Rachel, hello and welcome to teenagers.

Untangled the audio hug for anyone supporting someone who's going through the teen and tween years.

I'm Rachel Richards, journalist, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters.

Now, if your kid's been struggling in school, anxious, defensive, putting things off, they say they're trying.

You're trying.

Their teachers are trying, and just getting simple things done regularly turns into arguments.

I have a treat for you today.

We joined by the executive skills coach, Sean Garrity, who knows an awful lot about the topic, and particularly ADHD, having grown up in a family full of neurodivergence, he taught high school maths and ended up as the chief academic officer and became fascinated by what actually helps teens when they're stuck.

He's co authored the book.

I'll do it later, the battle cry of many a teenager.

Sean, thank you very much for joining us, so it's a pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

Now.

I loved your book because, well, it's unusual.

It combines practical tips with stories about composite cases that really help us parents understand that helping our kids is, sadly, not a one and done, and I know this because I have a neurodivergent child myself who's amazing, but, you know, it's an iterative process.

So perhaps you can share I don't know a little bit about your experience growing up in a family, you know, with ADHD siblings, and how that shaped your approach to coaching and supporting families.

Yeah, thank you.

I think I like to say I was kind of in on ADHD when it was becoming a thing.

So I'm one of five boys, and I want to say at least three had formal diagnoses, in addition to my to my dad as well.

And so I like to think that I have some common sense experience with it, and I saw often the trade offs embedded within the condition through my everyday life, intense, fascinating interests from lots of my brothers.

They were artists.

Some of them, they were completely obsessive about, be it film or books or things that just grabbed their attention, but had a harder time, what we would now maybe call hypo focus.

Had a harder time getting started on things like French homework or the five page essay that their English teacher wanted them to write.

It wasn't that they were willfully negligent about these things.

That's great.

They just, they just really couldn't get going.

And the opportunity costs, we would say, of their other interests, things that they were fascinated by, was so gripping that they often found themselves sliding into these periods of not doing what they were so called supposed to do, and doing a lot of what they were interested in.

By contrast,

and parents would be so frustrated, because they think, well, sometimes you've just got to do the difficult things.

What are the common struggles that you see in teens with ADHD and and how do these tend to show up at home and school?

We see lots

of different challenges and lots of different opportunities.

One challenge, especially now in school.

It's a very practical one.

And this is a podcast for parents so they will understand is navigating the school portals so it could be Google Classroom, it could be right, it could be Schoology, it could be canvas, all of these portals, where sometimes it takes somewhere between 15 to 50 clicks just to figure out what it is that you have to do that evening.

This teacher does this system.

That teacher uses it in this way.

This teacher uses it in that way, and it can be quite confusing and frankly, boring to try to figure out, what is it that I even have to do.

So we call, sometimes working with teenagers on this problem, Sherlock, Holmes, we have to figure out what is going on here, like, what is it that you have to do in maths, what is it that you have to do in English?

What is it that you have to do in science?

And simply going through that process, almost like medical rounds in a hospital, just to figure out what it is that you have to do can be something of a difficult problem for the ADHD mind that activation energy isn't really there because it's just not that interesting in these portals, ironically, Rachel are meant to make it easier for us, to make it easier for the teenager, but oftentimes in our experience, I would say, Nine times out of 10 make it more challenging in some cases, significantly so.

And I think parents often use it to check up on the kids, but they're not really seeing what it feels like to actually navigate it.

And one thing I thought was interesting is, actually, do kids always agree that there is a problem?

That's, I'm laughing because they really, genuinely don't.

I think that there's a few different things going on.

And, you know, I'm a parent of a teenager and a teenager, and you notice that as they get older, you talk about this all the time on the show, there's this divergence with, like, what mom and dad are saying, right?

So oftentimes we're triangulating between what the mom and dad are reporting as an issue.

Hey, there might be failing grades, there might be 47 missing assignments, there might be a lack of motivation to kind of get going, just on all areas of life, whereas the teenager, when you speak with him or her, might say something like, you know, we have a case that.

Like this in our book.

I think it's like, you know, it's manageable.

I think I got it under control.

That's the more casual side.

Or they might just fundamentally reject what mom and dad are saying, what mom and dad's point of view are.

No, they don't.

Occasionally the stars will align, and you will get some alignment where the teenagers, at least some, some version of bought into the idea that they they could use some support, or that things aren't going as well as they would.

Well as they would hope.

Those are the ones that are most fun to work with, because they're just so bought in.

But yeah, sometimes there really isn't this acknowledgement of there being a challenge.

And initially our take was, a teenager is wrong, but in talking with the teenager, hearing their point of view and coming to respect what it is they have to say about their own situation genuinely helps us inform sometimes, like the parents point of view also needs a little bit of an adjustment as well, at least in our experience.

So we sort of see it from both sides.

Yeah, I think the parent point of view often needs adjustment for on most topics my mind, included, and for parents who are new to the concept.

Let's just go over what executive function is, because I didn't actually fully understand and appreciate what it was until I came up against some real executive function issues with one of my kids.

So can we talk about what is this?

Yes.

So I think in the scientific literature, it's somewhat ill defined by that.

I mean, like, there's lots of different moving parts associated with the definition, but I think the common sense definition is it's the planning and control center for your brain.

What helps you plan and get stuff done?

What helps you think about how to get those things done and then once it's time to get started, what helps you do those things?

There's also an emotional regulation component that interacts with this, which I'm sure parents are sort of nodding along to.

It's not just that they don't want to do it.

Sometimes it's that they feel negatively towards the task, et cetera.

But big picture, it's the control center for your brain.

It's the thing that helps you plan, prioritize, get started on a task, sustain attention throughout it, lots of different break points, some teenagers, some adults, struggle with many different components of this.

Others struggle just with the idea of getting started.

But once they get started, they can sustain attention.

Some struggle with the idea of planning and prioritizing.

If everything's important, nothing's important, they might spend three hours on an assignment because they like the teacher, and 15 minutes drafting an essay that's actually worth 30% of their grade, or something like that.

So we see some challenges there, just at the higher level strategic objectives.

So that's what it is.

I think we we see enormous variation in executive skills.

One thing we've noticed, however, is that the executive skill demands on those in school as teenagers are rising at precisely the point that they're to our earlier point.

Rachel rejecting mom and dad's help, and so there's this much wider, wider gap than there might otherwise be.

And so that's where we try to come in and work with parents and kids.

So given that that might be the case, and as a parent, you're you've got a kid who's muddling through and you think, oh, there's a problem here.

What are the first steps parents should take if they're trying to help their their teen?

I'd be

curious to put this question back to you, just given you're so well versed in this area.

But our our take here is my co founder, Mike and I, we like to always ask, is the teenager to your very important question, understanding at some level that there's a challenge.

If they were to, if you were to say scale of one to 10, how?

Open to you our help right now, we don't Richards might not surprise.

We don't typically hear 10 out of 10.

We do aim for something like a six or seven.

Anything below that, it just feels like it's blood from a stone.

So we don't, we don't try to intervene there.

But if the teenagers like, yeah, I don't really feel like this.

I don't really feel like I'm on track here.

I'm somewhat open to some change.

That's the first and most important step from there.

I think the mom or dad or the parent or the Guardian should say something like, Am I in position, honestly?

Am I in position to work with my son or daughter on this?

Me personally?

Can I do this?

Oftentimes, I would say maybe four in five cases, the answer is no.

That doesn't even mean that the relationship is strained.

It's just that it might not be in the cards for you to be playing that role as a parent.

I have, like, I said, a teenager, I would not play this role with my own daughter.

Then from there, it's like, okay, if not me.

Who is there?

Someone who this my teenager responds to.

Is there someone that my teenager in her life responds to?

And can this person help you kind of keep going down the line?

Maybe there's someone you can outsource to, maybe there's an uncle, maybe there's a pastor, maybe there's a therapist, maybe there's a coach, there's someone who the person can respond to to sort of work through these challenges.

That's that that tends to be how we see this come together.

It's interesting, isn't it?

Because I think I focused particularly on the things that were the hard facts, like whether she was doing the work or not turning in the essays and things like that.

And I think the bit that I missed was I.

Wholeheartedly, loving and accepting her for who she is, and making her feel that, making sure she didn't feel shame or judgment or embarrassment.

And it's very easy to slip into that, because we look at them and say, Well, why can't you do this?

You're whatever age?

And I think they hear that all the time, and I think it can cause a huge amount of emotional distress.

So is that something that you end up tackling as well, or how does this manifest itself?

It's an

excellent question.

We see that with a lot of parents, especially when they opt into getting some outside support from whoever it might be, that they're able to relax that sort of task master part of their job, right?

So lots of parents, and I will say, especially moms, are quarterbacking many different moving parts of the teenagers life in it.

This is the area where there's the most stress.

There's all these missing assignments, there's all this stress coming in from the teacher.

They're feeling that stress.

And so that's where you're dialed in.

If you can create something of a division of labor such that that that can be managed by or supported by someone else, and you go back to trying to almost repair the dynamic by substituting that out for other stuff to your point, remembering and loving and accepting them for who they are trying to we had one mom who really just wanted to get back to going to Starbucks with her son.

She had, like, sort of lost that over a few years, the relationship had become so strained because of the multi car pileup associated with school that they just didn't have space or time for this.

Just almost like hanging out with each other that had been lost, and she was trying to slowly repair the dynamic by kind of taking some pressure off of the school stuff and trying to subtly reintegrate this relationship dynamic stuff.

So we do see that quite a bit.

I think the first step is what you just described.

But as a parent, speaking personally, and I'm sure you can relate to this when you see it going wrong, it's hard not to just lurch into action mode.

And so how to navigate that tension right between they need support here, and I don't know if I'm the right person to provide.

It is, I think that the key challenge.

And I think there seem to be so many moving parts that you think, Oh, well, what should I focus my attention on?

And I mean, messy rooms, really, Vex, a lot of parents.

It's one of the big you know, when I first started this podcast, that was one of the first topics we covered, because it drives parents mad.

And I kind of think, well, like, pick your battles you have in the book, something you call the Super system.

Do you want to talk about that?

Yeah, so we try to, we laugh sometimes in a wry way, about how ADHD is reframed as a superpower.

We always hear this as a superpower.

And so on one hand, we love that neurodivergence can be reframed as something positive, and oftentimes I think it is, as I was describing, my own siblings would have remarkable periods of focus and concentration on things that were fascinating and interesting, well beyond what would be conventional or normal, relatively speaking, at the same time, we laugh, because we're talking to moms and dads all the time who are struggling with this condition and who on the bottom of their list, they would call it a superpower, right?

And so it's something of a reframe on yeah, there's some good, but there's also some bad.

So super, it's just an acronym, super, super simple acronym, sleep, unplug, plan, eat in Rome.

So sleep is a very challenging issue for lots of folks nowadays.

I've listened to a show of yours where you're talking about the restlessness you feel when you're like, on the phone before bed.

So like setting up rituals for sleep, I think it's just very important, and it's extraordinarily difficult to stay disciplined on that, especially with the lure of the phone, which we can get into unplug, is related to that.

I think again, you've mentioned this on your show.

The the phone is so tempting for the ADHD mind, because it's such a instant sort of dopamine fill, right?

This is not anything new, and yet, because of that, you almost need to be a little bit more careful about it.

And I don't want to say discipline, but you need to have structures in place.

I work with a guy, for example, who whenever he's starting his homework, he needs to have the phone at least four rooms away, four rooms like, wow, make it difficult for himself to get to the phone.

Otherwise, the siren, siren song is there.

That's unplugged.

Plan and prioritize is just some version of Do you have a ritual on a daily basis less than five minutes where you're trying to get yourself organized on what it is that you have to do?

Eat?

This is a sensitive topic, of course, but the ADHD mind sometimes can be either overeating or under eating and forgetting to eat.

So we encourage you to check in with your physician or nutritionist on this, but make sure you have some some routines in place and then Rome, I feel like, especially if you're struggling with executive skills, just moving, moving your body a little bit, it doesn't.

Need to be like the high intensity interval training of 510 minutes of just boom, like lightning speed.

But you do need to have almost like movement as a practice.

I've heard you talk a little bit about this as well.

Interesting.

Yeah, moving your body trying to, I think step counters can be helpful for this, where you're just trying to, throughout the day, give yourself these little exercise snacks through moving your body so that you're not sort of getting you're not binging on exercise, and you're not spending a lot of your time sitting.

I think this stimulates there's lots of interesting research on what this does to the brain, which I won't get into, but it does seem to help mood and does seem to elevate focus, especially for those who are struggling so super.

Sleep, unplug, plant, eat, roam, that's how we think about that.

The big picture there.

That's such a great acronym for this, and it's so interesting.

I love that.

The eat the food thing was something that I only started to understand once I had a diagnosis for my daughter, because I spent a week with a girl on a yoga camp, which is a woman, and she has really raging ADHD, and you can spot it once you know what you're looking for.

You spot it.

And she said that because we were given food all day long, you know, and it was at set times.

And she said, This is amazing.

I never eat like this.

I basically eat junk when I remember.

And I think that is very much a mark of these children, and somehow creating some structure around it makes it a different it does make a difference.

And I found that with my daughters.

Even told me that it really helps when she's got, you know, proper structure around her eating habits.

Great.

Yeah,

we see that quite a bit, the forgetting and then the sort of substituting, maybe, let's call it more nutritious offerings for some not so great ones.

Yeah, we see that quite a bit, but I think it's like anything else, similar to the phone, where you need to have these management systems in place.

And Rachel, I'm sure you've seen this, maybe in your own life, and maybe with as a parent, these systems sometimes can break down too, right?

Like these systems can break down.

And so begin again is something that expect, fade out and begin again is something that we we tend to.

I love that, yeah, yeah.

And I think, I think I remember, you know, when they talk about dieting when I was growing up, and people would say, I've gone on a diet, and then they would eat something that they wasn't allowed, and then suddenly they say, well, there's no point is there?

And then they'd binge and that's, you know, this is why we have to be really mindful of, rather than setting ourselves incredibly difficult things to achieve and then giving up when we don't manage them.

It's really important that sort of repair just going, Okay, let's try again.

And I love that you talk in your book about the importance of clear wins.

Yes, what does that look like in practice?

So I think like with especially with the ADHD minds, there's commonly co occurring, is this rejection sensitivity, right?

So, like, you're getting negative feedback, right?

You're getting negative feedback, but unfortunately, negative feedback feels more salient to you, so then it might to, like a more neurotypical person, let's say, and so you're getting a lot of this thing which hurts more is a simple way of thinking about it, right?

And so there's been lots of research, especially over the past five or six years on well, what's the inverse of that?

I think that positive feedback also can mean a lot more, right?

So it can land better, particularly if it's precise.

The praise is precise, and I think it does a couple of different things.

If you're noticing, if you're paying attention, if you're noticing the positive things that are going on in the teenagers life, and you're narrating them to to the teenager.

One, they're not used to hearing that, right?

They're not used to they're not as accustomed to getting positive feedback.

And two, is for the parent, maybe you're reframing your conceptualization of what your child is capable of doing.

So if you're noticing these small things that they're doing, it could be you had 19 missing assignments, and you knocked out three of them, narrating the three instead of the remaining 16.

I think, can be helpful, so long as it's not done in a condescending or patronizing way.

It has like this remarkable capacity, I think, to help reframe the teenagers sense of themselves.

Wait a minute, I'm getting some positive feedback that's incoming, that feels different, that feels good.

It can create this snowball effect.

It's not a miracle, I don't want to say it's a miracle, but it can create this snowball effect where you're reformulating who you are, and therefore you're more incentivized to pursue more of these small wins.

Least that's been our experience.

Same here, same I found that with my daughter that kind of framing things in a really positive way, and then being really if something doesn't quite quite work, we just say, Oh, well, let's just knock that one off for the moment, and we can come back to that later.

Being very flexible about it has helped her have conversations with me about what she's trying to achieve, because she knows that she's safe, that I'm not going to sit there and make her feel terrible for not being able to do something or for something not working, where the thing just wasn't the right thing for her.

So what role should parents do you think play in enforcement?

Seeing accountability, you know, and to and to avoid this sort of level of burnout, because there is an element of us needing to give structure at the home, at home, you know.

And you know, when my daughter was coming back originally and saying, Oh, we've got no homework, and I was saying, that doesn't sound right, I think you probably have got some homework.

And you sort of, rather than being hands off.

You do have to be saying, I think you kind of probably do.

How do we strike that balance?

Yeah, I think like, this is, this is much easier said than done.

I can say this as a parent, as a practitioner, I think this, this in our experience, gets easier after 22 and not harder.

Support structure, right?

So we find that teenage years are the worst mismatch, right?

This adult responsibilities with child size, executive function, oftentimes in these rigid high school structures.

And so we think that some, some version of we talked about the Super system, narrating the small wins.

And then, if it can be, this may sound like overly practical.

But if you're if you're ritual for asking them what's going on, can be less than five minutes, that's what we always say, Oh, I like that.

Yeah.

If it can be less than five minutes, if it can be a couple questions, if they can show you real quick, you can even put the timer on.

Just say, hey, let's just put five minutes on.

Just show me what you got going on.

And then when the timer's up, it's up.

It's a boundary for you.

It's a boundary for the child, like, hey, let's just try to less than five minutes.

Less than five minutes, we think that the shorter it is, the more likely it will appeal because it's so short, and then the more leverage you have as a parent to keep coming back to the well.

So we think that maybe you can relate to this.

Certainly in my own household, we sometimes create systems that fall apart in like, three or four days, chores or whatever.

Like, you got to do this, you got to do this, you got to help your little brother, you got to do this, you got to do that.

Like, and it's sort of like, not really thought through.

Well, it's too big a commitment, and then it kind of undermines our credibility when it inevitably falls apart, like 48 hours.

So we try to, like, take small, take small bites out of the apple here.

And we find that, like, a tiny ritual like that can help, so long as you guys are both aligned at the outset, and I think initiating it in our experience before actually doing it.

So it might be something like tomorrow, at 330 we'll do this, not right now, because I'm kind of, you know, a little bit stressed out, and we're in this battle.

But tomorrow, let's, let's get it going, and then you can, you can return to it in a more relaxed state.

Oh, I like that.

And also, it gives them time to kind of get their head around what is going to be coming up, rather than pouncing on them.

And my daughter, what she's done with me is she's coached me, and she's come home and said, right, I want to try having a regular two hour homework schedule in the evening.

So I've said to her, Well, so what time do you want that to happen?

And then she has said, explain to me how she wants me to check in with her in a way that won't annoy her.

Because I think this.

I you know, I've spoken to another parent recently who just said, my daughter's just angry all the time.

Do you see this again with many of you?

Yes.

Why are they so angry?

Two things.

One is that we find, especially in the coaching process with teenagers, if you're trying to come in with your own stuff, like you got to have the analog to do list, or you got to use Google Calendar, or you got to do this or that.

If it's at least, at minimum, at minimum, it needs to be co created.

Ideally, it's what your daughter did.

So kudos to her, of like, initiating the process on her own and then saying, Hey, I would want some support from that.

That to us is a 10 out of 10 thing.

You're taking control.

You want some support.

That's great, and you're telling me exactly how I can help you best.

That's what we would want.

I think that oftentimes, if you had some I'm curious, Rachel, if you had said, Hey, let's set up a two hour thing for you to do.

Oh,

no, no, not at all.

No, that rubbish in the bin immediately.

Not a chance.

Total pushback.

Yeah, it's not a chance,

right, right?

That's what our experience, too.

And so I think like they need some degree of agency, and they need to feel like it's their own operating manual.

So many of our somebody, the teenagers that we work with, approach the problems of executive function in different ways.

Me, personally, I'm old school.

I like having an analog to do list.

I would say maybe two out of the 10 teenagers that we work with will even entertain the notion of writing stuff down, we just think it's powerful.

But if I come in like an authoritarian, like, Hey, you gotta do this, I'll lose them very quickly, at least in my experience,

of course.

And so we've talked about how we frame things at home.

There's another part of this equation, which is what's going on in school, and I know that some school systems are really poor and not suited to neurodivergent children.

I want to, want to say that right from the start, because I know that parents, some parents, really battle with this and but I think it's really important that we don't set up a antagonistic relationship with teachers.

So how can we.

Help our How can we reframe things with teachers?

How can we form a bond with teachers that's positive so that we're all doing the same thing, which is trying to support this child?

Are there tips that you can give?

I just think that's an

extraordinarily important tension that you just outlined, though, which is, like, we definitely do not want to be doing the thing that you said we don't want to be doing, which is antagonizing teachers.

We just don't want to be doing that.

That's just, that's just a bad idea, and frankly, is sort of disrespectful to the profession.

I 100% agree there at the same time, there are systems in place sometimes that are just ill designed for the ADHD mind.

And I think to come back to the portal thing, to the extent, as a school leader or as a small group of teachers, you can take a hard look at how are we organizing our system so that a teenager knows exactly what to do?

We've been fortunate to work with lots of different teenagers from lots of different schools, and I will say there is a wide range here, right?

There's a wide range about how these portals are organized such that the teenager knows exactly what they have to do.

Can we make it as frictionless and as easy as possible, just to know when things are due, how to find them they are right?

If we can work together on that small thing seems like a small thing, but it really, really, I think, makes a huge difference.

That would be like my first recommendation.

And then second is, in the States, we have things called IEPs and 504 and so sometimes they will be allowing extra time on tests, or it could be something like allowing for makeup assignments to be submitted.

We we see most times teachers are just so patient and accommodating of these, of these stipulations at the same time, sometimes it can create something of an antagonistic relationship between the teacher and the student where they're they feel like the student is weaponizing it, and the teacher kind of gets into this tit for tat on it.

And so we would just encourage the teachers to be patient and to be as they as they often are, to be forgiving and to be careful about these things, and at the same time understanding that sometimes it can be frustrating when you're inundated with lots of different incoming, say, makeup work or something from a student who who hasn't been doing it all semester.

So we understand there's two sides of this, but we just we hope for patients and we hope for a pleasant dynamic between

teachers.

Yes, I think if we go into the school and we say, well, they're wanting to try this, and they think this might help, that's, that's a really good way of just going about it.

My daughter did an amazing thing with her college, gosh, they have two hour classes, and she actually had a conversation with her chemistry teacher, who was amazing, and just said, you know, I just think I'd rather you took a five minute break in the middle, walked around and then came back and you were fresh, because I can see you fading.

And this sort of understanding that them just sitting down for that period of time is never going to be effective is a really wonderful accommodation that can be made.

And I think if, if it's a relationship where the teacher trusts that that child is not going to go to the losing vape or something that helps, right?

But, yeah, I think that's such a that one's beautiful because it's subtle, it's organic, and it's like the art of noticing what's going on.

So especially kudos to that teacher, I think that that's a that's a great, great interview.

I was so impressed, yeah, and so we love to see that.

And I think, like, yeah, just just noticing.

And it's hard though, because they oftentimes, they'll have dozens, if not hundreds of students, and so it can be hard to kind of keep everybody accommodated at the at the right level, at the same time, little moves like that, we find to be very effective,

yeah.

And obviously when they're in school and they're at home, there's a we can create a support system around them.

But then there's going from high school to college.

I am watching my older daughter go through her university first term at the moment is brutal, and she's eye functioning, perfectly capable.

She's got no problems with executive functioning.

She's twice put her laundry in without the laundry detergent because she's overwhelmed.

There's so much going on.

So I cannot imagine how hard this is for somebody who is neurodivergent, going into a setting like that where there isn't, really isn't the sort of support structures around them.

Are you finding this that that there's that shift, and then it really starts to become even more of a challenge,

very much.

So we find that, like, the first couple years of college, particularly the first semester of college, can be quite a shock, because you have, in some cases, you mentioned the longer classes, that's one thing, but then you might have like, entire days where you don't have to do anything, yes, right?

If you're so used to just getting up at like, 730 in the morning or something, going to school, coming home, there's a rigidity to that which, which can be, which can negatively interact with your mind.

But at least there's a structure when that.

Structure is removed.

It's almost a Be careful what you wish for situation, right?

You mentioned the laundry.

We work with lots of folks who have a hard time knowing if I can sleep until 1pm Should I sleep until 1pm right?

I can't.

It's a Tuesday.

I don't.

No one's asking me to do anything I should nominally be like doing some reading or something, but the professor never really checks.

It doesn't seem to matter.

It's all good.

I'll do it later, right?

Like it's all good.

I can just kind of take, I can, I can tend to what I need to tend to.

And so that presents, trying to create structure for yourself is both very difficult but very necessary.

And college is like, I think the first real exposure to that, especially coming off of high school, which for a lot of our secondary school, which for a lot of our teenagers, is is vastly more rigid.

Yeah, and are there things that you would suggest parents consider and students consider in that situation going up?

I mean, I this, this woman I spoke to, who is I went on a yoga camp with.

She said that she is in her fourth year of studying to be an osteopath, and that she actually has a trainer who's government appointed, who whenever she gets an assignment, actually sits down with her and goes through the process of how she's going to tackle it.

It's that much intervention that she needs in order to stay on top of her work.

I mean, she's she's really struggles of a lot, but they're not all like this.

But what are the things that we can do as parents in terms of picking courses or, you know, just considering the future that might actually help?

There's a few different ways of thinking about that.

First, I think, recognize that executive skills are incredibly important, and honestly assess.

And there's lots of different free ways to do this, honestly assess, like, just by observation.

And then there's some there's some free assessments where your child might be struggling, like, what do they struggle with?

Then I think if you can map some degree of minimalist interventions.

For example, we always encourage, especially for our college folks, to make a schedule.

It's very hard to make a schedule, but it can pay off if you can make a schedule, organize your life by the calendar, tell your time how you're going to spend it, or you'll lose all of your time.

Essentially, is what we would say.

We do see.

So that might fail.

Most interventions fail.

We should note that that might fail because some, some folks love to make the schedule, but then they don't really want to follow it.

Some don't want to make the schedule at all.

But we would always say, try to have a schedule as a first point.

And second is to your friend, the yoga instructor, understand that you will need a support team, and that's okay.

Like, you will need a support team.

Like, that's fine, right?

Like, this is, we're not trying to cure this condition.

This condition can be very, very positive.

We want you to feel independent.

We want you to have a support team for your life.

One Hour of the right help in the case of your yoga and stretch, it might unlock 10 hours of productive solo work, right?

And so in high school, maybe it's a coach.

In college, it could be a study group at work folks have assistants, or it could be lots of folks are using these large language models in really interesting ways, choosing jobs that match their brains.

There's lots of different ways to go about that, but treat it like you would any other chronic condition, something that's going to need ongoing support and feel no shame about that.

It's just the way that it is.

There's also, as we've talked about here today, Rachel, there's also enormous positive trade offs here as well.

But you will need support on these executive skills.

I think the shame factor is such a big factor.

I think it's it causes so many problems, I think, for parents who who just want to wish it away, and they think, Oh, I wish it was just much easier.

And how can we avoid this burnout?

Because what we really need to be doing is going, Okay, let's try this.

And as you say, say, four out of five things may not work.

And rather, I think that sort of not expecting it to instantly work.

Is part of that?

Are there other ways that you can help parents see how to manage their emotions going through this,

I think just a recognition of what you just said, which is that in our when we when we look at our case studies, we ask readers to guess, like, Will this work or this will this not work?

Why do we do that?

Because we, as people who are doing this for our professions, can't guess.

Oftentimes, we can't predict what will work.

So for example, maybe your listeners are familiar with the Pomodoro Technique, which is you put 20 minutes of a timer on where you do focused work, then you give yourself this five minute break, like your daughter's chemistry professor had suggested, organically for some like you read, if you read Reddit threads, or you read a book about this, or you watch a YouTube video, this is supposed to be like a miraculous thing, but they might be a disaster.

They might get circumvented in five minutes.

They might want to walk around.

They might fall into.

State of hyper focus, where, like the 20 minute alarm snaps them out of it, which is a bad thing.

So our experience is, try five things, watch four fail, build on the one that works.

Try not to get demoralized.

It's all good.

This is just a normal process, especially with a mind that is as fluid and as active as this, you've got to just constantly be open to trying things.

Have this experiments or mindset, seeing what works and seeing what doesn't, and then just taking it from the

top, yeah, and slowing down that expectation, like saying, Oh, but you're 15 or you're 17, you should be here.

No, there's no should about any of it, because it takes longer, but they can still get to wherever they want to

go.

How do you navigate that?

Though?

Personally, I wonder, like this should idea, because we see that certainly, I fall prey to it myself, because it's hard to see.

As we talked about, it gets easier at 22 not harder.

For the significant majority of folks, it's hard to see that though, like when you're in the throes of the nightly homework battle.

So what do you suggest personally on that?

I wonder,

well, I have found that we're on this conveyor belt, and we're stuck.

There's not much wriggle room.

And that is the problem with the education system.

It makes you feel catastrophic about it.

It makes you think, oh, because everybody is there, and my child is here, and this is a disaster.

And what we do is we catastrophize and think they're going to be living in the bins when they're 30.

And it's not true, because there are many, many different ways through life.

And rather than holding up some standard that is, this is what I want for my child or this is, this is what they have to achieve, why not just say, let's look at the journey and enjoy the view, enjoy the way that this life is unfolding, rather than having an expectation of an end, because there is no end.

That's our experience, given that the condition itself is so, so susceptible to the environment, and given that school is oftentimes not conducive to your mind at this at this stage, I think taking the long view, like you're describing, and really focusing on this flares up in different environments, like, for example, high school, like, for example, college, one which has too much structure, one which has too little what are some ways in which you can find a professional life, a family life that sort of allows you to have the right balance of what works for You and limiting what doesn't work for you.

Of course, you're not going to find a life where, like you never have to do something unpleasant or boring, but you can reduce the amount of hours in your life that are two or three out of 10 on the motivation scale.

You can reduce those oftentimes you have to wait until you're in your early to mid 20s to find that but that is something of an experiment.

We encourage our teenagers to be running on themselves.

What are some ways in which you might reorganize your day so that you find it more pleasant, more motivating and more fulfilling?

Just take into your point with parents.

Just just take that longer view, and they will get there as our point of

view.

And I always think it's about thinking creatively.

I think one of the problems I had when I was an early parent was I had an idea of what kids needed to achieve from the schooling system.

I had an idea of what careers would look like and and yet, I took a really, really odd path.

I did not follow a conventional path whatsoever.

And here I am having the most wonderful life.

I'm very, very lucky, and I think being open minded and creative about day to day, as well as the long term, helps our kids think more openly.

And I think the world they're going into requires that even more than ever before, because there are no set careers now they're gone.

You know that that kind of well, okay, we're going to be a surgeon, but I mean, a lot of the careers now are going to require our kids to be endlessly creative, learning new things, changing direction.

So I think having that ability is actually a real plus, and also the the ability to have conversations with people and connect with people.

So I just think focusing on the schools and the grades is really problematic, and it just it narrows all of our lives.

I agree.

I think that's so well said.

I think creativity is something that correlates in the scientific literature and just in our own common sense observations with the types of minds that we're talking about today.

So I do think that that's 100% correct.

I think that we, we have one teenager we work with who really genuinely could not care less about school, like he just, it's just not his thing.

Math, science, biology, it's just not his thing.

But if you get him talking about he really wants to go live on a farm, that's his idea.

Is to go live on a farm, figure out how to support that farm, and then to have a farm of his own one day.

You get him talking about that, and he has this amazing, almost entrepreneurial, enterprising, creative energy that's there.

And he could go on and on and on about it.

It's his thing.

But if we try to shift back to Ralph Waldo Emerson and the English in a couple days, it's not as interested, right?

It's just not his thing.

And so to your point, I think, though, the good news here the Rick.

Returns to being a good grade kind of person, I think are falling.

The returns to creativity are rising dramatically.

And so we're really kind of in this awkward in between, I think, where they have to kind of grind through this way station to get to the other side where that creativity can be more expressed.

But I think creativity is the right word.

I just want to underline that three times my mind.

I think that's, that's absolutely right.

Yeah, yeah.

Are there any other things you'd like to say to parents before we finish?

I just think with this, it's with this condition, we always just say, it's not a knowledge problem.

It's a performance problem.

Most ADHD teens, for example, they know what they should be doing.

They should start the essay, they should turn in the assignments.

The issue is just making themselves do it because it's boring, and so, you know, you might be able to hyper focus for six hours on video editing or something, but freeze at a 10 Minute maths worksheet.

Totally normal, same brain, totally different performance.

That's okay.

Just reframe that as this is just how the mind works, and not necessarily.

Again, defiance or negligence.

I love that brilliant Sean.

Thank you so much.

Do you want to tell people how they can reach you, either for coaching or your book that I really enjoyed again, because there are lots of there's sort of different stories of the types of ADHD you might see, and I love that.

Yes.

So our book is called, I'll do it later, surviving school and renewing the love with your ADHD son.

We have a book about females coming out next year.

That book is available wherever you would buy books.

Second we my co founder, Mike and I have just started the Center for teen flourishing, which is focused on a lot of race of what we've been talking about today, which is, how do we get teens doing more of the good stuff?

Be that, hanging out in person, sleeping less a little bit on the phone, although we don't want to be we don't want to create a boogeyman there and then, if you're interested in coaching, reset teen coaching is where to find us.

Reset teen coaching, com.

And thank you so much.

This is a great pleasure to be here.

Great to have you on the program, and I'll put all those links in the podcast notes, where you'll also find links to my website, www.teenagersuntangled.com you can email me on teenagersuntangled@gmail.com there's also a little button right at the very top you can click and you can message me.

I can't see you if you message me, but you know, that's a very instant messaging service.

That's it for now.

Have a great week.

Bye, bye.