Today we're going to be talking about a very important message. When social media misleads parents, how neurodiverse parenting content can harm your child. 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. So the reason I brought this topic up for Mike about some as something we should cover on the podcast was because I was in a meeting yesterday and the meeting was mental health professional psychologist, you know, another mental health professionals licensed clinical social workers such as myself, who practice nonviolent resistance, which is an evidence based methodology used to address behavior in children. And the focus of NVR nonviolent resistance is to help reduce parental accommodation. So this meeting that I was in yesterday was clinicians from the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, and I think there was one other country as well. And our topic was, you know, supporting families of kids with neurodevelopmental differences such as ADHD and autism. So one of the things that came up was that there's this growing wave seems to double every day sometimes of neurodiverse parenting content on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube that tells parents their child is their diagnosis, meaning they're telling parents that your child's identity is their diagnosis. And the worst part, Mike, is that, you know, they shouldn't expect their child to improve. And that setting expectations is somehow oppressive or ableist. And, you know, while the creators of this content, you know, I do think have good intentions, the reality is it's harming kids. So if you've ever felt confused after scrolling through any ADHD or autism or just, you know, basic neurodiverse parenting social media content, you're not alone in feeling confused. But it's time that we talk about what's true, what's not, and how to protect your child from messages that can keep them stuck. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about how to separate helpful support from disempowering ideology and give you some tools to help you discern what content you should trust. Great. So let's start with what clinicians are actually seeing. In the meeting that Ryan mentioned, several professionals shared the same concern. Parents are being told on social media that if they set expectations for their child, they're being ableist or they're being ableist. That if they ask their child to learn a new skill or manage their emotions independently, they are suppressing their identity. So some parents are now rejecting evidence-based recommendations like the number one recommendation for ADHD and executive functioning parent behavior training, because they've been led to believe that expecting change means rejecting their child. But what happens when parents stop using consequences and stop requiring their child to develop skills? They see exactly what these clinicians are seeing. Behavior that is escalating and in many cases is getting quite scary and really impacting quality of life, not only for the child, but also for the parents. Kids with rising anxiety, more explosive outbursts and lower self-confidence. And why is that? Why are we seeing this? To all of our listeners right now, who's connecting with what I'm saying, who's seeing what I'm describing? Because these kids are not building the skills they need to function in the world. So let's be clear about something else here. These concepts being pushed like masking, ableism, and in many times neurodiversity, neurodiversity affirming. They had legitimate roots, but because of the misinformation of social media, they have really been distorted to the complete other end of the spectrum. They're being used to justify the idea that your child can't improve, that discomfort is trauma, that scaffolding expectations is oppression. This is true ideology, not support. Mike, I wanted to mention two things to you. So number one, a few weeks ago, I got an email from a parent saying, I'm considering signing up for your membership, but I want to just make sure that it's not going to cause my child further trauma. And the parent went on to explain that the child had a surgery as a newborn, and therefore they had trauma from it. Now, let's be realistic, Mike, there is no way to really validate that. I certainly believe in medical trauma, but how do we know that an infant having a one-time operation constitutes trauma? So the parent went on to explain how this child has been in, I think they named, seven different types of therapy, like talk therapy, and OT and this and that. But even with that, his behaviors are continuing to deteriorate. So we just want to make sure that if we do your program that it's not going to cause further trauma. And I said to this parent, look, respectfully, if you are attached to this trauma narrative about your child having this trauma and therefore you don't want to cause it to be worse, yet these seven types of therapy you've tried haven't been helping, maybe it's time to reframe the way you're seeing him, because obviously nothing else is working. And I figured, Mike, that I would not hear from them again, and I didn't. And I think that's a really clear example of how parents get attached to narratives about their kids. Sometimes they come up with them themselves, sometimes they hear of the narrative from a professional, and they just get attached to that. And in this case, this was causing this boy to not improve after years of therapy, years. So that was the one thing I wanted to say. The other thing, Mike, I wanted to mention real quick. Before we got on, I was listening to Scott Kaufman, Dr. Scott Kaufman, who's a psychologist, his podcast. He was talking about his new book. I don't remember the name of it. But one of the things, Mike, he said was that people have a lot of misinterpretations of the term trauma. And one of the things is that when people always focus on kind of shape their lives around the idea that I have trauma, it keeps them from moving forward. And that's completely applicable to what we're talking about here as well when we're talking about how you perceive your child. Yeah, because you can pretty much safely assume that that specific parent you're talking about in that example was their fears, their sort of irrational fears in many ways, were reaffirmed by what she most likely saw on social media about trauma and misinformation there. So this all connects to the misinformation on social media leading to these parenting beliefs that are not helping you and not helping your child. So one of the things we want parents to understand is that when your child internalizes the belief that they are their diagnosis, that ADHD or autism is their identity, and that improvement isn't possible, they stop trying. That's what we call a fixed mindset. And it's easy for people to develop a fixed mindset regardless. But when a parent kind of enables this unintentionally because they're telling their child that this is your identity, this is who you are, and they don't put any limits or parameters around the child, or push them out of their comfort zone. The message that sends the child is, you can't do any better than this. So what happens is that belief system, it removes both accountability and an opportunity for growth. And one of the things is, you know, research shows that self efficacy. So the belief that you can improve, it's essential for development. And if a kid doesn't believe that change is possible, they won't attempt it. So just wanted to mention that. And research shows that self efficacy, the belief that you can improve this true growth mindset is essential for development. This is every parent's goal. Every parent wants their child to have the growth mindset and believe they can improve. So parents, you have to firmly believe that about your kids, yourself, not based on misinformation you find on social media. If a child doesn't believe change is possible, they won't attempt it. So how do you spot credible, nor a diverse parenting content online? We're going to talk about that and tell you what we think you should be looking for. So here are five questions to ask yourself the next time you see a post or a video. Mike, do you want to start with number one? Sure. So the first one is, does this content provide actionable strategies that will help my child build the skills they need? Or does it just rely on high emotional appeal? And this is a big one. Because that's one of the easiest ways to get likes, follows, shares, and to get a lot of followers on social media is to post feel good parenting advice that makes you feel good that you don't have to do hard things. Your child constantly can be your best friend and you can keep everything peaceful at all times and be the best possible parent, which just is not based on science. Mike, can I say something about what you just said there? Because you said something really important. The part about, you said, Mike, about that this content tells you you don't have to do hard things or come out of your comfort zone. What I want to mention, and Mike, we both know who I'm talking about here, but I'm not going to mention it. The fastest growing social media account I've ever seen is an influencer who pushes pathological demand avoidance content. And this pseudoscience called low demand parenting. And why I realize and when I've showed this to some of my professional colleagues, the reason why this account has grown so quickly, Mike is because, you know, this individual is telling parents they don't have to do hard things like tell their kids it is not okay for you to hit me, right? So when you tell people that here's the path of least resistance, that's very emotionally appealing. And I get that. And particularly for parents, particularly for moms who are acting as a whole executive functioning for the family who have juggling multiple demands. You know, when somebody says, yeah, you can do the easy work here and it doesn't have to be more difficult. I get why people would be drawn to that. Exactly. And it's in really all areas. And you know, I hate to constantly be the guy who harps on screen time. But just yesterday I saw a post that was all about, oh, you can end the screen time fights and also set no limits and no boundaries around screens and you can set this great balance where if you have if you're constantly having screen time fights, there's ways to communicate with your child, get on their level, build that relationship. So you can have open access to screens, but also get rid of the fights. And then it's the whole thing of write, write the word screen time in the comments and I'll send you my free guide. It's the it's just constant sales towards nonsense. The biggest thing that we have to remember that everyone remembers, there is no such thing as the perfect parent. There is no easy parenting parenting is the hardest and most rewarding thing you will do in your life. And if you find a post that is just feel good, you don't have to do hard things. Your child can always be your best friend. That is the number one red flag to realize this is most likely pseudoscience. Right. So Mike, that brings us to our next point. Something to ask yourself is, you know, is the information you're consuming? Is it grounded in evidence based practices like parent training and executive function skill building? Or is it opinion? And let's face it, Mike, most of the content on parent neurodiverse parenting social media is opinions, you know, or even worse, is it pseudoscience dressed up with therapy speak? So the content I was just talking about Mike and the about, you know, low demand parenting and pathological demand avoidance, it is very sophisticated and how it's dressed up with therapy speak about the nervous system regulation, you know, and masking and high masking and this and that and none of it is supported by any evidence whatsoever. But when you can, you know, cover that up and, you know, dress it as, as, you know, clinical sounding. Well, of course, people are going to be misled by that. Understandably so. Exactly. And the third is, does it frame your child as capable of growth, the ability to grow and gain skills, or as fragile and needing to be protected from temporary discomfort? I think Mike personally out of the five we're going to read here, I think that's the most important one, you know, because really, and this goes back to, you know, my point that so much of the content out there is telling parents to treat their child as fragile rather than anti fragile. We just did an episode about that, right. And, you know, and to protect them from temporary discomfort. Well, the research data is very clear on this. When you accommodate kids by protecting them from discomfort or anxiety, whatever it is, the that, you know, they don't develop resilience. They don't learn that they are capable of getting through temporary discomfort. They don't learn that they are capable of getting through anxiety. And in fact, what tends to happen is when they're protected from those things, because they're not developing the self awareness that they can persevere through it, things tend to get worse. And that's that's not my opinion. That's research. Exactly. And if there is one specific fact about human beings in the history of mankind, history of the world is that there is no growth within the comfort zone. Every single person listening to this podcast right now is an adult who who, you know, has grown and gone through childhood and adolescence. And everyone knows you don't gain skills. You don't accomplish meaningful tasks. You don't grow in life when you're comfortable. Every single one of you listening has accomplished something in your life when you are uncomfortable and you were experiencing temporary discomfort. So the more we keep our kids in their comfort zone, the more we are keeping them stagnant. So the next one is, is the creator a professional or are they going off of lived experience? And one of the things Mike that came up in this meeting yesterday was that some of the clinicians there were sharing that they work with some families who have basically said, you know, well, I'm really confused because, you know, I hear what you're telling me and you know, these are licensed professionals. But you know, I really feel that I need to listen to like the lived experience of, you know, autistic adults or adults with ADHD. And you know, Mike, one of the things is that every, you know, everyone has important experience to share, but we have to keep in perspective. So lived experience is somebody's subjective experience based on their, their experience, right? They're not speaking for, you know, every person with ADHD or every person with autism. And Mike, a lot of the lived experience content I see, these are individuals, despite their best intentions, they have no background in child development, they have no background working with kids, yet they're telling parents what they should do with their kids. You know, I don't think that's the best advice to follow of somebody who has, you know, no training is not a parent necessarily, doesn't have experience professionally with kids and is not citing research data. Yeah. And, you know, I would say, you know, as someone who's constantly doing, you know, intake calls with parents and things like that, one of sort of the most awkward things, honestly, is when parents would just straight up ask me, so Mike, do you have ADHD? You know, yes, I am someone with ADHD, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the work that I do in creating the grown out model. Both Ryan and I understand that just like autism, ADHD is a spectrum. Every single person is a unique individual. And in no way she performed as my life experience with ADHD have anything to do with my ability to help others with ADHD. You know, there has to be real evidence based science information and real, really in depth training. Ryan talks all the time about how he spends a lot of his free time doing all of these various trainings and certifications and things like that. That's what's really needed, not lived experience. And Mike, you want to do the last one here? Sure. So what you are seeing on social media, does it ask you to do something constructive or does it just validate your pain and keep you stuck? Wow. That this right here, that's a very powerful one. And that's something to really think about here. So what you are seeing on social media, is it something that's just validating your pain because parenting is so hard. And it's hard dealing with the constant arguing, negotiating, fights, you know, stress from school, stress from home, lack of a social relationships, all of those things. Is it just validating your pain or is it actually giving you points of what to do to break out of this negative cycle? And this is what I see all the time. And what drives me nuts about parenting social media is it's so much of just fear mongering and telling you that if you don't do the right thing, if you don't connect with your child, if you don't give them what they want in many ways, you're going to set off their nervous system. That's the big thing now that we're seeing on parenting social media is this key term of the nervous system. Everything revolves around the nervous system. Because it's such a vague term where you can't really explain what's the nervous system or what's not. So anytime you say, oh, do this, or you set off your child's nervous system, or you're permanently affecting your child's nervous system, that really affects parents. It validates their pain and it scares them into doing what is right for them to do based on science, which is the hard, uncomfortable thing that creates discomfort. Or are they then parenting with fear and afraid of hurting their child's nervous system and their future? That's an excellent point. So because we always like to finish up with some actionable strategies, we're going to talk about what should you be doing instead. So number one, follow accounts that are solution focused and teach real skills, not just ones that empathize with you or your child. Again, everybody wants to feel seen. Everybody needs some empathy, particularly those of us who are struggling with pairing a child with challenges. But at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, is the information I'm consuming, is it providing solutions? Is it helping me think about my child in the context of what will be best for them in the long term, five years from now, 10 years from now? Or is it just about making me feel seen and empathizing with me and empathizing with my child? And again, Mike's point when he said earlier, that's the content that gets the best engagement on social media because it makes people feel good, not necessarily what's most helpful. Exactly. And all of our listeners right now can look back on their lives and think about the best feedback, the best advice you've ever been given in your life. Was that feedback and advice that just made you feel good? Or did it actually do the opposite and make you not feel good? And that's what motivated you to change and do hard things and persevere so that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. That's what it is. If you're finding something that just makes you feel good, it's probably not going to help you. If it makes you feel uncomfortable at first and then motivates you to break through that discomfort, then it's probably something that's helping you gain skills. So look, so kind of start to embrace the discomfort and not focus so much on the feel good. So for number two here, what to do instead, look for people who explain how to actually do things, not just what they believe. So that's the thing about giving everyone a platform, everyone a voice on social media, everyone's expressing their opinion as if they're actual experts. Look for real actionable tips that bring about change, real things that help you to go through that discomfort, persevere through that discomfort and come out bigger, better and stronger, both as a parent and for your child. So the last one I have is you have to ask yourself, is the content that I'm consuming, is this advice, is it encouraging parental accommodation, or is it helping me learn how to gently and lovingly push my child out of their comfort zone with high empathy and high expectations. So for those of you who are not familiar with the term parental accommodation means when parents change their behavior to alleviate or avoid their child's temporary distress or upset. Examples of parental accommodation would be you allow your child to avoid anxiety producing situations because, you know, they're going to be uncomfortable, or you feed into their inflexibility because you don't want an argument about it, or you give them excessive screen time because they can become explosive when you tell them to get off screens. So again, research data is very clear. When you engage in parental accommodation, it makes things worse over time, not better. And the reason that this is my last one is because so much of this content on parenting social media, on neurodiverse parenting social media right now is encouraging parental accommodation under the guise of being neurodiverse affirming and empathetic. So you have to ask yourself that, you know, is this suggesting parental accommodation under the guise of being neurodiverse affirming or being empathetic or child centered, you know, or is it helping me learn how to reduce parental accommodation. Or at least not feed into it. Exactly. So overall, the truth here for all of our parents out there, you have to understand your child isn't just their diagnosis. You know, I think we can all agree we've gotten a little too diagnosis happy over the past couple of years. Sometimes parents will call me and it's an absolute alphabet soup of diagnosis. And, you know, all of these evaluations, you know, that you're spending thousands of dollars on on an evaluation. What many parents don't realize is you can go to five different evaluators and get five different diagnoses. Absolutely. Five different five different results. It's not that one person creating one document that creates the rest of your child's future. And oftentimes parents will call me and say, yeah, but my son's not just ADHD. He's also all these other things. So and but how do we treat this? How do we treat that? Like you need like you need a different treatment plan for each separate diagnosis. You know, your child is not your diagnosis. Your child is a unique individual that has all of those unique things in their own unique way. Your child, they are growing. They are a learning human being. And as their parent, you can support them in building the skills they need to succeed. But that starts with being mindful about who is shaping your mindset on your out your algorithm. And Mike, just one quick thing I want to add to that, you know, there's there's a lot of people on social media right now who have created a social media identity around the diagnosis. You know, whether that's a parent or an individual who identifies with the Nord developmental difference. And I just want to mention again, you know, that's that's fine if that adult wants to define themselves or create a social media persona based on a diagnostic label, but your child is not their identity. Your child's identity is not based on a diagnostic label. Your child's identity is who they want to be and how they choose to navigate through the world. And that shouldn't be defined by a label in my opinion. So thank you so much for listening everyone. If you have a question you would like us to answer in an upcoming episode, what you can do is submit your question, including your child's age and medication regimen with your question to the ADHD parenting podcast at gmail.com. What we ask in exchange for answering your question, if you could be so kind as to leave us a positive review on Apple podcasts or on Spotify, that would help us a lot. Send a screenshot of the review along with your question and we will answer it in an upcoming episode. So thank you everyone and we will talk to you soon. Take care. Thank you. If you or your child have any medical or mental health concerns, please consult your health care professionals.
