Unlocking the Power of ADHD Parenting
Brain-Based Strategies for Successful Parenting with an ADHD Brain
Hey There, fellow parents with wild and wonderful ADHD brains! Today I’m sharing a special sneak peek at a webinar I did with the always brilliant Mattea LeWitt, LCSW, as a joint program with Rittenhouse Psychological Services, all about parenting with ADHD brains.
Because there is a lot out there about parenting for children with ADHD brains. And for good reason- it’s tricky business (a trickiness I’m intimately familiar with!) But parenting when you have ADHD? Well, that’s no less tricky but a whole lot less talked about.
So in this clip, we talk about:
It’s good stuff.
And guess what? There’s even more to learn and enjoy. In fact, can get the full webinar with just one click! So- go ahead- get that understanding and insight and help yourself towards being the parent you want to be today!
Did it? Great.
Not in a watching/ listening place? I’ve gotch- read on to learn all about brain-based strategies for parenting with ADHD.
Ok, let’s get started.
The core difference of ADHD brains and how that difference impacts parenting, both good and bad. Because it is BOTH of those things- ADHD brains carry pros and cons. In fact, research even suggests that children with ADHD, who have parents with ADHD themselves, may have better outcomes. Their differences and similarities impact parenting in great, amazing ways but also in ways that create vulnerability.
So the trick here is understanding the difference and then creating systems and strategies that help protect against the vulnerabilities while celebrating the strength. So, let's take a closer look at these unique brains and explore how they can impact our parenting journey.
Regulation: The Core Brain Difference for Parents with ADHD
At the core of ADHD is the concept of regulation and the different ways that ADHD brains regulate their functioning.
For the basis of comparison. Let's think of a neurotypical brain. If we could peek inside a neurotypical brain, imagine it like a fancy sound studio mixing board. They have all these dimmer switches and faders, allowing them to find the perfect balance. So they have just enough volume to whisper to the person next to them while not being heard by the professor, or they expend just enough energy at their 9 am meeting to still have energy to spare at 3 pm. It's the "just right" state.
But here's the thing – ADHD brains are wired differently. They blow past "just right," landing more naturally in all-or-nothing.
ADHD brains have just as many switches as neurotypical brains but rather than dimmer switches; they are full of on/off switches– going all-in or all-out. They hyperfocus and zoom in intensely on something, or they’re scattered and unfocused. Energy levels can be supercharged and ready to conquer the world, or they can plummet, making it hard to get off the couch. It's a world of extremes that is home to ADHD brains.
These on-off switches affect various aspects of brain function, including attention, focus, action, emotions, planning, creativity, memory, and motivation.
How On/Off Regulation Impacts Parenting with ADHD
Now, let's explore how these all-in/all-out tendencies relate to parenting in great and difficult ways.
The Benefit of All-In/ All-Off Attention
When ADHD brains bring their all-in attention to children, something magical happens. Kids flourish under that focused attention. I witnessed this recently while on a playground with a friend who has ADHD. As we chatted and she multitasked, her three-year-old approached her. In an instant, I saw her attention switch from off to on. She knelt down, made eye contact, and became completely absorbed in the moment. The child felt seen, held, and loved. That all-in attention is like a beacon of love that all children crave and benefit from immensely.
All-In attention and focus are also known (and loved) as Hyperfocus. And hyperfocus can be the magical state that gets seemingly impossible things done- and sometimes done at hyperspeed. It can also unleash bursts of superhuman productivity, making tasks like organizing a closet, researching a major project, or building the perfect Lego tower a breeze.
And it’s tempting to think that the only good part of All-in/All-out regulation is when it’s on the all-in side. But all-out has benefits too!
All-off attention actually has a huge benefit. An all-off-attention ADHD brain covers a lot of ground and notices things others might miss. My husband, who has a beautiful ADHD brain, is the go-to guy for spotting struggling kids at pool parties. He has an uncanny awareness of what's happening around him, even when seemingly preoccupied. This ability to cover vast territory and gather various details can be incredibly useful.
The Vulnerability of On/Off Regulation for Parents with ADHD
However, there are struggles and vulnerabilities that come with on/off regulation. On-off attention can cause us to miss subtle signals from our children, such as hunger cues or signs of frustration. When we're hyperfocused on something other than our kids or caught up in off-attention mode, we may fail to read their signals and attune to their needs. This disconnection weakens our relationship with them and leaves children feeling unseen and unattended.
Regulation Strategies Tips for Parents with ADHD
So the thing about the pros and cons of this brain difference. Is that we want to embrace and celebrate the pros, but we also want to build strategies to support the vulnerabilities. As we do that, we want to remember that we can't fundamentally change the structure of an ADHD brain. And I believe strongly that even if we could, we wouldn’t want to because ADHD brains possess a unique beauty. Instead, we should work with their natural tendencies and find ways to support areas of struggle.
Undistracted Free Play: An ADHD Brain-Based Connection Strategy
The first ADHD-brain-based strategy is what we call Undistracted Free Play.
This strategy aims to provide children with the focused attention they crave while filling what we call their relationship bucket. The relationship bucket is the container that holds the strength of our connection with our kids. Positive attention deposits fill it up, while everyday demands and conflicts make withdrawals. When the bucket is at or near empty, it becomes very difficult for kids to stay regulated, keep their emotions in check, or meet our many, many demands.
Undistracted free play fills up this bucket helping to regulate children and making it easier for them to meet our expectations.
What is Undistracted Free Play?
Undistracted free play involves short sessions of quality, screen-free time with your kids. These sessions can range from 10 to 15 minutes, adjusting the duration and activity based on your child's age.
Screen Free
I know. Screen-free is tough. Sometimes playing with our kids is boring, and phones are our automatic answer to boredom- not to mention- we have stuff to do! But screen-free is important here. Screens are designed to induce hyperfocus, often without awareness. And that hyperfocus takes the attention away from your child and ultimately defeats the purpose of the activity.
Free Play
Undistracted Free Play is named exactly that for a reason. The play is meant to be free and child-led. This is a chance for you to enter your kid’s world instead of the other way around. It’s a time to allow the child to figure out how they want to spend their time without your input or agenda.
Activities like peekaboo and scarf play are great ideas for younger children. As kids grow into toddlers and younger kids, let them choose the activities while you provide reflective comments that focus on the process rather than passing judgment. For example, instead of saying "That's so pretty," you can say, "You're putting the blue block on the red ones." The goal is to make your child feel seen and connected.
With teenagers, adapt the strategy to suit their interests. Tune into what they like, whether it's shooting hoops, discussing music, or even joining them in playing video games. While video games can be an exception to the no screens rule, ensure there is active dialogue and engagement rather than just being physically present.
Undistracted free play is a powerful strategy to strengthen your relationship with your child, fill their relationship bucket, and provide the focused attention they need. Remember, these short bursts of quality time can have a significant impact on your connection and your child's regulation. So embrace this strategy and discover the wonders it can bring to your parenting journey.
Have you tried undistracted free play? How did it work for you?
Want more insight into supporting the vulnerabilities of parenting with an ADHD brain while celebrating its strengths? Sign up to receive the full webinar for free!
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So let's start with the core ADHD brain difference. By the way, Mattia and I are going to be kind of bouncing back and forth.
0:14
So, the main difference in is really about regulation. So I always think it is she is a poorly named disorder, I even hate the word disorder. I don't like any of it. But because the difference about ADHD brains is about regulation at its heart. And it's regulation of lots of different things, not just regulation of attention, or act, or, activity. So if we, if we could look inside, I'm going to open up a neurotypical brain and kind of look inside, this is not in reality. But theoretically, we would, we would be like, we would see this whole mixing board, right at a fancy sound studio where they have all these dimmer switches, and all these faders, which is where we can get just the right amount of things, right? Yes, enough volume that you can like whisper to the person sitting next to you, but the person, you know, leading the meeting doesn't hear you just enough effort to pay attention on your nine o'clock call, to then still have enough energy at your three o'clock call. And just enough attention on your cooking, that you can also spend a little bit of that attention to your three-year-old who's, you know, playing with trucks in the corner, right. So you said just right them out. And just right, it's great. But ADHD brains are different, they don't have the just right, they tend to have on-off switches. So they tend to go all in or all out. And that's on all the brain functions. So they go all in on attention, right, and got like some hyper focus zoomed in, really key that into things, or all out, and it's kind of like I'm all over the place, or all in on energy, and I'm super excited and, you know, ready to take charge and take on the new thing, or is kind of, you know, Wild horses couldn't drag me off the couch. So it says All in all-out kind of extremes that ADHD brains tend to live in.
2:54
And all ADHD brain functions are regulated with this kind of on-off switch. So attention, focus, action, emotions, planning, creativity, memory, motivation, all of these things tend to do it in this all on all off, all in all-out kind of way. So we're gonna look at a couple of these all in all out things and how it relates to parenting. And, and both what the strength there is, as well as what the struggle is, and kind of some strategies around it. So we're gonna start with attention and focus.
3:41
And so the strengths of on, on off attention, right kind of going all in with your attention are all out. It's, it's, again, all of these, it's easy to see what the downside is. But it's important to talk about the strength as well, because we want to not just celebrate it, and then like, yeah, everyone's great to find a way. But in a, hey, let's really take advantage of this. Right? And so, all in all our attention when that is focused on a child, it's in kids just blossom, right? I was on a playground the other day with a friend of mine who has ADHD, and we were kind of chatting and she was kind of doing a couple of other things. And her three-year-old came up to her and her you could just see her switch from OFF to ON her attention just went right on. I don't know what it is that he did that kind of elicited the on switch, but it happened and he had been kind of standing near us and I had seen him and he was just you know, fine. But when her on attention went to him, you know, she kind of knelt down and made eye contact, and it was she was totally locked in, you could just see him like blue, it was just this, this lightning and the sparkle that happened that you could just see, he felt so seen. And he felt so kind of held and cared for and loved in that moment. So, his love this, they love that all on attention, and they crave it. hyperfocus can also create some kind of like, almost super, superhuman productivity, right? If you happen to be staring at your closet that needs organization, when that hyper-focus turns on or when you're, you know, your meds kick in. I mean, it's amazing what can happen to a closet, in a short period of time, right? Or whatever the project is when that hyper-focus turns on. But as we said earlier, it's not just the all on that is a strength, there's also a strength in me off write that off attention, brains kind of cover a lot of ground and can see lots of things and taken lots of things. My husband who has ADHD is kind of known for everyone wants to invite him over to a pool party with kids, because he is always the one who can like spot the kid that's a little bit struggling in the water. And his you know, you don't really notice he's kind of talking or walking around. He's not like, you know, zoned in on the pool. But there's always just some awareness of what's happening over in the pool, and he will spot it and grab, I can't even tell you how many kids he has grabbed out of the deep end who shouldn't be in the deep end. So this off attention, this covering lots of ground has a lot of utility as well.
7:08
But there's a struggle here too, right? So struggle of on off attention, we can tend to miss signals and not kind of see the the calls for the subtle cues for attention, right? Like the big cues, of course, those get seen the little things the slight change in demeanor as a kids getting hungry, or you know, that slight change in demeanor as a kids doing homework, and they're starting to get frustrated, but they haven't kind of melted down yet, right? Those little missed signals. And those missed signals can lead to kind of miss attunement, right? When we're kind of either hyper-focused on something else other than our kids, whatever that might be, whether it's a screen or anything else. Or we're kind of an off attention. It can see we can kind of not get a to not kind of read into kids signals. And they can kind of feel that this connection, and that all together can weaken relationships, right? Because kids don't feel seen. They don't feel kind of held and attended to. They don't feel like they're getting their needs met. Of course, they wouldn't say they wouldn't verbalize it in this way. But it tends to, weaken relationships.
8:42
So I said we were going to talk about strategies. And this strategy. This is kind of a way of helping with us, right? Because whenever we're talking about strategies, we want to be really mindful of, we're not going to change this basic structure of an ADHD brain. We're not going to turn ADHD brains from on off switches to dimmer switches, right. And I don't even think we would want to because we lose out on a lot of that beauty that comes with an ADHD brain. And so instead, we want to utilize how it works naturally, and find ways to make up for the places where it's struggling or find those scaffolds that help kind of directed in the right, right way. So this first strategy is an attention strategy. So a way of giving kids that attention and that kind of all on attention that they crave so much and that they benefit so much from and so it's called undistracted, free play and For those of you who have older kids, this works across the age span.
10:05
Even though we're talking about free play, I'm going to talk a little bit later about how to make this work across all age brackets. So what undistracted free play does, is that it fills a relationship bucket. So I sometimes think about relationships as being a bucket. And when the bucket is really full, that relationship feels strong. And when the buckets really empty, that relationship feels weak. And so we put deposits into that bucket. And we also take withdrawals from the bucket. And so the deposits are our positive attention. That's a biggest deposit that we can put in to the relationship bucket with our kids. And the withdrawals, we do all the time, right? Like, I can't even I would love to count one day, how many withdrawals I make from my relationship bucket with my kids, right? The requests the demands the conflict. You know, just the very small like, put your shoes on brush your teeth, sorts of things, to the bigger, you know, ones that that raise kind of more hackles, to the all out conflict, all all of that are all withdrawals, they're all taking a little bit from the bucket.
11:39
So the more we have, the more we kind of fill up that bucket, the more we're able to take from it as well. And the other thing that undistracted free play does is it helps regulate kids. So it helps kids. Kids are actually what's called co regulators. Actually, all people are, are just kind of extra co regulatory when we're children. And so we regulate our own emotional state, based with each other. And, and I'm sure you've all had this experience, right? Where if you're feeling kind of agitated, but you but you then start to hang out with somebody who has like a very calm, soothing energy. They don't even have to do anything about what you're agitated about. But just being around them and they're calm energy can calm us down, right. And so this undistracted free play helps do some of that helps kind of regulate our kids. And because it's filling the relationship bucket and makes it easier for kids to do, what's expected of them and what we need for them for them to do.
12:54
So what is undistracted, free play? And distraction-free play is mall spurts. I mean, small this is not you know, all day sorts of thing of quality, no agenda connection time with your kids. So when I say small, I'm talking 1015 minutes, maybe you make that a little longer for the older kids and a little shorter for the younger kids. But we're not, we're not talking a huge investment of time, kind of next 20 minutes, you know, minimum five. But one of the big things here is no screens. And the no screens is really because we're thinking about how ADHD brains work, right? And screens are literally built to instill hyper focus. And we don't want the hyper focus to go to the screen, we want it to go to the kid. And if we can, even if we can't turn the attention on in that sort of way, that's okay. But we don't want something to kind of suck it away. Right? And so it's a no screen time. And it's child led with no adult agenda. So that means that you know, you do what your kid wants to do and the moment that's not kind of in a like yesterday sort of way, right? Like this isn't a you know, we can we can blow the house up now. But a responsible child, but kind of why what would you mommy wants to spend some time with you. You know, what would you like to do right now? You want to play with Legos you want to you know what, what is it that's less on your mind right now.
14:49
So how do we do this across age? So for little kids, we're going to, again, shorter sessions, and these are going to be things like peekaboo On scarf play and even just kind of that smiling and talking and eye contact making faces that we do with little babies and kind of early toddlers, right? Then when we get to kind of toddlers, and kids, but like younger kids, now we're kind of getting more into that child led kid gets to choose. But here, and this is kind of a thing that takes a little getting used to. Because we're not in instilling any kind of adult agenda on it, it can be really helpful to when we talk with our kids in this kind of undistracted, free play kind of way to reflect the process, rather than kind of what you know, rather than being like, Oh, that's so pretty, right? That's kind of instilling some adult agenda. Like, I think it's pretty and, you know, this is what pretty instead, we kind of say, Oh, you're putting the blue block on the red ones, or something like that, right? That can start to feel a little more awkward as a as your kids get older. And so you morfitt right. But again, it's, it's more of a like, oh, wow, I see how much attention you're putting into that. Rather than like, What a pretty drawing. So we tried to keep the judgment out, and then said, just kind of reflect on the process. The reason for that, is that that allows kids, kids to really soak up the scene part, right, that's, that's the whole goal of this is for kids to feel seen and connected to. And so when they, when you will reflect back to them what they're doing, it's like, oh, you see me I'm here, you're connecting with what I'm doing. And, and reflecting that.
16:58
With teenagers, we're not gonna do that, like, Ray, we're not going to play blocks and be we're not going to say, Oh, look at you, you put the blue block on the red ones. So it's going to be more about just kind of tuning into what they're liking. Right? And so do you want to go shoot, shoot some hoops? Do you, you know, they're in their, in their room listening to music, you pop in, and, you know, reflect on what this music is. And, you know, tell me about tell me about this band, what do you like about it, that sort of thing. This is a one place where where my little, no screens thing can has some room to change. And that is the video game. So if your kids super into video games, then plop down and play a couple of video games for them. Just make sure that there's some dialogue, right that you guys are actually talking and not just kind of existing side by side.
Unlocking the Power of ADHD Parenting