October 23, 2024
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.
Supporting a child with ADHD can be invigorating, exhausting, and rewarding. In this new Voices of Compassion podcast episode, we dive into the unique strengths of ADHD and explore actionable strategies parents can use to help their child with ADHD thrive. In conversation with CHC experts Danna Torres and Karly Crockett, we unpack how to channel their creativity, energy and problem solving skills. How can you turn ADHD challenges into opportunities for growth? Whether you’re navigating struggles or looking for ways to boost focus at home, this conversation offers practical advice to make life smoother for both parents and kids.
Welcome Danna and Karly. Let’s start by asking you to share a little bit about yourselves with our listeners and maybe why this topic could be so valuable to them.
Karly Crockett, LCSW: My name is Karly, and I’m a licensed clinical social worker. I’ve been at Children’s Health Council for the past 5 years, and I’ve worked with a lot of children with neurodiversity. I think this topic is so fascinating because the more I learn about ADHD, the more I learn how vast and nuanced it is, and it makes it very intriguing to keep learning about each child and how strategies can be applied to unique family dynamics and family structures.
Danna Torres, LMFT: Hello, my name is Danna. I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist. I work in our Ravenswood clinic, and prior to working in that branch, I worked at the South Bay clinic. So I’ve been with the agency for a few years now since 2016. And throughout that time, I’ve worked with a lot of children, adolescents, and later, at this point in my career, with adults who have ADHD or are experiencing amazing neurodiversity and the way that they experience life is a little different. And it’s been great to see the trajectory at different developmental stages of a person’s life and what it can feel like for a little, for an elementary school individual, for adolescents, right, we’ve got the raging hormones, and young adulthood when we’re seeking independence and life and into middle age, right, and even older adults. And so, this is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart because a lot of my experience has been with individuals with ADHD, and I love working with parents, so this is the podcast I was really interested in participating in.
Cindy Lopez: Thank you so much, Danna and Karly. And Danna, what you just said, I think is a good reminder to all of us and our listeners, like how a person with ADHD looks like across the lifespan, it might look a little different as a young child versus a teen versus a young adult versus adult. So today we’re talking really about strategies for parents of kids with ADHD, with a lens more on school-age and teens.
So let’s define ADHD first. So I know there’s like the official diagnosis and different types of ADHD, maybe you could talk a little bit about what behaviors might characterize ADHD?
Karly Crockett, LCSW: As Danna and I were preparing for this podcast, we were thinking about the definition and while there is the diagnostic statistical manual’s definition, DSM-5, we also thought it would be helpful to like take a step back even beyond the diagnosis, just to think about the term ADHD and how it is so much more than a diagnosis. And most importantly, like what strikes me, people commonly refer to themselves as having ADHD or like, “Oh, I do this thing. It’s because of ADHD.” And so it gives us, like, informality about the diagnosis and that overlooks the weight of a lived reality for someone who clinically has ADHD and may have a more severe version of it that really impacts their day-to-day life.
Danna Torres, LMFT: Right, and so, one of the things that we had talked about was looking at the bigger picture. And when we need a diagnosis because it’s affecting our everyday life, right, if a child isn’t able to learn in school or make friends, there’s a significant impact, then we seek the formal diagnosis. And sometimes that’s not something that’s attainable for everyone. And so we look at the bigger picture, which is another way of looking at it, right? We’re sharing different perspectives, and we can always help someone who is struggling with expressing themselves, with making friends, with someone who’s high energy, or maybe is spontaneous and is trying to figure out how to jump in and make new friends with a new group of people, or what it’s going to be like in a classroom setting, right, where the expectation is that you would be seated and follow these social norms. And you’re like, but I can’t wait. I really want to share with you this information that I have, and so that is one piece. That’s one component of a very complex diagnosis. And if it’s not a diagnosis, it’s just a very complex way of experiencing life, right, when we talk about this particular diagnosis. And so one of the examples that we were talking about that I was sharing was like when people say, it’s my social anxiety, right? So, sometimes we just don’t want to talk to people. Sometimes, stuff is hard, and it’s awkward, and you wonder what people are thinking of you, and if you’ve messed up a conversation.
When does it turn clinical, right? And I guess the point I’m trying to make is being mindful of not throwing those words around. Sometimes they can help create comfort in a conversation where, “Hey, it’s no big deal. Let’s move forward. It is what it is and we are accepting in this space.” And other times people want to feel validated and that that’s a very challenging experience that they’re having, right? And, all of us just kind of being informed and creating that safe space to know which way to go with it, right? Because if you’re going through something and I’m like, “Oh yeah, I do that all the time.” I’m like, yeah, but do you do that everyday? Did you have to repeat a grade because you forgot to turn in all your homework or, you know, like how impactful was that for you to that extent? But at the same time normalizing, it’s a really interesting balance, to be honest, that I think we’re always trying to find. So I’m being mindful of the fact that that’s hard, right? How do you validate someone’s experience? But also, not make them feel uncomfortable as you’re talking and pointing it out.
Cindy Lopez: It’s a good reminder too, that our language matters.
Danna Torres, LMFT: Oh, yeah talking to two therapists words matter. Words hold meaning for us.
Cindy Lopez: Yes. When you say, “Oh, that was so ADHD of me,” like, that minimizes people’s experiences with ADHD. And so it’s a good reminder to all of us that language matters and how we talk about what we’re feeling without minimizing another person’s experience is important.
Karly Crockett, LCSW: Then going back to the diagnosis itself, we go from like, well, I might lose things sometimes, or I get really distracted too, like, what’s the difference between that and having a diagnosis of ADHD? So we’re looking at, like, the frequency of symptoms, the duration, having these clusters of symptoms, as well as like the impairment in your day-to-day life and functioning.
And in order to have a diagnosis of ADHD, the symptoms have to occur in more than one setting. So with kids, it’s often at home and school. And within the diagnosis itself, there’s also a spectrum of mild, moderate, and severe. So then from there, that’s where Danna’s talking, like, the big picture, like if you start looking at the different domains of a child’s life and their different environments, and you’re seeing these patterns of behavior that fall within these categories that leads you more towards a diagnosis.
And on top of that, we also are saying that you don’t need a diagnosis in order for the strategies we’re going to talk today to be supported. If you as a parent are seeing, hey, this is concerning, these strategies can still be helpful to your family and child.
Danna Torres, LMFT: Right, and so, expanding a little on what that bigger picture is, you’ll find that a lot of providers, when we go in and share what our concerns for our children or for ourselves, that they’re looking at the bigger picture. They’re trying to see whether (like she had mentioned) is this happening at school? Is it happening at home? Is it happening during a particular time? Is there a particular trigger? Is it with particular people? We’re trying to get a bigger picture. Are there other circumstances that the child or the person is experiencing, is it just the piece of, for example, forgetting things. The attention piece. Is it the hyperactivity? Does it also maybe affect relationships and to what extent, right?
So there are a lot of pieces, and so if I like to think of it as an actual picture. Do you have the tree? Do you have the house? Do you have the flower, the grass? And if there are things missing, or you see a really big moon and a sun and you’re like, wait a second. This could be something else. Are we looking at maybe what we would call comorbidities? Are we looking at maybe a little anxiety that might be fueling this experience that the person is having? And so the provider themselves can start to tease out what is going on and how to best support to give the person somewhat of a road map. Start here, implement these strategies that support with school and home, and see if this helps the individual, right, feel more successful in their life. And as Karly had mentioned, you don’t necessarily need a diagnosis for that because parents are really intuitive and can sync with their kids and they can see early on, like, you lose things very often. How many pencils have I bought you? How many pencils, crayons, right? Or where’s your entire backpack? Like, did you lose the whole thing? Or every time you have a friend over, I see that you have a really hard time keeping that conversation going, especially when there’s competing interests or even competing individuals, more than one individual that you’re sharing attention with. How is this kid connecting or not connecting with these individuals? And so parents are seeing this. And they can start to facilitate, and so with these strategies that we’ll start to talk about, we can start working on those at home, right, making those connections, breaking things down for the individuals.
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Cindy Lopez: I’m wondering if you could share a little bit more, like give some specific examples of characteristics that might be associated with ADHD.
Karly Crockett, LCSW: Yeah, so based on like clusters of symptoms we’re talking about. So hyperactivity, your child’s really wiggly, having a hard time sitting still, they have to get up and move around from the dinner table, or they’re constantly bouncing in a chair in the classroom. They may have trouble managing impulses, they do things quickly without thinking, or the ball rolls in the street, they run after it. They don’t think to stop and look both ways. They want the toy that their friend has, they grab it without thinking about how it will knock somebody else over, having a hard time maintaining focus and attention.
So Danna was talking about like, you’re talking with one friend and another friend comes over and like all of a sudden you lose track of the conversation because you’re distracted by someone else showing up, or a bird’s chirping out the window or this pencil falls off the table and all of a sudden like, what were we talking about? I was looking at the pencil, and that also is like being easily distracted. Having a hard time focusing, getting inattentive. And because of those symptoms, they may need a lot of prompts or reminders from teachers or caregivers, “Oh, don’t forget to put your backpack away. Did you put your backpack away? Your backpack goes over there.” And, “I know, I know.” …”Well, it’s not done, okay. After school, put your backpack away.” Losing things frequently.
Danna Torres, LMFT: You know what I was thinking of, I was watching Trevor Noah talk about his experience with ADHD, and I thought how many times have I not heard this, but he’s describing it so well. He was talking to someone, a friend, and they talked about like something happening with their shower and that it had changed color. I guess that the water that was coming through had changed the color of the metal of the showerhead, and he checked out. And he was like the water, the minerals, and where, and how, and he’s just problem solving out here and his mind is wandering but the conversation kept going. So to your point, you know, with a lot of awareness, it sounds like was able to reflect and say, “I checked out. I was in my own world,” really thinking profoundly about what this person had said because it had striked an interest in him and his mind, right? But what they saw wasn’t that. They didn’t see the deep thought that he was in. They saw that he was, like, lost in thought and that he was no longer interested. And that, unless someone knows him, creates tension, like, you’re no longer interested in what I’m talking about, and socially that can be an issue for individuals. But when you have those close relationships, right, like your quote unquote tribe, then people can say, “Hey, where’d you go? What happened? Are you still with us?” And then that person can share without shame, “Oh, actually, I was thinking about all these other things that came to mind that might solve your problem, or this is where my mind took me.” And these individuals that are part of that person’s circle can say, “Oh my god, that’s so interesting. It would have never occurred to me,” right, like, let’s hear what you have to say, and so now that person is re-engaged in the conversation versus, no, you checked out. You’re not allowed to be part of this conversation anymore. And that can create frustration in the person, some irritability, some isolation.
When we think of fight or flight, and the nerves that we feel in a situation where we’re uncomfortable or we feel unsafe, whether it’s socially, physically, our body is responding to that anxiety, to that stress. You get children, you get adults that will respond with, well, I don’t want to be part of this conversation anyway, right? And you get defensiveness and frustration in this situation. You can get someone that just shuts down and says, “Oh, okay, my bad. I didn’t mean to miss what you guys were talking about, but go ahead.” And the person’s still checking out, but they’re not going to be confrontational about it. They just kind of withdraw. Sometimes people just freeze. So there’s these different responses, so we can start to see a cause and effect of what started off with an ADHD foundational issue that led to something else, which kind of leads to that bigger picture when you come in to see a provider like Karly or myself. And we start to tease these things out and say what happened? Why? How? What have you tried? And what else could it be? What could be fueling this situation?
Cindy Lopez: So I’m wondering if parents are seeing some of these things, do you have any advice for them about what they might be able to do?
Karly Crockett, LCSW: Yes. And I’d start with strengths because as Danna’s talking about it’s very common for people with ADHD to have sensitivity and emotional reactivity. So if you come in being like, “You’re doing it wrong. Do it this way. Remember how many times I’ve told you to put your backpack away?” Like that really is impactful on their self-esteem and doesn’t motivate somebody to cooperate or problem solve or start following directions. And on top of that, people with ADHD, as Danna was saying with the Trevor Noah example, have these incredibly creative problem solving, unique ways of seeing the world and thinking. And so if you can join your child with those strengths and be more strength- based in supporting them with strategies, you not only are developing their self-esteem, building their awareness of their strengths, you’re also probably going to be more successful in collaboratively problem solving around some of the areas that they’re struggling with in life due to these symptoms.
One way to help build on the strengths and start working on some of the areas of concern is through scaffolding. So children have the ability to do aspects of what you’re wanting them to do. And with ADHD, they may have a harder time following through or completing the whole task. And so that’s where a caregiver can come in and say, “Okay, we know we need to do this thing after school,” like, putting your shoes in their cubby. And so how can a caregiver make that a smaller task that meets the child where they’re at developmentally and within, their, like attention and focus and interest and making it maybe more playful or making it a smaller step. And then building up towards the child, completing the task and completing it independently and then completing it without any prompts.
Cindy Lopez: So it’s interesting, I really appreciate the fact that you brought up strengths because I think that’s such an important piece for parents and caregivers, even educators to understand and realize the strengths that come with some of the challenges and to help those children, students see those strengths, identify their strengths, and also give them opportunities to cultivate those strengths.
I think most of our listeners know, my background is education. So, a lot of my examples are from classrooms, but at school, you know, a teacher might have an assignment where they say, “You need to write a composition to express your learning. We just finished this unit, now write a composition on whatever it is. And so allowing students to have some choices in how they express their learning is important for kids with ADHD. It’s kind of important for all of us because we all express differently. And that can leverage their strengths. So it could be like, what if they did a photo essay instead of a composition? Or what if they actually built something instead of writing? So giving our students and our children opportunities to express themselves in a way that aligns with their strengths is important and will help them feel more than successful – like, feel a sense of belonging and wellness.
So, let’s get down to strategies. What can parents or caregivers do to support their child with ADHD? And as you’ve already noted, like you don’t need a diagnosis to use these strategies. And you’ve definitely talked about some of them. Are there others you’d like to add?
Danna Torres, LMFT: I wanted to share when we seek a formal diagnosis, a lot of the times it’s because we’ve tried a lot of things, a lot of interventions. We’ve knocked on a lot of doors, and we’re looking for support and the doors are closed because if you don’t have a formal diagnosis, right, from the therapist, pediatrician, psychologist, from somebody that can say, “Hey, we see it too. And we want the doors open to these other resources, maybe through the community, the insurance, right? We fully understand why we would need that. And I don’t want to minimize that, but I think it’s also important that we say out loud, “You can start anytime.” And although parents are fighting that battle to get the resources for the child and to move their child forward, there are things that they can start doing at home while they get that ball rolling. And a lot of parents are already doing these things. It’s bringing awareness to it. So as we talk about strategies, one of the things that Karly and I do a lot of, and she can expand more on it, is that connection between the child and the parent. If you think of an adult, think of a family member, anybody, diagnosis aside. Just think of a family member that you’re fighting with, that you’re not getting along with, that you maybe argue a lot with, but you still love, right? Still gotta see them every day. They’re cool, you like them. It’s a lot easier to have challenging conversations, to see them in the evening, to see them with love, and to see them with patience when you’ve done activities together, versus somebody who you see less often, or when you do see them, it’s to correct them, right? And this is me saying that as someone who lives in a multi-generational home. So it’s just the Latino community, right? This is just how we lovingly live.
And I share space with my parents who take care of my children, my husband, and sometimes my mother-in-law comes and visits, and it’s rowdy. It’s great. It’s beautiful, but at the same time it can be very frustrating with a lot of different personalities and people doing their own thing. So again, these strategies would apply in a situation like this. Let’s take a step back. What does everybody need? What’s going on? What are some patterns that we’re seeing, right? Nobody there needs a diagnosis to know that, A, we’ve been arguing about the same stuff. Those dishes, nobody wants to wash them. And it’s an argument that keeps coming up. And so, I can keep being frustrated or passive aggressive or just irritated that I keep asking and nobody’s doing it or nobody wants to or they’re avoiding. Or take a step back. I analyze the situation. I’m like, look, I don’t want to be upset anymore. Where can we start? How can I meet people where they are?
We thrive on structure, not on rigidity. Two very different things that I feel like sometimes get meshed in together. Structure is important because we know what to expect. Flexibility is also important. Too much of it can cause confusion. Too much of the structure can cause rigidity and that can also cause frustration.
Cindy Lopez: It’s just important to note that no matter what the situation is, what the relationship is, Danna, you just said, it’s like step back,and then see how you can resolve the situation in a way that makes sense. And I think our listeners know that, it’s just when you get in the middle of it, what do you do? And so I think any specific strategies we can share with our listeners would be really helpful.
Karly Crockett, LCSW: Yeah. And I love how, Cindy and Danna, you’re both kind of talking about this, like we’re dancing around it. And I think that dancing is like what therapy is. So that’s our tendency, like, sure we can give you this list. You could also Google a list. Why are you listening to this podcast is because you’ve looked at the list, and you’re like these aren’t working. I created a schedule, my kids not following it, we’re beating our head against the wall. And so that’s where Danna and I are like well, let’s take a step back and look at the whole picture, where are these clusters of behaviors? Where are you getting dysregulated as a parent or caregiver or educator because of some of the challenges, but wait, don’t forget your kid has these awesome strengths. What are their interests? And then raising a child is hard. Raising a child with neurodiversity is really challenging. It is beautiful. The world thrives because of this diversity, and it is so taxing. So, I think continuing to do this dance of like, looking at the big picture, zooming in, zooming out. Danna’s talking about this like multi-generational family and how like the relationships, that relationship between parent, child, caregiver, educator with the child, that is the meat of where the tangible strategies, having that consistency, creating that structure, being clear, being consistent, having a plan for the day, setting up boundaries. None of that is going to work if you don’t like your kid and your kid knows it. And it’s not that you don’t love your kid, but you’re so frustrated with them that most of the time you’re like, “I don’t want to be around you.” Well, they don’t want to be around you, either. So they’re not going to follow the plan for the day. And it’s not going to be helpful.
So like taking a step back, zooming out, dancing back into like, how do we find play? How do we connect? When I’m getting so frustrated because the backpack is on the floor for the hundredth time, how do I realize, “Oh, this is my soft spot. I get upset when this happens. Self, go take some deep breaths and then remember the strategy.” Talk calm, talk clearly, be like, hey kiddo, we need to do this before we do this. So having the First, Then strategy is going to be helpful with implementing structure once you as a caregiver are calm and regulated. Otherwise you’re going to feed into that dysregulation that your child will feel because they always feel like they’re getting things wrong because they have this life living outside the lines, and they’re constantly told, live inside the lines.
I just kind of want to name the fact that we are dancing around these strategies because they’re not effective if you don’t take the bigger context into consideration at the same time.
Danna Torres, LMFT: You know what also comes to mind because you’re saying it, and I’m envisioning it. I’m a visual person, but when I work with parents, and the times that we have worked together with parents, one of the things we tell them is look at your support system. What does it entail? Because those are the people you’re going to lean on during these situations. I hear what Karly’s saying. She hears what I’m saying. I’m hearing what Cindy’s saying. We can Google these strategies, and they’re not working because it’s hard, and when I say it’s hard, it’s in the moment where we’re in it. We’re living the frustration, and we’ve tried a lot of things and you know, sometimes neurodiversity runs in the family. And so if the kid’s frustrated for maybe a sensory issue, right? Things are too loud. Things are moving too quickly. The food might taste a little off or they wanted more. They were told no. Something is going on, maybe sensory related that we can’t see and the parents over-stimulated as well. Who’s the other person? Who do we reach out to as parents? All right, when we’re thinking of the parent implementing these strategies, maybe there’s someone else in the home that can be the person to say, “Hey, let me tap in. Let me help. I’m seeing that this is taxing and let’s just trade for a little bit. You go do this other thing, and I’ll do this thing.” Maybe it’s emailing the teacher and saying, you know what, the homework, it’s not gonna happen. Let’s do something else.
What are some accommodations, right? If there’s accommodations in place, a lot of the times the pressure for us to live that expected lifestyle, that expected evening, what that evening should look like. It’s expected for someone, someone out there. I’ll give you the example. Feels like a jump, but it’s not. A Christmas tree. Christmas is coming. Some people will be able to put up a Christmas tree this year, and it’ll be fine. And there are a large amount of families out there who will not, because they are going to have to really evaluate whether their kid can deal with the lights, with the sound, if they’re gonna bring the whole tree down. The expectations that we set, that we feel that they should be meeting, or what our evening should look like, what our morning should look like. It doesn’t have to look like anything. We re-evaluate. We define what our evening looks like based on the needs of our family and our child. And maybe your evening looks a little different. Maybe you did half the homework. And maybe bath time is every other day, not every single day. Maybe you’re using dry shampoo every other day, and that’s okay. We’re moving forward at our own pace, and our evenings, our mornings, our routines are specific to our needs. I think that’s really important when we talk about parents and strategies, setting that expectation of what they’re expecting.
Cindy Lopez: I think what you just said is the strategies are great, but if you’re in the middle of an episode of dysregulation strategies kind of go out the window.
Danna Torres, LMFT: We want to bring these two things together, right? Sometimes we can use our strategies in the moment, we’ve got them down, and they come up organically. Other times we rely on our support system to help regulate or to help support, and then those strategies come into play. And part of that is also setting the expectation of what we think that evening or that moment should look like.
Karly Crockett, LCSW: And building off of that, I think there’s also this combination of tangible strategies, like, we have a structure. We use timers. We use a visual schedule. And then soft strategies, like being aware of my family dynamic, being insightful as a parent of my vulnerabilities. When do I get triggered? Learning more about my child to see how do we need to individualize this experience? That is a strategy. It’s not going to be like an instant strategy, like deep breathing is a strategy. Kids with ADHD, parents of children with ADHD absolutely could use emotion regulation skills. So I think we’re talking like big picture, this hand in hand dance of soft skills, compassion, curiosity, being willing to challenge as a caregiver my expectations of myself or our family dynamic because my child has unique needs, as well as these tangible skills of having routine, structure, being very clear with the like expectations and boundaries, using a lot of positive speech. So we’re combining the two in these different examples.
Cindy Lopez: So if you’re listening and you have a child with ADHD or you’re seeing some of these kinds of characteristics in your child, there are a lot of strategies and you can find them in our own Resource Library at CHC, chconline.org/resource library. You can go there and find strategies, but in general, like the ability to plan the day as Karly already said, visuals, setting clear boundaries, being positive, simplifying things down, instead of multi-step directions, give one step, all of those kinds of things, organization.
If you know your child’s going into a situation in which their impulsivity might be triggered or their dysregulation might be triggered, you know that ahead of time. So how can you make a plan for that?
I think what’s really valuable that Danna and Karly are saying here is like, the strategies are important, but sometimes you have to step away and whatever that looks like, go to another caregiver and see if you can get some help, go take a breath and see if you can come back.
So I’m wondering if you have any advice about what these parents and caregivers can do when there is not really the opportunity to step back, or there’s not another caregiver around to step in. You know, I think, we’ve all seen like, parents in the grocery store with kids who are like having a meltdown because they’re like, I wanted the cocoa Krispies and you’re making me eat, you know, bran.
Danna Torres, LMFT: Not the healthy stuff.
Cindy Lopez: Yeah. Not the healthy stuff. So do you have any advice for parents in those kinds of situations? In the moment, if there’s nothing else, they can’t step back then what are their options?
Karly Crockett, LCSW: I think it’s important to remember in those moments when you’re like, I can’t step back, that you can step back. It just may look different than what you’re thinking. Can you walk away from your screaming child in the grocery store? Probably not. They may not be safe. They may not be safe to themselves or others or things in the store. However, do you have to yell at them in that moment? No, you could take a step back by just not saying anything and saying, “Oh, before I interact with my child, I need to care for myself. I need to… okay. This isn’t a fire. This isn’t an emergency. I know that how I react in this moment is going to dictate how my child responds to me.” And so being aware and taking a moment to care for yourself is a strategy of stepping back so that you can better show up for your child and support them in regulating and following through with the expectation of the moment.
Danna Torres, LMFT: I was also thinking, along the same lines, of if we’re meeting people where they are, same scenario, and we’re not in a place where they can think through the answer. They can still do the exact same thing. It’s like talking yourself through something before it happens. If this happens at the store, I’m gonna not say anything. Hold it in, drop what I’m doing. I’m gonna leave my cart here. Somebody will put it back, no biggie, right? And I’m going to decide in this moment, am I staying or if I’m going back to my car? I bring up expectation because it’s really at the crux of a lot of our decisions.
If I’m expecting that my kid can make it through the Walmart run or the Target run, I might push them to stay, right? No. I’m making this purchase, and I’m going through like, let me just, let me just get this one thing. No, ma’am. No, sir. Let it go. Maybe depending on the reaction, depending on what we’re teaching, depending on where we are, sometimes we just leave it and we go. We take a moment to ourselves, and we sit in silence and just let it pass, right, before trying to talk ourselves through things.
Now the next step of that would be you’re in the store, and you’re making a conscious decision, what am I going to do? How do I want to run this play and for me when I work with parents it helps to just have those rules when we talk about baseline. If you’re not in a place to do those, one practice walking away, do that this week. If it feels uncomfortable, sit through the uncomfortability, because it was the best decision you could have made to de-escalate the situation, right? If you went to the store, made it to checkout, and then you had to leave? Again, like Karly had mentioned, that’s a soft spot. Maybe we need to practice that a little more because we are being observant of our reality, meeting the child where they are, meeting ourselves where we are and building from there. And if that’s where we’re at then then that’s where we’re at. The goal would be to make it to check out and make it back to the car in the next month or two.
Cindy Lopez: Karly and Danna, I think that you’ve offered some really valuable advice and guidance and really talked with authenticity and credibility. So, we appreciate that. As we wrap it up, what do you hope our listeners really hear from you today?
Karly Crockett, LCSW: I hope that our listeners hear that neurodiversity is both a blessing and a challenge for the person living with it and those in their life. And so, as a caregiver or as an educator, this may be a moment to pause and reflect on someone you’re thinking of as you’re listening to this and think about the things that are so special and unique to them and sit in the wonder of these person’s gifts and how they add to your life and enhance the community that they live in because that will not only build your relationship with them and build their sense of self-esteem. It also is a moment for you to say, “Wow, what a blessing for me to know this person.”
Danna Torres, LMFT: That was beautiful. What comes to mind for me along with what Karly said, connection is important, right? There are a lot of behavioral strategies out there. I’m sure that there’s coaching, executive functioning coaching, there’s a lot of support at the school, there’s community support, but that connection between the caregiver and the child, right, the adult and their support system. So important, so important for them to find a place where they belong, find the sport or the activity that they enjoy engaging in so that they feel like they’re connected with people because feeling connected that’s where you revert to right when you feel like maybe you’re not accepted or you’re not understanding what’s going on in your environment in this setting, you just move on to the other one, you’re like, but I love to play guitar. I love to play with the drums. I love to play soccer in the evenings or, you know, something not video games. That’s like over simulating sometimes as great as it is, but maybe I get together with my friends on a Friday and we play together, right? There’s people there that you feel connected to. That is gonna make a big difference with how they regulate, how they express how they feel and how parents, you know, ultimately connect with their kids.
Cindy Lopez: Everything that you shared, the reality and as Karly just said, the blessings of living with neurodiversity in your kids and family. So thank you so much, Karly and Danna. And to our listeners thank you for joining us. If you are a parent or caregiver and you have questions about what’s going on with your child or in your family, please feel free to reach out to CHC. You can reach us at chconline.org. We have free resources like this podcast, Voices of Compassion, also our free resource library. In addition, you can see specialists like Karly and Danna and take advantage of their guidance and advice and expertise. We also offer assessments, so feel free to reach out. You can reach our care team at careteam at chconline.org, or you can call us at 650-688-3625. So thank you all again for joining us today.
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