ADHD and How We'll Survive Our Summer

[0:00]

Hey guys, it's Lacy with An ADD Woman Podcast, and I'm sorry,

I have been gone for a long time.

And let me just tell you, it was not by choice. My family has been dealing with

a really bad stomach bug for going on eight weeks now, actually.

It started President's Weekend back in February, so I guess maybe not quite

eight full weeks, weeks, but at least all of March, it ran through most of my

family. There's seven of us in my household.

And then I thought it was gone.

[0:38]

I thought it was gone the day before my youngest son's first birthday.

And then, of course, that evening, my preschooler came down with it.

He went most the rest of the week feeling fine. And then the end of that week, he got sick again.

And then the baby got it. And once the baby got it, well, you know,

the cat's kind of out of the bag with infant.

So then it got passed to everybody.

And so, yeah. So needless to say, I was not able to record a podcast,

but I'm back and I'm really excited.

There's quite a few things that I am going to be talking to you guys about today.

Specifically, though, I want to talk

to you about about what you do in the summertime with your ADHD family.

I want to talk about a couple different ideas that I have. So we'll play the

intro and then let's get into it.

[1:35]

Insights on ADHD Parenting

[1:36]

Welcome to an ADD Woman podcast. I'm your host, Lacey Eskel.

This is the podcast where we talk

about all things to do with ADHD from a Christian woman's perspective.

I'm so glad you're here, and I can't wait for you to realize all the amazing

things that God is doing in your life.

[1:56]

So really quick, one thing I want to talk about, and I want to stress this to

all of you moms out there who are, maybe you're just realizing you have ADHD.

And maybe you're just realizing you have ADHD and like your kid is two or three

or, you know, even at two or three years old, They don't really show signs yet,

but you know that you have it.

So, you know, you're preemptively learning about yourself and all these things

and thinking to yourself like, okay, I'm going to be, I'm going to do things

differently when my child gets to school age because I don't want them to struggle

like I did. That was definitely my thought process.

I thought I'm totally going to be, I'm totally going to do things differently.

One of the biggest things that I tried to do is I tried to take that shame factor

off of the struggle with school, right?

Well, I have an oldest child, and he is a lot like me.

He is a lot like his father, and he is the reason that I know that I have ADHD,

because when I got him diagnosed,

I saw, you know, and I meet so many parents who are like this,

and I actually just talked about this on a podcast.

[3:08]

A different podcast. And we were talking about how so many of us will,

you know, we get the paper test basically that the doctor says,

oh, well, go through this checklist and we'll see if you have ADHD or go through

this checklist for your child and we'll see if they have ADHD.

And, you know, you see yourself in it if it's your child and especially if you've never been diagnosed.

So that was how I got diagnosed.

And there was a lot of things in that of his that I I was like,

oh, I didn't, I didn't realize I was ADHD.

[3:38]

And looking back, I can see it like so prevalent from a long time ago.

So to give you the full disclosure with my, my oldest son, so he has been diagnosed ADD.

Technically they do consider him, he is ADHD inattentive type primarily,

which shocks me because I expected him fully to be combo type.

He has to do things like jump to be able to talk to me and to tell a story, to hold his thought.

And even now as in like a young adult, because he's a teenager,

he has to kind of stand, sway, like move his body.

[4:15]

One thing that like a lot of adults in his life have always tried to tell him

because it's very distracting for them, right?

He's trying to tell them a story and he's got to jump or he's got to tap or

he's got to, you know, he's got to have some sort of sensory input.

They'll be like, could you just, could you just stand still?

Could you just stand still so that I can understand what you're trying to tell me?

And he's like, no, no, because if I stand still, I can't think.

And I've always explained it to people that, you know, the ADHD brain needs stimulation.

It lacks stimulation. That's why stimulants work. for us.

And so a lot of times the sensory seeking that you see in ADHD kids or you see

in ADHD even adults, it is definitely related to ADHD.

Now, it will look really similar to sensory seeking, you know,

for people who have autism, but it is definitely not the same thing.

Okay. Sorry about that. I'm back.

So what you end up seeing is a lot of people will do the sensory-seeking behaviors,

and they're really just trying to stimulate their brain so that they can gather

their thoughts and so that they can tell you what it is that they're trying to tell you.

So with my oldest son, he's obviously, he's always had, he's always had ADHD.

It first really showed itself when he was about three.

And I was a young mom. I had undiagnosed ADHD myself.

And I don't know how much of his story I talked about when I told my story.

But he was a very, he was a very difficult child.

[5:40]

He was a very difficult child. And it's kind of the running joke.

Uh, we talk about how, um, like we laugh about how he was my hardest and I got him out of the way,

you know, but when I really think about it, it makes me sad because there was

so many years I was just doing everything I could.

And really what I was trying to do was control, right?

Because as a parent, that's part of like what you feel like is your job,

you know, especially when your

child is really small, like control so that they don't harm themselves,

control their environment, control what they're exposed to, control yourself.

[6:19]

Control your reactions, you know?

And so this lack of control that I had with him right out the gate,

I immediately was like, am I just a really bad mom?

Like I was the girl in school, like I say in school, but I was the girl when

I was young that I was like, I was always with the kids. I wanted to be with the kids.

I wanted to be with the little kids and I wanted to be the babies and I want

to hold them. And I was always very motherly. It was just in my nature.

And so when I became a mom and I'm dealing with this unruly kid who just,

there was just just no desire in him to want to really please me.

Like it was there, but it wasn't there enough to where if I was like,

you are, you are really disappointing.

I'm very disappointed with your actions. In his mind, that was like an invitation

to light himself on fire.

You know, he would just be like, okay, well, if you're disappointed in me with that, watch this.

You know, that was, that was how he was.

And it was very exhausting. And I had friends at the time that used to be like,

can't you just sit him down?

And I even had friends at the time that were like, yeah, you're just not strict enough.

And I was like, I don't think that's the key. I really don't.

And I still don't think that that's the key to it.

What I want to say is as the years went on, okay, I.

[7:42]

We eventually moved past that two, three, four-year-old phase.

We got into the school-age phases, and his behavior started to manifest itself

more as a pushback against academics because he was struggling to be able to process information,

to retain it, to learn it, to do what he needed to do in school for it.

And that has been a long road.

And what I really want to talk about today with that is I just really want you

to hear through what I'm telling you that even me who sits here,

who talks to you guys about ways to cope and ways to deal with ADHD,

I have a child right now who is not thriving despite his ADHD, even with his ADHD.

I feel like he has gone and grown into this teenage statue of rubber.

[8:30]

Everything that I try to, hey, try this, try that, it just bounces off of him

because he just does does not.

He just deflects. And it's so interesting because me and him had a conversation

today. It was a little bit of a heated conversation, not something I'm really proud of.

But when we finally really discussed the root of his problem and we're talking

about where he's at academically and how much he's struggling and what that

looks like to other people, what it looks like to me as his mom,

what I recognize that he's really doing to himself because he's cutting himself short.

I mean, I feel like that's what most of us ADHDers do, right?

Like for a long time, we cut ourselves short because everybody else does.

And then at some point, we flip the switch and we say, you know what,

I'm done. I'm done being that person.

I want to be different. And because we decide that we want to be different,

[9:26]

From PlayStation to Trampoline

[9:23]

we're finally all of a sudden capable to do that.

But before it didn't matter

how many times other people told us what we

should do or how we should do it we were always just like not

doing that because just because you asked me actually just because

you asked me i'm not doing it and um so

yeah so he he he's struggling right now so he doesn't quite know it yet um and

we talked in the last i talked in i think the last episode i was talking about

the secret that i had that we were getting rid of the playstation 5 now we did

my My oldest seems to have been the one that adapted the quickest, and I will tell you why.

[10:00]

More recently, he was more addicted to a different video gaming system,

a PC video gaming system.

And so he wasn't super sad when I said we're going to get rid of the PS5.

[10:13]

What we were planning on doing, and we're still planning on doing,

we just haven't found one yet, is we are going to replace it with a trampoline.

I am all for trampolines. I know there are a lot of parents out there that are

not for trampolines because of the danger of them, and I completely understand

that, and that's your choice, but I will tell you, trampolines are,

a wonderful thing for ADHD kids. Wonderful.

So we are going to do that.

[10:39]

The kids are looking forward to having a trampoline. We had one before,

but it got ruined. So we're going to get one again.

[10:45]

So that is one thing that is on my agenda for this summer.

But with my one son who is struggling academically, it's looking like our summer

is going to be spent learning.

And I just want to give you some solace.

If you are a mom out there or a parent listening and you're thinking to yourself,

[11:09]

The Struggle with Control

[11:03]

oh my gosh, yeah, I have to spend every summer with my child doing schoolwork because they struggle.

There's nothing wrong with you. You're not doing anything advertently wrong

in your parenting because I can tell you,

okay, I doubled down on the shaming and the I'm so disappointed in you things

that I know my parents did to me.

And I did that because I remembered how that felt. It felt really frustrating and really hurtful,

even though I know it wasn't hurtful, right and i have

done i've done what i've tried to do i've tried

to do the complete opposite with him i've built him up i've told

him you know you are capable of more i know you

are you are cutting yourself short i know you can do this i have even set the

bar low for him and said i'm i'm not expecting straight a's i just need you

to pass this class pass that class get this grade up and And still he persists

in his basically defiance,

but it looks different than it did when he was three, right?

When he was three and four, it was, I don't want to go to bed.

I don't want to eat. I don't want to sit down. I don't want to stay in timeout. I don't want to listen.

And now it is, I don't want to go to school.

[12:15]

And I think the key here, okay.

And, and again, I'm, I'm not talking to you guys about this.

I'm not having this conversation with you guys about all of this,

because I've gotten on the other side of it or I think this will work or I think that'll work.

I'm just sharing with you things that I'm thinking about as they're happening.

And I'm really just trying to hold you guys' hand.

Can we just walk through this fire together? Because this is hard.

I was crying earlier today over his attitude, his state of mind,

where he's at as far as his grades go and what his future looks like for him.

And as a mom who prays, I pray all the time and I pray for God to give him wisdom.

[13:01]

I pray for God to light him on fire, to put a hunger in his heart for God.

And surrender is hard because at the end of the day, that's what I have to do. I cannot control.

And when your child is little and you can pick them up and set them down and

[13:24]

Guiding Through Defiance

[13:19]

say, no, you can control, or at least you have this illusion of control.

Because as Christians, we know, we know there

is is no control like we really are not

the ones in control we're not but when he you know when i'm

staring at a a child who's taller than me

okay he almost weighs the same as me these days he's

more muscle mass than i do i'm sure and he's just

basically putting his foot down and saying no i don't i don't i don't

want to do this and he has no real good reason

he doesn't he's a teenager i mean

as a teenager how many we didn't have to have a good reason

to do half of the crap we did let's be real okay so he

has no real good reason but this is this is the

path he's chosen and you're not a bad

parent if your child is choosing a path that

you wouldn't want for them and you're also not

a bad parent if you choose not to try to control them when they have decided

that they're going to do things that you're not a bad parent if you decide not

to try to squeeze tighter on those reins. Do you get what I'm saying?

[14:31]

Parenting is about guiding. It's about educating, guiding, and then walking

alongside your child as they get things right and get things wrong.

Sometimes really small things they get right and sometimes really big things they get wrong.

Or sometimes they get really big things right and they get really small things right.

I see a lot of parents out there whose kids, you know, grow up and maybe they graduate with honors.

And maybe there is something in their parenting that made their child do all that.

But there is a component of parenting parenting i'm not supposed to phil i am

not supposed to control everything that my child does i'm i'm sure you're saying

to yourself what in the world do you mean Lacy like how can we not try to control

them especially when they're they're acting out of control.

[15:27]

Because the unfortunate circumstances of having ADHD is likely to mean that

we are going to have to learn our lesson the hard way.

And it's because when we have ADHD, we struggle with sequencing.

We have tunnel vision, but at the same time, we don't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So let's say, for instance, if I'm an ADHD kid and I'm walking outside and my

mom tells me, don't jump in that puddle.

Don't jump in that puddle. your shoes will get all wet. I think to myself,

so what if my shoes are wet?

So what? Not realizing that she's telling me this, not only because my shoes

will be wet, but because we're walking into a bank and the bank's floor is marble.

And she knows that if I walk into the bank and I've got wet shoes,

I'm liable to slip, fall, hurt myself, right?

And that's something that comes, that she she gets from experience, not just from knowing.

It's common sense. It's how we gather common sense. It's from learned experiences, shared experiences.

And she knows that, but I don't know that because I'm a kid.

Well, with ADHD, that component, we only ever get it as we build it.

So if we are thinking to ourselves like, okay, so like in my son's case.

[16:46]

Lessons in Self-Control

[16:46]

He hates school he says he hates

the school environment he hates having to sit in

a chair for eight hours a day and stare

at a desk or sit in a chair eight hours

a day and do school work and i got

i got pretty mad at him about it because i said

you mean to tell me that you you

just can't sit in a desk eight hours

a day to get an education or you can't

you just can't handle it it's too stressful for you to sit there and attempt

to learn now when I was done having this conversation with him I'm sure that

he felt a little guilty and that is not really an emotion I was trying to elicit

out of him but as a mom I was I was angry,

I was angry because, quite frankly, I felt like I was staring at that three-year-old

child all over again who just was being all out defiant for no real good reason, you know.

And I said to him, our Savior, our Savior allowed himself to be arrested by the Romans.

[17:57]

Arrested, beat. They put a crown of thorns on his head and they made jokes and

they laughed at him and and they spit on him.

I said, and you're telling me that Jesus, who did that for us willingly,

who went to the cross, who didn't despise it, no matter how hard it was,

no matter how uncomfortable it was, how difficult it was, you're telling me

that you could say to him, you could say to him, yeah, I know you did that,

but I just can't sit at a desk.

I just can't sit at a desk for eight hours a day, try to learn.

Now, he was pretty upset that I said that.

I was crying at that point. I was emotional. And I don't know if it was the

right thing to say or not.

What I can say is that these hard things, okay, these hard things for our kids or for ourselves,

they're hard because we haven't done them yet.

And once we do them, we slowly start to

build that bridge of how to do

them okay and sometimes we build the bridge wrong the first

time because we can't see it unlike our neurotypical counterparts who

can totally see the bridge ahead of them like they need to make a peanut butter

and jelly sandwich they can see the bridge okay that includes two pieces of

bread jelly peanut butter a butter knife a plate they can see the finished sandwich

we can only do that as adults because we've done it enough times as ADHD adults.

[19:26]

So my kid is telling me, I can't do the work. It's hard.

And I don't understand it. And it takes me more times of being explained it

to than I'm comfortable with. That's what he's saying.

Okay. In a nutshell, he's saying it in a different way, of course,

but that's what I'm understanding.

And I asked him point blank. I said, you lift weights because he does.

He goes, he does weightlifting with the football team. And I said,

you lift weights. And he said, yeah. And I said, so what's your squat at now?

And he said like 265. I said, great.

Do you remember when your squat was at like 200?

And he said, yeah. I said, do you remember the first time you picked up 200

pounds, how heavy it felt? And he said, yeah. I said, okay. And what does it feel like now?

And he said, it feels like nothing.

[20:07]

I said, okay. Okay. Because what he ended up telling me was he said he just

wants school to be easier.

He wants it to be easier. I said, well, it only gets easier if you get smarter.

It only gets easier if you push your muscle, your brain, using your Christian

mind that we know we have.

Okay. And telling your brain, I have to find a way to learn this.

[20:32]

Discord Community Creation

[20:28]

I have to figure this out. I have to keep going. I have to do something.

Now, when I say, okay, guys, when I tell you he's not trying,

i mean that his teachers

are literally saying he sits there with the

work on his desk and he doesn't even

touch it so yeah i learned

that in the iep meeting i had to go to recently and um he's been begging me

to he wants to work with me with this podcast and he has created a discord community

for all of us which is really exciting and i'll probably have to talk about

that on the next, my next episode.

I'll dive more into that, but yeah, that's what I'm dealing with.

So this summer we are going to spend time learning, time practicing learning.

[21:19]

And what is that going to look like? So a lot of ADHD kids will say,

well, I can't read because as I read, nothing comes to mind.

So what I have found is it's really helpful for ADHD kids to try to like,

Like try to go read a book that has a movie and actually allow for your child

to watch the movie first and then read the book with them.

And if you can break it up into smaller chunks, I read a page, you read a page.

I read two pages, you read two pages.

[21:49]

Bite sizes are how you eat an elephant, right? And with the ADHD brain,

bite sizes is how you build the bridge.

So every time that you have something that you need to do, you have to start

doing it to see the bridge and do it a little more and do a little more. It is really hard.

I am not going to say it's easy. It is hard. Okay.

But it's worth it. And every time that you build that bridge,

the nice thing is, is that the next time you have to do that task again,

all you have to go back to do is, we're staying with the bridge metaphor,

is go back and make repairs.

Oh, the last time I did it, I missed this brick here.

So I'm going to fix that this time and do it a little different.

And then I'm going to fix it a little bit more.

I also reiterated to him. him, I said, do you remember when I first had you

learn to unload or load the dishwasher?

And he said, yeah. And I said, and how long did it take you?

It took you forever, didn't it? And he's like, yeah.

And I said, and you dragged your feet and you huffed and puffed and you were

frustrated and you didn't want to do it. And he said, yeah. I said,

and how fast can you do it now?

He said, really fast. I said, yeah.

[22:55]

So I said, the problem is, son, is that all of your testing says you're smart. It says you're smart.

It says that you are capable of figuring it out. Yeah, it takes you a few more times.

But in talking to a few colleagues of mine, by the way, I have learned recently

that ADHD, dyslexia, any of those learning disabilities, those learning gaps,

okay, most of them, it just comes down to repetition.

You might have a child whose brain is a sponge and giving them information,

they just, they absorb it right away, right? So they don't need a lot of repetition.

Then you have a child like my older two sons who have ADHD and without Without

medication, with medication might be a little different, but without medication,

they need a lot of repetition.

So that's the other thing we're going to work on this summer.

We're going to be doing a lot of repetition.

And I want to, what I think I'm going to do is I'm going to focus on the idea

of moving the needle 1%. Because if I move the needle 1% in one direction,

compound interest eventually will take over.

[23:56]

So that's going to look like reading one line sometimes every day. okay, one line of words.

We've got that line down, great. Even though maybe the first time it took you

two minutes to read it, next time it took you less than a minute, let's keep going.

Now we're gonna read two lines. Now we're gonna read a paragraph.

We're gonna do three math problems in the morning. And then we're gonna do four.

Then we're gonna do five. And here's the thing, I'm not going to focus on,

so my older son, he's in ninth grade and he should be doing ninth grade work.

I'm actually not gonna even focus on those. What I'm gonna go back to is back to the basics. Okay.

[24:30]

In the summer, I'm going to spend

time helping him hone and work on his phonics and his reading skills.

And I'm going to have him read until he comprehends.

Now, again, back to the movie idea. So sometimes it helps if you have a child

that struggles with getting that picture going in their head as they are reading.

And that has to do with their comprehension.

If they see a movie that is the same as the book, but the book obviously is

usually a little different. It has added detail, has other things.

But it gives their brain a starting point. so they

don't have to draw from their own memory faces for

the characters because they've seen faces that they

can use from the movie it's it's kind of like

a filling in the gaps way of helping with comprehension um when it comes to

the math stuff again i'm going back to the basics i'm going to go back to multiplication

i'm going to go back to division i'm going to go back to you know and i'm going

to use visual aids so that when they're in when they're in.

[25:29]

Class next year and they are

trying to quickly do this new math problem and it

requires every math problem builds on the foundations

of adding subtracting multiplication division all of them so if they're having

to work through that well maybe this specific portion of this math problem is

long or difficult but either way it's going to be requiring what vacation division

addition and subtraction.

So the faster that they can do those things, the faster they can learn that material.

The other thing we're going to do is a typing course. They don't teach typing

anymore in school, even though almost every student these days is using a Chromebook, which is awesome.

[26:09]

Importance of Typing Skills

[26:10]

But all the same, they don't teach typing. Literally, that blew my mind.

I was like, you mean to tell me you do most of your work on a Chromebook,

but you are never taught typing? be? I don't get that.

So I'm going to wrap this up now. So I just spend the summer.

Okay. Spend the summer with your kids, going back to the basics.

Some of the basics here, I will list them quickly for you. Get them outside

as often as you possibly can.

Physical activity is so insanely important for the ADHD brain.

And I'm not even just saying that it's helpful. It's important.

If you have a day where you are having heavy brain fog.

[26:47]

Walk go for a walk walk

fast get your heart rate up okay it's very

very helpful and it is critical for the adhd brain to be able to function go

back to the basics i don't care if your child is 5 or 15 okay go back to the

basics and build on those why do i say this again like i said we're going to

be doing typing this summer.

Typing is a visual stimuli that then has to be processed in the brain so that

your fingers can do what it's supposed to do when it comes to retyping the word.

That is a very difficult process, okay, for our brains to do.

And at first, they're going to hate me.

I know they are. But I know that once they get faster, not only will it improve

their reading comprehension, because they will have to be reading as quick as

they want to type, but it It will also help their spelling and it will help

their finger, their hand-eye coordination.

And all of that is really, really good. And again, it's a foundational building

block for everything else.

They're going to go back to school with this typing skill and they will be able

to type ideally because really it only takes a few months to learn to type.

They'll be able to type much faster than most of their classmates,

making it so that their work could get done much quicker.

Currently, you know, my one son, he uses voice to text. It's one of his IEP accommodations.

[28:12]

The problem is, is that in the back end, that ends up taking him so much more

time to edit because he talks.

And when he talks, he doesn't exactly say what he's trying to get down on paper, right?

He ums and ahs and ands, and he'll say run on sentences or because he's dyslexic, he'll swap words.

So typing, go for walks with your kids, talk to them, Listen. Listen.

[28:40]

And do the best you can. It's hard as a parent, but do the best you can to not try to control.

We have to surrender our relationship and our children's lives over to Christ every day.

It is something I have to resurrender every day. This is in your hands,

God. This is in your hands, Lord. This is not mine.

You control their life. You know where to set them on fire, where to not.

You know what will motivate them. them i

don't you want to equip me great please equip me to do what i'm supposed to

do but in the meantime i have to make sure that i'm always here that they always

know how much i love them that they always know i'm rooting for them and that

their behavior while it may define their life.

[29:29]

Because it will unfortunately sometimes it does not define their value just

like it doesn't define our value.

So that's going to wrap up this episode, guys.

Thanks for listening. I appreciate you so much. Next episode,

be on the lookout to hear from me in regards to a very special upcoming debut that I'm offering.

We're talking Christian meditation, the good stuff, not the bad stuff, the good stuff.

And I really can't wait to tell you guys more about it. I've been working really

hard on it and I think you're gonna love

it so I will talk to you guys all really soon thank you so much and God bless

thank you so much for listening what would really help me more than anything

if you feel inclined is please leave me a five-star review wherever you listen

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Podbean, Apple Podcasts, all the like it really helps for the show to show show

up for other people that maybe they need to hear it.

Thanks again for being here. I appreciate you so much.

[30:35]