Speaker 1 0:00
I think there's argument to have really strong boundaries around the screen time. And that's in the form of parental controls and that kind of stuff. But I think it's more than that. And it's about family values. And the tricky part is living by that as an adult as well. If you have the no screens at the table rule, which we we do sometimes it's the kids saying mum phone away, and I say, oh, yeah, okay. So you have to really embody the values rather than just being really strict about the rules I think. Welcome
Speaker 2 0:35
to the ADHD families podcast. I'm your host Sharon Cullen, an award winning credentialed ADHD coach and consultant and Mama and wife to a very ADHD family. I am seriously obsessed with making life easier for people with ADHD and those that support my business. The functional family provides life changing support and strategies to ADHD. I particularly love anything that saves time decreases conflicts, and creates space for fun. Do you want to live with your beautiful family that is more functional, fun and full of joy? Let's explore together the wonderful and sometimes wacky world of family life with ADHD in the mix.
Speaker 3 1:23
Welcome to another episode of the ADHD families podcast. I am so happy that you're here today we are chatting about teenagers and ADHD. And I know that a lot of you are really curious about this topic. You might have some teenagers pending, or like me, you have teenagers yourself. And we know that adding ADHD in the mix when we're going through the normal teenage changes can add a whole new level of intensity. So I have got in a guest expert, the incredible Leann Tran, who's a registered psychologist who specialises in helping families and teens with ADHD. So in this episode, we chat about you know, what is the standard teenage behaviour and what happens when we add ADHD in the mix and how to spot the difference? We talk about executive functions. We talk about homework, homework, you know, high schools homework, how much should we we'd be worried about this. And how much pressure should we be applying for our teenagers with ADHD? We also talk about trigger warning for those that need it self harm and suicide, because we know that these are big topics in this age bracket. And then we talk about connection, unconditional regard. And screentime. I can't wait to share this one with you. Let's get to it. Welcome, Leanne. I am so happy to have you on the podcast today.
Speaker 1 2:46
Thank you so much. You've got such a lovely energy. So I feel very welcomed.
Speaker 3 2:50
I look, I think this episode is going to really really resonate with our listeners. But before I get carried away with all my questions, can you tell me a little bit about who you are, what you do and why you do it?
Speaker 1 3:04
Yeah, sure. So my name is Leanne Tran. I'm a psychologist who has worked with families, our children and their families for about 20 years or so. And they've always been children developing differently. So whether neuro developmentally different or physical disabilities or learning challenges, and I think I always wanted to be a teacher when I was in high school. And I think that shifted through into the work I do now where it's what I really love is teaching kids about themselves and families about their children. And what's drawn me lately to ADHD as some diagnoses in my family that's helped me niche down on that a little bit. And just really think about the practical strategies that work day to day for busy families.
Speaker 3 3:57
love that so much. You are absolutely on the right podcast for that. So you got into it because you had some diagnosis in your family. Is that what sparked the passion for ADHD? or consuming that ADHD content? Have you always been in this area?
Speaker 1 4:17
I've always worked with in this area, but I think it's particularly around the teenage years that's helped me because I guess a lot of the work I do was with younger kids much like the awesome work that you do, but in my clinic one on one, it's with younger kids, but I found too often that you know, kids are being diagnosed later and later now, but because I should have mentioned actually, to give context, psychologists seeing people in private practice one on one so and I found often even if kids weren't well, kids were teenagers. I mean, I'm talking about teenagers with ADHD. They were coming a lot with not a lot of information, and so maybe in some ways they missed that experience in the process. So it was kind of this combination of seeing more teenagers at that point of diagnosis, but also seeing families who had had the diagnosis for a few years, but missed that information. And then also, myself and my own family thinking about strategies for teenagers, particularly because their brains work differently to little kids. So that's what sparked the passion to adapt to think more strategically about the strategies I was giving for that teenage group.
Speaker 3 5:39
I've got so many questions. I'm just gonna organise them in my brain. So firstly, I would love to ask how people you know, how families or how teenagers presented to you in clinic? What are the things that they're saying?
Speaker 1 5:54
It's interesting, some families that say things like, I knew my child had ADHD right from the beginning. So when they were babies, or when they were little, and sometimes in that context, they're saying, we managed a lot of things, okay. Until now, and maybe it's when they've, those demands from high school have increased, and families are becoming, you know, all the kids kind of being put under pressure. And that puts the family under pressure. Sometimes in some cases, that's caused kids to have real difficulty with going to school, or sometimes challenges from ADHD throughout childhoods then kind of lead to impact on schooling and school achievement over the time, or even development of things like anxiety, and that kind of stuff. So often seeing teenagers with ADHD, but also those other challenges as well. Because as time goes on, I think, you know, very family to family, sometimes, the ADHD is supported differently. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not not easy to support an ADHD child. And so when it's not, sometimes these secondary things come along.
Speaker 3 7:12
So you I think a lot of parents, when we get to this age group of teenage, you know, we've got teenagers in the household. They parents have a lot of trouble deciphering what is an ADHD behaviour like symptoms? And what is normal teenage behaviours, pushing boundaries? Those sorts of things. Do you have any advice for parents that are questioning their asking? Perfect?
Speaker 1 7:35
Yeah, aren't we all asking for friends? I think it's really tricky to say, and this is I've have just done a webinar on this exact topic last month about trying to tell the difference between those ADHD type behaviours and, you know, other challenging behaviour. What I offered, as I see, I don't know if it really answers the question or not. But my perspective is that if you understand your team's executive functioning capacities, so that you've got the right expectations, and then you have support in the moment where they need it. So that's, for example, you know, lists and all the visual schedules and that kind of stuff, if you've got the right expectations and support, and it's still happening, it may be more along the lines of that challenging behaviour. This is for the day to day stuff in terms of being organised and all of that kind of stuff. But I think what is useful to expect for teenage kids is that even typically, developing teenagers will have more bouts of that just really irrational decision making. And so because as a time as teenagers are developing, they kind of develop it, they've got that real drive to be independent, and that kind of thing. And then their emotional processing or thinking and problem solving kicks in after that. So it's often, you know, times when they do really silly stuff that they can't explain, which is very similar sometimes in ADHD. So there's more likely that kind of stuff in teenage years anyway. So there's probably going to be a lot more of those times when it's just unexplained stuff. And recently, I read a book that was saying that if it's if it's very sorry, not very, that's not the right word. If it's sporadic, like occasional those blips of problem solving seems typical. Yeah, but if it's happening a lot daily, then it's probably more related to ADHD I'd
Speaker 3 9:47
say. That can be a very tricky one for parents to navigate. And yeah, I think when it gets to this age group, we start to mentally like Even though we know we probably shouldn't, because of the developmental delay, but we start to expect more. So perhaps in the younger years, we do a lot of our children's executive functions for them. We support them through all that stuff. And then it gets to the age and like, you know, like we, they're bigger, and we start to think I should be able to shoot, why can't they? I hate those words. But you know, it's quite natural for parents to actually believe that their children should and their level of their peers. Yeah, so can be a really tricky thing to navigate. Because our kids are just not quite there yet. Like, they're just they're still 30%. They're still at 30%. The line going?
Speaker 1 10:36
Yeah, that's right. Yep. And I think some of the changes in societal culture around teenagers impacts that as well. Because, you know, a couple of generations ago, we'd still see teenagers as more like kids who aren't really responsible. But in this day and age, we kind of some of the trends seem to show that we hold teenagers to adult standards when they are still developing. So just generally, expectations of parents can be too high of teenagers. And so it is a really important thing to reconsider.
Speaker 3 11:21
I often think it's a little detour now. But, you know, with our kids having so much access to YouTube, and tutorials and everything like that, I sometimes think it's a bit sad that they can be instant, like they can research everything straight away. Like for an exam, like an example, like thinking back to perhaps mine and your childhood, like we didn't have, like, if we wanted to know something, we had to kind of research it. And we also weren't the experts at everything. I mean, I don't know about you, but the first time I put on makeup, I was like, learning it from a dolly magazine. And it was terrible. When the athletes today, you can like be instant makeup experts, right? Because they're watching video tutorials. And they're learning things so quickly. And so rapidly. They're not getting those like that space in between things. Like they like they're not going through different stages, like we had grand stage and like, you know, like all different stages of you know, of culture, but they're not seeming to go through that they look so put together and like so adult these days. Yeah,
Speaker 1 12:27
that's right. Yeah, I think that definitely shifts our perspective, because they seem outwardly very competent, even if like you say, it's about the physical looks like through makeup or even fashion. But also that idea that if they're not sure about something, they can Google it, and they can find out or they can find out how to do something. So they can appear really worldly or confident and competent, but it's their emotional maturity is, you know, not at that same level.
Speaker 3 13:04
So that leads me to a question about screen time. Now, do you have a few? You know, where do you see on screen time? What's your feeling about that for our teenage beautiful parents with teenage teenagers that are, you know, probably glued to their phone? Right?
Speaker 1 13:18
It is the challenge of our generation, I think. And interestingly, I one book I read was about, like guiding our children with the knowledge we have now. But that each generations job is to take that knowledge, and then their own experience and learning and build on that to solve the problem. So I think, in some ways, it's going to have to be a problem that this generation of teenagers solves as they move through the world because, you know, we didn't experience we haven't lived through it to be able to problem solve it. But I think also, it ranges so much from just problematic, you know, screentime, in terms of not wanting to turn it off, and go and have a shower, right through to not going to school. So I think screen time has shown to be good for social interaction and skills for the teenagers particularly. So I think that's something in its favour, which means that it's, it is probably good to let your kids have some, but also, I think it's just inevitable, you know, they use laptops at school often and all of that kind of stuff. So to try to fight it too much is a bit of a losing battle. I think there's argument to have really strong boundaries around the screen time. And that's in the form of parental controls and that kind of stuff, but I think it's more than that. And it's about family values. And the tricky part is living by that as an adult as well. If you have the no screens at the table rule which we we do? Sometimes it's the kid saying mum phone away, and I say, oh, yeah, okay. But you have to really embody the values rather than just being really strict about the rules, I think. I also try and always use it as a reward at the end for things. So for example, if you, you know, I know for some kids, it's kind of regulating and calming to use it after school. But I find it's always really tricky to then stop that enjoyable activity to move on to something else that's less enjoyable. So I always try to suggest using something else to regulate if you need to, at the beginning of a transition doing all of the jobs or the work, and then the fun at the end is what my kids will probably put on my tombstone. Jobs and then fun. Yeah, but then if it's hedging over to the other side, where kids don't want to stop, if it's impacting their sleep, or impacting them going to school, it's no good. And you've, you've got to do something about it. Because those are the kinds of things that do snowball into bigger and bigger problems.
Speaker 3 16:15
I think it's such a big topic for families, you know, the handling this because a lot of the time, we're just so outmatched with tech, like, you know, I have no idea what's going on. And we did a inside the membership we did a wonderful child safety police officer came in and talked to us about tech and like how to protect our kids from being on like rude and extortion and all that sort of stuff. And I was so blown away by how much I didn't know, I was there. I was like, Oh, my goodness, I didn't even know about that sextortion thing I didn't know about it. So you know, it's really great for parents to have these conversations with our kids and give them you know that that open open dialogue and a bit of autonomy about it so they can go make good choices, hopefully, with us and us setting the example just like you said, like if we're going to ask our kids not to have phone up table, and we shouldn't have phones. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it is hard.
Speaker 1 17:12
I think sorry, one last point is that negotiating should be part of it as well. Because when kids are little, we can maybe be a bit more in charge of putting in the boundaries. But if you want your child to adhere to the boundary, they've got to agree to it, because you just can't force them not to. You shouldn't force any kids. But just as they grow older, and they're more looking towards being becoming independent and making their own choices, they just what you think is a little bit less powerful to them. So you've got to kind of sit down together and work out what's an acceptable solution for you and for them in terms of managing all the screen time. Love
Speaker 3 17:55
that great advice. Our kids hate being told what to do they hate it. Yep. Good to collaborate, ask them like what what is an acceptable amount of time? Like, what do you think that you can can do, whilst also, you know, doing what you need to do for sport and all that sort of thing? Now, can I ask the question about homework? So for teenagers, specifically, because I know this is your area? And I mean, a lot of parents have expectations about how much homework for keeping up with school and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. And I think our listeners would know that I do not have such expectations. Like I don't mind. I don't. For homework and school. My only goal for school for my boys is to get them through it. We don't stress about those sorts of things. But I know a lot of parents have a lot of internal turmoil about that. And a lot of battles are being had with their, you know, beautiful teenagers about how much homework expectations. Do you have any tips or gorgeous parents about homework and managing that book?
Speaker 1 18:53
I do. It's a little bit of a fraught topic, isn't it? Because people have different expectations and that kind of thing. But I guess as a psychologist, seeing lots and lots of kids come through with various different challenges. My my goal always is for kids to just go to school and be well adjusted, happy humans. And I think if you are doing that you're winning. So and I know schools have expectations about homework and if it's something for you as a family that you want to do. I think just the bare minimum is enough. I think there are some suggestions that can make it easier and so for for teenagers to get their homework done, particularly ADHD teenagers if you've got one that rises early because some kids still do. Doing it in the morning is better than slogging it out in the afternoon. And so doing it early on the weekends as well. Not early like six but you know in the Morning is going to make it far less frustrating. Any anything you can do to make it simpler, more fun and engaging is going to be less of a battle. So whether that's doing it in the morning or not, my child also uses that motivation is a strong factor. He needs that external motivation. And so interestingly, he has never struggled with the academics of it, but always has said, Mum, can you help me with my homework, and I say, how, and he says, to motivate me to do it. That's how we ask for help. So we use a lot of like, you know, breaking it down and doing each bit and those mini packets of skittles worked really well. So each little section, he'll have a Skittle. And you know, that's for him, what works. The thing that I would keep top of mind in thinking about this homework thing is that one of the biggest traps I think we can fall into with parenting, ADHD kids is getting into this battle of wills. And the reason for that is they fit what happens if you try and assert your will. And so to your kids, you gradually escalate, they escalate, and it gets to a point where then somebody just walks away or gives in. And that really sets up a pattern for our kids that if they push hard enough, they can just, you know, the problem will go away. And it's definitely not intentional. But that's kind of that pattern that then can keep repeating. So I think if I would rather forego any expectation of homework, Ben to be in that battle of wills all the time. And I think that's a lot, it becomes more important as kids grow older as well, because they are more responsible for their choices. And if we protect them from the consequences of their choices as well, then they never will be independent in doing it. So I think it's much more beneficial to kind of manage emotions and get through the basics well, and feeling good then to add on extra pieces of work.
Speaker 3 22:13
Yes, so, so much of what you just said, that was absolute gold. That's
Unknown Speaker 22:18
good. Yeah, that
Speaker 3 22:19
was really wonderful. So let's take it to a darker place now. So trigger warning for people that are listening, a lot of teenagers, and I'm sure you would have had a lot of experience with this. And this is definitely out of my realm. So I wanted to ask you about it. We're talking self harm, suicide for ADHD we have we know that it's an increased risk. So can you maybe provide some wisdom around those topics? Because I know that parents are struggling with this, to give them a few tips about what they can do if this is what their teenager is showing some concerning behaviours.
Speaker 1 22:55
Yeah, sure. To start with, I guess, if if, like with younger kids, if you aware of the challenges of ADHD and trying to put things in place to support that, then your chances of developing these secondary challenges are a lot reduced. So that's a really positive thing to think about and focus on. The way I see it too, with the self harm is that it kind of ties into that difficulty with regulation and regulation of emotions that teenagers have. So I think it's something that's really scary for parents. But if you see it more so as a way that they are trying to handle really big feelings, it can take a little bit of that fear out of it. And it can that can help you have a conversation with your kids about what's going on. And what you might want to understand is what they're feeling and what they're stressed by. It's likely to be friendship issues, school pressures, perhaps even possibly some pressures from home as well. Sometimes kids feel pressure that we don't mean to put on mum, whether that's sometimes it's as simple as other things going on in your life, that's just putting extra pressure on them. But if you can talk to your kids about that in this really open way of saying, you know, I heard that lots of kids do this as a way to kind of manage these big feelings and stress is that something that you identify with or that kind of thing, then they can talk to you about it a lot more. If you're taking your kids to go and see a psychologist what we would how we would usually approach it is to validate that self harm is one way of managing stress. But there are lots of other ways and we can help you learn a lot of other ways as well. So that it's kids for First of all develop a way of talking about their emotions and, and understanding how they feel, then they've got a range of different options to deal with them. And self harm is just one of those things. And so likely, they will try and do some other things that will be successful as well. So if that is something you want to try as a parent, you can definitely do that. It could recommend some alternatives, which could be, you know, some other things that manage feelings really well or like, tolerate that distress of feeling upset, like holding on to ice in your hands for ages. splashing your face with incredibly cold water icy cold water can give that same kind of feeling. So it can be something that you could teach your child to do and and see if that helps them or not as well, because it's kind of about learning how to manage the distress of those difficult feelings. So if you have open communication about that and say, Are there other things you can do? Can I help you maybe it's having a warm cup of tea or a cold drink or sitting in the sun for a few minutes, lots of other things you can offer as alternative ways to tolerate that distress so that self harm doesn't remain the only option. I guess that's the goal.
Speaker 3 26:20
And when I did the lifeline course, they, you know, was saying that it's okay to say the word suicide, it's okay to say the word self harm, like you don't, I think parents good or like, scoot around it. They don't want to say the word like there or anything. If you if you're having that conversation, you can actually say the word, it's not going to make them do anything. It's Yeah, exactly. Okay to have those real conversations, which I thought was a very great point to just add in there too. Like it's okay to talk about these things without feuds. Yeah,
Speaker 1 26:54
that is a really good point. Because I think it's often our fear as parents that holds us back from having those real conversations. And you can know that if your teenager is engaging in self harm, whether that's cutting themselves or that kind of thing, they've already thought about it, because they've already done it. So it's even new to say like, you know, I've noticed that sometimes when this happened, like, I wonder if you've been cutting yourself or something like that, and you can name it, they've already been thinking about it, because they've already done it. And the same is true for suicide as well. And I think the worry parents have a lot is if they say it, they might be putting that thought into their child's head. But nobody can really do that. So if your child has attempted suicide, or if they have thoughts about suicide, that is not because they've heard it from, you know, somewhere else or from you, you can't put that feeling into them. But by naming it, sometimes it makes it so much easier for our teenagers to actually talk about it themselves.
Unknown Speaker 27:59
Such a good point. Now,
Speaker 1 28:01
let's sorry, before you go on, I know you mentioned suicide a little bit. So I did want to talk about that a little bit as well. And I think that's a time when it's really great to go and get some help. You mentioned lifeline. And there are lots of places that you might be able to see a psychologist or, you know, mental health social worker, or OT as well, lots of people around who can help with that. But I think that's a time when you need to get some help into your team, because then they can teach you how to talk about it and deal with it. But and then you might be able to manage on your own. But it's I think it just gives parents that real confidence of knowing they've talked to somebody about it, who can help with assessing the risk, psychologists will then usually do a safety plan and talk about that with parents so that then you've got some strategies to first of all know, the triggers about what kind of sets this type of thinking off so that you can be aware of the triggers and then you've got some a plan about what to do to help your team. Sometimes the triggers will be things that they are feeling or experiencing that you can't see but sometimes there will be triggers that you do see like maybe they spend more time in their room or they stop going out with their friends. And being aware of those kinds of signs can help you feel confident as a parent of when you need to step in.
Speaker 3 29:29
Oh that is such good information. What I wanted to chat to you about is leading on from that you know we know I throw around the term unconditional regard and what right and how and trying to stress to parents how important connection is for a beautiful kids with ADHD it's it overrides every strategy everything all the time. Can you give us your view on unconditional regard and how important
Speaker 1 29:56
you think it is? Yeah, I'm I'm with you there It's the most important thing, I think it's the elites into that like attachment relationship with our kids is unconditional positive regard you, your audience probably is all aware of what it is if you talk about a lot, but it's essentially always feeling or appearing positive about your child. And regarding them positively, I think it's so important when kids are little. But even more so when they're teenagers, that that good attachment relationship and that secure bond we have with our kids is really what helps them feel safe in that relationship with us. And that lets them be able to explore who they are and what they want to be within that knowledge that we've got them, we love them forever. And in teenage years, that's when a lot of that exploration about identity and stuff like that happens. And so kids might might be in terms of their appearance or their hair do like thinking mullets and Crocs and that kind of stuff. So being unconditionally supportive of all of those choices is great, because it lets our kids kind of have the confidence to try out who they're going to be until they decide. But in teenage years, I think it's harder sometimes to be that give that unconditional positive regard, because they often don't give it to us. Teenagers can be so harsh. So it's really about trying to I practice this myself, like taking this big breath, after they've said something that's cutting or something like that, and, and try to remember that they're this person who's kind of stuck between being a kid and an adult, and they're trying to find their way into you got to have a thick skin. And I think one
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