Hello, and welcome back to the Parenting Without Power Struggles podcast. I'm so glad that you're here. This podcast is really just about helping you raise great kids, competent kids, caring, compassionate, while having more joy and pure power struggles. I'm your host, Susan Stiffelman. I'm a marriage and family therapist a teacher, a long time parent coach, an educator, a mom, and the author of parenting without power struggles and parenting with presence. And it's such a joy to share some of the things I've learned in my 40 plus years, doing this work with thousands of families, we cover everything here from anxious kids to meal, time, to screen, time to money, to burn out just everything under the sun when it has to do with.

Before we get started, make sure that you're taking advantage of everything that we offer for parents by visiting Susanstiffelman.com. We have a wonderful monthly parenting without power struggles membership program meets twice a month. And that's her parents who want more of my ongoing personal help.

We've got a co-parenting with a narcissist support group for those who need that kind of support and coming up next week, a really wonderful masterclass on the gifts of ADHD with Dr. Ned Hallowell, which is really going to be fantastic. You can find out about all of this and get our free newsletter with lots of inspiration and tips at Susanstiffelman.com.

Today's episode features part of a conversation I had with Dr. Hallowell, Ned Hallowell. That's going to introduce you to some of the ideas we're going to dive into next week in our masterclass on the gifts of ADHD. And again, you can find. More about that on my website too. If you've read some of my articles or listen to previous episodes on the subject, you know, that it's a topic.

Near and dear to my heart, both because I have the diagnosis and because I've seen countless kids and adults struggle with the expectations and the negative bias that's associated with those who have challenges around focus and impulsivity and organization and all. In this excerpt, you're going to hear us talking about the label itself, which we both agree is both demoralizing and inaccurate.

And you're going to get some ideas to think about that might help you reframe how you view your child's impulsivity, procrastination distractability and maybe your own, if you have it. So have a listen and we'll come back for the wrap up.

It's such a joy to have this time with you because you resonated so much with my sensibilities and to be able to share you with our folks is a great, great joy.

So Dr. Edward Hallowell MD as a child and adult psychiatrist in New York times, bestselling author, a world renowned speaker and a leading authority in the field of ADHD. He's the founder of the Hallowell diagnostic and treatment centers for cognitive and emotional health in Boston, New York city, San Francisco, and Seattle.

He's been interviewed by Dr. Oz., Good Morning America, Today, Dr. Phil, 60 Minutes, and CNN, appeared in all the magazines, New York Times, Newsweek, Time. And you're also the host of the Distraction podcast. Dr. Hallowell's website is drhallowell.com. Thank you. So I'd love to start by talking about the label itself.

Attention deficit disorder. Can you speak to that, please? Just take it wherever you want.

Well, it's a terrible term. It's completely misleading. It's a, it's not a deficit. If anything, it's an abundance. We who have it. I have it myself. We have an abundance of attention. Our problem is in controlling it, or our problem is in directing it.

So, deficit is wrong. Hyper activity is also often not present at all, particularly among females. They're often the opposite of hyper active. They're often quiet, serene that their minds or are hyperactive, but they're not physically hyperactive at all. And then disorder. I don't see it as a disorder. I see it as.

It can become a disorder or it can become an asset. And my job is to turn it into an asset. I had someone in one of the core. I do a course on Cape Cod every year. Someone from LA suggested we rename it vast and vast stands for variable attention stimulus. And I thought that was really quite good.

The variable attention stimulus trait, because attention does vary and stimulus does vary. And. So it w you know, it's, the terminology is influx, but certainly ADHD is a terrible term. And what we got to do is get it out of this disorder framework, this deficit disorder framework, because that just perpetuates the stigma.

That that really ends up people feeling bad about themselves. And if you line up the people who are mega successful who are just mega contributors to the world, like you Tim Armstrong, the current CEO of AOL and Yahoo who's. Very public about his having add or David Neeleman, the founder of jet blue airlines.

So, I mean, I could, I could fill many rooms with huge festival individuals, Nobel prize winners, self-made millionaires as well as just really good people, you know, really good fireman or really good teachers, really good chef, really good brain surgeons, you know, who have. You know, so to call it a disorder, it misses the point.

However, it can be a terrible condition. The prisons are full of people with, with this, and then the holes of the addicted and the unemployed and the multiply divorced. And the, you know, the people who are just marginalized and not able to. Yep. Things going in their life. So, and that's what makes it so interesting.

It makes it such an interesting condition because it can make you or break you and I've spent my life trying to help it, make people and not break them.

Wow. Yeah. I mean, I'm absolutely on the same page. The people that I find most dear and interesting and, you know, Cool to be around and spontaneous and adventurous.

But I would say that the majority of them would label if they were now, there are a lot of people who have barriers to this, you know, I don't want to label my kid. I don't want to label. Can you talk about that?

Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't want to put a label on someone. I'd like to describe someone, you know, so in plain English, You know, to say he's creative, he's original.

He thinks outside the box, he's freewill. He's a spirited. He's stubborn. He's got a mind of his own, you know, you never know what he's going to say next. You know, he, he will blurt out just about anything, you know, and, and, and he has no filter that's IDD, you know, so you don't have to use the term ADHD.

You can just describe the person and that's all add, or ADHD is it's a shorthand for a collection of symptoms of ways of being in the world. And, and the only reason we use the shorthand is it's shorter. So we don't have to go through a whole list of.

And then there are times, although it depends on what services you're going to get.

There are times when asking, using that identification can get you services or accommodations. Do you want to just say a few sentences about.

Sure. It really depends on the school. You're going to, whether those services are worth getting or not. The, the most famous is on testing or extra time on tests.

And my own opinion is everyone should be allowed to have extra time on tests. Some people who are. Or simply anxious should get extra time on tests. Some people who are just slow processors should get extra time on tests. It's not just people with learning differences. There's no pedagogical justification for a time limit, you know, unless you're preparing for a career on jeopardy.

You know, it, it really doesn't matter how fast you can come up with an answer. What matters is that you come up with the answer, but we're not enlightened enough. It's really just an administrative convenience. We don't want to pay people to sit in a room, watching people take tasks, so we put a time limit on it.

And then we say that this is, this is a measure of some sort of learning, some sort of some sort of thing we think is, has some. Educational value to it. So we, then we make you jump through a hoop and prove you have a condition that can't be proven. Anyway. There's no way to prove you have ADHD. So we created this whole testing industry to get you on time testing or extra time on that.

So you're in a great position because you're a, you're a physician and you're a psychiatrist to give us an overview of what we're even talking about in terms of the brain and what's going on in the brain of somebody like me or you. And of course there's an unlimited number of variables and what that looked like.

Can you give kind of sketch out what the add ish, right.

Well, the frontal part of the brain, the frontal lobe, the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for planning and prioritizing time management anticipation so-called executive function. That's not as. Active and people who have ADHD. So we're not good organizers, planners, time managers in our world.

There were basically two times there's now and not now. So you say you're having a test next Wednesday, not now. And it's just gone. And so we sort of live by chronic procrastination. And then at the very last minute, when not now is almost now, we said, oh my God, Tomorrow and in a panic, we, we get it done.

And what we're doing unwittingly is, was self-medicating because in a panic you get a big pouring out of adrenaline and adrenaline is chemically very similar to the stimulant medication. Adrenaline is very similar to the meds we give to treat add. So you're, you're, self-medicating with. And, and, and, and it works, but that's no way to live.

You don't want to live from crisis to crisis people with add love crises. That's why they go into high stress professions, ER, physicians, trial attorneys, traders on the commodities exchange, Navy seals. You know, that, that you'll find a lot of people with add. They do great in a crisis. They have trouble on vacation in Aruba.

You know, they go nuts. Where's this, where's the stem. And so they'll pick a fight or they'll, they'll create a crisis, you know, and cause they, they, they want to, they, they, they want something to get their adrenaline or adrenaline flowing. And they have trouble organizing. They'll organize by piles, you know, and they, they have trouble filing.

They have trouble, you know, getting their taxes in all 10, 11 trouble you know, getting their laundry, done, the left trouble, organizing their closet, elect trouble, you know, the, the, just other people. Do it so easily, those they DD, it just doesn't come easily to us. And we have trouble with inhibiting that sort of putting on the brakes.

My analogy for add, we've got a Ferrari engine for a brain, lots of ideas, lots of things going on, but we have bicycle brakes. So we, we have trouble putting on the brakes. We have this, we have this rate generator of energy, of aggression, of pleasure seeking. So the deeper centers that want pleasure, that dries aggressions, sex seeking pleasure, and the braking power that comes should come from above.

Isn't as active, you know, the, these, these higher centers aren't as active so they can burst through we'll grab the candy. We're not supposed to grab, or we'll jump the bones of the person we're not supposed to jump or we'll punch the person that we should've stopped ourselves from punching in.

And so we're always trying to. Put on the brakes. And sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail and there's always that tension throughout life of the drive and the inhibition. And we're, we're, we're trying to put on the brakes and sometimes we succeed, sometimes we don't, but remember that's also creativity, you know, creativity is basically impulsivity going on.

You know, you, you don't, you don't plan to have a creative idea. You don't say it's 10 o'clock time for my creative idea and lay it like an egg, you know, creativity, it bursts through it, it, it comes unexpected. It is by definition, impulsive, spontaneous disinhibited. So if you aren't somewhat disengaged, If you aren't somewhat unfiltered, you won't be creative.

No. The people who are very under, under control are not creative. They're uptight, you know, they, they, they don't say interesting things. They don't say unpredictable things because they're under control. They don't dare. They, they, and, and so, you know, we can be quote unquote inappropriate, but we can also be very creative.

And that's the plus and the minus of this condition. And then you also add Intuitive persistent, huge desire March to the beat of their own drum. So the, the positive.

I just, I want to say people, will people be watching this, not just listening to. Look, look at Susan, can't you just see how intuitive she is. I mean, you know, really, I mean, you can just see it in her face. I mean, she just, and you can see that about people that, I mean, she, she just has the look of someone who sees into people, and you can also, you can also read it in the face of someone.

Who's not some people just, you just know that. they don't see beyond the surface and, and, , and it's just, it's, it's just a fact of life. You can see it in someone's eyes.

Well, that's awesome. And it's probably why there is this magnetic pull toward people who are similar. And I, and so the fact that you do so much reframing and I know when I first found out in my forties, not that long ago, I was at first, it was, oh, cause it does show up somewhat differently in women. Definitely. Kind of grief and upset. Like why didn't anybody? Why didn't I know that this is, what else does it look like? My neighbor's perfect house, or I start so many things, but it's harder to finish them.

And then of course it was just this tremendous relief. but there's still work. Like I use Wunderlist. It's my go-to. It tells me what to do. I have an amazing assistant who keeps me on track. I have a lot of accommodations that allow me to do what I best but when we're looking at raising a child before that those pieces are in place, things like impulsivity or homework.

You know, Johnny is just an exuberant and alive and there's his buddy across the parking lot. And you know, he's 11, he's old enough. He should be able to remember.

You know, that's the breaks. Should be able to by certain age. There's no age, there's no age by which you can do something I'm 68 years old. And there's a lot of things that I still can't do that I should be able to do.

And the whole point is. Every child is this gift that we're unwrapping and we just want to support to parents to celebrate and cherish their unique.

I hope you enjoyed that. Ned's done so much to help remove the stigma of ADHD and help parents see it through a more positive and optimistic lens. So if this is a topic relevant to you at all, I encourage you to join us for our masterclass, whether you attend live or you catch the replay. As always we offer scholarships for those in need.

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