0:00

We went and had an evaluation with a psychologist, and it was really eye-opening

0:04

to me to get the report back from the psychologist because I had always thought

0:08

that she just probably had inattentive ADHD.

0:11

If she did, it was inattentive. It was not hyperactive. And he's like,

0:15

oh, no, she totally has hyperactive.

0:17

He said through the entire assessment, she was climbing on your back and on

0:22

your shoulders and using your leg as a slide and was constantly moving around.

0:27

And I'm like, that's just how little kids act, right? They just have lots of

0:31

energy and they're climbing around. and I had brought my youngest daughter who

0:35

doesn't have ADHD and I'd brought a book for her to look at while I talked to the psychologist.

0:40

And by comparison, my younger daughter who doesn't have ADHD sat there not even

0:44

looking at the book, just with the book sitting on her lap the whole entire

0:48

time, just listening to what we were saying. And she was probably only like three years old at the time. And he pointed out the difference.

0:54

So it was really eye-opening to me when I found out that she She did have both

0:58

types of inattentive and hyperactive. Music.

1:06

Hello, I'm your host, Miriam Brown. In addition to my teaching certificate,

1:10

I have a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's in curriculum and instruction.

1:14

I spent the last decade as a public school teacher, and I want to give you insider

1:18

tips on how to help your child do well in a system that might otherwise fail them.

1:22

It's summer, and making podcasts is a lot harder now that my kids are home.

1:27

So I'm going to do something a little bit different for the next three or four episodes.

1:31

I'm going to interview some of the parents I've worked with,

1:33

and I still want to keep the episodes relatively short so you can listen on a quick car ride.

1:37

So I'm going to break these interviews up into topics and release them all at

1:41

once, but in shorter chunks. This next series is going to be all about ADHD.

1:51

ADHD can be a little bit controversial. I know a lot of people are just horrified

1:56

that more and more kids are getting diagnosed with ADHD, and you hear a lot

2:00

of people downplaying it as if it's some sort of a made-up thing.

2:03

But if you do an MRI of a child with ADHD, you'll actually see differences in their brains.

2:09

It's really expensive to do, so that's not how they normally diagnose it.

2:13

But their brains are actually different.

2:16

Kids with ADHD are not trying to be disobedient or lazy or wild.

2:20

Their brains just don't function the same way that other kids' brains do.

2:24

They're actually different in size, structure, chemistry, and even function.

2:29

A child with ADHD will have a brain that is three to five percent smaller than

2:33

a neurotypical kid, so you get a bit of a developmental delay,

2:36

and the child might take a little bit longer to act their own age.

2:40

One of the biggest differences is in the frontal cortex, right behind your forehead.

2:44

This is the part of your brain that helps you focus, Focus, remember things,

2:48

organize, solve problems, and think through consequences and control your impulses.

2:54

You also see differences in how the two halves of your brain work together.

2:57

Studies have shown that when doing a listening task, the ADHD child's left side

3:02

is working less than a typical brain, and the right side is doing more.

3:06

So listening is not the same for someone who has ADHD, and they have a lot more

3:11

work to do to pay attention. The brain chemistry is even different. Numerous studies have found that there's

3:17

a difference in the dopamine system of kids with ADHD.

3:20

Dopamine is the chemical that makes us feel good, like if we eat sugar or even

3:25

taking cocaine can cause a dopamine release.

3:28

So kids with ADHD are going to require more stimulation to help them avoid unpleasant

3:33

feelings of boredom because they lack dopamine.

3:36

A typical kid might enjoy sitting down on your lap reading a story,

3:39

but the ADHD kid is not getting enough of the good feelings from the story,

3:44

so they might find it more fun to climb on your shoulders and bounce on the

3:47

couch while they listen to the story. So they've also found that adults who learn to manage their ADHD as children

3:53

have brains that end up looking pretty similar to a typical brain,

3:56

but a person who has uncontrolled symptoms will still show major differences.

4:01

So what that tells me is that learning to manage ADHD while you're growing up is really important.

4:06

Our brains are what they call plastic. They're moldable, they're changeable,

4:10

but it's not going to be easy. So I I asked my friend Erin Coppin, who's my medical practitioner,

4:16

to talk with us about her children who have ADHD and how it has affected them,

4:21

their family, and their schooling. Yeah, so I am mom of three kids.

4:26

I have a son and a daughter with ADHD, and also my husband has ADHD.

4:32

And then in my professional life, I'm a physician assistant in family medicine,

4:36

and I treat patients that also have ADHD. Tell us a little bit about how you

4:41

first started wondering if your child might have ADHD.

4:45

So my middle daughter was the first that we found out.

4:49

And I first actually started having inklings that she might have ADHD when she was in preschool.

4:55

In my professional life, I had gone to a pediatric behavioral health conference,

4:59

and they were talking about all the symptoms of kids with ADHD.

5:02

And they were talking about girls and how oftentimes they are underdiagnosed

5:07

because they're not necessarily the problem kids.

5:10

But they were listing off things like difficulty following multi-step instructions,

5:14

you know, take this to your room and go get this and then come back. They get lost.

5:19

They talked about clumsiness. And he always joked that my daughter could fall

5:23

off the stool at breakfast like five times in 15 minutes.

5:27

And then I asked her preschool teacher, how does she do in class?

5:30

If I have her up like at the board doing work, she's great.

5:34

Anytime I give her an assignment to work on independently, she can't get it

5:38

done. And so that's where I first started kind of thinking about it.

5:41

In kindergarten, the first week was doing great.

5:44

And about the third week of kindergarten, her teacher called me and said,

5:48

hey, is something different? Has something changed?

5:50

She not sleeping as much because she just is distractible.

5:53

Nothing had changed. And I probed the teacher a little bit like,

5:56

you know, her dad has ADHD. I thought maybe. And she's like, no. And she just worked with her all year and

6:02

she seemed to be doing fine. And then in first, the teacher had concerns because she said she wouldn't pay attention.

6:09

She wouldn't look at her. She was always off looking at other things.

6:12

She was talking to her friend. And as we kind of got into the school year, it was clear that she was struggling.

6:18

And so we took her to primary care provider who did some questionnaires and

6:22

had the teachers fill some stuff out. And he's like, yeah, she probably has it.

6:25

And then we went and had a formal evaluation with a psychologist.

6:29

And it was really eye opening to me to get the report back from the psychologist,

6:34

because I had always thought that she just probably had inattentive ADHD.

6:38

You know, if she did, it was inattentive. It was not hyperactive.

6:42

And he's like, oh, no, she totally has hyperactive.

6:45

He said through the entire assessment, she was climbing on your back and on

6:50

your shoulders and using your leg as a slide.

6:52

And it was constantly moving around.

6:55

And we hadn't diagnosed my son who was older than her yet.

6:58

And I'm like, that's just how little kids act, right? They just have lots of

7:01

energy and they're climbing around. round and I had brought my youngest daughter

7:05

who doesn't have ADHD and I'd brought a book for her to look at while I talked to the psychologist.

7:10

And he was telling me all about what my daughter who does have ADHD was doing during this.

7:16

And by comparison, my younger daughter who doesn't have ADHD sat there not even

7:20

looking at the book, just with the book sitting on her lap the whole entire

7:24

time, just listening to what we were saying. And she was probably only like three years old at the time. And he pointed out the difference.

7:30

So it was really eye-opening to me when I found out that she did have both types

7:35

of inattentive and hyperactive ADHD. So how did you find out about your first child's diagnosis?

7:41

So like I said, my daughter was diagnosed in first grade and her brother is

7:46

two years ahead of her in school. And he wasn't diagnosed until fifth grade. He did really well in the first few years of school.

7:54

And I remember his second grade teacher talking to me about things like he gets

7:59

out of his chair a lot, But we just work with that because I just have him sitting in the back of the room.

8:04

So if he stands up, he's not disruptive to the other kids.

8:06

And as long as he's not disrupting, I let him move around.

8:10

And so he had a lot of teachers that just kind of work with that need to move.

8:14

But as far as school learning, he was doing great. He was reading. He was in advanced math.

8:20

And then about fourth grade, school started getting harder.

8:23

And at that time, I thought he just was bored because he would ignore doing his work at school.

8:29

And his teacher started showing me unfinished work that he just threw in the

8:32

garbage can instead of turning in. And he would hide his book in his desk and pull it out and try to read instead

8:39

of paying attention in class. And that's when I first got Miriam involved because he was in her Gifted and

8:45

Talented program and she started helping with some strategies.

8:48

I was just thinking that some of the behaviors you're mentioning also are pretty

8:53

typical for gifted kids. And it's sometimes really hard to diagnose because they can do OK academically

8:59

without paying very much attention.

9:02

And the reading, it's really hard to tease out whether it's a gifted behavior or a ADHD behavior.

9:09

Yeah. So we kind of went through fourth grade, struggled, but he did OK.

9:14

And fifth grade, his grades started dropping even more. and then I got a phone

9:19

call from his teacher who was like, so just had an hour to work on an assignment.

9:25

Probably would have taken him 15, 20 minutes.

9:27

And all he did was get his name on the paper.

9:30

And the more that I talked to her all through that year, there were more and

9:34

more of these ADHD type behaviors and distractibility and difficulty starting tasks.

9:39

And I kind of mentioned, well, you know, his sister has ADHD and his dad does.

9:45

How do you think he compares to the other kids. Should I get him evaluated?

9:49

And the teacher was like, I can't tell you, but was like nodding.

9:54

Yes. Like, yeah, there's a marked difference between him and the other kids.

9:58

And so we took him to his pediatrician and did the same thing,

10:01

had the teachers filled out some forms and, and they're like, oh yeah, he also has it.

10:06

At that point, we decided to get him on medication and it was marked the difference.

10:13

Like he was getting C's and D's and then the last quarter of the year,

10:18

his grades suddenly went up to A's and B's.

10:20

A lot of people think ADHD is the popular diagnosis.

10:24

Now people are just diagnosing everybody with ADHD.

10:26

So there are very clear differences that we can see if you look at the diagnostic

10:32

criteria for how we diagnose a child with ADHD.

10:36

And like I said, when I sat there comparing my two children,

10:40

which I had not really taken the time to do before, there are legitimately things

10:46

that my two children with ADHD cannot do.

10:51

Sitting still is something that

10:54

my daughter, I don't think, has that ability, like sitting in the car.

10:58

But yeah, people do a little online quiz and are convinced they have ADHD when reality isn't.

11:04

And technically, you'd have to see that dysfunction in multiple areas of their

11:09

life in order to diagnose this as ADHD.

11:11

But yeah, I think there is more awareness of ADHD and there is less stigma around

11:18

mental health today than there used to be.

11:20

And we have more and more research about it, which provides more treatment options.

11:27

And so I think all those things can play a role into how frequently kids are

11:33

being diagnosed. Does that mean that we are over-diagnosed? Not necessarily.

11:37

It just means that we may have more options to help kids today than we did,

11:42

say, in the 1980s when we were growing up, and more awareness to be able to

11:46

identify kids that would benefit from treatment.

11:52

Treatment. Their brains are different, but their brains also can change.

11:57

You know, our brains have the ability to learn. And so you can get better at things.

12:03

And maybe even if time management never is your greatest strength,

12:07

you can get better at it so that you can at least function in daily life.

12:11

And that's something that we talk with our kids about is that ADHD means their

12:17

brains work in different way than the majority of the population,

12:21

but that doesn't mean that their brains don't work and that having a diagnosis

12:26

of ADHD is something that helps them to understand better how their brain works,

12:31

but it never gets to be an excuse. Well, I didn't do it because I have ADHD or I can't learn that because I have ADHD.

12:39

It just means we have to find a different way to accomplish that task,

12:46

but not that I can't do something because I have ADHD.

12:49

Music.