In My Head: ADHD And Parenting

Welcome to In My Head - a lecture series about ADHD and all things related to mental and emotional wellbeing. In this talk, I tackle the topic of Parenting. What it's like to parent neurodiverse children, being a neurodiverse human myself, and what supports and tools I use to make parenting a little bit easier. Why it's important to work within, and know, your window of tolerance, circle of control and how modeling these behaviours teaches your kiddos that advocating for what their brain needs is really important.

Transcript

Hi,

Hello,

How are you?

Welcome to In My Head,

A new series of talks that I'm going to be giving on Insight Timer,

Specifically related to mental health and emotional well-being.

My name is Shanna Moyer.

I'm a mental health counselor,

An ADHD management specialist,

And a trauma support specialist based out of London,

Ontario.

I'm also a human who exists with late-diagnosed ADHD,

And I'm a parent of two neuro-spicy ADHDers.

I know a thing or two about how the brain works,

Why we are the way we are,

And how the world just has not been created with neurodiverse humans in mind.

So my hope with this new series of lectures here at Insight Timer is that you will take away one little sliver,

One nugget,

Every single time,

That helps you understand your brain and helps you embrace who you are.

Welcome to the episode where we talk about parenting.

Being a neurodiverse human,

Parenting small human beings who happen to also be neurodiverse.

I am a human that exists with inattentive ADHD,

So I can get lost in a thought,

I can have a thousand thoughts going on in my brain all at one time.

I can also jump to conclusions,

I have a really wicked sense of rejection sensitivity,

And I'm forgetful.

I forget things all the time.

My two children,

My youngest,

Is autistic with defiance,

So a pathological demand-avoidance profile,

PDA,

And has combined ADHD,

Which means he is hyperactive and inattentive.

He forgets things all the time,

But he is driven by a motor and loves repetition.

My older child is inattentive like his mama.

What is it like to parent within those systems,

And how hard is it?

Newsflash,

It's difficult either way.

Parenting is a whole ballgame and a comedy of errors that nobody could ever possibly prepare you for.

There are twists and turns,

Curveballs,

Dead ends.

Parenting is something that is so individual,

And depending on how you were raised,

The systems you were raised in,

How much support your parents had to parent you,

Is really going to pave the way forward for you as a parent.

My parenting origin story started with losing my dad in 2005.

I hadn't yet had children then.

My first child wouldn't be born for another five years,

But when I lost my dad,

I was very overwhelmed by the amount of neglect that I had received earlier on in my childhood.

I was raised primarily by my dad,

Mentally,

Emotionally,

Physically.

My mom wasn't really there,

So I didn't have a motherhood relationship to build my sense of parenting off of.

I started modeling my parenting more so on what I didn't get than what I was shown.

I always wanted to be the parent that showed up for their kids,

Was at the school assemblies,

Was there cheering along the sideboards,

Knocking on the glass during a hockey game,

Was there to emotionally be with them in times of trouble,

Sit with them and enjoy movies that I would have enjoyed with my dad.

I always wanted to be that parent,

But I was undiagnosed at that time.

I didn't know then that overstimulation by repetitive sound,

A baby crying,

Would send me into a panic attack.

I didn't know that that was why.

I didn't know that that was just a part of my ADHD and how my brain worked then.

Fast forward to being 40 years old and my kids being 12 and,

Oh I have to do some quick math,

12 and 8 at the time when I was diagnosed with an attentive ADHD and oppositional defiance disorder,

And it made a lot of sense why I parented the way that I did in their early years of childhood.

Even still,

I get overstimulated by noise.

It's not uncommon in my home for there to be something on the television,

Usually sports,

Probably baseball,

A child watching something or playing a game on their tablet or the Nintendo Switch,

Music playing in the background,

And multiple conversations happening at one time.

What do you think that does to a human's brain who has auditory overstimulation?

Sometimes I feel like I'm going to explode and sometimes I do.

I lash out and I get angry and I'm quick with my words.

Other times I reach in my pocket for my earbuds and I take the music out of the speakers that are overhead in the house and put them in my ears so it drowns out the noise and also regulates my brain.

Sometimes it's turning on a soundscape from one of the instructors here at Insight Timer and other times it's just listening to instrumental covers of pop songs.

Overstimulation as a parent happens regularly on a good day whether you have ADHD or not,

But those symptoms and those triggers and those responses are so much bigger when you're dealing with children who need that sensory input,

Who need to be watching two things at once because that's how their brain works and in this house we honour that.

But as the human who needs quiet to process the world around so that I can show up and fulfill their emotional needs,

That's really overstimulating.

So what do I do?

I have my earbuds in my pocket pretty much all the time but I also have ear plugs called loops.

They're a great invention that really they have different varieties and different types of them but what they do is they help reduce the decibels in your environment so that yes you're getting ear protection but you're also giving your brain an opportunity to regulate by taking down the stimulation in the environment.

If you've listened to any of my present moment awareness tracks here at Insight Timer you know that reducing the amount of stimulation in your environment is a really great way of staying present.

If we can isolate one sense at a time we can allow our brain an opportunity to regulate itself and de-escalate itself.

I also turn to breath work,

That take five breaths,

The emotional regulation breath that I teach so often on Insight Timer Live.

I do it as much for you as I do for me because the more times that we practice and repetitively practice something like breath work,

The more it becomes this fail-safe automatic response when we are triggered,

When we are overstimulated.

The great thing about breath work is that my kids also know it as a tool for when they're feeling overwhelmed,

For when they're feeling sad,

For when they're feeling these big emotions that they don't necessarily have the vocabulary to label.

They know that they can go to their breath and use that as a system of regulation.

So reducing your stimulation in your environment,

Auditory stimulation for me is the biggest one.

Maybe you're someone who visual stimulation is really difficult and overwhelming for you.

So as a parent having a screen that is playing some video on YouTube probably and also a child that is playing some kind of game on a tablet or video gaming device that could be really overwhelming for you.

So taking two,

Three minutes to yourself in a dark room where you're removing that visual stimulation will give you that opportunity to regulate again.

So reducing your stimuli,

Breath work,

Using that as a tool because it is there and accessible to pretty much all of us.

We can count to five as we inhale.

We can hold for a moment and we can release that breath while counting down from five,

Giving us a normal sense,

A natural sense of de-escalation.

Those are two very simple things that we can do as parents to provide spaces of regulation within a neurospicy household.

Now I said that we honour our different brains here in this house and that's so very true.

One child often likes to be on their own while the other one likes you to sit right next to them.

As most parents out there I'm sure you get touched out from time to time.

At some point we need personal space.

I have a rule in this house that my bedroom is mine.

My closet is mine.

My bathroom is mine.

I need spaces in this house that are just for me because those are safe.

Those are spaces where I can go to de-escalate if I need to.

The closet has no windows.

It's quiet.

It's cozy.

It's dark.

The bathroom,

The bath itself,

The running water,

The candlelight,

All of those things are cozy and nurturing and comforting for my soul when I'm feeling overstimulated and my bed is just for me.

We have to have these things and these systems for ourselves and what we're actually doing is teaching our children that they also need to honour themselves.

My older child goes down to the basement and that's his gaming domain.

That's where he likes to be.

It's quiet.

It's cozy.

That's what he likes to do and when he's feeling really overstimulated he will advocate for himself and say,

I just need a minute and he'll go down there.

The other kiddo will say,

Mom I want you to sit right next to me.

Sometimes it works for me and my brain to put a time frame on those activities,

That snuggle time.

It's always five minutes at bedtime and a one minute 60 second hug just before he goes to bed and my brain knows that within those five minutes and the additional one that routine will be complete.

He will feel emotionally nurtured.

It's not too much for me and it's not too little for him.

Finding ways to connect within your window of tolerance are really important as an ADHD parent.

Finding tools that you can use to cope with their dysregulation are really important.

Reducing the amount of stimuli in your environment,

Breath work and carving out individual space for yourself.

Very,

Very important.

I'd love to hear from you in the comments of this recording.

What works for you?

Everyone is different.

Every family system is different.

I know for me individually that my window of tolerance for parenting is about two or three days and thankfully I co-parent with their dad which means that every two to three days I get a dedicated break and I need that break to decompress from potential meltdown behavior,

From extra activities,

From just being generally overstimulated and potentially sleep-deprived because my youngest also has a sleep disorder.

Sleep is an incredibly important thing for an ADHD brain but we'll talk about that in a different episode.

Knowing that I have that dedicated break,

Knowing that I have a dedicated space in my own home for decompression are so instrumental to me being able to show up and be a positive parent for both of my children.

What works for me might not necessarily work for most or any of you but I think what's important to note is I've taken the time to recognize what my triggers are and how I can help myself through those because at the end of the day I'm just modeling behavior,

Modeling habits and showing my kids that it is incredibly important for them to advocate for their own needs.

Not every day is perfect.

Often the perfect ones are few and far between but every day that we show up for ourselves and we set the tone as that as the example,

We're teaching our kids that their needs are important too.

So keep showing up for you and your beautiful ADHD brain.

Let me know as a parent what works for you or what you're struggling with because maybe I can help.

Until next time,

You're not broken,

You just have ADHD.

Reviews

I’m 55 years old and just found out that I’m inattentive ADHD. Thank you, it all make so much sense for me now, why I was feeling so crazy when my girls were crying/meltdowns when they were very young. Thank you. I am still discovering the beauty of being unique.