Answering Parents' Questions

Welcome to the ADHD Parenting Podcast with Mike McLeod of Grow Now ADHD and Ryan Wetzelblatt 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. Mr. Mike, how are you? I'm doing great, how are you? Long time no see. Very long time. It's been a busy summer for both of us and we just wanted to thank everyone for sending us so many kind messages and leaving reviews. The podcast has gotten overwhelming positive support. So thank you to all the listeners out there. Thank you everyone, we really appreciate it. And because we've had so many questions submitted over the summer, we're going to do an answering parents questions episode today. So we're going to answer questions that were submitted. If you have a question you would like us to answer in a future episode, you can email us at the ADHD Parenting Podcast at gmail.com. What we ask in exchange for answering your question in a future episode, if you could please leave us just a short positive review on Apple Podcast and just send us a screenshot of the review along with your question to that email address. Make sure to include your child's age and if they're on medication or not, because that could influence how we answer your question and we will be happy to answer it in a future episode. So without further ado, Mike, let's get started. I'm going to start with a question for from a parent of a nine year old. So they say my nine year old daughter who has an attentive ADHD and anxiety is doing well overall, but the only other kids in our neighborhood, three neurotypical stiblings ages 9, 10 and 11 from a blended family often exclude her, especially during conflict. They can be unkind and while I'm helping her build emotional and social skills, it's hard to watch. This dynamic has gone on for two years and flares up on all three are together. Should I keep supporting her from my end or is it time to talk to their parents? All right, Mike, do you want to start with this one? Sure, absolutely. So first of all, the first thing I take from this is it's incredibly positive that you have her outside playing with peers, playing with kids in the neighborhood. The fact that you are a parent to a child with ADHD and you have fought that outside fight, that outside play fight, there are so few things that are more healthy for the ADHD brain than outdoor social unstructured play. So the fact that you're already doing that is an incredible positive. Okay. And I think what I would add is that, you know, it's normal for, you know, stiblings or, you know, even in like neighborhood kind of dynamics for some kids to kind of, I don't want to say gang up on another kid, but kind of take sides. And I think what I would ask this parent is, you know, is your daughter doing any behaviors that you're aware of that's eliciting this response from the kids, whether that's being inflexible or being bossy or yelling at them. And I'm not implying that she is, but I think that's something you have to look at because often when kids come home and they complain about other kids treatment towards them, particularly kids with ADHD who struggle with perspective taking, what they're missing is how their words or behaviors are eliciting this response in their peers. So I think that's something you have to keep in mind. And, you know, for instance, this is why when, when parents tell me, well, you know, my kid says they're being bullied at school. And I say, well, you need to get feedback from somebody who observes them like during recess. Okay. Because their perception of the situation may not be accurate because of their difficulties with, you know, what we call social executive functionate. Now, in this case, you know, it sounds like it's a family and maybe they're just kind of, you know, feel like that they can gang up against her. So my suggestion would be that maybe, you know, restrict of the amount of time she's with them, keep it short and sweet. And maybe she needs kind of an extended break for, you know, a few weeks or a month, you know, because maybe having that space away will make it a little easier when they come together and play. But in regards to your question about talking to the other kids parents, I don't think it would be appropriate to do that here because essentially what you're asking is for their kids to change their behavior towards her. And really, this the solution would be if you don't like it, then, you know, she doesn't need to play with them. So I don't think it's appropriate to ask them that, particularly if you don't have a whole picture year of kind of the dynamic that happens, you know, and if you're just going by your daughter's interpretation of it. But even if not, you're not going by her interpretation, you feel that you have an accurate picture. I still don't think it's appropriate here to talk to the other kids parents and ask them to change their behavior towards her. Yeah, and you might want to have, you know, a little bit of education or conversation with her about, you know, family dynamics and, you know, how they are siblings, all the members of one family. And, you know, the chances are they are probably going to take each other's sides and sort of, you know, you are sort of the outsider in this situation. It's not a character for you. You're the one non-family member in this play-based experience. So it's most likely the siblings are going to take each other's back. So a little bit of conversation about, you know, why it's most likely happening. You probably don't want her to think that it's something wrong that she's doing or a character flaw or anything with her self-image. It's play. And, you know, these things happen a lot more than you would think in terms of, you know, interactions and conflict and those sorts of things. This is what happens when young kids play. They argue and those sorts of things. This just happens to be three members of the same family versus, you know, somebody else who is a friend slash acquaintance. And what you as the parent can do is, you know, talk more about a safety plan when you feel ganged up on them, when you feel uncomfortable, when you feel like you're being ganged up against. The best thing for you to do is come home, give me a call, take a break, and you can go back out if you want. And you might want to look to diversify other things she can do in the neighborhood, reach out to other parents, you know, reach out on Facebook, see what's out there, and try to find some other people for her to play with as well. But, you know, overall, the fact that she's playing outside, she has peers, these things are happening, she's playing outdoors. Overall, this is a positive thing and a sign of strong parenting. Yeah. I think that's good advice. So Mike, our next question is from somebody whose son works with grown out. And it says my 22 year old son was diagnosed with ADHD in the last year. He currently takes and names the meds. I listened to your July 9th episode twice. First, I want to figure out how to help my son self regulate around our family and figure out a way to stop emotionally manipulating all of us. Second, like in your podcast, I don't want to raise a son that still is struggling into his 30s and 40s. He fell out of school after two years and has been at home for the last year. He is working with Jody of grown out ADHD on some executive function skills. His phone and substance abuse use are two of his main issues. He feels that my husband and I treat him differently than his siblings. My question is, how do you set expectations for a 22 year old and hold them accountable? We struggle with the repercussions on a 22 year old that can't meet expectations. For full disclosure, he holds a job and pays for most of his food outside of the home on his own. The only thing we feel that we could restrict our use of our car, possibly pay rent or pay for his phone. Other ideas? Okay, so this is great. Thank you for mentioning that you're working with grown out and all of that. I appreciate that. So yeah, one of the things that I always, because we have our young adult independence program and our college success program, it's so important for parents to realize, you know, regardless of age, if they're living in your house, they are your dependence. This is a great example of an ADHD young adult who is working and making money for themselves and is paying for their own food. That's fantastic. So they have, they now have autonomy over the food that they eat, but they live under your house. They live under your roof, your electricity, your Wi-Fi and you are paying their cell phone bill. So this person could be two, 22 or 52. They are your dependent, you're the parent, and they are still dependent on you to live a successful life. So all of the disrespect, all of the non-compliance, all of the issues you're dealing with in the home are still just as unacceptable now as if a child were doing it. So a lot of the recommendations Ryan and I are going to give as part of answering this question are going to be sort of just eliminating the mindset that this is a 22-year-old and he's an adult now, so I can't fix this problem. We have to get rid of that mindset and realize until he's out of the house and living fully independently, we still have a lot more control than not over his day-to-day. And let's focus on the fact that he's working full-time. So he's obviously capable, okay? Yes. So I'm going to ask if the things that you're dealing with at home, are they occurring because maybe there's been some accommodation of these behaviors. And when I need by accommodation is tolerating them beyond where maybe they should be tolerated, because to Mike's point, even though he's 22, he's still living in your house. He's still financially dependent on you to an extent. And you are allowed to have expectations of how family members should be treated. You're allowed to have expectations of helping around the house. And you're allowed to have expectations about, you know, how he's going to contribute financially or otherwise. And there's no right or wrong answer to this. It's what you feel is right. But I think one of the things you have to think about is, you know, how are we maybe making his life a little too easy for him? And not that I'm saying you need to make his life more difficult, but how are you making it too easy for him? And in regards to the question about emotional manipulation, you know, kids with ADHD and even some adults with ADHD, they are highly adept at using emotional, I'll call it emotional blackmail. So saying things like, you know, you don't care about me, you think I'm stupid, things like that, particularly when they're not getting their way. And my answer to that is you have, you can't control what comes out of his mouth, but you can put up an emotional boundary and not respond to the attempts to manipulate you emotionally or use emotional blackmail. Okay. So by putting up a boundary and not responding to it, what you're showing him is this is not working. Because if he says things like you don't care about me and you respond with reassurance and saying things like, no, I do care about you and so on. What that's teaching him is that that's effective. So you have to put up that boundary and stop allowing those comments or stop responding to those comments and showing him that they're not going to affect you. Exactly. And I would probably just add to that quite possibly the single most powerful line that you'll gain from Ryan Ryan's parent membership site is unplug the power source. And that's exactly it. This is a 22 year old who is getting a dopamine rush from a note from emotionally manipulating his parents, just like a teenager or a younger child does. So Ryan use the phrase emotional blackmail. Really, that's a catchy phrase for he feels good because his brain is getting dopamine. We're not saying it's a character flaw. His brain is just doing what works. So the ADHD brain is the instant gratification path of least resistance brain. So what does that mean? They look for gratification now. They look for dopamine now. And there are two ways to get dopamine now screens and conflict. And what a coincidence. This email message to us said to us, he's always on his screens and he's always arguing. There you have it. So that's the ADHD brain screens and conflict screens and conflict. So number one, yes, he should fully be paying for his phone. He's working full time. Why are you still paying for that? Yes, he should be doing that. And you know, to be totally honest with you, if there's days where he's really screaming and really yelling, if he had let you didn't mention that he's doing property damage or physical aggression. But if it ever gets to that point, then I'm assuming he should have enough money in his savings to, you know, go stay in a hotel for a night and come back when he's ready kind of thing. So the boundaries need to be in place. He's working full time. Yes, he's independent with food and food is obviously very important, but he's not independent in other places. So you need to stop paying for his phone bill immediately 100%. Yes, he's going to be upset too bad. That's part of the boundary. So the boundaries need to be up and the boundaries need to stay. We are no longer going to respond or provide any emotional response to his arguing. All right. Our next question is from a former membership site member who was a member of my membership site. And thank you for your compliment. And they start off by saying our oldest is 11 and has hyperactive and pulse of ADHD. He's taken during a PM. He struggles with social skills the most. We need advice on scaffolding social situations when there is unstructured activity and high energy levels from kids around him. Recently, our son had an event at a school that was supposed to be a fun sleepover. It was chaperoned by a couple of the parents. He was super excited about this within about three hours of dropping him off. We got a call to pick him up because he had caused damage to the school and looking at what he did. It could have been an accident like he tripped or was careless. This was deliberate, but probably done as being silly or showing off and then it went too far. When I went to pick him up, I realized there was no way he would have been successful that night as if as it was a circus with kids everywhere. Even the normally pretty quiet and behave kids were on a sugar high and wild. We want to advise on how to scaffold events like this that we know he's going to get dysregulated and take things too far. Especially as they are often after minutes have worn off. We thought about planning to go for only a few hours rather than all night and us staying to watch for early signs of losing control, but not sure if that's good scaffolding as we need him to develop the regulation skills. Thanks for your help. Okay, so a few things here. One, I just want to mention to this parent. I don't know if you watch the socially smarter course in my membership site, but if not, you can always revisit that because I do talk about helping to build situational awareness there and front loading unstructured social experiences because what this parent described is very normal. Many kids with ADHD can present fine and structured social situations. It's the unstructured or semi structured situations like this where they struggle, particularly if we're talking about something at night where meds have worn off. So I think this is all pretty far for the course, Mike. I don't hear anything surprising here that I think would surprise either of us. I think in regards to this parent's question, the strategies are number one, front load with him about what's expected, about if he needs to take a break that an adult is going to tell him that. And you need to obviously discuss with the adults beforehand that if he starts to get dysregulated, you need to ask him to take a break and let him know that that's going to happen and that you talk to adults about that so he understands that. And then just kind of help him yet to understand at most what's expected. And I think the most important thing this parent said here was should we limit his time there? And I think that's a really good idea. If he cannot handle a sleepover yet, so be it. That's something he can work up to. But in terms of staying there and watching for early signs of losing control, I would not suggest that because basically you're monitoring him and really it's not socially appropriated his age for you to be doing that. Lots of parents do do that, but it's not socially appropriated. The other kids are going to say like, why are your parents standing? You're watching you. So I think the last thing I would say is explain to him that him not staying all night is not a punishment. It's just that you want him to be 6-4 and don't want him to get in trouble. And that's pretty much it. And this was a sleepover at a school or at a peer's house? At a school. Okay, so this is an incredibly rare thing. Most schools would not do a social event like this. A sleepover taking place on school grounds at the school. There's always the question of what was available to them? What were the chaperones doing? All those sorts of things. I think it's fantastic that this event came up and you were willing to send him and he was excited to go and he socially motivated all of those things. But it sounds like pure sensory overload and it sounds like a really unique situation. So I think one of the best things we can do is help him to recognize that success or non-success at a very outlier event like this is not representative of his overall skills. Is there a chance he went out of his way to be the center of attention, make others laugh, be wacky, be silly like a lot of ADHD kids do to sort of get that instant gratification of a cheap laugh socially? You know, there's screens, there's conflict and there's getting a cheap laugh from peers that gives them so much dopamine. Yeah, he probably was. He probably was sort of doing the whole are they laughing at me or laughing with me kind of thing, thinking they're laughing with me kind of stuff. So being extra wacky and extra silly. So some social executive functioning work, perspective taking all of that. But overall, this sounds like a real outlier event and I probably, as I would agree with Ryan, I probably wouldn't send him anymore at school property ground sleepovers. I would probably recommend that schools don't do those kinds of things. You know, it's very easy to do social events with students to get them to build some camaraderie and build some, you know, relationships besides having something that take place at night. I think there's as much healthier things to do. But overall, you sent him, you had the experience and with, you know, with the right growth mindset, this could be a real good learning experience for him. Okay. All right, so Mike, the next question is from a dad. And it says Ryan and Mike, I found your podcast a few months ago and it has been incredibly impactful as we work to navigate our son's ADHD. My son is 10 on Vyvance. He was diagnosed with ADHD at eight. My question is he is entering fifth grade this upcoming school year. So that would be now I have heard Ryan mentioned the challenges boys often face at the midway point in their fifth grade year. And I would like to understand more about what we can look for, expect and how the best work through the challenges that may come up in the next year or so. Thank you both for all you do. So let me just start off by saying this is not a definite, you know, not all kids begin to struggle socially in fifth grade. You know, typically what I say is that there's a few entry points when we start to notice kids social struggles. One is second grade, because in second grade, that's when we, you know, kids start realizing no, not everybody is my friend and you know, he's nice to me, she's weird and so on. And then fifth grade, because social expectations grow up, kids tend to want to be part of a, you know, same gender peer group more so the boys want to be part of a boy group girls want to be part of a girl group. And what happens is with social expectations going up if you can't meet them, then you tend to begin to struggle a little more kids start pulling away from you. So absolutely no guarantee that's going to happen. Usually, in most cases, I have found that there are signs before that, you know, the child needs some help with their social executive function skills. So I don't want to kind of say like this is what to look for when there's no, you know, nothing definite, but if you would look for anything would be that other kids maybe not getting as many invites to things or other kids are pulling away, or they talk about being left out, you know, girls in particular can can really start doing that a lot and fourth grade, fifth grade. And those are the type of things we see and then, you know, one of the things we can always do is ask the people who see them at school for some feedback about what do you see in socially, you know, with my son or daughter. Because again, you always want to have feedback from people who are observing them in natural environments, not just going by your child's perception of things. Exactly. And one of the things I talk about a lot in my one to one parent coaching that we're doing is there's an executive functioning skill of self awareness. This is the first executive functioning skill to develop when they're young babies and they start to realize, hey, when I cry, mom helps me or hey, when I smile in mom's face, she'll smile back and they start to realize I have an effect over my environment. So this self awareness executive functioning skill is one of the first to develop, but over time becomes one of the most delayed. So a lack of true self awareness, which is the foundation of perspective taking skills of what kinds of thoughts and feelings am I giving to other people. So it with fifth grade as things become more academically challenging, you now have one different teacher for every subject, much more homework, you have to keep track of various belongings. You probably have a school Chromebook, that's a mess or a laptop, whatever, all of that. So along with the academic rigor, things are also increasing socially and things are becoming much more clicky and groupie and those kinds of things. So what you're going to want to do is just have more conversations with him to focus more around this concept of self awareness. Is he aware of how he is presenting himself to others. So like there's this whole concept of socially desirable, which can be quite controversial online and social media, but depending on who's saying it and who you like and who you don't. But when you have one kid, when you have a fifth grade boy go to school with a Minecraft shirt, Minecraft backpack, Minecraft pants and only wants to talk about Minecraft, that's sort of alienating himself to only want to be in one little group. So you want to make sure he's presenting himself well, showering, hygiene, life skills, dressing well, participating in class, showing he cares, treating others with kindness and respect, doing the things he can to send others the message that I respect you, I respect your space. We are here in a school where we are a community together and just put good feelings into other's heads, which is just, you know, high character, what all people want in other people. I think that's my favorite thing you've said so far, Mike. Oh, by any episode we've done. Today or of all podcasts? Oh, this, this, yeah. Oh, okay, nice. One advice, yeah, that's great. Awesome. I like it. Yeah, I think what I would just add to what Mike said is just a little thing that sometimes parents say with the best of intentions. But we strongly, I'm going to, well, I think we both strongly recommend not telling this to your kids is don't say to them, you know, don't care about what other people think, just love yourself, because that's not going to help them. Okay, because we all need to care about how other people think. If you don't care about how other people think you are going to be unemployable, right? So to say to kids, just, you know, don't care what other people think of you. Number one, it's not developmentally appropriate because at 11, you know, at the beginning of adolescence, they do care what others think about them. As Mike said, they're becoming more self-conscious. And number two, you know, if we want others to like us and want to spend time with us, we do have to care about what they think. We have to care about their feelings and their thoughts, just like they care about ours. So to say, you know, don't care about what other people think about you is not teaching reciprocity in relationships. What it's basically saying is, you know, you should be treated special because I think you're special. I mean, I think Mike, that's what we tend to see when people have a problem with what you said. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So it's really, you know, coming to school and recognizing that I have in effect on others. And so it's not so much like, oh, don't tell me how to feel, those sorts of things. You do have an impact on other people. And obviously, if he's going into fifth grade and you have concerns socially, one of the foundational recommendations I'm always going to give parents is, step one, keep him off of social media because that's just going to have more of a negative impact on his mindset, his self-image and those sorts of things. So if you do have concerns based on what you've heard previously, Ryan say about fifth grade being a tipping point socially for boys, one of the best first steps you can take is make sure he's not on Instagram, Snapchat and those kinds of things because that could make things worse. You want him to just go in and figure out who he is, figure out who his friends are, where he fits socially, where he's comfortable. That's a very interesting time to be a boy. You've got a lot going on in your life. And the last thing you want to throw in there is the stress of likes and shares and hearts and retweets. Right. And by the way, Mike, where can I find Minecraft pants? I've never seen them before. Target has Minecraft plants flying off the shelves. Oh, you have no idea. You have no idea. I'm surprised I haven't seen a fourth grader with a Minecraft tattoo on his face at this point. Right. Just like how much merch there is. It's out of control. Right. All right. All right, Mike, I'm going to let you answer this next one because I feel like this question burges into the SLP field. My nine year old son was diagnosed with ADHD just a few months ago and already we have seen a lot of improvement with medication and parenting changes that we have implemented banks to the ADHD courses and videos. Thank you. I appreciate that. One area that remains elusive is reading. Joey is very bright and taught himself to read before he turned four. However, in the year stint then, he has not really progressed beyond reading graphic novels, comic books and nonfiction books with blurb like text. That was the case with my son. He does enjoy reading novels. Certain ones he prefers humorous books. If his dad or I read them out loud to him, which is part of our bedtime routine, but Joey says that when he tries to read the same book on his own, he does not follow the story as well or recognize which parts are supposed to be funny. At school, he is consistently on grade level for reading and comprehension. I don't think there's dyslexia or anything similar going on. He has had a full neuropsych assessment done a few years ago, which didn't turn up anything glaring at that time. But he does complain about school, about reading time at school being too long with not enough books he likes, though we have that same problem at home and overall his enthusiasm for school has really plummeted over the last year and a half. Yeah, so I guess my, you know, do you have any thoughts about this? I mean, because I think we can look at this for two ways. Is it just, you know, a question of him not finding things that he enjoys reading or is there a reading comp issue here? And because of what he said about, you know, he doesn't follow it as well or doesn't understand which parts are supposed to be funny. What's your take on that? Of course. Yep. So this is an incredibly common thing. So there are two academic tasks that the majority of kids and teens with ADHD struggle with the most of all the things they're introduced to at school. Number one is reading comprehension. Number two is written expression. So and that is because of the amount of executive function needed to perform efficiently at both of those tasks. Because the foundation of all executive functioning is a skill known as nonverbal working memory, which is the visual imagery system of the brain and the ability to make mental movies and visualize things. If you're listening to this right now, you know, my recommendation, go into YouTube type in Dr. Russell Barkley, nonverbal working memory. There's another another great executive functioning specialist who Ryan and myself are a huge fan of Sarah Ward, who is a fellow speech and language pathologist. Hopefully we can have her on the podcast someday type in Sarah Ward, nonverbal working memory. Dr. Russell Barkley and Sarah Ward described nonverbal working memory far better than I ever can and their ability to describe how foundational it is to all executive functioning skills. It's the ability to visualize the past with our hindsight, visualize the future with our with our foresight and make mental movies, hold images in mind and manipulate them, which is exactly what you have to do when you read. You have to visualize what you are reading and writing is even harder because you have to have it visualized and organized in your mind and then very, very slowly transfer it from the brain down to the arm to the keyboard or the paper and pen. So there's more of a delay involved, more of a time delay and more self regulation. So writing is even harder for ADHD kids than reading comprehension. So you mentioned that he reads graphic novels. Well, one of the things that want one of the main reasons why ADHD kids like Ryan's son as well loves graphic novels is because it gives you the image. It provides the image for you. So the image is there. They look at the image first. The eyes track the image first. Then they read the little speech blurb of what's there. So it's doing a lot of the work for them. So it's not like, you know, when they read regular novels with no pictures, they have to go back and read the same page over and over again, because they're not properly visualizing. And a lot of schools sort of miss out on that because schools don't get training and executive functions. So when a child is delayed in writing, they go back to the lexical, they go back to the grammar, they go back to all these things that really aren't the main foundational issue. He's simply not visualizing what he's reading. So I think if we take a little bit of a twist here and focus more on his ability to visualize what he's reading, you'll start to see him drift more towards novels. But however, what was his child's age again? What was he? I think it was nine. Okay. Nine years old. It's nine years. There's a lot of nine year old boys that only want to read graphic novels and those comic book style things. So he's still quite young. The fact that he's reading it. Great. Maybe double or triple the amount of time he is already reading it because that still is reading. Us and our parent minds, we see those comic books and those graphic novels and we don't think that they're real books. They are real books. He's reading. He's doing it. He's there. He should get tons of positive praise for doing that. But let's focus more on his ability to visualize and then he can naturally transfer to more mature books. Yeah. And just to add on to what Mike was saying, I just want to share this story real quick. When my son was maybe, I don't know, nine or 10, I was working at a school then and I went to the librarian and I said to her, you know, my son's not really, really reading novels at all. All he wants to read is like graphic novels or comic books. And what she said to me was she said, leave him alone. She said, just allow him to read what he wants to reach. And this is a really important thing that she said to me and I have a video on YouTube about this. She said, do not toxify his relationship to reading. Just let him read what he wants. And I think that's really important for parents to hear into Mike's point that if this is what he's into reading, just let him read it. We don't want to take away the enjoyment of reading because we think that something's not age appropriate. You know, and I've had parents of, you know, 13 year old say, oh, all he wants to read is Captain Underpants. My response to that is fine. Let him read Captain Underpants. He's reading. Again, you don't want to toxify your kid's relationship over reading. And you know what? My son, Mike, I'll tell you at 26, he just, he finally just let go of his, what's the, his Naruto graphic novels. At 26. So they were important to him. Like that. Yeah. I'm around for that long because they meant something to him. So my point is that, you know, my son didn't let go of these books until he was 26. So they, they meant a lot to him. So that's, I think just that's something to, you know, to keep in perspective. So, so that is it for today. We hope you found this helpful. Again, if you would like us to answer one of your questions in a future episode, you can email us at the ADHD Parenting Podcast at gmail.com. Make sure to include your child's age, medication, or if they're not on medication and make sure to send a screenshot of a review you left for us on the Apple podcast or Spotify. And we'll be happy to answer your question in a future episode. All right. Thanks so much for tuning in and we will talk to you soon. Thank you guys so much. 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 or your child have any medical or mental health concerns, please consult your healthcare professionals.