Stepping Into Your Parental Authority

Welcome everybody. Today's episode is called Stepping into Your Parental Authority. Welcome to the ADHD Parenting Podcast with Mike McLeod of Grow Now ADHD and Ryan Wexelblatt of ADHD Dude. Learn about parenting kids with ADHD from a licensed clinical social worker and speech language pathologist who specializes in ADHD. No fluffy parenting advice, only practical information that will equip you to help your child with ADHD effectively. I have to tell you that this episode is very timely for me because it just so happens that yesterday I did office hours for the membership site and I found myself two or three times during you know that 45 minutes or an hour however long it was saying to parents what I'm hearing is that you're not being authoritative enough and that you need to step into your parental authority more and in some cases that look like speaking in a firmer voice sometimes you know sometimes it meant you know having more you know structure scaffolding and boundaries at home and we're going to get into all this but you know I just wanted to you know mention to you that yeah this is this is just really timely for me because I just went through this like three times yesterday so I think Mike a good place to start would be why don't you start talking a little bit about you know what the research tells us on parenting styles because I think a lot of people still don't know this and there are there's decades of research to support this so why don't we start there. Yeah this is exactly why I'm so excited to talk about this on this episode because this whole concept of parental authority when parents first hear about it they tend to get scared and you know we it's very black and white thinking that parents think they need to be a drill sergeant yelling angry all of those things when actually parental authority is the exact opposite and there's so much research to back that up so we can talk a little bit about the research on the various parenting styles specifically with ADHD kids so we have a systematic review across 24 studies found parents of children with ADHD use more permissive and more authoritarian styles compared to parents of neurotypical children. So Mike I wanted to comment on that real quick because you mentioned that a lot of times parents think that they think they have to be authoritarian and my experience and I don't know if you guys find this a grown out but I find more it's the opposite parents are scared of being authoritative because for one thing they get authoritative and authoritarian confused right and then the other part is they are scared of being authoritative because as we know Mike you know permissive parenting has been rebranded on social media as being compassionate and with a bunch of different names I'm not going to mention here you know there is some of the most popular parenting influencers in the neurodiverse parenting space we'll call it you know encourage permissive parenting again under the guise of being compassionate and you know nervous system regulating whatever that is supposed to mean I'm not even sure so what what we're talking about is we the parents here who tend to go on one extreme or the other that is much more common in families of kids with ADHD and I think Mike if we even take it a step further and I'm only going to speak for myself here and I want to hear you know your experience but I often find Mike that sometimes you know a lot of times what I hear is fathers try to be more authoritarian which we know is not helpful and then you know often not that they try but necessarily you know mothers tend to be more permissive or sometimes they feel that they have to be more permissive to counteract the father being more authoritarian sorry you know I don't know if that's what you guys find as well oh absolutely yeah uh in terms of the intake calls and parents reaching out to learn more about you know our services through grown out 99% of the time it's the mom it's very rare for one of the dads to reach out to learn about the services and be proactive in their parenting so basically when you have an ADHD child you learn rather quickly that there's really no playbook if you will on how to parent this child uh it's incredibly stressful leads to burnout and is really really hard on the parents and because they have ADHD a different brain than their neurotypical you know counterpart uh parents you know tend to go to social media for information on how to best parent and they get absolutely inundated with parenting information because now more than ever basically every parent's algorithm is just constant messages on how to be a perfect parent and what what type of social media information does best short form feel good videos that are very fast very quick and leave you feeling good and the best way to do that is to share permissive low demand things that are all very feel good in terms of like connection seeking and uh lowering demands and all that kind of stuff things that make you feel good that make you feel like parenting is easier but we know in the long run are not helpful and we know this based on research not based on social media algorithms uh so here from this systematic review that we're breaking down here we found that authoritative parenting is consistently linked with lower ADHD symptom severity the inattention hyperactivity impulsivity and lower anxiety in kids so this is a full on systematic review of 24 different studies showing a lower symptom severity and lower anxiety that should be absolute music to parents ears hearing that all of these issues especially impulsivity and anxiety are decreased when their parent is comfortable enough to consistently be in their parental authority so mike i think for a minute we should break down for people who don't know what authoritative means okay so authoritative parenting means warmth combined with structure scaffolding limits boundaries so the way i frame it i say authoritative parenting is high empathy with high expectations okay and what research tells us and this this goes back to the 1960s that it is the most effective parenting style to raise kids with good mental health outcomes for all kids forget about ADHD for a minute okay so what mike just said about the the fact that it's been shown to lower ADHD symptoms like inattention impulsivity and lower anxiety i think that says that when kids feel contained when they feel emotionally safe because they know parents or caregivers are leading them that helps lower anxiety and that helps with some of these ADHD symptoms okay when kids don't feel contained when they feel like they don't know who is in charge or they the parent is trying to partner with them that's when they tend to have higher anxiety and tend to show more of these you know typical ADHD symptoms so just keep that in mind um so just wanted to mention to everybody if you would like to see the research from this the head clinicians the head researchers last name is q q i u so if you look up uh you know q i u systematic review you know ADHD you should be able to find it online if you'd like to see the study exactly and in terms of these different parenting styles just to break it down so parents understand so there's permissive parenting and the number of the best sentence to understand permissive parenting is basically when you overindulge the child to avoid conflict there's no better sentence to sum up permissive parenting than that giving the kid what they want to keep them calm to keep them quiet you know giving them whatever it is in the moment that they're screaming about crying about being this being disrespectful about you're doing whatever you can to avoid conflict because you as the parent are are not comfortable in conflict you're worried about the relationship breaking down you're worried about increasing the child's anxiety or you're not comfortable seeing your child be temporarily discomforted uh there's a lot of various things there that may cause you to overindulge the child to avoid conflict when it comes to authoritative parenting what we're talking about today it's all about what i refer to as reciprocal parenting i call authoritative parenting reciprocal parenting because it sounds far too much like authoritarian authoritative parenting is when you solve problems together with the child you're not stepping in and saving them from discomfort you're walking together and you're asking questions to help them figure it out so you're not keeping them away from failure saving them from uh you know getting in trouble at school the next day or you know stepping in and solving problems for them you're working with them to solve them but you're asking questions for them to do it themselves which builds executive functions and independent skills so when the parent sets clear rules and expectations open communication and natural consequences that's authoritative not yelling not screaming none of that authoritarian stuff that's parent driven and strict authoritative is true 50 50 okay so last thing we wanted to mention um we also found out that permissive parenting is associated with higher risk of ADHD symptoms and weaker self-regulation and that was found in the study uh the lead researcher for that was uh the last name i think is pronounced uh set yin set yineza and that's a 2022 study so that i think mike is no surprise that you know the permissive parenting style um you know is shown to um you know it well kids exhibit you know stronger we i'm sorry weaker self-regulation um and and mike i have to say when i read this you know it brings me back to when i was working at a school as a school social worker for students with behavior challenges um and you know one of the things i can tell you is that we typically found was that the students diagnosed with ADHD when they came to the school they were there because their school district felt that they couldn't provide for them so the school district was paying for them to be there um and i have to say and i'm not saying this is a judgment but what we typically found was that those kids with ADHD who had much weaker self-regulation to the extent it was so disruptive in school that they couldn't stay in their home school what we what we often found connected to this was very permissive parenting you know with with those students so um just just wanted to put that out there exactly and that's incredibly important for parents to hear and you know there's a lot of studies that talk about nature versus nurture and you know dr rossa barkley describes it as parents are not engineers they don't engineer the child and build them up like clay or like legos they're shepherds they shepherd the kids in to various experiences in life and one of the most important things that kids learn from parents is reciprocity of relationships where if you are kind to someone you're respectful to someone you think about them you take their perspective you do things for them you know there's we can't allow a child to grow up learning that relationships work where you can treat someone very poorly and still get what you want from them you can't uh constantly be overindulged to avoid conflict uh and you know this is why uh limits and boundaries and you know rules and you know not overindulging the child to avoid conflict is so healthy for the brain especially the time blind impulsive uh you know a dhd brain that struggles with self-regulation skills yes it's harder because your child's going to complain more cry more scream more there may be more property damage there you know maybe other issues but these limits and boundaries set them up for long-term success because that's the goal of parents of parenting is for your child to live a better life than you did before them and the best way to do that research-based is authoritative parenting so to summarize all this you know just we want you to take away is that kids with adhd while they often tend to get less structure at home or more permissiveness or the opposite end you know a more authoritarian home where there's more harshness both worse in outcomes for kids with adhd and what we know is that authoritative parenting so that warmth clear limits scaffolding is correlated with better behavior and emotional adjustment and you know what you might see things online saying you know well that's not neurodiverse affirming you know or that doesn't work with my child's nervous system this is research data so this is one of the times that we're going to ask you to please look at the re listen to the research data here and make parenting decisions based on research data not just your emotions okay obviously parenting is a very emotional experience for anybody but when we're thinking about the bigger picture here and what we want for our kids long term make decisions based on research data like this so all right so mike let's move on to talk about why we know that authoritative parenting you know works best why don't we talk a little bit about what some of the studies here found sure so we have another study here by q q i u which talks about why authoritative works best it's really that warmth and consistency reduces adhd symptoms and anxiety so to me the number one word that sticks out there is the consistency that is one of the best things is you know ryan in his parenting course talks a lot about affective calmness and remaining calm in the face of stress that is one of the best ways for an adhd child to learn self-regulation they're never going to learn it through your words through your lectures through your monologues you telling them to calm down you telling them to stop and think and process or take deep breaths or any of this co-regulation stuff you hear about they're going to learn by watching you which is real co-regulation which is modeling you modeling how to stay calm in the face of stress so if your child is screaming at you cursing at you demanding things and you stay cool calm and collected and you don't use excess words and you hold your boundary and you are consistent that is what models self-regulation skills and that's how they transfer on to the child mike i want to tell you a quick story about that i haven't thought about in years but you just talking about that just brought this up when i first started doing you know my middle school guys group you know i have always had a teacher fill out a form so i can get him understanding of what the kids look like you know with their peers in school and i remember this one kid who was coming for the first time the teacher put you know he tends to be emotionally reactive with you know his peers in school and and so on and you know tends to you know blow not blow up but like make a big deal out of things that aren't a big deal and so on and it was interesting because the first time he came to the group his father dropped him off and his father couldn't find like the building you know and he finally finds it and he's like you know like not screaming but like cursing under his breath and like you could just see how incredibly irritated he was and and you know what my guys i saw then i was like no wonder why this kid is like this in school because this is what's modeled for him at home so yeah so it made sense why he acted this way because affective calmness was not modeled at home so that's why what mike said is so important that we have to you know teach by doing not just from having talks or you know all these lovely ideas about co-regulation which is all fine but at the end of the day it's what you model at home that is the most important okay so moving on the other thing that was found in a study by a researcher's last name is stevens in 2019 is that the authoritative parenting style predicts fewer internalizing symptoms internalizing symptoms such as anxiety and depression means that you feel more anxious or depressed inside basically um so so what we know is that an authoritative prayer parenting approach reduces those while a permissive or authoritarian predicts more so that's basically just to reiterate what we said before that you know using an authoritative parenting style helps with you know better mental health outcomes and that's been known for for generations now you know to my knowledge so yeah yeah and and just like i said earlier this should really be music to parents ears because you know one of the most difficult things that you can deal with as a parent is when your child is internalizing you know they become very anxious they withdraw they're in their room all the time they're not answering your questions they're not sitting down with the family at dinner maybe their school refusal and it's a really just negative toxic relationship and what you tend to see with these ADHD permissive parents is they describe it as they're constantly walking on eggshells around their child and that's a very nice way or trendy way of saying my child runs the home my child creates the emotional tone of the home and everything we do is walking on eggshells to make sure there's not a bigger blow up so this authoritative parenting style really decreases that internalizing gets rid of those eggshells and creates so much more of a positive environment where your child feels comfortable to come to you with their negative thoughts with their bad day at school you know when you pick your kid up from school oh what you do today nothing who'd you talk to nothing was the best part of your day leave me alone you know all of that stuff that's so much less likely to happen with authoritative parenting because you are this authoritative loving strong figure in their lives and they know they can come to you for help because you are the strong leader not the person who bends over backwards to keep them from constantly freaking out so one thing I wanted to mention about what Mike said was you know on a weekly basis pretty much I get an email from a parent saying you know basically what Mike said that we're you know our our child's behavior controls our you know whole house we tiptoe around them and I just want to say you know when that happens you know it is we're not blaming parents for that okay because what we know is that most parents I have a saying that I'm going to share most parents of kids with ADHD are unintentionally misled as soon as their child is diagnosed they are never told the evidence-based treatment recommendations they are never pointed in the direction of effective help what most parents are told you know is here's medicine if you want it and go find a therapist for your kid and research data extremely clear therapy is not going to help with self-regulation therapy is not going to help your child be more cooperative it's not going to help with oppositional behavior it's not going to help with them provoking their siblings any of those things okay but still and this is people have a really hard time believing this but most clinicians pediatricians school counselors psychologists they don't know the ADHD treatment recommendations which is why with the best of intentions they constantly refer families to play therapy or some kind of talk therapy even though the research data again is very clear that it's not helpful all right so so when parents reach out to us and they say things like you know we tiptoe around you know our kid it's not because they're doing this intentionally it's because they haven't received effective help and that's not their fault you know I always believe that parents are doing the best they can at any given moment with the information and resources available to them so you know just keep that in mind so before we you know finish up with some actionable steps I think it's important Mike that we do address because you know every day Mike I feel like this is more pervasive on social media about how the permissive parenting style has been rebranded and I just want to share this with you real quick and then you can get into this I saw a post yesterday Mike on social media I'm not going to say who was from it was from you know parenting person and it said your child's oppositional behaviors are really a deep seated you know connection seeking you know thing right so the idea that your child's being oppositional because they want connection with you and let me be very honest I have a term for that I call it mom pandering and the reason I call it mom pandering is to say because that is emotionally it's an emotionally compelling narrative used to sell a product to a mother all right because who are most of the people who you know look at parenting content moms of you know of course and when when you know something like that is put out saying you know yeah your your kid's oppositional behaviors are because they want deeper connection with you the intention with that is to make you know a parent feel needed and it's to get to them emotionally because as we know in marketing emotions sell things not logic okay but the thing is with that there is no validity to that whatsoever there is no evidence that your that oppositional behavior has anything to do with connection seeking what does oppositional behavior have to do with it could be with anxiety it could be with flexibility which is one of the core executive function skills it could be a need for control which is common with kids who have had some kind of early childhood trauma you know or adverse childhood experiences and it could be novelty seeking behavior because they like that you know seeing an emotional reaction from being oppositional so those are the reasons for oppositional behavior or accommodation of those it's not because there's some deep-seated need for connection you know so I just wanted to mention that because I saw it yesterday but Mike let's let's talk more about the risks with this you know permissive parenting because I think that's really important for people to hear so I read recently that the vast majority of people out there now get their information from social media so people are getting their information from twitter instagram tiktok facebook as compared to newspapers or the actual news so the algorithm has a lot more power over your brain your mindset your thoughts your beliefs than most people realize and we all know that parenting advice you know the this concept of the perfect parent and constant parenting advice being thrown at you via the algorithm is a reality for far too many parents so social media reframing parent permissive parenting as gentle compassionate or child led the risk here is that permissive parenting leaves rules fuzzy which can make adhd kids more anxious because they thrive under structure they crave predictable structure so permissive parenting kind of gives the child the ability to be the parent themselves which doesn't feel good as a kid acting like you you know in the moment it may seem like they're constantly on the quest for control but that lack of predictable structure really does not help and it causes you know a further rift in relationship between parent and child and the research shows permissive parenting is linked to more anxiety and poorer self-regulation especially problematic for kids with adhd who already struggle with emotional control because that's what it's all about adhd is not attention deficit it's self-regulation deficit so avoiding conflict may feel compassionate in the moment because that's you know what the algorithm is teaching you or that's what feels good but avoiding conflict can increase chaos and emotional dysregulation over time so last thing i want to mention about this you know one of the things i've learned from my years of being on social media is that people like labels because labels help them attach a story and a narrative to something and help them make sense of the world and you know it's sometimes with our kids things just don't make sense but when people can have a label for something and attach a narrative to that label it makes them feel better and particularly what it does and makes them feel like oh this is not my fault my child has you know insert this label here that's not a diagnosis okay but one of the things you know i want to mention is that while you know parents tend to like labels or they i shouldn't say like labels while parents tend to find comfort in labels and catch all terms you know that seem to explain their child you know feeling seen by an influencer or professional and being emotionally validated by them that's not the same thing as giving you the tools to help your child thrive and i just want you to keep that in mind because that's really important all right so mic to finish up let's go through because we always like to end with some actionable things parents can do let's give some practical examples of what it looks like to step into your parental story absolutely so remember authoritative is reciprocal 50 50 being clear come and collected as that authoritative leadership parent which make kids feel safe so one of the easiest things to do is to always make sure that the rules are very clear because remember their brains crave structure and make the explanations very clear as well using as little language as possible so saying something as simple as we do homework after snack so you can relax before dinner and then remember we also want to stay warm and consistent so you can say something like i get that you're frustrated about chores we still need to finish them before screen time and another thing i want to mention is that kids with 80 et tend to um thrive when there's predictability and sometimes what i see parents do with the best of intentions is they give their kids choices about everything because again they they feel like i want my child to feel heard you know i want them to feel seen you know i want them to feel like you know that they they have a say in everything and that is a um you know that that is done with with love obviously but for a lot of kids with 80 et that is not helpful because it's putting too much on them it stresses them out so one of the things we can do is have a level of predictability when they know things are going to happen and of course things change sometimes but the more we can front load with them by telling telling them what to expect you know before going into a situation or what the day is going to look like having a routine as much as possible um helping prepare them for transitions those things are very helpful and remember part of that isn't about asking your child to do things it's telling them what's going to happen so it's not saying you know do you want to go to this new activity it's you're going to this new activity on friday um and mike one other thing i want to mention about this is one of the kids who used to come to my school year programs and my camp um you know he would always get anxious before things and you know i said to his his mother one time i said you know i noticed that um you know or no i said to her sorry i said does ben ever give you a hard time when he has to come to you know the to guys group or to camp and she said he doesn't and here's why because i never gave him an option in his whole life so he doesn't know to ask because if i would have given him the option he would have said no to any single thing i ever suggested so i took the choice out of the picture for him and you know what today as a young adult he is much better off because of that and he is thriving because he learned how to navigate the world he learned how to deal with temporary discomfort and because there was a predictability in knowing i'm not going to be able to avoid things that are going to be temporarily uncomfortable so my point is his mom did a tremendous service for him by not you know giving him a choice in these things and having a predictability about what was expected of him that is really such a great story because you know what i find is that the vast majority of parents who are currently permissive really fell into this permissive trap they became permissive unintentionally they never had the intentions to over-indulge their child to avoid conflict or become a permissive parent it happens unintentionally because it is such a difficult time to be a parent and one thing you can kind of do right now to kind of determine your level of parenting and you know sort of where you fall in the spectrum of permissive and authoritative is kind of figure out how emotionally affected are you by your child's complaining that's one thing i find all the time his parents confuse complaining with some sort of lack of skill oh he's complaining i shouldn't push this on him he's complaining i shouldn't sign him up for a sport he complains about having to transition from his preferred task to the coaching session he's complaining about having to go out with friends on the weekend you know if you're not asking your child to do you know hard labor you're asking them to just join you know a club a sport or this or that you know that's part of setting expectations and setting boundaries and that that story that ryan just gave of not giving choices sometimes you need to push our kids out of our comfort zone so they can try new things and that's how they learn their talent and they build a life away from you that's really what's the what one of the healthiest things for adhd kids is when they have a social network away from the family they have peers other adults other talents other skills other interests so try to recognize when your kid complains how much does that pull at your heartstrings and then cause you to change your boundaries or drop your boundaries or drop your limits simply because you are so emotionally affected by their complaining yeah it's a great point and my last one is something that i teach which is called shifting from high giving low expectations parenting to high empathy high expectations and here's why i came up with that one of the things i learned early on was that in so many families i saw that the kids were being treated as fragile they were being treated as they were going to break easily or they couldn't handle things they were being enabled meaning that the parents were doing things for them that they were completely capable of doing themselves for the reason mike said because they would complain or they would act helpless you know or they would start making self-defeating comments and what over time what this led to was what i call this high giving low expectations parenting where kids are just giving everything you know phone you know screen time internet whatever it is and nothing was asked of them in return except for maybe grades okay and one of the things that i saw consistently was these kids who acted really immature and entitled at home but didn't act that way outside of the home and what i came to realize was they were acting this way at home because there was no expectations of them and they weren't made to feel useful they were treated as a much younger child and it was not helpful to them and it made them you know not feel like they had something to contribute to the family and they were owed everything so when we shift from high giving low expectations to high up at the high expectations what that means is we put expectations in place that are achievable but they have to work towards so there's going to be some effort involved okay and we do that with with empathy and understanding that when we when we place expectation on kids that it could be hard for them at first you know but we meet that with with empathy and with encouragement because the way kids develop self-confidence is to recognizing their abilities within themselves not from somebody else telling them how wonderful they are so high empathy with high expectations helps kids feel useful it makes them a contributing member of the family uh one of the most important things is it makes them think about other people besides themselves um and then like I said you know the last thing is it teaches them it helps them develop the resiliency to get through non-preferred things which is just part of life so I actually created a whole course around this because I found that in so many families of kids who I saw were uncooperative and inflexible um you know we're just out of control it at home and and the parents you know couldn't get them to do anything it was because of this high giving low expectation so created this course you know creating daily expectations just for this very specific reason so just wanted to end with that exactly and and the truth is is when your child turns 18 19 they age out of that IEP that 504 they graduate you know from that point forward there's nobody who's going to be permissive towards them the expectations whether it's college career work peers relationships there's going to be expectations placed on them to follow or you know follow the rules be a part of a society be a community and treat others with respect and be able to take others perspectives into account and understand that all relationships are 50 50 and they're going to have to do for others if they expect others to do for them so you know all of the permissiveness really backfires over time because at the end of the day this is a society any society and it is a community we want your child to be successful so you know ADHD parenting a lot of what you're seeing on your algorithms social media a lot of parenting instincts you know really gets thrown out the window when your child has this neurodiverse brain of ADHD with their negative attention seeking time blindness and lack of self-regulation and ability to self-soothe and that is why parent training is the number one recommendation all of the counseling talk therapy CBT all of those things are not there in terms of the research and the evidence to back it up to show real world progress in improvement in skills and an improvement of quality of life and this is exactly what the ADHD dude and grow now program is based on is clear and direct parent training on what works best for ADHD kids to improve their quality of life behavioral parent training programs are evidence based and teach these authoritative parenting skills systematically and what the research tells us especially the research of PAIVA from 2024 behavioral parent training when teaches these skills systematically reduces both ADHD and oppositional behaviors because when you as the parent start following evidence-based treatment recommendations and you gain comfort stepping into your parental authority and you feel comfortable doing hard things your child will then feel comfortable doing hard things and doing things that don't give them instant gratification and that's what life's all about is learning to delay gratification and persevere improve that frustration tolerance and improve quality of life. Last thing I want to say I can imagine this episode might be a little difficult for some people to hear because you know I think a lot of parents feel like well I need to be more more authoritative or I you know I just don't know how to or I'm scared you because I don't want to damage you know our relationship what I want to end with is this I promise you that 20 years from now your child is not going to be sitting in a therapist's office saying my mom was so mean you know she made me put my clothes away in you know my dresser or they're not going to be saying you know my parents never listened to me you know and they made me go to things that were a little uncomfortable at first you're not going to damage them you're not going to hurt your relationship by stepping into your parental authority if anything you're going to improve it I promise you. In fact it's actually quite the opposite you know here at Grown Now we have a young adult independence program a college success program we work with a lot of young adults who are struggling to find a job make friends keep friends and if anything what I find is the permissive parents that now have this sort of failure to launch young adult when the parents are permissive from birth to 18 birth to 19 the kids gain more resentment towards the parents of why didn't why didn't you hold me accountable why didn't you set those limits and you really tend to see a real negative experience there the parents who do feel comfortable stepping into their parental authority and expect something from their child and build that true 50-50 relationship and let's be honest it's never going to be truly 50-50 you'll always do more for your kid than they'll do for you but it makes them feel good to know they play a role in the family and they do things as well so when you feel comfortable doing those things every single time I've seen it it vastly improves the relationship. Alright everyone so that's it for today if you have a question you would like us to answer in an upcoming episode you can submit your question to the ADHD parenting podcast at gmail.com make sure to include your child's age make sure to include your their medication regimen if they're on meds or if they're not we do need to know that please keep your question somewhat concise sometimes people like to send us 50 questions at once which we can answer and the last thing we ask is that in exchange for answering your question we ask if you could please just leave you know a nice short review on uh apple podcast for us we would really appreciate that and just send a screenshot with that along with your question we'll be happy to answer in a future episode so thank you for listening we really appreciate your time and we will talk to you soon thank you take care thanks for listening to learn more about Mike's practice grow now ADHD please visit his website grow now ADHD.com to learn about the services Ryan provides please visit ADHDdude.com you can find Mike on instagram at grow now ADHD and Ryan on the ADHD dude youtube channel we'd love to hear your feedback or questions so feel free to contact us at the ADHD parenting podcast at gmail.com the ADHD parenting podcast and content posted by grow now ADHD or ADHD dude are presented solely for general information and educational purposes our goal is to provide valuable insights and knowledge not to replace professional services. Mike and Ryan cannot provide clinical consultation or free advice through social media or other forms of communication the information on this podcast is not a substitute for professional advice if you are your child have any medical or mental health concerns please consult your healthcare professionals you