December 24, 2021
Cindy Lopez:
Welcome. My name is Cindy Lopez, the host of this CHC podcast, Voices of Compassion. We hope you find a little courage, feel connected and experience compassion every time you listen. Today we’re talking with a mom about parenting a child with ADHD. It comes with its challenges, joys and moments of sheer panic. You know, it’s too bad that kids don’t come with little books, right? It’s essential to remember, you’re doing the best you can, and so is your child. As a parent of a child with ADHD, it’s also important to know you’re not alone. Listen into this podcast episode as we talk with Lauren Sims, a mother of a child with ADHD. She will share her real life personal stories that we hope will inspire you and provide some encouragement as you continue on your journey with your child. Welcome, Lauren.
Thank you so much for joining us today. I’m wondering if there’s anything that you would like to share with our listeners?
Lauren Sims:
Well, hi, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here and I am a mother of two boys, one 13 and one 10 now.And my whole family, my husband and I have been on quite a journey with ADHD and we just think it’s important to share with others how our journey’s been and tips and tricks that we’ve learned along the way.
Cindy Lopez:
I know hearing from our listeners, they love it when they hear people’s real stories and it makes such a difference to them that our guests on our podcast are people who are living the journey that they are. So thank you for be willing to share. So I’m wondering as we think about your family’s journey, with your son and ADHD, what were you seeing in your son that caused you to think that you should seek some help?
Lauren Sims:
Well my husband and I could see right away at about 12 months that our son was way more energetic than other boys and girls, which we found very endearing. We gave him silly nicknames and he would be repelling off me when I would hold him, and he’d want to be upside down and thrown around, but around 18 months, we started to see that he was unusually oppositional when we’d ask him to do something that he didn’t necessarily want to do get in the car seat or not have a cookie and by three years old, he was having big crying, screaming tantrums that lasted almost an hour when my friends were complaining about their toddlers having a tantrum for 15 minutes. So we took him in to be evaluated rather on the early side at about four and a half years old.
Cindy Lopez:
So you took your son to be evaluated. There’s obviously those red flags going up for you. When he was evaluated and you heard the diagnosis, what was that like for you?
Lauren Sims:
We had a sense of fear and all these questions came bubbling up for us. How hard was it going to be for him to learn in the classroom compared to his peers or was he going to not like learning and our son was also having a hard time with friends at four years old. So would he be able to make lasting friendships? And I think the biggest question that most parents have is will he grow out of this?
Cindy Lopez:
Were you able to ask questions, like the psychologist or whoever did the evaluation? What were your resources at that point to find answers to your questions?
Lauren Sims:
Well I think the evaluation provided a lot of answers for exactly how he learns and how his brain works. So for us that was very helpful in getting a full evaluation. In terms of the fears of how this was going to impact our everyday life at the beginning, that was something that we would have to read books and just figure out on our own.
Cindy Lopez:
Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. Thinking about, also, the impact on the family is probably part of what you’re thinking. And, after you received the diagnosis, kind of when you’re in the thick of it, what made the biggest difference for you?
Lauren Sims:
Well, I felt very alone with everything we were going through at home because none of the other parents around me were really talking about learning differences. There is almost a competitive feeling among the parents about what schools they were trying to get their kids into and what extracurricular activities they were doing and nobody was really being vulnerable and discussing issues like tantrums or attention problems. So it really wasn’t until I met a group of neighbors who all had older boys that I felt I finally found a group of people I could talk to and these women really talked about everything. They talked about dyslexia, ADHD. They said, oh yeah, our kids have tons of behavioral problems, and they were not afraid to say what was really going on in their homes. And it was so refreshing and it really was a weight off my shoulders, and the best tip I got from this group of women was to go to CHC and see Dr. Glen Elliott.
Cindy Lopez:
For our listeners, you can find out more about CHC and ADHD and our resources at chconline.org. So I think it makes such a difference when you kind of find community, right. When you can find people that you can talk with that understand and kind of have lived or are living some of your same experiences. What really made the difference? You received some support and recommendations. How was seeing a psychiatrist able to help you?
Lauren Sims:
Well, seeing a specialized psychiatrist like Dr. Elliott allowed us to ask the hard questions and gathered data on how children with ADHD develop and a good psychiatrist can be a wealth of knowledge on brain development, research studies, medication options, which we had a ton of questions around and advice on what to do. So CHC also recommended a behavioral therapist for our son, because really you get the best results when you’re doing medication management and therapy together. So we got very lucky in finding Kendra Fraka at CHC, who is so wonderful and understood how to get my son to open up. And, you know, she would hold therapy sessions, outdoors, shooting a basketball, which is very cool. And my son absolutely adored her. So we really got the two together, which gave us the most impact.
Cindy Lopez:
We have an upcoming session with Dr. Elliott about the combination of behavioral therapy with medication intervention; that’s an important thing for parents to consider and think about. And in addition to the behavior therapist and seeing a psychiatrist, I can imagine there are also other kinds of supports that would be useful. For example, parents support groups, reading all kinds of things. And I think you were able to access some CHC resources that made a difference for you, and even started your own parent support group for ADHD. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Lauren Sims:
I was on the CHC Outreach Committee, and I realized that there were very few parent support groups, and I felt like we as the caregivers were going through it just as much as the children are. So, we started a parent support group along with my good friend, Monica Graham and this was such a helpful free resource for people. So for three years I was able to learn from other parents tips and tricks of what they were doing at home, how they were approaching teachers, getting their kids to sleep, managing screen time, that was a big one. And groups allow you to discuss all of your worries. Medication would come up a lot and we were also able to vent our frustrations on how exhausted we all are. It was just a great space to be able to cry occasionally, and it was a room filled with parents who completely understood what I was going through, and that was just so therapeutic for me.
Cindy Lopez:
Yeah. That’s amazing and amazing that you took the initiative and said, let’s just start this parent support group and we still have an ADHD parent support group at CHC. You can find out about that again at chconline.org. So, you mentioned your friends and some of them not really understanding. How did you handle talking about your son’s diagnosis with friends?
Lauren Sims:
You know, it was really tricky because my husband did not want to talk about it with people, and at first we didn’t really want to tell people because we didn’t want to label him, and we also felt a lot of judgment from people. I realized that wasn’t the healthiest thing for us or our son, to sort of hide his diagnosis in a way.
So I’ve learned over the last nine years, just to be completely upfront with the fact my son has ADHD, and I do this in order to sort of fight the stigma around learning differences, and I casually mentioned, it’s not like I come out with it right away, but I casually mentioned it to every teacher, coach or a friend that my son interacts with a lot. And I’m not trying to label him, but rather help people understand why he’s talking so fast or maybe he’s interrupting or not listening, you know, when he’s being spoken to and staring off into space occasionally in his own world and in today’s climate, we just put a lot of expectations on boys and how they should behave. So letting teachers and coaches know about a learning difference has only helped them gain a better understanding of my child.
Cindy Lopez:
Yeah, what keeps coming back to me over and over again, and we hear it a lot at CHC, if they could, they would, right. And so, helping people understand that is important. So my background is education, right. So as a teacher, as an administrator, you see students who are being the class clown or being disruptive or whatever. And it’s always important to ask why, to ask what’s happening that produces that behavior. So let’s talk about that for a minute. What were the behavioral issues that you were seeing?
Lauren Sims:
In the younger years it was just impulsivity or, you know, maybe don’t go stand on those garbage cans and jump over that fence. And then you’d walk away for two seconds, and him and his friends are standing on the garbage cans and jumping over the fence, and you know, some kids, you’d say, okay, don’t do that, I’m serious. And the kid won’t do it, but my little guy, rules were just suggestions in a sense, and he didn’t take those too seriously. So, he just had a ton of energy and the energy never really bothers me because we are an active family who likes to get out and hike, and we really have taken the approach of let’s just burn the energy we’ll keep him moving all day long, and I remember when he was little I tried to do a meditative exercise where he was in a fighter jet, and I was trying to get him to calm down and he was laying down on my lap, and I was doing this visualization. I thought this was so great, and he said, “mom, you don’t understand I’m a shark, I have to keep moving or I’ll die..this meditation exercise is actually painful for me,” which you know, that was shocking to me, but relaxing and closing your eyes and trying to be calm was painful and annoying to him.
Mike:
CHCs Voices of Compassion podcast is made possible by the generosity of people like you. To learn more about supporting CHC, go to chconline.org/donate. Also make sure to follow us on social media for more inspiring and educational content from CHC.
Cindy Lopez:
So as you were seeing your son’s behavior and figuring out ways to help him, to support him, to communicate with him, I imagine that in addition to what’s happening with friends and on the school front, what’s happening on the home front is that there’s an impact on the family. I’m just wondering what it has been like at home as you and your family have learned to adapt and work with your son’s ADHD.
Lauren Sims:
Yeah, that’s been the trickiest part, I think is, we do have a younger child and our oldest son is a big personality who takes up, I would say seventy-five percent of the parental effort. So there’s a lot of guilt around that as I think for all parents with kids with learning differences, there’s the neuro-typical sibling that sort of gets ignored and it can be very challenging for them. So we try to really do a good job of putting in extra attention and time with his sibling and making sure that they feel important and valued, and that they have our attention. And a lot of times when things aren’t going well behaviorally, we would have to split the kids up. I would take one child to the beach and the other child would go somewhere else. So unfortunately, sometimes it’s just not working and you have to make adjustments, which stinks for the parents, but, you know, it’s really about keeping the peace and setting your son or daughter up for success, right. And in order to eliminate some of the tantrums or meltdowns or whatever isn’t working at home.
Cindy Lopez:
So thinking about how to set your child up for success, what about school? What does that look like?
Lauren Sims:
Well for school, I think the most important part for us was talking to our teachers because teachers have the best intentions, but sometimes they’re short-staffed and don’t have a lot of bandwidth to help your child with their executive functioning difficulties. So it can be hard to be patient with the student who keeps forgetting their homework or constantly talking to the friend next to them. So many ADHD kids require accommodations, which is a lot of extra work for teachers, and we’ve had a few wonderful teachers that have taken on that challenge and been really pleased when they figure out what the perfect balance of accommodations that will help our son, but other teachers have really resented him or punished him constantly, and made their favoritism of other students obvious as they believe this would kind of teach him a lesson. So one tip I’ve learned is that you have to be really pushy for a meeting earlier than a school conference, and it’s a really great time to review the accommodations or any concerns the teacher might have.
And I like to try to set up attainable goals that we as a family and the teacher can kind of work together to attain, and setting that tone early shows that you’re going to be really involved. And you also want to hear about behavioral problems going on at school, that you’re not going to be defensive, that you’re going to be open and accepting to listening to what’s really going on and helping the teacher in any way that you can, and there’s going to be a small percentage of teachers that might not want to meet with you, or you might have to go to the principal to get involved. And I really wasn’t comfortable originally demanding things, but I’ve learned that you are your child’s only advocate, and if you don’t fight for their accommodations, they can fly under the radar and have a really rough year.
I also go out of my way to volunteer at school when I can to show my support and really try to give a very thoughtful holiday present to all teachers involved, and the fact is that my child requires extra attention, so I always try to make sure the teacher knows how much my son and I appreciate them.
Cindy Lopez:
Yeah, thank you. We briefly mentioned this before, but I’m wondering about the combination of behavioral intervention with medication. I wonder what advice you have for parents as they might consider medication?
Lauren Sims:
I think, you know, when we were doing the support group, this was the number one thing that had the parents feeling guilty, confused and it was the largest discussion among the parents. Going on medication was definitely one of the hardest decisions for my husband and I. You know, we eat organic food, we don’t like artificial coloring and it’s really hard to get behind giving our, at the time, eight year old medication. So we were so thankful that we went to a psychiatrist that specialized in medication in order to make these big decisions, but for us, medication is necessary for our child to focus more than maybe 8 to 10 minutes and now that he is older, hecan be very verbal on how he feels and when a medication is working and he tells me, without my stimulant medication, I don’t really feel normal or focused, which is his words.
Cindy Lopez:
Yeah, my conversations with Dr. Elliot have been that it isn’t necessarily one and done with medication. You kind of have to try some different things, and then as the child grows and changes, you might have to try different medications or whatever. Have you also experienced that?
Lauren Sims:
Yes. We’ve needed to try a whole bunch of different types of stimulants. It’s all dependent on a particular child’s body composition. I felt wonderful at the fact that we’re going to Dr. Elliott because there’s a lot of different factors.If a child has some issues with anxiety, you need to be on a different type of medication. So I think that’s where it can be very customized, and it felt great to be in good hands on that. And I remember, one thing about Dr. Elliott I wanted to say is, when we thought that our son was too young to be on medication, and he looked at me and said, Lauren, we’re sort of at a crossroads, do you want your son to have friends at school or do you not? And I was like, well, of course I want my son to have friends at school, but I mean, that always stuck out as, oh my goodness like, and he was right, you know, in second, third grade, the kid that is very boisterous and you know there becomes a tipping point where their peers start to reject some of their behavior, and once you are labeled that, it’s very hard socially to get out of that. So, I do think the behavioral therapy and the medication management was really key in that 8 to 13, of teaching him, like helping him be a really good good friend.
Cindy Lopez:
Yeah. So we’ve talked a lot about the hard things, right. We’ve talked about the behavior and figuring out the diagnosis and, and responding to all that at school and at home and everything. I’m just wondering, um, have there been any happy surprises along the way?
Lauren Sims:
Definitely. I think the one surprise that ADHD has given my son is it has provided a lot of gifts and it has definitely made him a better athlete. He has so much physical energy and is determined to learn new things or perfect anything that he’s working on. He’s very smart and very curious about everything and he asks great questions everyday. I remember when he was two, he loved sharks. So he memorized an entire book of 60 different species of sharks. And obviously he couldn’t read yet. So we were so amazed at this ability to memorize all these facts. And now he uses YouTube to learn skateboarding tricks or how to draw something. This week it’s boxing workouts cause he’s trying to get faster and build muscles, but if an ADHD kiddo is interested in something, they’re going to figure out how to master it and getting this determination behind school work would be amazing, but that could be trickier. His personality is just very charming. He can talk people into anything and has us laughing a lot. So the ADHD qualities are really part of his personality, so we wouldn’t really have it any other way.
Cindy Lopez:
That’s great. I know my nephew, who is now an adult, 30-something, with his own family, talks a lot now about ADHD, his superpower, right. It’s enabled him and he’s gifted and talented in different ways because of that, and it sounds like you also see that in your son. So as we wrap up our conversation today, what’s the best advice you have for parents who are just starting on their journey, or even for a parent who’s kind of on the journey, but currently discouraged?
Lauren Sims:
My advice to parents who are just starting out would be to get an evaluation. If you can get a free one through the school, that would be amazing, or sometimes you have to do it privately, but most schools require it in order to get accommodations and it’ll really help you see where your child is struggling. And if your child’s focusing issues keep coming up and up and it’s affecting their schoolwork, I would look into discussing medication options with a psychiatrist who specializes in learning differences. In the Bay Area the wait list is long to see someone, but sometimes pediatricians can’t help with more complicated cases, and also most kids have other struggles like anxiety, which makes picking the right medication hard. A book I read that I love is Driven to Distraction, it’s my favorite book, and I bought maybe a hundred of them. So it really describes what it’s like to be a person with ADHD and how they feel. I had a lot of aha moments when I read that book and definitely use free parent support groups and educational resources. CHC is a great place, and surround herself with at least a couple of friends or family members that you can really talk to about your home and school struggles. There are so many other people that are going through the exact same thing as you. So finding these people can be really amazing. And lastly, on the hardest days, just remind yourself of all the good things about your child and just have faith that if you continue to shower them with love on their worst days, they’re going to grow into a wonderful, loving person.
Cindy Lopez:
That’s one thing too that I’ve heard as I’ve had these different conversations on this podcast with other parents and experts is that just love your child unconditionally, and make sure that they know that, and that goes a long way to just giving your child the kind of confidence they need just to, you know, go to school the next day. And communication is so important with your child’s specialists, any specialists they’re working with, and any educators they’re working with and as Lauren noted, their soccer coach even or whatever. So thank you Lauren so much for sharing your story with us, your journey with us and for being so open about that journey. I I know that other parents who are listening to this will really appreciate your story and your perspective and insight, so thank you and to our listeners thank you for joining us and we hope you will join us again next week.
Lauren Sims:
Thank you for having me.
Cindy Lopez:
Visit us online at podcast.chconline.org. Make sure to subscribe to Voices of Compassion so you never miss an episode and we’d love it if you’d leave us a rating and review. Have a question? Send us an email or a voice memo at podcasts@chconline.org. We’re here for you when you need us.
