Episode Description
In this episode Spencer Chernick, LMFT explores the complexities of parenting when ADHD is part of the equation. He breaks the discussion into three scenarios: when the child or teen has ADHD, when the parent has ADHD, and when both do. For children with ADHD, Spencer highlights challenges like self-esteem issues, emotional dysregulation, and struggles with school, emphasizing the importance of understanding their emotional needs and avoiding shame-based approaches. When the parent has ADHD, he discusses difficulties with structure, sensory overload, and internalized shame, while also celebrating the strengths ADHD parents bring, such as empathy, creativity, and playfulness. For families where both parent and child have ADHD, he addresses the risks of double dysregulation and the importance of co-regulation, shared systems, and open communication. Spencer encourages shame-free parenting, focusing on repair over perfection, and fostering teamwork to build stronger, more resilient family relationships.
Episode Transcript
Hey everybody. Welcome back. so now, we’re just like full fledged now ’cause we’re at episode three. So now, we’re very serious. I’m even, more of an expert as a podcaster. I’m just kidding. But, welcome back everybody. We’re at episode three. I appreciate you guys stopping by.
This is ADHD as an ally, thrive in your career relationship and responsib. Today, in today’s episode, we’re discussing parenting. this is a topic I run into all the time. This is super big, right? And today I’m gonna break it up into three sections, right? Because it’s when the child or the teen has ADHD, when the parent has ADHD.
When you both have ADHD, these are important. There’s obviously gonna be a good amount of overlap. but at the same time, they do deserve their own little space. So the first thing to understand is when the, we’ll start off with when the child or the teen has ADHD right. Challenges, School.
Tends to be difficult. I’m not saying all of us do, right? If we have enough, if our anxieties, rejection, sensitivities, whatever the case may be, are heavily directed towards academic success. We can really grind ourselves out and we won’t recognize till early adulthood that we just tanked ourself.
So for the ADHD child that does really well with, academics, it’s possible that they just have a good system and that’s great. But I do wanna point out that like that. Can it be something to still track? and they can just burn out later because they’re just living up to, an expectation that anxiety has been driving them for a long time.
But for those, that is not the case, that can really lead to self-esteem issues, and labeling, by themselves, by their peers, by their teachers, even by you even accidentally. especially if it’s just like I don’t, I don’t know where you got that from. I always struggle. I don’t have that.
This might be you trying to process it out loud, like trying to make sense of it. But all they’re hearing is, oh great. This is how I’m different from you. This is how I’m less than, and this is at a time, especially if they’re a teenager. You always got puberty going on for real. Yeah.
Okay, cool. So we’re at a time where we don’t wanna be treated like a kid, but we also want, still want a lot of the benefits of a kid. We wanna be seen as an adult, but we don’t want responsibilities As an adult. We feel like we understand more than we do, but people think that we understand less than we do.
And then also we gotta act like we know what we’re doing when we’re not supposed to. Like our first dating experience is. If we were supposed to know how to flirt already, there’s a lot of pressure being a teenager, throw in mixed up hormones and all that other kind of stuff from puberty and stuff like that.
Teenagehood is not a cakewalk as it is, and for children it writes a lot of emotional reregulate regulation, building over time, understanding of the world over time. So it’s difficult regardless, right? So you throw in these struggles, self-esteem, just really that’s like the first thing that gets hit. And this leads to emotional dysregulation, right?
Especially if it’s teens and actually, true for either grouping, honestly, child or teen. it can lead to intense meltdowns or a low frustration tolerance. I. It. A lot of times if there’s like this repeated perception of the self, we, ret routinely show up to school or an event or a family dinner or whatever the thing is not at zero.
And remember whenever I say zero, that means we are ground zero. There’s zero issues, right? It’s these higher numbers that now, okay, now I’m building, I’m climbing this ladder of emotional dysregulation and A lot of times this child or teen is not at like their best self. And so we’re also assuming that they probably don’t have all the strategies that they will as an adult.
So they also are lacking some tools in the toolbox. So it’s a really difficult time. So it’s easy to lead to self-esteem because as teenagers. We know that we’re still in the faking it till we make it stage, at least in some categories. So it’s really easy to jump to that kind of self label and self phrasing.
and so what parents often feel is confused, right? There’s an inconsistency. It’s it’s not that you never do your homework, it’s that I don’t understand. what powers you, what doesn’t power you? I don’t wonder why, are we able to do it this time? But you weren’t able, or you did that one time, got a good grade, another time you didn’t like it can be really, hard for the non ADHD parent with the A DH, ADHD child or teen to understand.
’cause it’s okay, so you clearly can do it, so why don’t you just do it every time? First of all, let me just highlight real quick and we’ll get into this a little bit later, but like a strategy that is meant to create temporary or instant change is almost never the same strategy built for maintenance.
So even if they find a way to get themself who knows what they had to overcome and go through to get themselves to do it that once, they might not wanna repeat that pattern. It might be filled with negative self-talk and all sorts of things that you wouldn’t even recommend. So there’s multiple reasons why they might not do it.
Again, mainly the reason is taxing, but also there’s this thing to really understand, right? There’s this acronym called In Cup. ADHD is really drawn to when something is interesting, novel or new, competitive or challenging, urgent, or it’s a passion, right? That’s income. when they’re interested in something, let’s say it’s a hyper fixation, maybe that’s why they were doing it at once, but then they lost that, that newness, the, the interest.
Maybe it’s no longer a passion. Maybe the urgency’s gone, right? Maybe it’s no longer competitive or challenging, right? We are emotionally driven. That’s, the stuff that works most notably for us. So we have to purposely activate these emotions and that can be really, confusing, for the parent who doesn’t have ADHD.
And so sometimes the parent can say that it’s their own lack in parenting. that’s the cause. there’s guilt or there’s self-doubt about the discipline and the routine. So they actually. Wanna like lock in more and give less wiggle room. And even though I understand that logic, I really do.
I’m not coming at you parents, I really am not. But just so you know, that’s actually gonna be more overwhelming, right? It’s more yes, we can tighten up certain disciplines in certain routines, but we wanna make sure that we are phrasing it in a way that honors the emotional process resistance and struggles that person is going through.
If they feel heard and they understand that, yeah, okay, you get it. You’re not labeling me negatively ’cause I’m already doing that. We still gotta find a way to get it to not be like that. That seems to be a much more navigatable thing for the teen. Now, when the parent has ADHD, and this is true whether the child has ADHD or not, there’s challenges that come with that.
’cause now we’re the adult in the room. Great. Okay, now everyone’s looking at me. Cool. Yeah, let’s happen. Blindly the blind right now. Now you talk about imposter syndrome. Oh man. New parents who are ADHD is I gotta keep you alive. it’s it’s really, it could be a really stressful thing.
so forgetting structure or the follow through of discipline. Oh man. Not only is there forgetfulness of a structure that’s just part of the diagnosis, but also We, it doesn’t get talked about a lot, but we tend to be like, energetic and light. Unless, it’s been, unless our ED C’s been really wounding for us.
then it tends to be more of like a, let’s just say a different presentation, a, harder presentation. but a lot of times, like we wanna keep things dopamine filled, right? Punishing the kid, now the family can’t, blah, blah, blah. It’s oh, we’re really gonna tell you, tell them that they camp, but we’re still gonna, So now you’re in that inner conflict, not to mention, as the person who at one point was doing that thing, you wanna remember, we come from an emotional base as ADHD, so we’re gonna wanna empathize and be like, oh, I don’t wanna make them feel how I felt growing up. So we get this, Twisting and turning thing that like, really makes it complicated to be consistent. it’s a, it’s struggle for ADHD in general, but in this case, that’s how it shows up. There’s also like sensory overloading, overload with parenting, and the demands that come with it. It can be a crying child and there’s that sensory overwhelm, but also like spinning plates analogy.
I don’t know if you guys are familiar with that, but sometimes we go to a circus act or whatever. they’re like spinning a little stick and there’s a plate on it. And as long as they keep maintaining this certain, like gyration, the stick doesn’t fall over, the plate doesn’t fall.
It looks really cool. And to make it more impressive, they try to get as many of these things going as possible. So I like to use this analogy because imagine the strength of keeping all these plates from not falling and breaking. now have those actually just not be plates that break? I. Maybe it’s making that the kid has good teeth, is going to the dentist regularly and also has a good plan for this.
And also there’s like a will. And also we’re raising them to be good people and also we’re, checking in on this and that. And then also I’m modeling good behaviors ’cause I’m staying out ’cause I gotta get my me time too. I have my own dopamine drain and gain to worry about. Dah da Oh man. Wow. Did you feel that?
I did. That’s a lot. So it’s very understandable and this can lead to battling like this internal shame around like being disorganized or scatterbrained or whatever the case may be. It’s painful. Maybe you even say to yourself like, oh, see, like I knew I was gonna mess someone up and whatever. The negative self-talk that we engage in, like the most painful thing that a lot of clients run into is realizing that we just copy and pasted the painful words and or voices that we grew up with and just covered it with our voice.
And now we’re just saying that to ourself, that sucks. That’s how much it got in. To where now we repeat it and we hated it when it happened to us. Why are we continuing it? It’s a very natural human thing, and it happens even more with ADHD because of our shame spirals and our rejection sensitivities and things like that.
And so we’re really quick to labels. We feel so bad, and it’s look at how I’m letting these people down, and that it just, it can become this really big battle. Now, the thing that I really hope doesn’t get forgotten is. There’s a lot of strengths that come with being an ADHD parent. Remember, we come from an emotional base.
Why does he keep saying that? I’m so glad you asked. That’s because we are able to have a deep empathy and attunement that comes much more naturally. We can really feel where our kid’s coming from much more easily, which makes it easier to decide maybe what kind of punishment to give or how to handle the situation, and maybe we’re much more inclined to empathize and use that kind of language.
That sets us up to have a much better connection. So even if you do have a mistake here and there, which by the way, regardless of diagnosis or not, you will, that’s just part of parenting. It’s a learning experience for everybody. It’s all good. I don’t even have kids yet, and I know that to be true. I’ve heard it way too many times.
Seen it way too many times. And I’m a fur parent. I’ve got three cats. Every new cat was a learning. I’m not comparing, I don’t want anyone to be like, is he really comparing cat? I’m just saying even with that, there’s a learning curve, so I can only imagine with kids. That’s what I’m trying to honor y’all right now.
That is, that’s a big thing. So it. We gotta give ourselves the wiggle room to make those mistakes. And if we use that emotional, tend to connect with the child and be like, Hey, my bad, that wasn’t you. There’s, I’m still working on this system, to just be, better at this for myself, but also how I show up for you.
and I’m gonna keep working on that, but I love you, da, whatever, however you talk. I don’t wanna tell you like how to talk to your kid, but The thing that we don’t know, that I didn’t know honestly until my master’s program was that they actually taught us there’s actually so much benefit in the repair.
We worry so much about the mistake that we forget that there’s this awesome opportunity to be like, Hey, even if I mess up, I got you. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna this to you or that to you. I’m gonna, I’m gonna fight for this. What does almost every person in this world wanna know in any relationship that they have that can depend on you.
Use this a DT as a strength. Stop beating yourself up so much and just focus on, okay, what can I do differently? And then honor that feeling with the kid. Model that so that they can grow up to be people who can do that for their kids if they choose to have ’em, or their future relationships, whatever the case may be.
And may I say the creativity in play and problem solving. Oh man. It naturally, the energy that positive’s talking about that comes with it. We’re more naturally to wanna go play the, I am so excited for secret agents or tea parties or whatever the heck they want to come up with. That’s do the voices.
You don’t have to tell me, I’ll do the voices during reading time this. That’s strength. You do not have to tell me or teach me to do that. I don’t want your parents forgetting that. So let’s, understand that yes, there are these challenges, but there’s a reason I don’t say weakness. You will never hear me say the word weakness, other than like right now.
But you’ll never hear me say that word ever because I actually don’t think that’s accurate in these realms. I think that there’s strengths and there’s struggles. It’s just a misplaced strength, right? Do that over there. Great. Do that over there. Not great. So now all of a sudden my strength’s a weakness ’cause I’m doing it in a different context or a different frequency.
Yeah. Okay. No, it’s a struggle. You just miss, you just, hammer’s a great tool, but using it to brush your teeth probably gonna be a struggle to brush your teeth. So now when you both have ADHD that’s combine these two. It’s understanding that there’s the chance for double dysregulation, right?
The parent can feel overwhelmed and the child can feel overwhelmed and they can dysregulate, Hey, good luck having a communicative. Success. I know that’s not English, but we’re gonna roll with that ’cause we’re live. it’s, it can be really, difficult and especially if the parent is hearing themself, have to say what was difficult to hear as the child.
Remember when you, when I mentioned the, gift of attunement, now you have a kid with ADHD. You’re literally like, that’s little me, right? Like it’s, there’s a whole other weight that gets attached to this. That’s a big deal. There’s a lot more pressure that gets put on that, so you’re actually more likely to dysregulate because there’s more importance added to this moment.
Honestly, if you feel at all that there is any inconsistencies because of your dysregulation or overwhelm or whatever, yeah, the kid’s gonna be struggling with an inconsistent, it’s, hard. You can double dysregulate. It can be really hard to, to handle, morning routines. and it just leads to I.
More chaotic routines in the beginning until you figure out a system together. And obviously, I really want us to take in the kids’ opinions, but, occasionally they’re gonna be like, and I want cake for breakfast. Obviously use your, parenting prowess, to, to your benefit.
But I also really recommend listening. Maybe there’s a way that you didn’t even think of, right? Every new generation, there’s new information and what worked for you or didn’t work for you as a kid. It doesn’t need to be copy and pasted on this one. They’re going up with a different circumstance, a different world.
So maybe you can even learn something, talk to them, Hey, what would work this and that, and take the shame out of it. Also, mirroring and triggering. so the parent sees their own struggle reflected in the child. I just mentioned that, so I’m just gonna get a little more specific with it because it leads to either grief or frustration, right?
It’s oh my God, maybe you’re telling yourself, oh, I gave you this. Or maybe you’re saying, oh, I remember feeling that way, and you get this weird inner conflict, or you’re like frustrated and you don’t even recognize that part of your frustration is because you’re actually seeing what it’s like to be on the other side of what you did growing up.
Whether you make that connection or not. It doesn’t feel good to be frustrated to the level that you may have seen someone else describe. And you tried to be like, no, it’s not the big, do I just blah, blah, blah. And that was your truth from that angle, and that’s valid. But now you are over here being like, oh yeah, that is really frustrating.
Oh my God, that’s what I did to mom. That’s what I did to the teacher, blah, blah, blah. So now you have to process that, go through that, but still maintain the moment. So as always, I’m pretty much gonna say every single time, give yourself some grace here. This is really, a difficult task to, multiple spinning plates in this area.
but like the. It’s a connecting thing, but it can be a triggering thing. It’s both. a lot of thi, something I like to say in therapy a lot is package deal, right? It’s gonna be this, but then it means it’s also gonna come with that. Whether it’s in a different scenario, it looks like this versus that.
Or because someone is trustworthy when it comes to secrets, you know that you won’t be able to get that hot goss from them when it comes to that other person, right? Package deal. Things just come together like that. But here’s the beauty. It also comes with these, I like to call moments of magic, right?
Where the parent sees their own story, where the, there’s like this shared humor, a sensitivity, and it’s almost like a non-traditional bonding, right? Where there’s like maybe more of a friendship because it’s like, Hey, I get you right? I see you more than just this like label of kid or parent.
It’s Hey, I’m human to you. I, yeah. Yeah. You saw daddy put the basketball shoes in the refrigerator. True story from when I was in high school. I had a lot going on. I was stressed and I was trying to make cereal, and I just got back from basketball and somehow the milk was put on the bathroom counter where I had, used the restroom and wash my hands.
And then the shoes were in the fridge. I don’t remember what the third thing was. I remember there was something maybe in my wallet, and it’s just like, how do you explain that? Almost there’s someone else oh yeah, for me it was the, keys and the laundry hamper or something like that. so when you see your kid do the thing, it’s just Yeah. Yeah. I mean for me it was blah, blah, blah. Or they, maybe they see you do it and it helps them be like, oh, okay, that’s something that we connect on. That’s something that we’re similar in, and then you can create some teasing around it, some loving play around it, things like that.
I know I went over it, but I wanna kind of finalize it with how I work with clients that are either coming to me because they are the parents with or without ADHD that has a kid with or without ADHD. We wanna start with self-regulation before behavior management. Remember, emotional base, this is where we start.
If I’m dysregulating, I’m in an emotional state. I’m emotionally processing, I’m emotionally communicating, which means I’m emotionally listening. So if you’re like, you knew that was gonna happen and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’m not trying to be mocking, I’m just saying like it, yeah.
We’re gonna wanna say that. Make it a two part convo or two separate convos, If it’s a young child. Whether you have ADHD or not, be the parent you needed. If you have ADHD, that’s literally a thing in psychology. Be the parent you needed that can really help with your own regulation. ’cause it’s look at me like being for them when I need it.
That, that, can really, help with your own regulation. But also it’s gonna make this way easier. Take care of the emotion first. Hey, I get it. I get it. That’s really frustrating, right? You really wanted to be able to go to your friend’s house, but because of this, and this, you’re not able to.
If that’s valid. I’m really sorry you’re going through that. Right now, I really wanna be able to hear you and I wanna be able to support you better. but it’s really hard for, mommy, daddy, whatever you call yourself to do that when you’re throwing your toys, right? That scares me. I wanna be able to hear you and understand you and support you.
So let’s breathe and walk them through it. Why do I not want you to wait for them to calm down before you say, next time, breathe. There’s an emotional brain We have during the moments of emotional reactivity. We want that brain to learn, right? I. It’s kinda in that movie Beer Fest where they made a joke about like drunk memory and they were only able to remember how to get to that place if they were drunk again.
’cause they found the place when they were drunk. It’s the same concept. I don’t know the validity of drunk memory, but if you’ve seen the movie, the point I’m trying to make is if you were taught something while dysregulated, you created synapses during a dysregulated brain, which is the brain you will have when you are dysregulated next time and need to remember what to do.
Even though I think it’s good to also have a conversation when they’re calm, again, make sure they understood what you coach them through. It is very important that it’s done during that thing is really important. Hey, I get you. Let’s breathe. I’m here to listen. I’m here to listen. But these behaviors, that’s not gonna help.
We hear you. That’s not gonna help you feel better. So let’s do this instead. We don’t wanna attack it. We don’t wanna shame it, right? They’re already going through that enough as it is and as the parent, right? That can be really difficult. next we wanna externalize the systems. First off, understand that everything’s happening because of how somehow a system is structured and playing out.
So charts, whiteboards, verbal reminders. We don’t wanna fix the kid, we just wanna support the whole system. What sets them up for success? so that’s really just coming down to understanding what typical obstacles does your kid run into, right? You probably know most of them by now. So not only how do we help set that up, but let’s help them understand it, walk them through it.
Then if they don’t do it and it backfires, let’s not take the I told you so approach, be like, Hey, no, I get it. I know, it’s this. We just gotta make sure to, do this now and blah, blah, blah, blah. And hey, if we wanna avoid this feeling in the future, just remember it’s really, helpful for us to do this before we blah, blah, blah.
And again, have it as, a part two thing, but don’t make it be like, see, you just wanna slide that in. So they go, oh yeah, that’s why I’m being told that. But it’s not being used to make it worse. and then as I mentioned before, we wanna normalize repair. There’s gonna be mistakes. There’s going to be mistakes even if you don’t see it as a mistake, right?
Every kid is gonna have their own scale of one to 10 of how traumatic some parenting approach or event in their life is gonna be. And it’s all subjective, right? Not all of us have a 10 of the same thing. It’s based on what we’ve gone through. So even if you give your kid like the best life. Ever. Then their, 10 is I don’t know, something along the lines of I can’t find my shoe for five minutes, because if that’s the worst thing they’ve been through, that is gonna be a 10.
So there’s always gonna be something, whether you agree with it or not, see it that way or not, that’s gonna be really difficult. And we don’t wanna, we wanna. Protect our kids, set them up for whatever, right? So we can hit our own rejection sensitivity, our own, this is especially true for the A DH ADHD parents out there with the DH ADHD kid, right?
Can really hit us and we can, dysregulate, oh God, look at me. And it’s and then that almost makes us tighten up and be more like, so you need to do this to get our point across. ’cause we’re trying to protect, right? We’re coming from an emotional base, but it’s really important.
That we just teach that prepare matters, not perfection. I say progress over perfection and practice makes better. I’m very anti perfection. it’s literally impossible at best. You can have a perfect moment maybe, but it’s, it can’t stay that way. It’s just not how we’re built. And that’s okay. So it’s really important that.
I like to teach parents that it’s about the repair things are gonna happen and you can use it to create even better bond as a result. Maybe even be like, Hey, I’ve done that too, yada, yada, and that’s really, important. and also we want to, I, know I said this before, but I’m gonna give it a name.
Shame, resilient parenting. We don’t need to shame ourselves. We don’t need to shame the kid. That is like the big S word that we really gotta avoid because that’s the go-to. That’s the first place we go to as the ADHD individual. Oh God, look at me doing this again. So it’s really, important that we just make it, how do we figure this out?
Just like I talked about in my last episode where it’s about relationships. Yes, those were technically about romantic relationship, but it’s relationships in general. You’re a team, your family, right? Parent child. You both want this to be as simple and as successful as possible. You actually have the same goal, just at worst.
You’re going about it different ways, taking different routes. maybe it doesn’t look like you have the same goal because maybe you get more specific, but you probably both don’t wanna be fighting. You probably both want to have a good system that works for everybody, yada, yada. So let’s take the shame out of it for both the parent and the child and just focus on the system.
Repair. Hey, my bad, let’s connect. All that kind of stuff. And so what do we do now? And what do you think would work to like at least better prevent this next time? And if for some reason it starts to fall off, what would you like me to do? What do you think would be good for you to do? And that will also teach solution creation.
That’ll teach problem solving, which is a skill that they’re going to need when they’re out in the world and you are not there. And you’re gonna want them to not have shame, self-talk, be any part of that. And this is a wonderful opportunity for you to coach that. So as always, with all of my episodes, I can go on and on forever.
I love these topics, but we do have to bring this to a close at some point. So if not now. When, which you know, by the way, is a great strategy as well. If, let’s say the kid’s putting off something and it’s, okay, if you’re not gonna do it now, then when, and what’s your reasoning? Maybe they have a good reason, right? And, maybe you’re dysregulating ’cause you’re trying to create a pattern where it needs to be done this way and then that way, but maybe not And look at me doing it again. we’re gonna arrive here. I promise I’m gonna try to not create a podcast of eyes.
So I really appreciate you guys stopping by and listening. Hopefully that was really helpful. whether you’re the parent, the child, or you’re both listening together, I love these, relationships and they’re so important and they can be so beautiful. as long as we just understand the understanding plays the biggest role.
So hopefully this helps with the understanding. Hopefully the strategies are helpful. And, until next time I bid, you would do.
