“I see a lot of women who probably have undiagnosed ADHD in this sport because we all gravitate toward this… and find that the repetition and structure of running works,” said Olympic marathon medalist Molly Seidel during her recent conversation with WebMD about barriers to mental health care for women. “A lot of people in elite sports, I think, do have something going on… Yeah, we’re all running from something.” (Seidel may be on to something, as some research suggests that ADHD may actually be more common in elite athletes than it is in the general population.)

For Seidel, that something is a late-life diagnosis of ADHD, along with comorbid obsessive compulsive disorder and eating disorders.

“This Is Never Going to Get Easier. And That’s OK.”

It took Seidel years, and a lot of work, to figure out how to manage her conditions, and to find the self-care systems and strategies that are most beneficial for her. She likens this work to her training as a runner, and emphasizes that both are ongoing.

“I think a lot of people assume that I’m a lot more naturally talented than I actually am at this sport. I’m really not,” she said, emphasizing that her success is a product of hard work and dedication. “It’s that consistent, day-to-day work that has translated exactly into my mental health, my realizing that it’s OK that I’m going to have to work at this every day… I also have to wake up every day and brush my teeth, and I’m not expecting that if I brush my teeth enough, I’m never going to have to do it again.”

Seidel’s sharp understanding of herself and what she needs to be at her best every day echoes the advice of Dawn Brown, M.D., a sports psychologist and ADHD specialist who recently hosted the ADDitude webinar, “How to Leverage Sports Psychology to Benefit ADHD Brains:”

“We should adapt to how our brain, our minds are created, meaning we have to find accommodations and strategies that are in line with how our ADHD brains respond to performance and productivity,” Brown said.

Though Seidel has developed effective methods for managing her mental health conditions, she says their impact on her life is far from static. “There are times where these things are very manageable for me,” she shares. “And there are other times when it takes over my entire life.”

Mindfulness and Other Self-Care Strategies

Mindfulness is the lynchpin of Seidel’s daily routine. “I operate on a very high-strung, very over-stimulated level, and I struggle with coming down,” she said. “Being able to decompress, come down from that, [by using] various breathing and calming techniques has been absolutely vital for me. That is something that I have to do every day, multiple times a day.”

Mindfulness, she said, “is about really focusing on lowering the temperature in the system and lowering the breath rate…so that I can come back to almost like a baseline level.”

Mindfulness, like other relaxation techniques, is part of optimal mental performance conditioning — “what great athletes practice,” according to Dr. Brown.

Recovery and Structure Outside the Track

What happens outside her running shoes is just as important for Seidel’s overall mental health and performance, she said.

“I need to have stuff outside that I’m working on,” she said. “Being able to have some sort of structured time and structured assignments is really mentally healthy for me.” Seidel is pursuing an MBA through DeVry University’s Keller School of Management. “It’s nice having something else outside of running to focus on.”

Another important self-care lesson Seidel has learned as a professional athlete: Healing — both physical and mental — is not a luxury, but a necessity. “Recovery is a huge part of my job,” she says. “And I’ve found that it is just enormously helpful for what I do, and for being able to manage not only just life, but a higher level of training.”

Athletes and Self-Care with ADHD: Next Steps

• Read & Watch: “Maybe I’m Not Just Thoroughly Messed Up:” Olympian Molly Seidel On Her Late ADHD Diagnosis
• Read & Watch: “Athletes are Real People with Real Mental Health Issues”
• Webinar: How to Leverage Sports Psychology to Benefit ADHD Brains
• Read: Olympians, Professional Athletes, and Sports Legends with ADHD

SUPPORT ADDITUDE
Thank you for reading ADDitude. To support our mission of providing ADHD education and support, please consider subscribing. Your readership and support help make our content and outreach possible. Thank you.

Half of all women with ADHD receive a misdiagnosis or an incomplete diagnosis before finally identifying and treating their attention deficit disorder. This staggering statistic, revealed in a recent ADDitude survey of 2,760 women, confirms the anecdotal reports we hear often of medical gaslighting, distrust of self, unnecessary suffering, delayed treatment — and the grave consequences of each.

“I was misdiagnosed and received treatment that did not help me,” wrote one survey respondent misdiagnosed with depression and anxiety. “This led to me never getting better and ending up having a mental breakdown before I got my proper ADHD diagnosis 10 years later.”

“I believe if, instead of being diagnosed with bipolar 2 (cyclothymia), anxiety, and depression, I had been appropriately diagnosed with ADHD and given coping skills and treatment for that, my life would be completely different,” wrote another ADDitude reader.

“Antidepressants worked for a while, but my anger and frustration flare-ups were still an issue,” wrote a woman diagnosed with ADHD in her 50s. “Eventually, the antidepressants didn’t work anymore and I hit bottom… By the time I was diagnosed with ADHD, I was on long-term disability and felt I had no control over my life.”

The reasons for incomplete or inaccurate diagnosis range from outdated ADHD and gender stereotypes to low self-esteem and self-trust, seeded by years of criticism for unrecognized and untreated symptoms of ADHD, according to ADDitude‘s Women’s Health Month survey.

“Not being able to verbalize my emotions well continues to be a difficulty, likely due to not being able to trust my own emotions, whether they are valid or an under or over reaction,” wrote an ADDitude reader misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder. “In my opinion, this led to being misdiagnosed.”

This prevalent and debilitating roadblock to an ADHD diagnosis was a topic of discussion with Olympic marathon medalist Molly Seidel during her recent conversation with WebMD about barriers to mental health care for women.

“I wish that I had been more vocal about exactly how I was feeling earlier, because we might have gotten to the solution a lot earlier,” said Seidel, a world-class professional runner who was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and eating disorders before finally receiving an ADHD diagnosis a few years ago. “Especially as women, a lot of us are willing to almost gaslight ourselves by saying, ‘Oh it’s not really that bad.’ And then you look objectively at it, and you’re like, ‘No, this is objectively pretty bad and there has to be a better way to live than this.’”

For Seidel, an ADHD diagnosis was nothing short of life changing.

“My diagnosis came with such a sense of relief from knowing, Oh my God, there is a reason why I feel the way I feel. Maybe I’m not just thoroughly messed up and thoroughly a terrible person. My brain just works a little bit differently,” said Seidel, who earned the bronze medal in the Olympic marathon in Japan. “That diagnosis was the most freeing thing and the thing that has gotten me to the place that I am now.”

“What it took me years to figure out is that, if you are just trying to treat the symptoms and not addressing the underlying causes, it will just tend to jump from diagnosis to diagnosis to diagnosis,” said Seidel, who reported that she’s “in a much better and more stable place than I’ve been in a long time.”

Seidel’s ADHD treatment plan today includes mindful meditation, fine-tuned nutrition, miles upon miles of exercise, and therapy.

“Ultimately, the point of therapy is learning to have a better relationship with your own brain and understanding the mechanisms by which your brain works,”she said. “That has been the biggest thing in becoming more confident and trusting myself.”

ADHD Diagnosis in Women: Next Steps

• Self-Test: ADHD Symptoms in Women and Girls
• Read: Why ADHD in Girls Is Often Overlooked
• Read: Why Women with ADHD Feel Disempowered — And What We Can Do About It

SUPPORT ADDITUDE
Thank you for reading ADDitude. To support our mission of providing ADHD education and support, please consider subscribing. Your readership and support help make our content and outreach possible. Thank you.

These are just three of the nearly 33,000 comments posted on “The Difference Between an ADHD ‘Actor’ and a Person Who Truly Has It,” a one-minute-long TikTok video by @xmaaniiix, a young Hawaiian with 290,000 followers but no formal training in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Still, her personal and engaging video has received 2.2 million likes — nearly as staggering as the 2.6 million likes showered on “ADHD in Girls,” a video by self-proclaimed “mental-health advocate” @peterhyphen. His collection of #ADHD videos has garnered an impressive 9.7 million likes, though he cites no sources and likewise has no medical credentials.

How #ADHD Caught Fire on TikTok

The #ADHD channel on TikTok — the social media platform comprising short video clips of coordinated dances, hopeful singers, and bored quaranteens — now boasts 2.4 billion views. Yes, billion. TikTok has 1 billion active users in 150 countries, including roughly 100 million Americans every month. Its popularity and a flood of new content posted during the pandemic has caused an undeniable spike in ADHD awareness, particularly among adolescents and young adults.

At best, ADHD TikTok destigmatizes mental disorders, fosters community, and makes life-changing research accessible to a new demographic. At worst, it leads to dangerous self-diagnosis, overwhelms unqualified content creators with direct requests for help, and perpetuates untruths that further stigmatize individuals with ADHD.

The question with which ADHD professionals and caregivers are grappling today is this: Do the benefits of #ADHDTikTok outweigh its risks, or vice versa?

[Download: An Ethics Manual for Your Teen’s Electronics]

Benefit #1: TikTok Makes ADHD Strategies Accessible

The cadre of ADHD TikTokers includes comic illustrator Dani Donovan, chef and podcast co-host Erik Gude, and psychology and neuroscience student @ADHaDult, among many others. Most creators don’t monetize their content; they share personal anecdotes and other people’s research. But some do link to PayPal or Venmo accounts for donations and some even become ambassadors for their mental illness.

Though in fewer numbers, licensed psychiatrists and therapists do contribute their ADHD-expertise to TikTok as well. Dr. Edward Hallowell, an esteemed ADHD psychiatrist and author, began posting daily “NedTalks” on TikTok last September, after a friend convinced him the 60-second format perfectly suited an ADHD audience. Since then, @drhallowell has earned over 4.5 million views and nearly 100,000 followers.

“I have patients saying they’re addicted to TikTok, so I wanted to find out what this was,” Dr. Hallowell said. “It was a lot of very entertaining, imaginative and creative content — it was like an ADHD field that was very fertile.”

[Expert Answers: Dear Teen Parenting Coach]

Dr. Hallowell offers quick bits of advice for dealing with frustration, managing chaos, and remembering to eat breakfast. He says his goal is to help viewers who identify with his videos, and to encourage those with undiagnosed and/or untreated ADHD to seek professional help.

“I’m trying to do a service to educate the public,” Dr. Hallowell said. “[ADHD] is a good news diagnosis! Not knowing you have it is the real danger… then you don’t know why your best efforts don’t succeed.”

Risk #1: TikTok Confuses Content Creators with Experts

Peter Wallerich-Neils, of the popular @peterhyphen, is a 31-year-old retail manager from Tacoma, Washington. He made ADHD his dominant theme last June, after his “Symptoms of ADHD I Wish I’d Known About Sooner” series went viral, garnering 6.4 million views. More than 65,800 people commented on his video about ADHD in girls, which highlights symptoms of predominantly inattentive type ADHD such as daydreaming and misunderstood symptoms like emotional dysregulation.

“All of a sudden, a ton of people who have ADHD or who weren’t diagnosed with ADHD and thought maybe they had it, saw me speaking up about something that they realize is a part of their everyday life,” said Wallerich-Neils, who has received thousands of messages from viewers thanking him — and many also asking for medical advice.

Catie Osborn is a 32-year-old actor whose @catieosaurus video series presents research on topics that fall outside the mainstream, such as the link between ADHD and comorbid disorders like anxiety, mood and eating disorders, chronic pain, and sexual dysfunction.

“Nobody ever told me that people with ADHD have a higher likelihood of having eating disorders or being predisposed to addiction,” Osborn said. “That is information that should be on the front page of the brochure, not something that some random person on TikTok tells you in 15 seconds!”

Osborn said she receives about 100 direct messages every day, mostly from teenagers who lack a support system or worry about talking to their doctors and parents.

“Some days it gets really hard,” she said. “I get Instagram messages at two o’clock in the morning from people who are like, ‘I’m thinking about killing myself, are you awake?’ and I’m just like, ‘Yeah, but I’m not qualified to handle this.’”

Risk #2: TikTok Oversimplifies ADHD, Posing a Health Risk

Suicide ideation or intention requires immediate professional help, said Dr. Roberto Olivardia, ADHD psychologist and instructor at Harvard Medical School. Having ADHD alone increases the risk for suicide, but 20% of people with ADHD also experience mood disorder, and about 20% experience bipolar disorder.

Certain symptoms such as fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and under-stimulation are common attributes of both depression and ADHD. Similarly, sleep problems, hyperfocus, impulsivity and emotional dysregulation overlap with mania symptoms in bipolar disorder. Thus it’s common for ADHD to be misdiagnosed as a mood disorder, and vice versa.

“When untreated, symptoms of both ADHD and the mood disorder will be much more severe than if someone just has one of those diagnoses,” Dr. Olivardia said.

Matthew Haring, a psychologist at North Shore Center for ADHD in Chicago, said his adult patients almost all have a comorbid diagnosis like anxiety or depression. Parsing out, identifying, and effectively treating those ADHD comorbidities must begin with a formal comprehensive assessment, he said.

“An informal diagnosis can explain a lot of people’s symptoms in a way that comforts them,” Haring said. “But it skips over all the steps needed to really target and treat the underlying cause.”

Many TikTokers speak openly (and often comically) about their comorbid diagnoses. But #adhdcheck and #adhdtiktok videos simply repeat information from other TikToks by non-professionals, and fail to address the nuances of the condition.

“There is no regulation of what people say on TikTok, so lots of false information can be spread with a tone of authority,” Dr. Olivardia said. “It may be a call to action to professionals to enter the TikTok space to establish authority on ADHD information.”

Benefit #2: TikTok Shatters Mental Health Stigma

Kyra Steck, then a sophomore at Northwestern University, was diagnosed with ADHD in late 2019. A few months later, just as the university sent students home because of COVID-19, she started a new medication that helps her concentrate – but sometimes on the wrong things.

“Instead of being focused on my work, I was hyperfocusing on COVID cases rising in my area,” Steck said.

But then a friend showed her a TikTok video about hyperfocus and she saw her behavior not as a personal fault but as a symptom of her ADHD. “My friends started asking me about my symptoms and testing experience because, all of a sudden, their ‘For You’ pages on TikTok, were filled with these videos,” she said. A trending hashtag was making people curious to learn more about mental health.

Fiona Devlin, a sophomore physics major at Texas A&M University, suspected she had ADHD for two years but only sought an official diagnosis last November. A few months earlier, she discovered “Neurodivergent TikTok,” which includes videos on ADHD, autism, dyslexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and Tourette syndrome.

“The more videos I saw, I was like, wait a minute — I kind of relate to ADHD a bit too much for me to just be in the center Venn diagram,” she said. “Maybe this is something I should see a professional about.”

Like many young adults with ADHD, Devlin’s struggles became more obvious when she left home for college and got a part-time job. She was habitually late for work due to difficulty gauging time and working memory problems. After watching TikTok, she recognized these struggles as potential symptoms of ADHD and sought a formal evaluation.

Risk #3: TikTok Perpetuates ADHD Stereotypes and Stigmas

Despite her happy ending, Devlin thinks most ADHD TikToks do more harm than good. Her concern is shared by many ADHD professionals: Many young people are self-diagnosing based on superficial characteristics and untrue stereotypes, failing to recognize ADHD as a serious disorder that requires professional medical help.

“It can just be frustrating how everyone suddenly starts claiming they have something that they do not actually have,” Devlin said. “Then other people are like, ‘[ADHD is] not that bad…’ when in reality, if those things aren’t treated, it can be very harmful to your life.”

Popular #ADHD videos from the likes of nutrition and fitness influencer @chalenejohnson, frenetic @itsfred, and choreographed @threedotcoreymay emphasize hyperactive traits such as talking very fast, constant distraction, or excessive fidgeting — or they highlight traits that aren’t actual ADHD symptoms.

“What I have typically observed are videos where ADHD gets used so loosely and the person most likely does not have ADHD,” Dr. Olivardia said. “Being excited or bubbly does not mean you have ADHD. These videos do a disservice to people who truly have ADHD. It lends to lowering credibility of the diagnosis.”

Lady Taylor, a sophomore art major at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, has confronted misinformation in the comment section of her painting videos. In response, she posted a 30-second video explaining: “My ADHD is so severe that it is a disability… If I didn’t have medication, I wouldn’t be able to go to college or get a job. I’d have to live with my parents the rest of my life.”

The video soared to one million views within a week, but she never meant for something so personal to go viral. One person wrote, “Wow, they really making anything a disability now,” while another insisted that she had inattentive, not hyperactive, ADHD.

“I only talked about certain aspects of ADHD, and people thought that’s all it was,” Taylor said. “And people were diagnosing themselves, and I thought that was dangerous.”

Still, Dr. Hallowell said that the pros of the ADHD TikTok trend far outweigh its cons.

“The only danger of information on any platform, is that it is wrong information,” he said. “But that’s the danger for the entire Internet. If you identify with the symptoms of ADHD, it’s up to the professional to screen out the people who don’t have it. It’s not up to the viewer.”

ADHD TikToks on Our Short List

• @adhdcoachsheila
• @catieosaurus
• @drhallowell
• @dr.kojosarfo
• @howtoadhd
• @loloelizabeth
• @stina905
• @thepsychdoctormd
• @youradhdmom

More Mental Health TikToks

• @5hahem
• @dhoardlmft
• @drpatriceberry
• @h_e_z_y_helps?
• @lesleypsyd
• @lindsay.fleminglpc
• @doctorshepard_md

TikTok and Beyond: Next Steps

• Read: Are Screen Limits Even Possible During the Pandemic?
• Watch: How to Help Quaranteens Learning at Home
• Use: The Social Media Guide for Teens with ADHD

SUPPORT ADDITUDE
Thank you for reading ADDitude. To support our mission of providing ADHD education and support, please consider subscribing. Your readership and support help make our content and outreach possible. Thank you.

Social skills in kids with ADHD are almost universally misunderstood. For example, parents and professionals often say to me, “He misses social cues.” But that’s actually not accurate for most kids with ADHD who have social learning challenges, meaning they have not learned social information intuitively from a young age to the same extent as their peers.

Lagging perspective-taking skills — this is the foundation of these social learning challenges. Kids with ADHD have difficulty thinking about others’ thoughts and understanding how they come across to others. This is a result of their lagging self-directed talk, or “brain coach,” as I call it.

In early elementary school, lagging perspective-taking skills looks like:

• Wanting to control play situations
• Being bossy
• Having trouble engaging in reciprocal play

Around age 10 or 11, social learning challenges become more noticeable because becoming part of a same-gender peer group becomes important to more kids and social expectations increase. This is when most parents reach out to me because they realize this has not improved with age.

Manifestations of Social Learning Challenges

Kids with ADHD who struggle socially because of lagging perspective-taking skills often don’t understand why their peers may reacts negatively to them. As a result, they may think other kids are being mean to them or they are being bullied. In reality, most of the time, their words or behaviors elicited a negative response. I call this “cringe-y thoughts.”

Another reason why kids with ADHD struggle socially is because of poor situational awareness, or reading the field. If your son ever walked into the street without looking, it was because he wasn’t using situational awareness. I often find that kids do fine in structured social situations, but have difficulty reading the field in unstructured or semi-structured situations.

How to Address Social Learning Challenges

Social learning challenges are a learning issue, not a mental health issue.

Counseling or talk therapy is not going to effectively address social learning challenges. A social skills group may have been recommended to you by a professional, but please know that the research shows social skills groups are not effective for kids with ADHD and that is certainly the case for the vast majority of families with whom I work.

WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW FOR MORE

Social Learning Challenges: Next Steps

• Watch: The Top 10 Manifestations of ADHD in Boys
• Understand: Will My Child Ever Have a Best Friend?
• Read: How To Make Friends: A Guide For Kids with ADHD (And Their Parents, Too)

Ryan Wexelblatt, LCSW is the facilitator of the ADHD Dude Facebook Group and YouTube channel. Ryan specializes in working with males (ages 5-22) who present with ADHD, anxiety with ADHD, and learning differences.

Submit your questions about ADHD in boys here!

“ADHD was made up by big pharma.”

“There was no such thing as ADHD when I was her age!”

“ADHD is just an excuse to get drugs.”

Unqualified, uneducated people seldom hesitate to spout ‘facts’ to prove you (or your child) cannot possibly have ADHD. Does it matter what these people think? Absolutely not. But that doesn’t mean that dismissive, nasty, know-it-alls can’t undermine your self-esteem and your trust in your diagnosis.

You have a limited energy reserve; don’t waste your precious time and creativity arguing endlessly with people who are willfully ignorant about ADHD. At the same time, when myths aren’t rebutted or debunked, they get to live on and on. It isn’t your job to educate everybody, but it is important to be able to defend yourself. Here are the six strategies that I use with people who doubt or judge my ADHD diagnosis, ranked in order from least to most effective.

Strategy 1: Fight Back (Effectiveness Score: 1/10)

Refute, rebut, or demolish their statement with facts. Quote studies and statistics. Talk about neurology. Give the history of the disorder. Name famous people with ADHD.

Strategy 2: Play Dumb (Effectiveness Score: 4/10)

Expose their statements (opinions or beliefs) by asking simple, naïve questions:

“ADHD is way over-diagnosed? Really?! By how much? What are the diagnosis levels today and what should they be?”

Strategy 3: Seek Clarification (Effectiveness Score: 7/10)

When someone claims that ADHD isn’t real, ask them, “What about DRD4.7? DRD4.7 was the first gene that was identified as being a suspect for ADHD.” This a fact that most ADHD doubters won’t know.

Strategy 4: Concede a Point That May be True (Effectiveness Score: 8/10)

If someone argues that college students are faking ADHD in order to get stimulant medications, you can say, “Yes, some do fake ADHD to try to get an advantage, and that really hurts the students who really need medication to regulate their neurochemistry.”

Strategy 5: Been There Done That (Effectiveness Score: 9/10)

When a person argues that ADHD is just a manifestation of poor diet and poor parenting, begin by agreeing that this is, indeed, a very popular misconception — one you actually believed, too. And then you began actually educating yourself, and you learned the truth.

“Yes! That’s exactly what I thought. Then I found out…”

Strategy 6: Say Nothing

Remember, not everyone is trying to hurt or humiliate you. The Internet is overflowing with scary myths and, yes, real medication abuse does exist. They may actually be deeply concerned about your welfare; don’t assume they are not.

Learn More About How to Respond to ADHD Naysayers

1. Read: How to Respond To ADHD Haters and Naysayers
2. Download: Your Free Guide to Responding To ADHD Doubters
3. Listen: The ADHD Guide to Fighting Stigma: How To Defend Your Diagnosis and Build Your Self-Esteem

The content for this article was derived from the ADDitude webinar, “The ADHD Guide to Fighting Stigma” by Rick Green, which broadcast live on May 26, 2020.

SUPPORT ADDITUDE
To support ADDitude’s mission of providing ADHD education and support, please consider subscribing. Your readership and support help make our content and outreach possible. Thank you.

Q: “How do we tell the difference between bullying and ‘ribbing?’ Our 5th grade son is very sensitive and emotional. He complains about being bullied and has few friends. But we’re seeing a different pattern. It seems like other boys take digs at him, possibly in that shared male language of ribbing each other. Our son then blows up, screaming and crying, identifying himself as the ‘weird’ kid — after which, the bullying begins in earnest. How can we — parents, teachers, AND our son — get better at figuring out when other boys are teasing to connect vs. teasing to hurt?”

A: “There are two things you need to do to help your son discern the difference between friendly ribbing and bullying. First, we need to teach him context of relationships… The other thing we need to help him understand is his social history with individuals. This can be difficult for kids with ADHD due to poor episodic memory…”

WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW FOR THE FULL ANSWER

ADHD and Bullying: Next Steps

1. Read This: How to Stop the Cycle of Bullying
2. Take Action: What To Do If Your Child Is Being Bullied
3. Address Behaviors: 5 Things To Do If Your Child Is the Bully
4. Download This: Free Guide to Improving Your Child’s Social Skills

Ryan Wexelblatt, LCSW is the facilitator of the ADHD Dude Facebook Group and YouTube channel.

Submit your questions about ADHD in boys here!

Your child with attention deficit disorder (ADHD or ADD) tells you she hates reading. But really she’s just frustrated, and emotionally wiped out by its difficulty.

When reading is mentally taxing and unenjoyable, kids avoid it – and often develop reading anxiety.

Help your child learn to enjoy a good story with the tips in this video.

1. Choose books about your child’s interests.

If your child is a Pokémon fanatic, pick up the latest Pikachu novel.

Books need not be educational to build literacy skills.

2. Be open to graphic novels.

Though filled with artwork, these texts have narrative passages and dialogue bubbles on every page.

Their total word count is lower, but graphic novels can be a confidence-building step toward longer texts.

3. Use audiobooks effectively.

Hearing a story alleviates the mental burden of interpreting the words on the page, while still building language skills.

Audiobooks allow listeners to practice the same language processing skills that visual reading does.

4. Pair books with their movie version.

Let kids watch the movie first, then read the book.

Knowing the plot and characters in advance can make the novel easier to digest and interpret.

5. Take them to the library.

Set your children free to wander the stacks and pick a book — or eight. It’s so much more fun than looking up titles and summaries online.

Learn More About How to Reduce Reading Anxiety

1. Read: Beef Up Reading Skills
2. Download: Apps & Extensions That Improve Productivity and Learning
3. Podcast: Beyond Dyslexia: Overcoming Reading Challenges for Kids with ADHD
4. Blog: “How My Dyslexic Son Fell Out of Love with Books and How I Brought Him Back”

Standard productivity advice says, “If a task will only take 2 minutes, drop everything and complete that task now.” That “2-minute rule” doesn’t work for adults with attention deficit disorder (ADHD or ADD). Why?

Your weak working memory makes it hard to remember to go back to your original goal when the 2 minute task is complete. Your difficulty transitioning between tasks adds 10, 15, even 20 minutes to any multi-tasking endeavor. Instead of stopping what you planned to do, carry a notebook and add items to your “catch-all” to-do list, and set a point in the day or week to revisit those tasks.

In the above video, from her ADDitude webinar titled “ADD-Friendly Productivity Strategies for Adults with ADHD,” Linda Walker, explains how to stop procrastinating and be more efficient.

Learn More About How to Stop Procrastinating Without the “2-Minute Rule:”

1. Read: Everyone Has a Productivity Zone. Here’s How to Find Yours.
2. Download: 19 Ways to Meet Deadlines and Get Things Done
3. Slideshow: Are You Time Blind? 12 Ways to Use Every Hour Effectively
4. Blog: Why My ADHD Brain (and Yours) Loves to “Complexify” Things

10 Clutter Solutions That Reduce Stress

For adults with attention deficit disorder (ADHD), housework is the first thing to slide when you are feeling overwhelmed.

You’re too busy, upset, or rushed to tidy up. So the clutter mounts. And that only makes a bad mood worse.

Outer order can bring inner calm. So try 10 clutter solutions every day to keep your house and mind balanced:

1. Make your bed.
2. Put your dirty clothes in the hamper.
3. Hang up your bath towel.
4. Keep magazines and books where they belong.
5. Shut all drawers, cabinet doors, and closets.
6. Pick up the mail, sort it, recycle junk mail, and put important mail in its proper place.
7. Put dirty dishes in the dishwasher or the sink.
8. Deal with your recycling.
9. Keep a bag handy for things you want to give away. Drop it at a thrift store whenever it is full.
10. Hang up your coat.

Learn More About Clutter Solutions That Reduce Stress:

1. Self Test: Is Your Clutter and Disorganization Out of Control?
2. Download: 22 Clutter-Busting Strategies that Reduce Stress for Adults with ADHD
3. Reader Advice: How to Declutter Your Home with Adult ADHD
4. Blog: 10 Decluttering Tips
5. Listen to:  “ADHD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life, Now!” with Judith Kolberg

Q: “My son has a propensity to smother other boys when he makes a new friend. He goes overboard, so the friends tend to pull away and then he feels very rejected and makes self-defeating comments. How can we help him?”

A: “Kids with attention deficit disorder (ADHD or ADD) tend to be sensitive in general. They feel emotions stronger. They feel a lot of empathy for others… So they find a new friend, then smother him because they are so excited to have a new friend and they don’t want to lose him. They do this, in part, because they have trouble with perspective taking and how they appear to others…”

WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW FOR THE FULL ANSWER

Ryan Wexelblatt, LCSW is the facilitator of the ADHD Dude Facebook Group and YouTube channel. Ryan specializes in working with males (ages 5-22) who present with ADHD, anxiety with ADHD, and learning differences; he is the one professional in the United States who specializes in teaching social cognitive skills to boys from a male perspective.

Submit your questions about ADHD in boys here!

Q: “My son (9 years old with ADHD) has had trouble since he was a toddler with entertaining himself. He always needs to be playing with myself or someone else (of his preference). If he isn’t, he wanders around the house and ‘can’t find anything to do.’ What activities can he do alone that will keep his attention and that aren’t electronics? What have you found success with in the past? With summer coming up, this becomes a huge issue as I can’t be entertaining him all day everyday.”

A: “The Number One reason why kids with ADHD have trouble tolerating boredom is faulty non-verbal working memory — or your ability to visualize doing a task in the future. If you cannot visualize yourself doing a task, that is going to make it difficult for you to complete a goal and visualize things to do when you are bored. So this is the strategy that I teach kids for this…”

Ryan Wexelblatt, LCSW is the facilitator of the ADHD Dude Facebook Group and YouTube channel. Ryan specializes in working with males (ages 5-22) who present with ADHD, anxiety with ADHD, and learning differences; he is the one professional in the United States who specializes in teaching social cognitive skills to boys from a male perspective.

Submit your questions about ADHD in boys here!

Q: “When my son’s emotions begin escalating and he’s getting more and more upset about something, it seems nothing that I do or say helps to calm him down. What can I do in these situations to help him?”

A: “As parents, we have a propensity to try to calm our kids by talking them down. But what you need to remember is that, when they are in that state, they can’t hear and they can’t learn. Instead, my suggestion to parents is this: When your son is escalating, reduce your words by 80 percent…”

Ryan Wexelblatt, LCSW is the facilitator of the ADHD Dude Facebook Group and YouTube channel. Ryan specializes in working with males (ages 5-22) who present with ADHD, anxiety with ADHD, and learning differences; he is the one professional in the United States who specializes in teaching social cognitive skills to boys from a male perspective.

Submit your questions about ADHD in boys here!

“I’m a grown-up but my emotional outbursts make me feel like a child. It’s hard to be taken seriously.”

The emotional dysregulation of ADHD is all about extremes, and going from one extreme emotion to another. It’s about being happy, and then sad. It’s about being furious, and then not-so-furious. The roller coaster of feelings can be very difficult to manage internally, and in relationships with others.

When relationships suffer, it’s easy to internalize the judgement of others, and become ashamed of who we are as a person. It’s an ADHD trait that contributes greatly to the condition.

In the video, from her ADDitude webinar titled “The Adult Guide to Shedding ADHD Shame,” Linda Roggli, PCC, explains how our extreme emotions can make us feel ashamed.

Learn More About the Emotional Dysregulation of ADHD:

1. Take This Test: Could You Have Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria?
2. Take This Test: Could You Have Emotional Hyperarousal?
3. Top Article: 3 Defining Features of ADHD That Everyone Overlooks
4. Download 15 Ways to Disarm (and Understand) Explosive ADHD Emotions
5. Watch How ADHD Amplifies Emotions
6. Read After the Shame: How to Re-Center Your Bruised Emotions
7. Listen to  “Emotions and ADHD: What Clinicians Need to Know for Accurate Diagnosis” with William Dodson, M.D.

Q: “What kinds of summer camps work best for boys with ADHD?”

A: “I do not like seeing kids with ADHD go to one-week camps. If you have social learning challenges — difficulty making friends and connecting with other kids — it takes you a week just to get used to the camp program and routine, and then you are done. One-week camps are usually not the best choice for the guys I work with, but I’ll tell you what I do like…”

Ryan Wexelblatt, LCSW is the facilitator of the ADHD Dude Facebook Group and YouTube channel. Ryan specializes in working with males (ages 5-22) who present with ADHD, anxiety with ADHD, and learning differences; he is the one professional in the United States who specializes in teaching social cognitive skills to boys from a male perspective.

Submit your questions about ADHD in boys here!

Q: “What can we do to lessen the lying that happens over everything from ‘Have you brushed your teeth?’ To ‘How are you getting on with your science project?’ I have always had high value for honesty, so I find the frequent fibbing to be really troubling.” — NLparent

A: “When your child lies, it’s impulsive. He’s not doing it maliciously or because he lacks a moral compass or because you haven’t taught him good values. He’s lying for a few reasons: One, it was the easiest answer to come out and then rather than correcting himself, he feels ashamed and just keeps going…”

WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW FOR THE FULL ANSWER

Ryan Wexelblatt, LCSW is the facilitator of the ADHD Dude Facebook Group and YouTube channel. Ryan specializes in working with males (ages 5-22) who present with ADHD, anxiety with ADHD, and learning differences; he is the one professional in the United States who specializes in teaching social cognitive skills to boys from a male perspective.

Submit your questions about ADHD in boys here!