In this special guest post by Caroline Maguire, ACCG, PCC, M.Ed. (author of Why Will No One Play with Me?) shares her advice for parents on how:

Your Child with ADHD Can Play Better and Live Better With Coaching: Learn How!

As a parent, you hear your child with ADHD revealing too much too soon to another child. You watch your teenager avoid reaching out to other teens. You notice your child seems immature and is laughing too long at jokes that are no longer funny. Or you notice your child can be irritable and appear rude. Children and teenagers with ADHD often struggle with self-awareness, self-regulation, and the ability to manage emotions that are crucial to social interactions.

You may be baffled, but you can help your child with ADHD change her social approach. With direct instruction and support, your child can work with you to develop better social skills. Why Will No One Play With Me? is your road map to learn how to talk to your child, coach her, and help her to develop these key life skills. After all, how often does self-advocating and communicating with teachers and peers come up in academics? Being able to fit in, collaborate with others, manage emotions, and make conversation are not just social skills—they are life skills.

Check Out My Top 5 Tips to Help Your Child Play Better and Improve Social Skills:

1. Open the Lines of Communication

Start by using more open-ended questions to open the conversation and make it more collaborative. Open-ended questions use the words who, what, when, where, how, and why. They ask, rather than tell. You can ask your child, What makes friendship hard? Who are you hanging out with these days? I notice you had a big reaction, what made you have that reaction? You need intel, and your child has it.

This communication style will allow for more collaborative discussions and help you to understand your child’s social dilemmas through his eyes and his own experience. Don’t assume you know why things are happening. When we assume, we miss so much. Any time your child balks at doing something you’ve suggested, ask, How come? Maybe it’s because he’s afraid of the unknown, or he remembers an experience that wasn’t pleasant.

2. Teach Your Child to Read Between the Lines—Games make learning more fun.

Play a game with your child. Make it a game to ask your child to interpret not what people say, but what they mean based on body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. If need be, prompt your child and share with her some ways to guess what the person means, such as, What does the person’s body signals and tone of voice tell us they are trying to say? What do we know about this person? Ask her to pick out a sharp tone in one party guest, someone at the mall who is angry but does not say she is angry or someone who uses sarcasm and ask her how she knows this is the case.

3. Teach Your Child Learn to Read the Room

Help your child learn to clue into social cues by playing a game with your child. Prompt your child to pick out two people in her family to observe and then to report back what their facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice are when they are angry, frustrated, nervous, or frightened. When you and your child are at a party, at a mall, engaging with your family, ask her what she sees. Ask her, What does that person’s body language mean? What information can you gather just from the person’s tone of voice? In every environment, there are social guidelines, meaning typical behavior that the situation calls for—they are the unspoken rules.

4. Help Your Child Improve His Self-Regulation 

Help your child learn what makes him too excited, lose control of his body, or become flooded with emotions. In the moment, guide your child to pinpoint what is going on inside his body and mind. These are signals that show him his current emotional state. Ask your child, Is there a particular topic that makes you experience a reaction? What happened before you got excited, or felt big emotions? Arm your child with calming strategies that you design with him collaboratively, so he is prepared in the heat of the moment to head off any signs of losing control.

5. Teach your child to engage in a “polite pretend”

The ability to fake interest or happiness and to be polite even when your child is hungry, tired, or bored is what I call a polite pretend. Begin by asking him some open-ended questions, How do you think your friend felt about your behavior? How do other people feel about how you treated them? What behavior does the situation call for? This will help your child think about his actions and why performing a polite pretend may be necessary rather than hurting other people’s feelings.

Bio

Caroline Maguire, ACCG, PCC, M.Ed. is a personal coach who works with children who struggle socially and the families who support them. She is a former coach for the Hallowell Center in Sudbury, MA. While with the Hallowell Center, Caroline was the primary coach for children and teenagers. Her groundbreaking book, Why Will No One Play With Me? teaches parents how to coach their children to develop and improve their social skills.

Follow her parenting advice and purchase the book at carolinemaguireauthor.com.

Learn about Coaching at the Hallowell Centers: NYC and Boston MetroWest

Do the words Crazy Busy sum up your life? Are you increasingly wrestling with the issue of what to do about what’s happening and how to cope in a distracted, disconnected world?  Are you wondering how to take back control of your crazybusy life? Then listen to Dr. Hallowell’s mini podcast on “Taking Back Control of Your Crazy Busy Life” and learn how to focus on what matters most to you.

Dr. Hallowell is also including more practical strategies below from his book: CrazyBusy. These tips can help you take back control of your time, learn how to use electronic devices responsibly, and reestablish the human connection that is all too often missing.

Coping in a Distracted, Disconnected World: Taking Back Control of Your Crazy Busy Life

1.   Education. First, take an honest assessment of how the use of electronics and technology has taken control of your life.

• Are you texting friends or colleagues while sitting next to them instead of having a face-to-face conversation?
• Are you spending too much time interacting on Facebook instead of hanging out with friends?

Involve your family in the discussion. Point out how you grapple with the over use of technology and ask them to assess their use of electronics as well. To get the best outcome, it is essential that all family members be involved in managing screen time.

2.  Set a goal of how much total time should be spent each day on electronics.  Then break the total goal into time categories: how much time where, doing what, with whom.

3. Plan daily periods of abstinence.  These “brain breaks” provide intervals of time in which no electronic device may be turned on.  Yes, this will be difficult for you at first.  So try beginning with 10 minutes twice a day.  Then increase that time by 10 minutes a week until you reach 1 hour a day or whatever goal you all want to achieve.

To go one step further, plan a “de-tox” day over the weekend.

Reserve a Saturday or Sunday, during which you and/or your family has absolutely no electronic usage whatsoever, except lights and appliances.  No TV, no phone, no Internet, no video games, no iPad.

Get the family or your friends involved in planning the “de-tox” day. You can play a board game, go for a hike, visit a relative or family friend.  Other suggestions are to volunteer at a community event or any other ideas the family comes up with. The point is to plan something that doesn’t involve any electronics.  Then have fun reconnecting.

4.  Make it a goal to restore the healthy habits that over use of electronics often disrupts:  First of all, get more physical exercise, especially outdoors.  Try eating family dinner together. Figure out how to enough sleep.  Finally, have some uninterrupted face-to-face conversations; pray or meditate.

5.  Replenish daily your dose of the other Vitamin C, Vitamin Connect.  Overuse of electronics depletes one’s store of the human connection. Spend time having a face-to-face conversation with people, uninterrupted by anything. Likewise, try banning electronics when you’re out with friends or during dinner.  Having face-to-face conversations with others is an important step.

6.  Monitor progress together.  Set time aside each day or weekly to see how everyone is doing.  What difficulties are they having? What difficulties are you having?  How does everyone feel about this?

Conclusion

Setting goals to limit the use of electronics and helping each other achieve those goals can be a family and/or friend project. Of course, it won’t be easy, but don’t give up. Your success in addressing the overuse of electronics one strategy at a time will lead to your success, and a lot more joy for the entire family.

Adapted from CrazyBusy Overstretched, Overbooked and About to Snap!   Ballentine, NY, 2006

Let Dr. Hallowell help you manage your CrazyBusy life. Download for FREE his CrazyBusy Tips APP for iPhone.

Making meaningful connections at their best involve your whole soul. Of course, not every connection will draw upon all of you, but if you give yourself honestly in all your interactions, you’ll make meaningful connections and lead a connected life.

If, each day, you resolve to make contact, if you resolve to reach out, no matter what the response, in a genuine way; and if you resist the urge to pull back, then you will connect. In short, if you try to draw pleasure from connecting, you will.

Why not try starting your day with family breakfast? Or breakfast with a friend?

Click here for Tips on Making Meaningful Connections

If you’re a parent and would like to know how to help your child make meaningful connections, Dr. Hallowell’s session in The Parenting AUTISM Summit on “The Importance of Making Meaningful Connections” airs Wednesday, November 6th.

About The Parenting Autism Summit:

The Parenting AUTISM Summit offers strategies in autism and parenting from 28 experts; including Dr. Hallowell, that work to help your child navigate the social world; some of the available treatment options and how to focus on your child’s wellness, and more.

The summit is online and runs November 4 – 7, 2019.  You can’t afford to miss this! 

You’ll Learn the skills, strategies, and mindset necessary to understand:

• how to help your child feel safe, loved, and appreciated;
• to figure out what is behind your child’s behaviors; 
• how some people experience their autism; and more…

Register for FREE here. 

MYTH: The “right help” for ADHD begins and ends with medication.

FACT:  While medication can often be useful in dealing with ADHD, it is neither necessary nor always effective.  The starting point in managing ADHD is education.  One needs to learn about what ADHD is–and what it isn’t–in order to change it from a serious liability into a bonafide asset.

Books are a cost-efficient way to start the process.  I can recommend my comprehensive book, Delivered from Distraction, written with Dr. John Ratey, but there are many other good books out there as well.  

There are also excellent websites, chock full of free, valuable information.  The best one for parents looking for help for children is Understood.org, which is a phenomenal resource. ADDA provides resources for adults.

Once you learn about ADHD—its positives and its negatives—then you get to work, with a good guide, a therapist of some sort who understands ADHD. Someone who takes a strength-based approach, to change whatever it is in your life that is causing you problems. Usually you need to work with a coach to get more organized.

Steps To Take:

• Get on a regular sleep schedule.
• Build exercise into your life.
• Consider the nutritional aspects of treatment.
• Reconsider your job or school situation in light of ADHD
• Making various structural changes in your life can make a big difference: the right filing system, the right organization scheme, the right daily schedule.

In addition, you will likely want to talk with your therapist about your family life. If you are a child, some family therapy will help. If you are an adult, couples therapy can make a big difference.

Beyond education, coaching, and therapy, it is important to have a plan for developing your talents and interests. This will take time, but it is key. You build a life not on weaknesses you have repaired, but on talents you have developed. Of course, fixing weaknesses can help you in developing your talents, so the two go hand in hand.

Click here for a list of comprehensive resources.

Click here to learn how the Hallowell Centers can help you.

Follow me on Facebook. 

If you missed my podcast on the Upside of ADHD, listen HERE.

If you want to know about the Downside of ADHD, listen HERE.

Recently I had the great pleasure of attending a conference in Liverpool, England sponsored by the ADHD Foundation, Britain’s leading organization dedicated to neurodiversity, which of course includes ADHD and dyslexia, both of which I have myself.

I was thrilled to see the enormous progress the Brits have made on this front. Not too long ago the “moral model” still prevailed there, in which children and adults who had ADHD were told to try harder, be more disciplined, and basically to suck it up.

Now, under the dynamic leadership of Tony Lloyd and the great team he’s put together, the foundation offers screening, testing, and treatment, as well as massive public education, symbolized by the Umbrella campaign. Children wrote their strengths onto umbrellas—red, blue, orange, green and purple umbrellas—and the symbol caught on so well that in Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport in London there is a section where you can see dozens of these colorful umbrellas hanging from the rafters, celebrating the progress and joy created by the ADHD Foundation and all the participants who’ve joined in.

It’s a beautiful sight, bright colors, bearing bright messages of hope, progress, and a new era in helping the neurodiverse population in the U.K. These (we) are the people who have changed the world for the better since the dawn of time. DaVinci seems to have had it, as do Mozart and Thomas Edison. We neurodiverse people are the ones who come up with the game changing ideas and the ideas that take the world to its next level. For too long we’ve been misunderstood and stigmatized.

But the new era is upon us at last.

At last this group of the world’s population is finding understanding and credit, validation and well-deserved admiration from the rest of the population who, for centuries, did not appreciate the amazing gifts wrapped inside the minds of this diverse group.

It was wonderful to look up and see these multi-colored umbrellas, hanging like Mary Poppins’ favorite form of transport should do, symbolizing triumph, joy, freedom and creativity for all the world to share.

Freedom at last for the tens of millions who’ve been shackled by misunderstanding, ignorance, and stigma for centuries. Freedom at last to give all that we have to give, to develop all that we can develop, and to share with the rest of the world the immense and unpredictable fruits of our diverse, creative brains.

Hooray for Tony Lloyd and his merry band of freedom-fighters in the U.K., liberators all, benefactors of the civilization that gave us Parliament and Shakespeare, the greatest literature the world has known and an enduring form of government tailored, fittingly enough, to preserve freedom.

Hooray for their great work, and hooray for this world, so in need of good news, that the day is come at last where hidden gifts get recognized, unwrapped, developed and put on grand display.

Just go to Terminal 5 at Heathrow, look skyward, and get ready to fly.

Since October is ADHD Awareness Month, now is a good time to review some ADHD myths. We want you to have the FACTS.

MYTH: Having ADHD, ADD means you are stupid.

FACT:  People with ADHD vary in their intelligence (whatever that elusive word means!) as much as the general population does.  Many people with ADHD are extremely intelligent, especially in the areas of:

• • creativity,
  • original, out-of-the-box thinking
  • remarkable persistence and resilience
  • highly intuitive style
  • resourcefulness, and
  • emotional savvy.  

Indeed, when I meet with someone who has ADHD, one of my top priorities is to locate their special talent. This is what I often call their special sauce, because, in my experience, almost everyone with ADHD has one. 

Of course, when you first receive the diagnosis, you may not feel you have any special talents. You might also feel afraid. This diagnosis may sound ominous, containing the words deficit and disorder, but you need not be afraid.  Since once the diagnosis is made, the next step is to find and develop your talents.

What To Do If You Find Yourself Asking, “But What Am I Good At?”

My answer is, “You never know. But whatever you do, don’t stop looking.” You can’t predict what your talent will be. Maybe it’s in being creative with investing online. Or maybe in working with motors or engines or in inspiring people. Whatever the talent, the goal of treatment is to bring your special talent to light and put it to work.

Learn How to Embrace Your ADHD

If you have ADHD and feel, “incompetent,”  “stupid,” or “ashamed, learn how to reverse the negative thinking that leaves you feeling depleted and defeated. Read my approach outlined in this ADDitude article, “How to Stop Beating Yourself Up Already.”  

Need help managing your ADHD?

At the Hallowell Centers,  we follow Dr. Hallowell’s strength-based approach. It begins with a personal connection with you. We also connect with your family – if appropriate – and one of our clinicians.  We believe in the power of positive connection above all else.

Upon that positive energy we seek out your, or your child’s, interests and strengths, while also identifying what weaknesses need shoring up.  Together we turn what you may have thought was a “deficit disorder” into an advantage full of powers that can’t be bought or taught. We open up what you’ve known all along was a treasure chest, but you just didn’t know how to open.  Learn more…

If you want to learn more about ADHD, click here.

Follow Dr. Hallowell on Facebook for more ADHD tips.

I have ADHD and I’m proud of it. My daughter and one of my sons have ADHD. I think that people with ADHD represent some of the most fascinating, fun, and fulfilling of all the people I meet. However, words such as structure, supervision, reminders, and persistence don’t even begin to describe the magnitude of the task people with ADHD have to tackle every day, especially kids.

People with ADHD need their families and friends to understand their difficulties. If you know someone with ADHD, the best way to help is to start by changing your own thinking about ADHD.

When explaining ADHD to a child, I say, “you have a turbo charged mind – like a Ferrari engine, but the brakes of a bicycle, and I’m the brake expert.” When ADHD is properly treated, children and adults can achieve great heights: doctors, lawyers, CEO’s, dreamers, innovators, explorers and even Harvard grads. Founders of our country may have had ADHD. The flip-side of distractibility is curiosity.

By far, the biggest barriers for understand ADHD are denial, ignorance, and a refusal to learn. So you need to learn what ADHD is and what it isn’t. Perhaps the single most powerful treatment for ADHD is understanding ADHD in the first place. You need to understand what a positive attribute ADHD can be.

You can learn how to break down the positive aspects of ADHD by watching my TV interview with WBZ | CBS Boston below:

Reframe Challenges in terms of Mirror Traits 

Remind yourself  of the positive sides of the negative symptoms associated with ADD. By recognizing the mirror traits, you avoid the ravages of shame and fear.

DIAGNOSING ADHD