Dr G's ADHD Chat

ADHDers get more criticism than neurotypical children and frequently have lower self-esteem. To help them develop resilience and better self-esteem, it’s important to remember that they have a lot of strengths and positives. On this show I will briefly review the positives and strengths that ADHDers commonly demonstrate.

Parenting an ADHD child does not always end at adulthood especially in our current economic environment, not to mention (but I will) Covid and the disruptive effect that has had. Coupled with the fact that many, if not most ADHDers tend to the sort of creative activities that aren’t particularly robust. As a result, you may get a phone call or more likely the doorbell will ring and there will stand your young man or lady with all their worldly possessions in a duffel bag. You have now entered that parenting an ADHD adult phase of life. I will share some of my experiences both as a clinician and a parent and hopefully some helpful insights.

ADHD has been identified as having an 85% heritability index, which is incredibly High and indicates that if even only one parent has ADHD, it likely that the children will have ADHD. I have a wife who’s family has a number of family members diagnosed with ADHD and she probably has it ,too (I’m not supposed to evaluate or treat family members and as a smart old husband, I’m aware that its probably better for her to decide she’s got it than for mer to say it.) We have three children, two of them have ADHD. And honestly I’m not sure that my family doesn’t”t have ADHD. I think both my brother and my father probably do. SO, it’s not that ADHD runs through your family, the important think to keep reminding yourself is that it’s genetics, it’s not anybody’s fault. It’s also not because of poor parenting.

This is the third in our series of tips for parenting ADHD kids. This time it’s presenting in a do this, don’t do this format. I’m terming to be aware that frequently at least one parent is also ADHD, so I should do some tight lean format material.

This is a time of year for thinking about life, evaluating life, thinking about our decisions, our performance, our loved ones both living and, deceased. This sometimes leads to joy and sometimes leads to anxiety and/or depression. These are my reflections on the season, life and ADHD

This the third podcast in a series about handling holiday for ADHD parents. This episode contains a series of things you can do to make it through the holidays with way less stress. They are simple but proven by research ways of helping deal with holiday stress.

In this, the second episode in our holiday stress series, I’ll be discussing the the reason why the holidays are so stressful. I’ll be identifying the specific causes of the stress that cause so much turmoil and distress, not the least of which is the idea that “ I should be happy while I’m doing all this work on top of my regular duties.”

The holidays are supposed to the time of” peace on earth, good will to all men.” So why is it so stressful? Why do the rates of mental illness go up? Why do I feel so stressed out? I’ll cover the answers to these and other questions about holiday stress in the next three episodes presented over the next three days.

Had so much interesting stuff, I decided I needed two episodes to include it all. ADHD is an increasingly researched diagnosis, so we get more and more information to use to help our ADHDers. This episode talks more about handling the neurological aspects of the ADHD brain, that hyper alert,creative, rapid responding brain can be trained.

Parenting an ADHD child is not for the faint of heart. Between the emotion regulation problems and the executive difficulties there is a tremendous amount of work for a parent. The first step is to keep reminding yourself that this is a neurotically conditioned not a behavior problem. I’ll discuss some of the other nuances of this condition in this episode of the Chat.

The morning routine is typically a problem time in an ADHD household. The problems of having everybody in the household having to get up, get ready and eat breakfast and be on time is challenging at best. It will likely never be perfect but you can. Make it easier on yourselves as the parents by starting the night before.

Given the ADHD impulsivity and the difficulties with employment, careers and relationships over 40 to 50 years, it is not surprising that middle-aged alcoholics with ADHD are common. In this episode I will explain some of the difficulties this group of ADHDers have including disillusionment that they haven’t achieved more in life.

ADHD teens are more impulsive and adventure seeking than their peers. They are also more prone to experiment with different substances. The most common of these is alcohol. It is easy to acquire because it’s available everywhere including the home. Treatment for alcohol in teenagers is a bit specialized and even more specialized for ADHD teens with alcohol problems. I’ll cover some of the most effective treatments and some of the approaches parents should take.

ADHDers have a higher rate of alcoholism than neurotypicals. Why should this be true? I’ll cover some of the reasons and some speculations about why this is so. I’ll also discuss some of the treatments available.

Does having ADHD make one more prone to alcohol abuse? Is the rate of abuse higher for ADHDers than neurotypicals? I’ll cover these issues and more. I used to do drug and alcohol evaluations, so I have worked with substance abuse of all kinds. Alcohol of all the substances of abuse is the one that’s hardest to avoid. It is literally available everywhere and is embedded in many people’s culture and religion. I’ll cover these issues and more that make alcohol a major problem for ADHDers.

We have covered the significant differences between females and males in the last 4 episodes. In this episode I will summarize what the research has shown about females and ADHD.

Another difference in females with ADHD is that masking is more prevalent. Masking is just a different way of saying that the ADHDer is trying to act like she doesn’t have ADHD. This involves denying any symptoms of ADHD or minimizing those she can’t deny.

Female emotional dysregulation is different from male emotional dysregulation. Males typically have stronger reactions and are more likely to react with anger. Female emotional dysregulation is usually less extreme and less easy to observe and identify. This is likely at least partially the reason that females are much less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than males. I’ll present on the different issues regarding female emotional dysregulation and its impact on diagnosis and treatment.

As If having ADHD wasn’t problem enough, Women have to go through further difficulties secondary to their menstrual cycles. The fluctuations in estrogen during the menstrual cycle cause further difficulties with the regulation of dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with ADHD. I’ll discuss this issue further in this podcast.

Like many areas of medicine most of the research has been done on men. In fact for some time it was thought that women didn’t have ADHD. This was both because overall research on ADHD was in its preliminary stages and it was not known that there were multiple ADHD subtypes.When it was recognized that the more recognizable hyperactive type was not the only type and that there was a much quieter and harder to recognize ADHD, inattentive type. This is the type of ADHD most commonly seen in females. With improved evaluation procedures more and more females were being diagnosed with ADHD. It is likely that the actual incidence is essentially the same for both males and females. I’ll discuss what is known about females and ADHD in the next few episodes.