a preferred way for teachers to give them instruction. For example, should they give them one direction at a time? Would checklists be helpful for them?
00:20:06.119 --> 00:20:37.970
Should they have them repeat directions back to them? What actually works? The name of the game is always visuals. You have to have some sort of visual of show a model of what this looks like when it's done. Get a picture of that child working independently, or sitting quietly at their desk, or raising their hand appropriately. Whatever the desired behavior is, use visual models so they know what they're supposed to look like. Visuals trigger nonverbal working memory. Verbal prompts do not.
00:20:38.329 --> 00:20:45.339
When you tell an ADHD child a verbal prompt, you've now made it too stimulating to do the opposite of that verbal prompt.
00:20:45.730 --> 00:21:17.220
If you say, "Please sit down, to an ADHD child, you've now made it more stimulating to not sit down and have you repeat yourself and make them the center of attention. Verbal directives are a simple follow and move on, or don't follow and get more attention on you. And all ADHD behaviors need an audience because that's what gives them dopamine. Let's give them a model, show them what it looks like, and have them start to believe and tell themselves internally, "I can do that. I can work towards that goal.
00:21:18.089 --> 00:21:27.559
So I'm wondering if this would be a good example. But let's say a teacher's assigning a class project. Would it be best for the teacher to show what an example of a finished project would look like, so the child knows what they're working towards?
00:21:27.859 --> 00:22:31.789
Yeah, and so teachers can create something themselves and create a model of what it looks like to be done. Show a visual of that completed Word doc, that completed Excel sheet, that completed written essay. Show them a quick model of what done might look like, and then have them visualize what done might look like for them. Three minutes of visualizing the steps of what it takes to get to be done, what done looks like, how it feels, and we get them chasing future emotions. That's the cure to instant gratification. That's the cure to time blindness. That's all executive functioning is. For decades, we thought it was time management organization. When in reality, it's future thinking skills. The only reason we organize now is so it benefits us later. And our kids today don't do that because they're never bored and they live in this crazy instant gratification world. We need our kids to think more about the past when they overcame challenge and the future where they see themselves being successful at various tasks.
00:22:32.569 --> 00:22:55.240
I'm wondering if this model of visualizing what the expectation looks like could work with regards to their backpacks because that's something that I hear all the time from parents: is that the teacher and the parents get frustrated with how messy their backpack can look and how disorganized it can look. So, could we use that to our favor? Could we show them what an organized backpack would look like, and then say this is the model that you should work towards? Could that work?
00:22:55.509 --> 00:24:04.500
That's exactly it. On day one at school, before they had a chance to have a messy backpack, snap a picture of that backpack with all of the books in it, the Chromebook in it, whatever it needs to be, and get a picture of it day one looking clean. And that's the visual prompt. You never say to them, "This backpack is a mess. You need to clean that. Never say it verbally. Just show them the picture. This is what your backpack needs to look like. So I've seen so many schools start these executive functioning classes. All of these non-certified executive functioning coaches tend to just sit with the child and organize their backpack, organize their folder, or sit with them while they work and make sure they don't have 75 different tabs open. And all those things are doing is keeping them prompt dependent on those classes or on that very expensive adult. So there's no internal skills being strengthened. The name of the game is independence. If this child sees and feels the benefit in having a clean, organized backpack and starts doing it themselves without any prompting, any visuals, that's the goal. But if we show them a picture of what it looks like, they start doing it, and they're doing it now without a fight.
00:24:01.890 --> 00:24:07.440
They're doing it now because they're benefiting from it.
00:24:04.559 --> 00:24:10.170
That's what it's all about: less support from adults, more independence for the child.
00:24:10.799 --> 00:24:13.319
But initially, do you feel like kids benefit from prompts?
00:24:13.349 --> 00:24:18.630
Because I'll see in the classroom they have a list of tasks to do, accomplish this 1234, before you go to recess.
00:24:19.140 --> 00:25:16.529
Do you think that there's any role of prompts that is oh of course yeah I was never saying no prompts I'm saying fading prompts towards independence that's the name of the game so what parents can do is they can Google something called the prompt hierarchy and the bottom of the prompt hierarchy is the most dependence and you work your way up towards independence this is why I mentioned earlier, too many 504 plans are the same in kindergarten as they are in 12th grade. These prompts need to fade back over time. So prompts are essential. It's part of scaffolding. We build that scaffolding to get the skyscraper ready for independence and all of that. So we keep that scaffolding in place. We need the prompts, sure, but if it's the ADH neurodiverse brain, the bottom of that prompt hierarchy is verbal prompts. Verbal prompts don't work for ADHD kids. The heart-to-hearts, the monologs, the go get ready, the get dressed, go do this, go do that.
00:25:16.950 --> 00:25:55.839
When they hear you talking, their negative attention stimulation brain wants to do the opposite of your verbal prompts. We got to focus more on visuals. If they can see a visual, see what it looks like, and then do it without an adult doing anything because they followed a visual, that's independence, and that's what we're working towards. So we want them to be able to see a visual and do it. And there's also gestural prompts, like an adult will do a gesture, or there's partial physical, where the adult will do 25% or 50% with them. So there's different prompts to work towards independence, but you got to fade back those prompts as quickly as possible.
00:25:56.349 --> 00:26:32.930
Okay, that completely makes sense. So prompts are good. Get them in the habit of achieving those prompts with the goal in mind to eventually wean them off, fading prompts towards independence. This is really how goals should be written. Like if you look at an IEP, it's this ridiculous language of with 90% accuracy in eight out of 10 trials, as observed by such and such. It should literally be Johnny will initiate, persist, and complete non-preferred writing task with fading prompts towards independence, and that's it. It's as simple as that. And we figure out what level of the hierarchy we're on, and how quickly can we get to the top.
00:26:33.500 --> 00:26:38.869
And the accommodation is now gone. The goal is now gone. We move on. An internal skill is now gained.
00:26:39.619 --> 00:26:53.950
Amazing. I think visualization is a great skill, and it's a great skill to keep in mind because I do think that so many parents and teachers get so frustrated, repeating themselves over and over again, prompting kids, telling them what they expect of them, and it falls on deaf ears, and everybody ends up unhappy.
00:26:54.880 --> 00:27:15.480
More people need to know about nonverbal working memory. Like it is literally the foundation of all executive functions, the visual imagery system of the brain, and by one year of age, human beings have a stronger visual imagery system than all other living species. Our ability to hold images in mind and manipulate them is what makes us human.
00:27:16.349 --> 00:27:39.799
Now, what about the teacher who has the children that have ADHD in the classroom that struggles to keep them focused and paying attention. I want to make sure we've talked about all the ways that might help them in the classroom. What about things like fidget spinners and squishies or playing classical music? Is there anything else that children can do that may help them improve their attention that won't distract the entire class?
00:27:40.430 --> 00:28:01.740
There's very little science behind any of the fidget spinners. Those are obviously just materialistic goods. They make a lot of money off of total fads. Very little science behind them. Probably same with the squishies. I'm guessing. Yeah, exactly. It's all just it's all marketing. It's all nonsense. At the end of the day, it's movement. Number one, the teacher needs to use that school laptop as little as possible.
00:28:02.130 --> 00:28:13.440
This whole ed tech, Google taking over education, big tech reframing as ed tech-it's horrible. And our ADHD kids are the biggest victims of it, and they can't resist the internet.
00:28:13.710 --> 00:29:04.650
Asking them not to surf the web and play games and hack it. How many schools hire an IT guy to put up a firewall, and an ADHD kid hacks that firewall in five seconds. So it's nonsense to think that they are going to resist the internet and learn about the periodic table or learn about ecosystems. So we need teachers that bring back pen and paper, bring back textbooks, don't rely on the internet, don't rely on YouTube, don't rely on the computers. The best classrooms I've observed are the ones that say, "Close your Chromebook, put them back on the cart, put them back in your backpack, put them under your table. We're not using them today. We're gonna do some group-based work. We're gonna do some project-based learning. I'm gonna have you research something with your peer, and you're gonna present on it. Then we're all going to talk about it and bring the social into it.
00:29:02.250 --> 00:29:12.390
When you're leaving them on their own, you're making it too tantalizing to go off course or go to the bathroom or hack the computer. Bring peers into it.
00:29:12.450 --> 00:29:20.009
Bring class discussion. The lecture listen model of education never really worked.
00:29:16.140 --> 00:29:25.970
Where it's here's my lecture, listen to it, memorize it, put it on the test, then forget it all and move on to the next subject.
00:29:26.210 --> 00:29:31.670
And what you're describing sounds like so much more fun than the lecture-listen model.
00:29:28.759 --> 00:29:42.009
Getting together with friends, working on a project, being able to get out of your seat, move around a little bit, while getting something done, while learning something, sounds much more beneficial and more realistic for a future job.
00:29:42.579 --> 00:29:52.930
Exactly, there are definitely ways to get students more actively engaged in the learning than making it as passive as it currently is in far too many classrooms.
00:29:53.650 --> 00:29:59.799
And what about when it comes to the expectations that teachers should place on children who have ADHD with regards to.
00:30:00.059 --> 00:30:08.670
Turning in their missed assignments, turning in homework late, arriving in the classroom late-I feel like that can be a big source of frustration for teachers and parents alike.
00:30:09.329 --> 00:30:12.720
Should we be lessening the expectations on kids with ADHD?
00:30:12.809 --> 00:30:13.500
What is your opinion?
00:30:13.950 --> 00:30:35.990
Absolutely not. Not in any way, shape, or form. High expectations raise the bar, and they should be doing that. They should be following the rules just like everybody else. We are not lowering the bar because you have ADHD. We're actually raising the bar because you have ADHD because you are capable of anything. ADHD is not an excuse.
00:30:31.880 --> 00:30:35.990
ADHD is not a character flaw.
00:30:36.589 --> 00:30:39.829
You can get places on time. You can turn things in on time.
00:30:40.279 --> 00:31:11.279
You're just getting distracted by the internet, distracted by your phone or whatever it may be. And if we raise the bar, we're setting you up for future success. So this concept that ADHD kids need these accommodations, they need extra leeway. That's nonsense. They need higher expectations, higher consequences, and that sends them the message that I believe in you. You can do this. I'm raising the bar because I know you're capable, and your ADHD brain is special. You can accomplish incredible things.
00:31:07.859 --> 00:31:18.569
When we lower the bar on ADHD kids, we're unintentionally sending them the message: I don't believe you can do this.
00:31:15.210 --> 00:31:36.440
And how many ADHD kids now are graduating high school and holding their high school diploma in their hand on graduation day, and looking back on their entire educational journey, and they realize, hey, I did nothing on my own. This diploma is really all of my accommodations, my entire yeah, not doing them no favors at all.
00:31:36.619 --> 00:31:43.630
The ADHD brain, the ADHD child, teen can do anything, and we teach them that by raising the bar.
00:31:44.529 --> 00:32:07.470
So something that I'm very sensitive to kids with ADHD is with regards to their self-esteem and preserving their self-esteem. So I feel for teachers when it comes to disciplining kids with ADHD when they blurt things out if they're causing trouble. So do you have any advice for teachers on how they can correct or guide the impulsive behavior, like blurting out, without embarrassing the child?
00:32:08.160 --> 00:32:31.250
Well, yeah, of course. There's a very big difference between discipline and consequences. You know, a consequence might be I forgot to mail that letter and it gets there late. You know, that's not something that shames me. That's just the natural consequence of something that happens. So if a child blurts something out, there's so many ways to deal with this. So we talk about gestural prompts.
00:32:28.009 --> 00:33:14.579
Maybe it's you know almost like a picture catcher, like giving each other gestures. Like both parents and teachers really need to start utilizing this gesture right here, like the pump the brakes with the hands. Like if they just look at that child and they blurt out and just say nothing, don't say a word, don't embarrass them in front of their peers, just give the gesture prompt of two palms going up and down, pump the brakes, chill, cool down. That's going to be so much more effective than please be quiet, don't blurt out, leave my classroom, give them a quick little gesture, tap their desk, tap them on the shoulder, remind them to get up, walk around, go in the hallway with their water bottle, stand there for 30 seconds, come back, work with the younger kids on, like let's say the student's name is Mike.
00:33:11.549 --> 00:33:22.549
Let's build some self-awareness on what ready Mike looks like and what not ready Mike looks like. There's no shame in that.
00:33:18.930 --> 00:33:22.549
Everyone is not ready sometimes.
00:33:22.670 --> 00:34:09.329
Everyone is ready sometimes. But when you're in my classroom, I need you to be ready. When you start to feel like you're not ready, that's your sign to go take a brain break. To go in the hallway, go take a couple of deep breaths, or you know, walk back and forth for 30 seconds, and then come back and be ready in my classroom. So we build a little bit more self-awareness around it, and we come up with some gestural cues. Find ways to to help them initiate their brain breaks because we know they struggle with self advocacy. You know, we build a lot of these internal skills to make them independent. Because there's like I said earlier, even adults who work from home, you know, they might blurt out on a Zoom meeting. They might need to get up and go walk around. You know, we're not productive all day every day. We can't expect that of our kids.
00:34:09.719 --> 00:34:16.440
It's just a matter of letting them know, building that self-awareness that this accommodation, this break, is now needed.
00:34:17.309 --> 00:34:51.219
I talk to a lot of kids who are frustrated because they'll tell me that their teacher is always mad at them, and they can't help it. And that's when they come to me asking for medications because they feel bad. They don't want to be in trouble all the time. So I think advice like that, and I'm not saying that medication isn't helpful for many children, but I do think it's nice to hear of alternative options that teachers and parents can try to help the kid feel better while they're in the classroom. So that sounds really helpful. A gesture that they know is indicating them to try a different move, to sit down, to be quiet, to focus on their work, something like that, without getting them in trouble.
00:34:51.760 --> 00:35:19.559
And when you have students coming to you saying, "My teacher hates me, the very first thing you have to do is reach out to that teacher and have some sort of conversation, because. The ADHD brain can twist certain things. They could interpret things wrong. They also struggle with perspective-taking skills. So it's very easy to say my teacher hates me when they know they have 30 missing assignments and are late to class every single day. So you need to take that with a grain of salt every time.
00:35:16.409 --> 00:35:50.530
Dig a little bit deeper. Get everyone's perspectives, and maybe the teacher has a different perspective, or now the teacher is now aware that this student thinks I hate them, and they can spend a little bit more one-on-one time and build that relationship. That's another big thing we got to bring back to education: is relationships and teachers being themselves in the classroom instead of being slaves to a program or slaves to a curriculum. Teachers need to have more one-on-one time with students and building that relationships and talking to each other and having that community. That's very important to that sense of belonging.
00:35:51.010 --> 00:36:08.880
I'm glad you bring that up because I think the parent-teacher relationship is so important. And I'm curious, what would your advice be to parents on how they can approach the teacher sensitively, knowing that they're doing the best they can, without over emailing them, over asking of them, what would your advice be to parents when it comes to communicating with teachers?
00:36:10.230 --> 00:36:37.579
You want to make sure you're not doing it super often. That's a huge thing. Whenever possible, we want the child talking to the teacher themselves. That's the most important thing. We want the student Self-advocating the student-teacher relationship is always more important than the parent-teacher relationship. So, anytime the child can self-advocate, just like I always coach parents, when the child is doing a sport, then all of a sudden they want to quit.
00:36:34.219 --> 00:36:46.119
Don't call the coach themselves and say my son is quitting. That child has to go talk to the coach themselves and say I'm quitting. And chances are the child's not going to do that.
00:36:43.719 --> 00:37:14.159
And then they'll end up doing the sport. And by the time the season ends, they're going to say, "Then God, I didn't quit. I had a lot of fun and made a lot of friends. And so number one is always push for the child to self-advocate. Don't reach out to the teacher and ask for constant accommodations. Can they retake the test? Can they be excused from homework? Don't make excuses. Reach out and explain what works for the child in the home, how their brain works, and give them suggestions on how to build relationships.
00:37:14.219 --> 00:37:37.849
Oh, she really loves K-pop demon hunters, or they really love the New York Giants, or they really love this. Find different ways to build relationships with my child. Spend a minute when they first walk into class. Ask them about the game last night. Ask them what they did. Give them tips on how to build that relationship based on that personal information that only a parent would know.
00:37:38.630 --> 00:37:57.639
I love that advice. I think that's so real life. I think that's the way to connect. I think if teachers take an interest in the children in their classroom, it's only going to make them like each other more and feel closer and have a more trusted relationship. So that's great advice, Mike McLeod. You're phenomenal. What I'm hoping for this episode is to be a good primer for parents and teachers alike to listen to.
00:37:57.880 --> 00:38:00.039
We're all on the same team.
00:37:57.880 --> 00:38:03.929
We're all looking out for the child, and I think this has been really helpful with some great advice. So thank you so much.
00:38:04.500 --> 00:38:29.269
Yeah, and I love how you and I have this sort of overall theme of like your child is normal, and I love how you phrase that question of do we lower the bar and over accommodate? And really, you know, this is the biggest thing. All this gentle parenting, lowering demands, low demands. These ADHD kids need the bar raised. You know, you do such a phenomenal job of just coaching parents to not lower the bar, not lower expectations.
00:38:29.360 --> 00:38:35.300
So you're doing incredible work, Dr. Jessica. You are one of my favorite people on social media.
00:38:32.570 --> 00:38:41.170
So everything that you're doing and really raising expectations and really empowering parents and empowering kids is great stuff.
00:38:41.710 --> 00:38:52.869
Thank you. You are too kind, and I agree with you that kids themselves they don't want to be looked at as different. They want you to believe in them, and they want you, the parent, to know that they can do it, that they're capable of it, which they are.
00:38:53.679 --> 00:39:26.269
Yeah, and one of the best parts about raising the bar is it means that your child's doing more and you're doing less. So that whole mindset of nothing gets done unless I step in. The structure and the high expectations become the prompting. So you get to sit down and enjoy your coffee and stop chasing them around the house in the morning. You get to relax after a long day's work instead of being the homework secretary. So it's not all of this prompting-it's really do less parenting. We need parents doing less and kids doing more.
00:39:26.989 --> 00:39:30.019
I completely agree. I think we have made parenting a lot harder than it needs to be.
00:39:30.590 --> 00:39:49.719
100% There's a reason why before smartphones, before social media, kids would come home from school, do a little bit of homework, and then they'd be out. Make sure you're home in time for dinner, and they'd just be out riding bikes. That was what childhood is supposed to be like. That's what benefits kids and builds independent skills.
00:39:46.269 --> 00:39:59.110
Now, this whole concept of get your homework done, earn your screens. I know where you are in that room by yourself. Even though parents say he needs it to be connected with his friends, it's a social device.
00:39:59.590 --> 00:40:21.199
Even though they. In their room by themselves for hours. We need kids to be kids again, and we live in a world now where the greatest advantage you can give your child is not buying them a smartphone. Because we're going to see the kids that are screen addicted and who aren't, and the ones who aren't screen addicted and have people skills, soft skills, executive functioning skills, those are the ones who are going to get jobs.
00:40:21.650 --> 00:40:26.300
Thank you again for your time and your expertise. It's always a pleasure to learn from you, and I'm very appreciative.
00:40:26.780 --> 00:40:43.599
Thanks again for having me. I'm looking forward to number three now. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of Your Child Is Normal. Also, if you could take a moment and leave a five-star review wherever it is you listen to podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it. It really makes a difference to help this podcast grow. You can also follow me on Instagram at Ask Dr Jessica.
00:00:00.119 --> 00:00:22.820
Welcome back to Your Child as Normal. I'm your host, Dr. Jessica Hochman. Today we're talking about kids with ADHD and how we can better support them at school. Parents want to help their kids, and teachers want to help their students. But how can everyone work together to support the child? I'm excited to have Mike McCloud back on the podcast. Mike is the founder of Grow Now ADHD, and he's an important voice when it comes to helping kids with ADHD build the skills they need to succeed.
00:00:23.359 --> 00:00:56.649
Today, we're talking about practical ways that parents and teachers can get on the same team, communicate better, and help kids with ADHD become more confident and independent. And if you know any parents or teachers who may benefit from hearing this conversation, it would be great if you could send the episode their way. And as a reminder, before we begin, if you enjoyed this podcast? Please take a moment to leave a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Reviews really help other parents find the podcast, and I truly appreciate it. Mike McCloud, thank you so much for coming back. I so enjoyed our past conversation, and I'm really looking forward to talking to you today.
00:00:57.280 --> 00:00:58.780
Yeah, thanks again for having me. I'm so excited.
00:00:59.679 --> 00:01:02.399
How have you been? Tell me, how is Grow Now ADHD going?
00:01:02.939 --> 00:01:05.579
Grow Now is going very well.
00:01:02.939 --> 00:01:25.579
We're working with families in all 50 states, all around the world. It's just such a different, unique service. We have our college success program, our young adult independence program. We have a homeschool program now for our homeschool families, and we work with all ages. And I do a lot of professional development for schools. We do our fully personalized parent training, our summer camp. So staying busy.
00:01:26.269 --> 00:01:30.498
Amazing! It sounds like full service to help parents who have children with ADHD.
00:01:31.219 --> 00:01:39.349
That's exactly it, and it's all about just always taking a never a one size fits all approach.
00:01:35.390 --> 00:01:45.250
And there's no two kids that are the same. You've met one kid with ADHD. You've met one kid with ADHD. They're all different, unique individuals.
00:01:46.030 --> 00:02:18.449
So, what I wanted to talk with you about today, I thought it would be helpful to talk about how parents and teachers can work together to help children who have ADHD, because teachers need to teach to the class, and they want to help the child, of course, but realistically, they have to teach to their class, and then it can be difficult for a child with ADHD to learn in a traditional class setting. So I wanted to go over with you ways that parents can advocate for their kid and talk to their teacher and help come up with a plan that might best suit the individual child.
00:02:19.139 --> 00:03:09.810
Of course, absolutely, and this is what you tend to see: is right now a lot of that pseudoscience online is get the biggest 504 plan, the most accommodations, get the biggest IEP with the most services, and sometimes that ends up backfiring and promoting prompt dependence. You know, the whole point of getting an IEP or a 504, the number one goal is to no longer need it because you now have the skills to no longer need those accommodations. You now have the skills to no longer need all those services in the IEP, and that's what ADHD is all about. ADHD, you can gain these skills. You know, social media talks about lowering the bar and over accommodating. When in reality, Dr. Russell Barclay says, if you want to see an ADHD child fail, put them in an environment with no consequences. And in so many ways, we've done that at school.
00:03:10.199 --> 00:03:46.060
We've tied so much funding to passing rates and disciplinary measures that schools are pushing kids through. We've all seen the highlights of kids graduating high school. They get their high school diploma. They realize they're still completely illiterate, and they go back and they sue their public school district because we're over accommodating and not challenging these kids. So really, the best accommodations, accommodations like sitting in the front of the class closest to the teacher, or being able to take tests in a separate room, those are great accommodations because you can do that in most colleges and most workplaces.
00:03:41.710 --> 00:03:49.780
It's realistic beyond the age of the IEP and the age of the 504.
00:03:46.300 --> 00:04:03.479
But being able to turn things in late with no points off, having test questions read aloud to you, and all of these accommodations that are not realistic in college, we want to make sure these are fading accommodations, fading prompts, and not sticking from kindergarten to 12th grade.
00:04:04.319 --> 00:04:07.889
So, are there any homework modifications, in your opinion, that are actually useful?
00:04:08.400 --> 00:05:31.879
Oh, 100% And this is the huge part of it: is when it's ADHD, the best setup that we've been able to do successfully with hundreds of families is keeping home and school completely separate. The ADHD brain tends to be very black and white and rigid. They are never going to see mom and dad as school employees. We need to set it up where the child is getting their homework done at school, whether it's before school, after school, during a free period, supervised, whatever. We don't want that child going home and having to do homework, so keeping home and school separate is the best possible accommodations because they're going home, they're getting into three-hour fights with mom over 15 minutes of homework, and it's a whole battle. And now with ed tech and laptops, the worst thing to ever happen to education for ADHD kids. Is just bringing the internet into everything and asking ADHD kids to resist the internet and do schoolwork. Parents feel like they need to sit with their child and make sure they're not watching YouTube videos, they're not playing games, they're actually doing their homework, and it's a losing battle, and it's toxifying their relationships, and it's keeping the kids prompt dependent because the ADHD brain gets stimulated by the negative attention. They'd rather get into a three-hour fight. They get more dopamine from a three-hour fight than doing boring homework. So we got to keep home and school separate.
00:05:32.629 --> 00:05:51.850
So if there's a child with ADHD who, let's say, doesn't finish their homework at school or they need extra help to grasp the concepts that they learned in math, for example, for the day, would you then recommend that child get tutoring at school or goes to a library? Basically, what I'm hearing you say is learn that concept anywhere else aside from being at home. Is that right?
00:05:52.360 --> 00:05:59.439
You know, it's not the parent's job to help make sure the child becomes mastery of the content.
00:05:56.439 --> 00:06:11.370
It's the parent's job to make sure the child has competent roles in the house, has varied experiences, has limits on technology. It's not the parent's responsibility to make sure the child knows their math facts and their math formulas and those kinds of things.
00:06:11.939 --> 00:06:25.728
I'm so glad you say this, by the way, because so many parents feel like they need to relearn the new way that math is being taught nowadays, and it's frustrating for everybody. And you're right. It just leads to more fights, more conflict in the home, and it just helps to know kids' math.
00:06:26.329 --> 00:07:00.370
In all my years of doing this, I have never once ever seen a parent ever, literally never ever seen a single parent be successful in helping their child with homework and things like that. You know, every once in a while, you'll see some parents help with studying and quizzing them on flashcards or whatever it may be. But no, we put it on the child. We put high expectations, raise the bar. You have to reach out to your teacher and say, "Hey, can I come see you after class? Who's holding the child accountable to actually go meet with that teacher and get that extra help?
00:07:01.269 --> 00:07:17.939
Okay, just to summarize what you're saying, for parents, our job is to be the unconditional voice of support, to be a place of love for the child. But when it comes to schoolwork and learning, that should be at the school. Or if the child needs extra support, they should find other ways to get support without involving the parent to become the teacher.
00:07:18.600 --> 00:07:22.339
100. So parents need to keep their parents' hat on, like Dr.
00:07:22.550 --> 00:07:26.360
Russell Barkley says, parents are shepherds, not engineers.
00:07:26.810 --> 00:07:59.259
It's parents' jobs to shepherd their kids into varied experiences, so they can try as many different things as possible, figure out what they love, figure out their passions, figure out their talents, and reach that bar. So the parent should be communicating with the school. I need you to hold my child accountable to meet with their math teacher before school, after school, during a study hall, and make sure non-educational sites are blocked on their laptop. Opt out of that laptop entirely. Get the Wi-Fi removed from the laptop.
00:07:59.379 --> 00:08:41.200
Whatever you need to do to make sure asking an ADHD child to resist the internet and listen to a lecture is completely insane. I've worked with ADHD kids who have had the police call to the school because of things they've looked at on the internet, and it's not their fault. You know, we're giving them open access to the internet. They're looking at those sites on a school-issued laptop on school Wi-Fi. So parents need to communicate with the school and make sure there's someone there meeting with my child. Maybe they meet with a counselor on Monday, set goals for the week, meet on Friday, review the goals, set new goals, and make sure the child is meeting with the appropriate people and not just taking that ADHD path of least resistance.
00:08:37.610 --> 00:08:46.330
It's not the parent's job to be a tutor. It's their job to make sure that there's a tribe holding my child accountable.
00:08:47.169 --> 00:08:55.330
Okay, that advice definitely resonates with me, especially as a parent myself who really doesn't enjoy doing homework with my kids. I really, of course, why would you?
00:08:56.110 --> 00:08:58.059
You're validating my feelings, so thank you.
00:08:58.450 --> 00:09:20.250
There's a great book called The Homework Myth. You know, homework really doesn't improve information retention until much later high school. So, homework in general, it's really not the parent's responsibility. Every single parent needs to understand your child's homework output is in no way, shape, or form a reflection of your parenting. Those two things are not tied together. School is school, home is home.
00:09:20.610 --> 00:09:33.529
Absolutely. Okay. A common question that they hear from parents is they want to know should they be advocating for their kids to get longer test time or quiet testing, movement breaks, accommodations of that sort. Any of those accommodations, do you agree with?
00:09:34.159 --> 00:09:52.629
Oh, movement breaks, 100% Asking kids to sit still and listen to lectures all day, especially for our older kids that are going class to class and just it's very lecture based, movement based 100% Think of all the adults who work from home or work in an office. They get up and move constantly. They're not sitting in their cubicles the entire time. They have to move.
00:09:52.779 --> 00:09:56.559
Movement is necessary for ADHD.
00:09:52.779 --> 00:10:53.200
That's why we never get rid of recess. We need more gym time, more phys ed time. It should be in their 504, in their IEP, that they're able to get up and walk to the main office, take a lap, come back as much movement as possible. This is why a lot of the PD I do at schools, I really coach the teachers on how to do more project-based learning and more group-based learning and up and movement and decreasing that lecture-listen model. When you learn more about education in Finland, the number one country in the world for education, the biggest difference between Finland and America is Finnish teachers do 75 percent less talking, less lecturing. And with American teachers, we talk and we talk and we expect them to process every single word we say. That's not how it works. A movement breaks 100% Tests in a quiet room, absolutely. You can get that in most colleges and most workplaces. That's totally fine to ask to have no distractions when taking tests.
00:10:53.529 --> 00:11:13.620
That's a huge anxiety piece. Is what like someone next to you turns in their tests because they're done and you're still on question two. Like why deal with that anxiety? You process it at your own pace. So that sort of thing, yes. I remember feeling exactly like that. Oh yeah. When Erin was the best test taker, she'd be done in 25 minutes, and I was only halfway through the test questions, and it was anxiety provoking.
00:11:13.919 --> 00:11:54.129
Yeah, and it causes you to forget all the stuff you studied, and you lose your confidence. You start freaking out. It's horrible. It's a horrible feeling, especially when you're a young kid with a half-developed brain. But this whole concept of extended test time, extended test time actually backfires for ADHD kids, where it increases the dysregulation towards that test too much time. Really, what you want to do is have one page of the test sort of timed, and then you finish that one page, you get a movement break. You come back for page two, and then you have a movement break. Come back for page three. Chunk it out with the movement breaks. Give them limits so they can get it done, but mix in the movement breaks.
00:11:54.668 --> 00:11:56.408
I've actually never heard that before. I like that idea.
00:11:57.009 --> 00:12:01.559
Yes. Yeah. The ADHD brain and extended time on tests does not mix.
00:12:02.129 --> 00:12:07.200
I also feel like, me personally, to know that I have double the time to take a test-that sounds horrible.
00:12:07.679 --> 00:12:08.789
Yeah, that's exactly it.
00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:21.950
Who wants to sit and take a test for hours upon hours? No, you want to have that deadline, and if that deadline triggers a movement break to get up and move around and clear your mind, and you can come back and work on it again for a set of time.
00:12:22.340 --> 00:12:29.360
You don't want to just have all day long to get it done because that's going to further dysregulate and escape their mind from the actual content.
00:12:30.049 --> 00:12:37.639
Okay, so extended test time for the ADHD brain. It may seem like it's helpful and beneficial for them, but the reality is it's not the case.
00:12:38.629 --> 00:12:48.999
The evidence is not there, and you can hear a lot of great experts like Dr. Russell Barkley, Sarah Ward, George McCloskey. You can hear them talk about how extended time on tests really doesn't help.
00:12:49.870 --> 00:13:13.169
The other thing that I think is tricky is once there's a few kids with accommodations for extended test time in the classroom, all of a sudden the other kids notice it and they want the extended test time to take a test. So once there's a few kids in the class that have extended test time, then all of a sudden I find there's other parents that are asking for their children because they feel like their kids at a disadvantage, which I understand. But it doesn't teach the child real life skills.
00:13:10.350 --> 00:13:28.039
There's no guarantee that they're going to go on to college and have the same accommodations, and then they're going to be more anxious for tests in college, which are harder than in high school. So I think it's one of those concepts where, in the short term, it feels like the nice thing to do, but for the long term, we're not serving the children.
00:13:28.519 --> 00:13:47.620
In general, yeah, the majority of our students definitely do not need it, and it's okay to be held to those standards. But you know, we've taught to overaccommodate. We've been taught to blame the teachers, blame the school for sort of those things that are happening, and not allowing our child to struggle or take accountability.
00:13:43.870 --> 00:13:49.389
A lot of different things can go into it besides accommodating.
00:13:50.289 --> 00:13:54.309
Yes, the older I get, the more I really believe that grades don't matter.
00:13:54.909 --> 00:13:55.240
Of course.
00:13:55.539 --> 00:14:13.740
And if the idea is let's give this child extended test time so they can get a few more points on their test, in the end, what a waste of time! You know, waste of time for the teacher to be sitting there for a longer amount of time. For the child, they could be out having fun with their friends during that time instead of sitting and taking a test. It doesn't actually provide them any benefit in the way that we might think it does.
00:14:14.129 --> 00:14:20.509
Exactly, the vast majority of homework now is not testing their knowledge of the content.
00:14:17.580 --> 00:14:42.399
It's testing how good are they at copying and pasting into Google? Executive functions are always going to be a greater predictor of success than grades. Always, just look at our ADHD kids. Their IQ is through the roof. They're gifted. These are the kids that hack their school Chromebooks. They're playing Minecraft all day in class, and they're still getting pretty good grades. But do they have friends in real life? Can they do non-screen-based tasks?
00:14:42.789 --> 00:15:18.059
Can they follow through on task of daily living and hygienic tasks without 1000 prompts? Can they do a varied experience? Can they do a new thing? Can they regulate and motivate through discomfort? Executive functions are always going to be more important, especially in this age of AI, when all that memorization of content is becoming less and less important. We need the executive functions. We need the people skills. Employers are not going to be looking at high school transcripts. They're going to be looking at people that I want to hire this person because I want to be with this person in the office. I'm not going to hire the straight A kid that never gets off his phone at work or can't handle the conversation.
00:15:18.629 --> 00:15:25.940
I'm going to take the C kid from a not so known college, but is really fun to be around, and is a good teammate, and the people like him, and he adds to the morale of the team.
00:15:26.720 --> 00:15:41.529
So, just to review, when you were talking about some of the things that may make a classroom more ADHD friendly, you talked about how movement's really important, breaks are really good. We can't get rid of recess. It's okay to have a quiet space while taking a test.
00:15:38.450 --> 00:15:50.679
Sitting in the front of the room you had mentioned might be a good place for the child who has ADHD. Is there anything else that we've left out? Anything else that may be worth a parent talking to a teacher about to help their child?
00:15:51.460 --> 00:16:48.399
Yeah. So what I talk about a lot in my professional development with schools is so often we give kids work to do or we put expectations on them and we just expect them to sit there, do it, and that's it, and hand it in, done. We don't do enough of the prep work, enough of the mental gymnastics, enough of the executive functions. We have to remember this is a whole new species of child we're dealing with right now. These are kids that are not getting play, boredom, and struggle. They don't have the nonverbal working memory and the verbal working memory foundation to be successful at these new challenging tasks. So they're not sitting on the bus ride home completely bored, thinking about what they learned today, thinking about what they want to do later. So we need to have them visualize what it looks like to do this task. You know, make a little bit of a mental movie, and think about what this task entails. What are you going to do? What are you going to need? How is it going to feel?
00:16:45.519 --> 00:17:13.049
You know, what does the end result look like? Like that book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Number one was start with the end in mind because that's executive functions, nonverbal working memory, and the visual imagery system. What does it look like to be done? How does it feel to be done? That is so incredibly important. And then once we grasp that concept of what done looks and feels like, because that's emotion and motivation.
00:17:13.500 --> 00:17:32.240
All motivation is is emotion of the future. Like if I set a goal to lose 15 pounds, I have to be able to visualize myself in the future looking better, feeling better, and that's what's going to help me resist all the Oreos today. That's what's going to give me the strength to do that.
00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:46.210
So we have to be able to look into the future, know what it looks like to be done, how it feels to be done, and once we have that, we can have the internal dialog to coach us to that point, because now teachers report to me, I'm repeating directions 1015, 20 times.
00:17:46.569 --> 00:18:09.210
They're asking questions that I already explained. I'm repeating myself constantly. 10 kids get 90% of my attention, and the rest of the 20 get 10% Because if we take 510, minutes to do a little bit of what does it look like? How does it feel? What do we say to our brain when we get stuck? And we do a little bit of that before we ever ask them to do anything in front of them.
00:18:09.869 --> 00:18:16.019
Ask them to do it here first-a mental dress rehearsal-and then do it here. Then we set them up for success.
00:18:16.650 --> 00:18:22.670
Are you referring to the way the school day is going to look, or the way the instruction is going to look. What are you actually referring to?
00:18:23.359 --> 00:18:38.269
To the way the instruction is going to look. So when the teacher is asking them to do some independent work or do a task, do an activity, whatever it may be, because that's the problem now. Kids just aren't starting, persisting, and completing. They're saying,"Hey, can I use the bathroom?
00:18:38.630 --> 00:18:46.930
Then they're gone for three hours. You never see them again, or school refusal, chronic absenteeism, all these different things. Because kids don't feel good about themselves in school.
00:18:47.319 --> 00:19:54.819
Their fight-flight response is heightened higher than it's ever been. So we need them to be able to see themselves being successful at these school tasks before we ever plop it in front of them. Because especially these ADHD kids, they're time blind. We put something in front of them. It might say two plus two, but to them, this is going to take me seven hours. I'm not even going to start. And us as adults, we look at it and we think it's two plus two. Write four and you're done. But to them, it's this is forever. How can we get them to visualize themselves being successful? How can we get them to build their inner positive inner monolog to coach themselves through these challenging tasks because school is the biggest non-preferred task you have in your entire life. Work you're at least getting paid, and all these other things end up having some sort of return. School is one massive non-preferred task that makes you feel incompetent, and kids are always going to care more about their social standing than their grades, and do people like me than my grades? Am I cool or my grades? We have to help them feel good about themselves at school, and we do that with executive functioning and working memory.
00:19:55.299 --> 00:20:09.180
So you had mentioned instructions and school instructions for children that have ADHD. Do you? That there's a preferred way for teachers to give them instruction. For example, should they give them one direction at a time? Would checklists be helpful for them?
00:20:06.119 --> 00:20:37.970
Should they have them repeat directions back to them? What actually works? The name of the game is always visuals. You have to have some sort of visual of show a model of what this looks like when it's done. Get a picture of that child working independently, or sitting quietly at their desk, or raising their hand appropriately. Whatever the desired behavior is, use visual models so they know what they're supposed to look like. Visuals trigger nonverbal working memory. Verbal prompts do not.
00:20:38.329 --> 00:20:45.339
When you tell an ADHD child a verbal prompt, you've now made it too stimulating to do the opposite of that verbal prompt.
00:20:45.730 --> 00:21:17.220
If you say, "Please sit down, to an ADHD child, you've now made it more stimulating to not sit down and have you repeat yourself and make them the center of attention. Verbal directives are a simple follow and move on, or don't follow and get more attention on you. And all ADHD behaviors need an audience because that's what gives them dopamine. Let's give them a model, show them what it looks like, and have them start to believe and tell themselves internally, "I can do that. I can work towards that goal.
00:21:18.089 --> 00:21:27.559
So I'm wondering if this would be a good example. But let's say a teacher's assigning a class project. Would it be best for the teacher to show what an example of a finished project would look like, so the child knows what they're working towards?
00:21:27.859 --> 00:22:31.789
Yeah, and so teachers can create something themselves and create a model of what it looks like to be done. Show a visual of that completed Word doc, that completed Excel sheet, that completed written essay. Show them a quick model of what done might look like, and then have them visualize what done might look like for them. Three minutes of visualizing the steps of what it takes to get to be done, what done looks like, how it feels, and we get them chasing future emotions. That's the cure to instant gratification. That's the cure to time blindness. That's all executive functioning is. For decades, we thought it was time management organization. When in reality, it's future thinking skills. The only reason we organize now is so it benefits us later. And our kids today don't do that because they're never bored and they live in this crazy instant gratification world. We need our kids to think more about the past when they overcame challenge and the future where they see themselves being successful at various tasks.
00:22:32.569 --> 00:22:55.240
I'm wondering if this model of visualizing what the expectation looks like could work with regards to their backpacks because that's something that I hear all the time from parents: is that the teacher and the parents get frustrated with how messy their backpack can look and how disorganized it can look. So, could we use that to our favor? Could we show them what an organized backpack would look like, and then say this is the model that you should work towards? Could that work?
00:22:55.509 --> 00:24:04.500
That's exactly it. On day one at school, before they had a chance to have a messy backpack, snap a picture of that backpack with all of the books in it, the Chromebook in it, whatever it needs to be, and get a picture of it day one looking clean. And that's the visual prompt. You never say to them, "This backpack is a mess. You need to clean that. Never say it verbally. Just show them the picture. This is what your backpack needs to look like. So I've seen so many schools start these executive functioning classes. All of these non-certified executive functioning coaches tend to just sit with the child and organize their backpack, organize their folder, or sit with them while they work and make sure they don't have 75 different tabs open. And all those things are doing is keeping them prompt dependent on those classes or on that very expensive adult. So there's no internal skills being strengthened. The name of the game is independence. If this child sees and feels the benefit in having a clean, organized backpack and starts doing it themselves without any prompting, any visuals, that's the goal. But if we show them a picture of what it looks like, they start doing it, and they're doing it now without a fight.
00:24:01.890 --> 00:24:07.440
They're doing it now because they're benefiting from it.
00:24:04.559 --> 00:24:10.170
That's what it's all about: less support from adults, more independence for the child.
00:24:10.799 --> 00:24:13.319
But initially, do you feel like kids benefit from prompts?
00:24:13.349 --> 00:24:18.630
Because I'll see in the classroom they have a list of tasks to do, accomplish this 1234, before you go to recess.
00:24:19.140 --> 00:25:16.529
Do you think that there's any role of prompts that is oh of course yeah I was never saying no prompts I'm saying fading prompts towards independence that's the name of the game so what parents can do is they can Google something called the prompt hierarchy and the bottom of the prompt hierarchy is the most dependence and you work your way up towards independence this is why I mentioned earlier, too many 504 plans are the same in kindergarten as they are in 12th grade. These prompts need to fade back over time. So prompts are essential. It's part of scaffolding. We build that scaffolding to get the skyscraper ready for independence and all of that. So we keep that scaffolding in place. We need the prompts, sure, but if it's the ADH neurodiverse brain, the bottom of that prompt hierarchy is verbal prompts. Verbal prompts don't work for ADHD kids. The heart-to-hearts, the monologs, the go get ready, the get dressed, go do this, go do that.
00:25:16.950 --> 00:25:55.839
When they hear you talking, their negative attention stimulation brain wants to do the opposite of your verbal prompts. We got to focus more on visuals. If they can see a visual, see what it looks like, and then do it without an adult doing anything because they followed a visual, that's independence, and that's what we're working towards. So we want them to be able to see a visual and do it. And there's also gestural prompts, like an adult will do a gesture, or there's partial physical, where the adult will do 25% or 50% with them. So there's different prompts to work towards independence, but you got to fade back those prompts as quickly as possible.
00:25:56.349 --> 00:26:32.930
Okay, that completely makes sense. So prompts are good. Get them in the habit of achieving those prompts with the goal in mind to eventually wean them off, fading prompts towards independence. This is really how goals should be written. Like if you look at an IEP, it's this ridiculous language of with 90% accuracy in eight out of 10 trials, as observed by such and such. It should literally be Johnny will initiate, persist, and complete non-preferred writing task with fading prompts towards independence, and that's it. It's as simple as that. And we figure out what level of the hierarchy we're on, and how quickly can we get to the top.
00:26:33.500 --> 00:26:38.869
And the accommodation is now gone. The goal is now gone. We move on. An internal skill is now gained.
00:26:39.619 --> 00:26:53.950
Amazing. I think visualization is a great skill, and it's a great skill to keep in mind because I do think that so many parents and teachers get so frustrated, repeating themselves over and over again, prompting kids, telling them what they expect of them, and it falls on deaf ears, and everybody ends up unhappy.
00:26:54.880 --> 00:27:15.480
More people need to know about nonverbal working memory. Like it is literally the foundation of all executive functions, the visual imagery system of the brain, and by one year of age, human beings have a stronger visual imagery system than all other living species. Our ability to hold images in mind and manipulate them is what makes us human.
00:27:16.349 --> 00:27:39.799
Now, what about the teacher who has the children that have ADHD in the classroom that struggles to keep them focused and paying attention. I want to make sure we've talked about all the ways that might help them in the classroom. What about things like fidget spinners and squishies or playing classical music? Is there anything else that children can do that may help them improve their attention that won't distract the entire class?
00:27:40.430 --> 00:28:01.740
There's very little science behind any of the fidget spinners. Those are obviously just materialistic goods. They make a lot of money off of total fads. Very little science behind them. Probably same with the squishies. I'm guessing. Yeah, exactly. It's all just it's all marketing. It's all nonsense. At the end of the day, it's movement. Number one, the teacher needs to use that school laptop as little as possible.
00:28:02.130 --> 00:28:13.440
This whole ed tech, Google taking over education, big tech reframing as ed tech-it's horrible. And our ADHD kids are the biggest victims of it, and they can't resist the internet.
00:28:13.710 --> 00:29:04.650
Asking them not to surf the web and play games and hack it. How many schools hire an IT guy to put up a firewall, and an ADHD kid hacks that firewall in five seconds. So it's nonsense to think that they are going to resist the internet and learn about the periodic table or learn about ecosystems. So we need teachers that bring back pen and paper, bring back textbooks, don't rely on the internet, don't rely on YouTube, don't rely on the computers. The best classrooms I've observed are the ones that say, "Close your Chromebook, put them back on the cart, put them back in your backpack, put them under your table. We're not using them today. We're gonna do some group-based work. We're gonna do some project-based learning. I'm gonna have you research something with your peer, and you're gonna present on it. Then we're all going to talk about it and bring the social into it.
00:29:02.250 --> 00:29:12.390
When you're leaving them on their own, you're making it too tantalizing to go off course or go to the bathroom or hack the computer. Bring peers into it.
00:29:12.450 --> 00:29:20.009
Bring class discussion. The lecture listen model of education never really worked.
00:29:16.140 --> 00:29:25.970
Where it's here's my lecture, listen to it, memorize it, put it on the test, then forget it all and move on to the next subject.
00:29:26.210 --> 00:29:31.670
And what you're describing sounds like so much more fun than the lecture-listen model.
00:29:28.759 --> 00:29:42.009
Getting together with friends, working on a project, being able to get out of your seat, move around a little bit, while getting something done, while learning something, sounds much more beneficial and more realistic for a future job.
00:29:42.579 --> 00:29:52.930
Exactly, there are definitely ways to get students more actively engaged in the learning than making it as passive as it currently is in far too many classrooms.
00:29:53.650 --> 00:29:59.799
And what about when it comes to the expectations that teachers should place on children who have ADHD with regards to.
00:30:00.059 --> 00:30:08.670
Turning in their missed assignments, turning in homework late, arriving in the classroom late-I feel like that can be a big source of frustration for teachers and parents alike.
00:30:09.329 --> 00:30:12.720
Should we be lessening the expectations on kids with ADHD?
00:30:12.809 --> 00:30:13.500
What is your opinion?
00:30:13.950 --> 00:30:35.990
Absolutely not. Not in any way, shape, or form. High expectations raise the bar, and they should be doing that. They should be following the rules just like everybody else. We are not lowering the bar because you have ADHD. We're actually raising the bar because you have ADHD because you are capable of anything. ADHD is not an excuse.
00:30:31.880 --> 00:30:35.990
ADHD is not a character flaw.
00:30:36.589 --> 00:30:39.829
You can get places on time. You can turn things in on time.
00:30:40.279 --> 00:31:11.279
You're just getting distracted by the internet, distracted by your phone or whatever it may be. And if we raise the bar, we're setting you up for future success. So this concept that ADHD kids need these accommodations, they need extra leeway. That's nonsense. They need higher expectations, higher consequences, and that sends them the message that I believe in you. You can do this. I'm raising the bar because I know you're capable, and your ADHD brain is special. You can accomplish incredible things.
00:31:07.859 --> 00:31:18.569
When we lower the bar on ADHD kids, we're unintentionally sending them the message: I don't believe you can do this.
00:31:15.210 --> 00:31:36.440
And how many ADHD kids now are graduating high school and holding their high school diploma in their hand on graduation day, and looking back on their entire educational journey, and they realize, hey, I did nothing on my own. This diploma is really all of my accommodations, my entire yeah, not doing them no favors at all.
00:31:36.619 --> 00:31:43.630
The ADHD brain, the ADHD child, teen can do anything, and we teach them that by raising the bar.
00:31:44.529 --> 00:32:07.470
So something that I'm very sensitive to kids with ADHD is with regards to their self-esteem and preserving their self-esteem. So I feel for teachers when it comes to disciplining kids with ADHD when they blurt things out if they're causing trouble. So do you have any advice for teachers on how they can correct or guide the impulsive behavior, like blurting out, without embarrassing the child?
00:32:08.160 --> 00:32:31.250
Well, yeah, of course. There's a very big difference between discipline and consequences. You know, a consequence might be I forgot to mail that letter and it gets there late. You know, that's not something that shames me. That's just the natural consequence of something that happens. So if a child blurts something out, there's so many ways to deal with this. So we talk about gestural prompts.
00:32:28.009 --> 00:33:14.579
Maybe it's you know almost like a picture catcher, like giving each other gestures. Like both parents and teachers really need to start utilizing this gesture right here, like the pump the brakes with the hands. Like if they just look at that child and they blurt out and just say nothing, don't say a word, don't embarrass them in front of their peers, just give the gesture prompt of two palms going up and down, pump the brakes, chill, cool down. That's going to be so much more effective than please be quiet, don't blurt out, leave my classroom, give them a quick little gesture, tap their desk, tap them on the shoulder, remind them to get up, walk around, go in the hallway with their water bottle, stand there for 30 seconds, come back, work with the younger kids on, like let's say the student's name is Mike.
00:33:11.549 --> 00:33:22.549
Let's build some self-awareness on what ready Mike looks like and what not ready Mike looks like. There's no shame in that.
00:33:18.930 --> 00:33:22.549
Everyone is not ready sometimes.
00:33:22.670 --> 00:34:09.329
Everyone is ready sometimes. But when you're in my classroom, I need you to be ready. When you start to feel like you're not ready, that's your sign to go take a brain break. To go in the hallway, go take a couple of deep breaths, or you know, walk back and forth for 30 seconds, and then come back and be ready in my classroom. So we build a little bit more self-awareness around it, and we come up with some gestural cues. Find ways to to help them initiate their brain breaks because we know they struggle with self advocacy. You know, we build a lot of these internal skills to make them independent. Because there's like I said earlier, even adults who work from home, you know, they might blurt out on a Zoom meeting. They might need to get up and go walk around. You know, we're not productive all day every day. We can't expect that of our kids.
00:34:09.719 --> 00:34:16.440
It's just a matter of letting them know, building that self-awareness that this accommodation, this break, is now needed.
00:34:17.309 --> 00:34:51.219
I talk to a lot of kids who are frustrated because they'll tell me that their teacher is always mad at them, and they can't help it. And that's when they come to me asking for medications because they feel bad. They don't want to be in trouble all the time. So I think advice like that, and I'm not saying that medication isn't helpful for many children, but I do think it's nice to hear of alternative options that teachers and parents can try to help the kid feel better while they're in the classroom. So that sounds really helpful. A gesture that they know is indicating them to try a different move, to sit down, to be quiet, to focus on their work, something like that, without getting them in trouble.
00:34:51.760 --> 00:35:19.559
And when you have students coming to you saying, "My teacher hates me, the very first thing you have to do is reach out to that teacher and have some sort of conversation, because. The ADHD brain can twist certain things. They could interpret things wrong. They also struggle with perspective-taking skills. So it's very easy to say my teacher hates me when they know they have 30 missing assignments and are late to class every single day. So you need to take that with a grain of salt every time.
00:35:16.409 --> 00:35:50.530
Dig a little bit deeper. Get everyone's perspectives, and maybe the teacher has a different perspective, or now the teacher is now aware that this student thinks I hate them, and they can spend a little bit more one-on-one time and build that relationship. That's another big thing we got to bring back to education: is relationships and teachers being themselves in the classroom instead of being slaves to a program or slaves to a curriculum. Teachers need to have more one-on-one time with students and building that relationships and talking to each other and having that community. That's very important to that sense of belonging.
00:35:51.010 --> 00:36:08.880
I'm glad you bring that up because I think the parent-teacher relationship is so important. And I'm curious, what would your advice be to parents on how they can approach the teacher sensitively, knowing that they're doing the best they can, without over emailing them, over asking of them, what would your advice be to parents when it comes to communicating with teachers?
00:36:10.230 --> 00:36:37.579
You want to make sure you're not doing it super often. That's a huge thing. Whenever possible, we want the child talking to the teacher themselves. That's the most important thing. We want the student Self-advocating the student-teacher relationship is always more important than the parent-teacher relationship. So, anytime the child can self-advocate, just like I always coach parents, when the child is doing a sport, then all of a sudden they want to quit.
00:36:34.219 --> 00:36:46.119
Don't call the coach themselves and say my son is quitting. That child has to go talk to the coach themselves and say I'm quitting. And chances are the child's not going to do that.
00:36:43.719 --> 00:37:14.159
And then they'll end up doing the sport. And by the time the season ends, they're going to say, "Then God, I didn't quit. I had a lot of fun and made a lot of friends. And so number one is always push for the child to self-advocate. Don't reach out to the teacher and ask for constant accommodations. Can they retake the test? Can they be excused from homework? Don't make excuses. Reach out and explain what works for the child in the home, how their brain works, and give them suggestions on how to build relationships.
00:37:14.219 --> 00:37:37.849
Oh, she really loves K-pop demon hunters, or they really love the New York Giants, or they really love this. Find different ways to build relationships with my child. Spend a minute when they first walk into class. Ask them about the game last night. Ask them what they did. Give them tips on how to build that relationship based on that personal information that only a parent would know.
00:37:38.630 --> 00:37:57.639
I love that advice. I think that's so real life. I think that's the way to connect. I think if teachers take an interest in the children in their classroom, it's only going to make them like each other more and feel closer and have a more trusted relationship. So that's great advice, Mike McLeod. You're phenomenal. What I'm hoping for this episode is to be a good primer for parents and teachers alike to listen to.
00:37:57.880 --> 00:38:00.039
We're all on the same team.
00:37:57.880 --> 00:38:03.929
We're all looking out for the child, and I think this has been really helpful with some great advice. So thank you so much.
00:38:04.500 --> 00:38:29.269
Yeah, and I love how you and I have this sort of overall theme of like your child is normal, and I love how you phrase that question of do we lower the bar and over accommodate? And really, you know, this is the biggest thing. All this gentle parenting, lowering demands, low demands. These ADHD kids need the bar raised. You know, you do such a phenomenal job of just coaching parents to not lower the bar, not lower expectations.
00:38:29.360 --> 00:38:35.300
So you're doing incredible work, Dr. Jessica. You are one of my favorite people on social media.
00:38:32.570 --> 00:38:41.170
So everything that you're doing and really raising expectations and really empowering parents and empowering kids is great stuff.
00:38:41.710 --> 00:38:52.869
Thank you. You are too kind, and I agree with you that kids themselves they don't want to be looked at as different. They want you to believe in them, and they want you, the parent, to know that they can do it, that they're capable of it, which they are.
00:38:53.679 --> 00:39:26.269
Yeah, and one of the best parts about raising the bar is it means that your child's doing more and you're doing less. So that whole mindset of nothing gets done unless I step in. The structure and the high expectations become the prompting. So you get to sit down and enjoy your coffee and stop chasing them around the house in the morning. You get to relax after a long day's work instead of being the homework secretary. So it's not all of this prompting-it's really do less parenting. We need parents doing less and kids doing more.
00:39:26.989 --> 00:39:30.019
I completely agree. I think we have made parenting a lot harder than it needs to be.
00:39:30.590 --> 00:39:49.719
100% There's a reason why before smartphones, before social media, kids would come home from school, do a little bit of homework, and then they'd be out. Make sure you're home in time for dinner, and they'd just be out riding bikes. That was what childhood is supposed to be like. That's what benefits kids and builds independent skills.
00:39:46.269 --> 00:39:59.110
Now, this whole concept of get your homework done, earn your screens. I know where you are in that room by yourself. Even though parents say he needs it to be connected with his friends, it's a social device.
00:39:59.590 --> 00:40:21.199
Even though they. In their room by themselves for hours. We need kids to be kids again, and we live in a world now where the greatest advantage you can give your child is not buying them a smartphone. Because we're going to see the kids that are screen addicted and who aren't, and the ones who aren't screen addicted and have people skills, soft skills, executive functioning skills, those are the ones who are going to get jobs.
00:40:21.650 --> 00:40:26.300
Thank you again for your time and your expertise. It's always a pleasure to learn from you, and I'm very appreciative.
00:40:26.780 --> 00:40:43.599
Thanks again for having me. I'm looking forward to number three now. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of Your Child Is Normal. Also, if you could take a moment and leave a five-star review wherever it is you listen to podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it. It really makes a difference to help this podcast grow. You can also follow me on Instagram at Ask Dr Jessica.
