BEST OF: Ryan Wexelblatt on How To Help Kids With ADHD Succeed

Fresh Take: Ryan Wexelblatt, the ADHD Dude
Margaret: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to "Fresh Take" from "What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood." This is Margaret. 
Amy: And this is Amy. And today we're talking to Ryan Wexelblatt, also known as the ADHD Dude. Ryan is a licensed clinical social worker, a former school social worker, and a father to a son with ADHD. Ryan creates content for the ADHD Dude YouTube channel and ADDitude Magazine. He also provides parent training, in-person school year programs, and a summer camp for boys. Originally from Philadelphia, Ryan and his son live in Tucson, Arizona. Welcome, Ryan. 
Ryan: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. 
Amy: So we're both parents of kids with ADHD on this call. I think actually three of us. You parent someone with ADHD.
Margaret: We're three for three. 
Amy: Yeah, we're three for three. We can understand those challenges. So I wanted to talk about a couple of those. Can we start with time blindness, the concept of that and how that plays out for kids with ADHD? 
Ryan: Yeah. So I think time blindness, what it actually is, is difficulty sensing the passage of time.
[00:01:00] So, I mean time blindness isn't too far off, but it's not an inability to understand time. It's difficulty sensing the passage of time, and that's a skill that we can build. And the way we build that is not through the traditional means that you've probably seen everywhere of using timers or the red countdown timer.
We actually have to teach kids how to see time in unit volume. So here's the example I always give. Think about when you were in school and you were looking up at the clock, if you had analog clocks in your school, you know, waiting for a period to end and you were watching the big hand move. Right? Waiting to get to the end of the period.
That's actually tick, tick, tick. Yes, exactly. Tick. That's how you learn how to feel time. So what has happened is, you know, besides just people with ADHD struggling with that in general, we've kind of taken analog clocks out of the picture. And we also, you know, now live in a culture where nobody has to plan anything around time.
So I always give the example, you know, when I was growing up, cause I'm an only child in my life, revolved around when the Brady Bunch was on, right? So I had to plan, you know, between, you know, because who wanted to record [00:02:00] anything on a VCR, right? Between five o'clock and six o'clock, I had to plan my life around when the Brady Bunch is on, that doesn't exist anymore because if kids wanna see anything, they just go to YouTube. Right. Everything's on demand. Everything's on demand. So on top of not seeing analog clocks, we also kind of have taken away kids' ability to learn how to plan around time.
Margaret: When you're talking about ADHD, are you talking about a specific diagnosis that captures a specific kind of behaviors or kind of child?
Because I think ADHD, ADD, the spectrum, they've all slightly become terms that have kind of a super broad, oh, I'm so ADHD. I forgot my phone before I left the house. What are you talking about when you talk about ADHD? 
Ryan: So ADHD is an executive function developmental delay, meaning your executive function skills, kind of the operating system for the brain is lagging behind, you know, your same-age peers, approximately two to three years [00:03:00] in childhood.
Now what we know is that for anybody, the prefrontal cortex, which is the last part of your brain to finish growing and is responsible for most of executive functioning, that doesn't finish developing until somebody is about 25, 26. So with individuals with ADHD, it's not done developing until they're closer to 30.
When your prefrontal cortex is done developing, it's kind of, that's where you are. So what I mean by that is some people will, there's gonna, for some individuals with ADHD, there will be significant improvement in their executive function over time. For other individuals, there will not be. But again, we can implement strategies to help build these skills, but they never might be perfect.
Now, I'm glad you brought up, you know, the terms before, because one of the things I always want to explain to people is, you know, obviously I think probably you're both familiar with the term neurodiverse or neurodivergent. I don't use that term because I think it's very broad and I think it's meant to be inclusive, but when we use vague language, it really doesn't help [00:04:00] people understand the bigger picture of what we're talking about.
So when I talk about ADHD, I'm talking about it as an executive function developmental delay for some individuals that presents as more what we know is the inattentive type of ADHD. And for other individuals it presents as what we call the combined type. So inattentiveness plus the, you know, hyperactivity or impulsivity.
Amy: And what about slow processing speed, Ryan, how does that fit into this? Sometimes, all the time. I know that it can present itself, but I don't know if it's always there or not. 
Ryan: Yeah, so processing speed is a little different than this that would more fall under, you know, the category of learning differences. So it's definitely present for some individuals with ADHD, but not, certainly not for everybody. 
Margaret: So we talked about time blindness. Let's talk about prompt dependence. This was something that Amy and I were both like, yes, thank you. And I know people who have IEPs and kids who are on educational plans often will see their kid like successful in this with one prompt, successful with two prompts, [00:05:00] like prompts are part of the language of people who parent kids with ADHD. So could you talk about prompt dependence? 
Ryan: Yeah, so prompt dependence, interestingly is a term kind of left out of this field a lot, but really what prompt dependence is this. So let's say in the morning, your child is getting ready and they need you to tell them every step. So put on your shoes, you know, get your water bottle, do this, do that.
That is prompt dependence. That means you are acting as their executive functioning, so they are not learning to use their own executive functioning. Most people settle for prompt dependence because they don't know there is an alternative, and you can help shift kids from prompt dependence to independence. And I will tell you, you know, one time I was listening to the author of one of the most well-known executive functioning books on the market.
I was listening to a podcast with her and she said, well, just keep prompting until they get it one day. And I thought to myself, that's the worst advice I've ever heard, because you plan to go to college with your kids and live in the dorm with them and prompt them then, or call them, you know, to walk through their morning routine [00:06:00] when they're going to their job?
You know, we can teach kids to move from prompt dependence towards independence, and that means essentially we're teaching them to use their own executive functioning instead of you acting as their executive functioning. 
Amy: The next question I have about this is very often we are told that natural consequences can come into play, right?
You shouldn't prompt your kid to remember his homework folder, and if he forgets his homework folder, well then he's forgotten it and he'll remember next time. At least in my experience, that is not really an effective strategy. So I shouldn't be haranging my kids to remember his key every day, but if I don't, then he forgets his key and that will do nothing to help him remember his key.
You see what I'm saying? And then we get stuck in this fighting thing. So, and I think that's where your work comes in, right? We can't remind them to do everything 12 times 'cause they end up yelling at us that we're nagging them and yet they need the reminders. So, and removing the reminders is not the strategy. So what is the strategy?
Ryan: The strategy is to implement scaffolding around them. That's what I call it. So what scaffolding looks like is [00:07:00] number one, shifting the way you use language. So let me give you an example. Instead of saying, you know, get your water bottle, it's on the kitchen counter, I would say, look around the kitchen and figure out, you know what you need to look like you're ready for school.
When I say that, what happens is that kids have to use their own internal dialogue, right? They have to think, oh, what does my mom or dad mean when they're saying that? So, internal dialogue or what we call self-directed talk, that's one of the things that is inconsistent in kids with ADHD. They're not always using their internal dialogue.
Some will say, I hear it all the time, some will - that's pretty rare. A lot of kids will say, well, I hear it some of the time, and some kids will say, well, I barely hear it. This is another topic that you're really not going to read about in the ADHD literature. Because historically the ADHD field has come out of the mental health field.
The mental health field really does not kind of understand the role of language in terms of executive functioning. So a lot of the training I've done, and a lot of the work I use actually does not come out of the mental health field. It comes from the speech language [00:08:00] pathology field, because language is such a critical part of this.
So that's one way of implementing scaffolding - by shifting the way we use language. Another way is instead of making lists, which don't work for the majority of kids with ADHD, we can make what's called a visual timeline where they actually see themselves doing a sequence of steps. And what that does, it activates what's called non-verbal working memory or your ability to visualize yourself doing something in the future.
Margaret: And what, just to point, 'cause I've seen these and worked with them and I do find them effective, what does that look like? I mean, and what does it look like kind of at ages and stages? Because I know with a young kid you might have, you know, every step and you have to put your card up or whatever. What does that look like?
Ryan: Yeah, so I actually don't suggest using those, the things with like the cards or you know, the little cartoon pictures. What I actually do is I teach parents how to make, you know, like let's say we're talking about morning routine. Will you take pictures of your child actually going through their morning routine of the different steps?
We put it on a timeline. So then instead of [00:09:00] saying, okay, put your shoes on, we can say, go check the timeline, or we can say, where are you on the timeline? Because when you see yourself doing the actual task, that's what helps activate that nonverbal working memory, what I also call future thinking skills.
Margaret: And why is a photo better than a cartoon? 
Ryan: Yeah, because you have to see yourself actually doing that. So I'll use this example. Let's say that when we're, you know, done talking, I have to go to the supermarket. So I'm picturing myself getting in my car, driving to the market, I'm gonna, you know, go to the left to go get milk. That's non-verbal working memory. It's me picturing myself doing something in the future when I get to the supermarket and say, okay, I'm here, I need to get milk, that's what's called verbal working memory. So what happens is with ADHD, verbal and nonverbal working memory kind of gets split. So kids with ADHD struggle with the nonverbal working memory piece, which is the, you know, scenes into the future or picturing themselves doing in the future.
So when we present, when they see a picture of themselves doing a task, that's what helps activate this. 
Margaret: And that's what you're trying to [00:10:00] scaffold for, is like you can start picturing yourself in your head someday. You're not also gonna send them to college with the pictures, you want them to start into internalizing that picture memory. That is fascinating. Yeah. We are talking to Ryan Wexelblatt, the ADHD Dude, and we will be right back. 
Amy: Ryan, let's talk a little bit about non-preferred tasks. Another thing that's like, I didn't know there was a term for it, but I certainly know what it is, but it's way harder for a kid with ADHD.
Ryan: Why is that? Yeah, so one thing I wanna mention first is we all have non-preferred tasks. This is not something that's ADHD specific. You know, I hate vacuuming, right? That's my non-preferred task. So what happens with somebody with ADHD is they tend to lack the resiliency to persevere not through non-preferred tests for a few reasons.
Number one is because they have difficulty sustaining attention to non-preferred tasks. So ADHD I always say is a really bad name, you know, because it's not actually what it is. What [00:11:00] ADHD will be called eventually, I believe, is executive function developmental delay. So ADHD is not a deficit of attention.
It's difficulty sustaining attention to things that are not interesting to you. But let me use this example of a non-preferred task. So let's say you tell, you know, your child, clean your room, okay? Or clean your room before, you know, we go to the park. Well, in order to clean their room, a few things need to happen.
Number one, they have to be able to visualize what the room should look like when it's clean, right? Because that's what directs your behavior, is knowing what the end result should look. If you have difficulty with future thinking skills, you're going to have difficulty visualizing what the end result should look like.
On top of that, if you don't know how long it's going to take to clean your room, you might think it's going to take three hours where it will only take 15 minutes. So if you have difficulty sustaining attention to something that's boring, if you have difficulty conceptualizing how long something will take, and you have difficulty visualizing what the end result should be, your room's probably not going to get clean, but if we implement scaffolding, we can [00:12:00] help make that process a lot easier. 
Margaret: I found also for myself, when this was emerging in my kids, the idea of non-preferred and preferred tasks really opened up a full kind of understanding for me, because when you're getting a child diagnosed or you're trying to figure out what's going on with your own kid, and people say, well, these are kids who can't concentrate on things, and I think, well, I just watched this kid put together a 2,500 piece Lego, that's not a kid who can't stay on task. That's not a kid with an attention problem. But this dynamic of preferred and non-preferred tasks was a real lightbulb moment for me of, oh, you have to be able to do non-preferred tasks. And that's a huge part of the problem. 
Ryan: Right? And to your point, that's why a lot of times, in our culture, ADHD, kind of people look at it as a character flaw and think, oh, well he's lazy, or he doesn't care, or just doesn't want to, you know?
And, and I just wanted to mention something, you know, about the point you brought up earlier. You'll [00:13:00] hear people joke about say, oh, I forgot my keys, I'm so ADHD. ADHD is not really taken seriously in our society. People will joke about it. I've never heard anybody joke about autism though, right? And say, oh, I'm so autistic, I did this. And I think that's something I really want people to be aware of, that just as a overall that ADHD is not taken very seriously in the fact that people make jokes about it. 
Amy: Let's talk a little bit about the negotiation vortex, as you call it, that parents can get sucked into with ADHD kids. This is another thing like kids with ADHD are particularly available for being argumentative about things like non-preferred tasks, and why is that and what's the negotiation vortex?
Ryan: Yeah. So one aspect of executive functioning you don't hear a whole lot about is flexibility, right? So in order to consider other ideas, to try different things, I have to be flexible.
I have to be able to have an internal dialogue with myself to say, well, maybe this is not the way I want to do this, but I can try it this way and it'll be okay. You know, so what happens is when kids with [00:14:00] ADHD struggle with flexibility, they have difficulty often working in groups in school. They might have difficulty in the younger grades with reciprocal play and at home it often comes out as, you know, by maybe becoming very argumentative or emotionally dysregulated when things are not going their way or they're not getting what they want. So often what happens is that parents will get pulled into what I call the, let me say it this way. I find more often fathers get pulled into what I call the argument vortex, where kids start arguing about something and moms do too, of course.
And that argument kind of veers off into something else, right? The kid takes it on a tangent and then the kid is in full control of the conversation. And the original point of the argument is far gone. And then there's what I call the reasoning and negotiation vortex. Which is when parents try to reason with their kids or negotiate with them.
And what I - I have a saying, you cannot reason within inflexibility, and I often see that moms get into this habit of getting pulled [00:15:00] into the reasoning vortex and the negotiation vortex, because what often happens is they get so caught up in wanting their kids to feel heard and worrying, well, my child won't feel heard.
So they keep kind of going on with this instead of putting their foot down and say, I'm sorry, this isn't happening. Right. Because when you say that, when you set limits and say, I'm sorry, this isn't happening right now, kids will be upset, but they'll get over it because all feelings are temporary. So that's, and you know, and often, I mean, I see this in families gone on for years and years and years.
Margaret: And is that, I was gonna say like is, how do you attack this problem?
One of it is like, you know, firm boundaries and okay, we're doing this no matter what, like I might have a kid who's like, aww, no ice cream? Oh the ice cream parlor shop. But a kid with ADHD or other, you know, executive functioning or regulation problems, maybe that's 45 minutes, or that's the next three hours of the day ruined because they're having such a hard time with it.
And so is that why we're getting pulled into this, that we just [00:16:00] feel like I would do anything to avoid this three-hour meltdown that I know will come, or this larger meltdown, maybe it's not three hours. 
Ryan: So I think there's a few different reasons for this. One, I think is what I mentioned, that a lot of parents are worried that, you know, my child won't feel heard if I set limits with them or you know, I don't want to upset them more.
But what we know is that for kids with ADHD, you know, I have a saying, and I call it clear, concise, and concerete. The clearer you are, the more concise you are in what you say, and the more concrete you are about things, the easier it makes it for their brain to understand things. When parents kind of resort to what I call fluffy language or more what I refer to as fluffy parenting approaches, you know where, "I hear how that makes you feel that you really want ice cream right now, but we're not getting it.
Let's talk about your feelings." You know, that's not helpful for kids with ADHD 'cause that is not clear and that is not concrete, right? If we just say, I know you want ice cream right now, we're not getting it. It's okay if you're disappointed, you know, and let it go, then [00:17:00] that will help them get over it sooner.
You know? And again, all feelings are temporary. They might be upset, they might say mean things. They might say things they don't mean, but that doesn't mean that they really mean those things. Okay? You are the safest person that they can take things out on. So that's why they might say things that they don't mean because they can with you to express their frustration. But I also have a saying that - I have a video about it that's coming out tomorrow - that ADHD is not an excuse for disrespectful behavior. Okay. Having ADHD does not entitle you to treat your family poorly. And this is something I find a lot of parents struggle with, that they think, you know, I have to be basically, you know, a metaphorical or sometimes literal punching bag for my child because they have ADHD or they have autism, and I say, no. That's doing them a tremendous disservice to teach them that. 
Margaret: I understand that for a lot of kids, reflection is very helpful. Like I hear a lot of frustration from you. That kind of reflective approach does work with some of my kids, but some of my kids need much more "this isn't happening. If you're [00:18:00] gonna have a tantrum about it, this is what the next step of that looks like." And so it's hard sometimes, like there's no rule book for every kid. And I do think that kids with ADHD, you have to approach in different ways. 
Ryan: I think everybody should feel heard and we all should have our feelings acknowledged. But that doesn't mean you need to get pulled into the negotiation or the reasoning vortex with them, or that they're entitled to treating you poorly. 
Margaret: That's the step, right? Like stopping before you're then "and therefore we will have a negotiation about it."
Ryan: You know, the research, there is decades of research literature that shows that an authoritative, not authoritarian, but an authoritative parenting approach produces the best mental health outcomes for children and for whatever reason we're, you know, and we're gonna put a little bit of blame on the mental health field for this, or a lot of blame actually. Okay. We've moved away from this evidence towards this kind of more permissive, indulgent parenting approach, particularly in this field, and that's contradictory to what the research shows.
Amy: We're talking to Ryan Wexelblatt. He's the ADHD [00:19:00] Dude. And when we come back I wanna talk about how to get the kid with ADHD involved on this scaffolding. So Ryan, I'm curious what you think as you coach not only parents, but you coach kids with ADHD as well, and I'm curious at what age do you think they can start to sort of understand and own this is something that I need to have some extra scaffolding around, and how do you approach that with them?
Ryan: Yeah, so one of the things I always teach is that ADHD is, and this is I think particularly important now, I teach ADHD is not your identity, it's a description of how your brain works. And I say this emphatically because I see a lot of putting an identity on kids based on a diagnostic label or the neurodivergent label.
And my feeling is we should let kids identify how they choose to, not by an identity we put on them. And I don't want kids thinking that this is who they are. They are not ADHD. It's just the description of how their brain works. And one of the things I teach kids is there's nothing wrong with you.
Everyone has [00:20:00] things that their brain makes easier to learn and harder to learn. So for myself, my brain makes math harder to learn. My brain makes football harder to learn. I can't throw a football, okay? But my brain might, you know, making friends easier to learn. So I come up at it from that angle that this is just about everyone has things that are easier or harder for their brain to learn or to do.
So that being said, we can really get kids involved from the very beginning, and that's a huge thing because we want kids to experience ownership over their own. success and see, you know, their own success because the way self-confidence develops is not from you telling your child how great or how smart they are, by sitting in a therapist's office,
the way their confidence develops is by recognizing their abilities within themselves. So when we get them involved in the scaffolding, when they can see that they're building skills, that helps them feel good because they realize they're becoming more independent. 
Margaret: We have a ton of questions from our listeners when we told them that you were gonna be on. Here's our first question. Do you recommend that parents or kids [00:21:00] tell teachers, coaches about their ADHD diagnosis upfront? 
Ryan: Absolutely. And my response to that would be, I think you're doing a child a disservice if you withhold information about them. Because if you withhold information, people don't have context for understanding them.
You want people who are working with your child to have context for understanding them better, so better to be as transparent as possible and help them understand their strengths and their challenges as well, so they can support them. 
Margaret: It makes sense. It would make sense with any kid. It would make sense with a kid who has any issue coming in.
Amy: Somebody had a question about the negativity fixation, that was their term, that can accompany ADHD. I think sometimes it's also called like rejection sensitivity dysphoria. How does that play out in the kids that you see? 
Ryan: Yeah, so those are two different things. I mean, one of the things I will say is for a lot of kids with ADHD, I have another saying that negative attention, positive attention, they'll take it however they can. They would prefer positive attention, but negative attention is easier to get. So many have a propensity to be [00:22:00] negative because that often gets their parents' undivided attention and emotional reactivity. Okay, so when parents feed into that and keep giving attention to negativity, well, of course they're going to continue.
The other part of the question, rejection sensitive dysphoria is not a diagnosis. It's a description of how people with ADHD are prone to have strong feelings of being rejected or perceived they're being rejected even when they're not. And what I say about that is, you know, part of ADHD, and I say kids with ADHD tend to live in strong emotions.
So for me, that's just a normal part of h ADHD for many individuals because they live in strong emotions. So I just always want to clarify for people that that is not a diagnosis. Just like something like, you know, people will use the terms executive function disorder or executive dysfunction. Those are not diagnoses.
Margaret: But for a kid who, as a parent, you see a kid who goes right to the place of, this is the worst day of my life. I hate everything about school. You know, they [00:23:00] have one bad experience and I hate all my friends, and no one's ever liked me, that this does seem to be part of this constellation for a lot of kids with ADHD.
And as parents it can be very painful to feel like, okay, we're trying our best, and then you tripped on the way to school and now suddenly this whole year is worthless. We hate everything. Do we react to that? Do we blankface that? I don't always wanna be like, no, you're a great kid. Listen, see the bright side. How much of this is baked in the cake and do we have control over some of it? 
Ryan: Yeah. So one of the things is, you know, in terms of this. When kids make negative comments, okay, that the more attention you give it, again, you're reinforcing that this is an effective way to get attention. But here's the other thing, you know, forget about that piece that we all say things sometimes we don't mean when we're upset or frustrated.
We say things, we express our frustration. By comments like that, when you keep giving validity to it, you start to make it larger for kids and they start, they can start to think, [00:24:00] oh, well, you know, even though I just felt this for a moment, maybe there's some truth to this because my mom keeps talking about this and this is a conversation that's going on.
So my suggestion for parents is, don't give energy to negativity. Say, I hear how you feel. Okay. Don't give them reassurance because reassurance never helps anybody actually feel better, okay? Just acknowledge how they feel and then let it go. Because again, all feelings are temporary, and the more you give it energy, the more it's gonna have validity to them.
As for self-defeating comments, that's something else. You know, a lot of times, again, we say self-defeating comments when we're frustrated in the moment or upset. And again, if you give it attention and keep focusing on it, you're making it into something more valid than just a comment made out of frustration.
Okay. The other thing I will see a lot in kids with ADHD is they will resort to what, you know, I would call emotional manipulation. So, you know, I'm not getting my way. Well, okay, well I'm gonna kill myself because you're not giving me Fortnite, or I hate myself, you know, and that is meant to elicit [00:25:00] a, you know, concerned response from parents.
And I wanna mention, you know, I often get pushback from people when I use this term. They say, oh, well, kids can't manipulate. And my response to that is read any child development book - toddlers can manipulate. Okay? It's not the same way an adult can manipulate. But of course kids can manipulate and it's not done maliciously.
Okay. It's done to obtain what they want. That's all. 
Amy: Can we talk about how ADHD sort of can exist within a family system? And when you have a kid with ADHD who maybe doesn't have some of the same expectations that their siblings without ADHD might have, or they get a pass for saying, if you don't give me Fortnite, I'm gonna kill myself and carrying on in a way that their siblings probably wouldn't get away with. How do you include the siblings in understanding and not accommodating, but accepting the differences? 
Ryan: Yeah, so one thing I think is important to note, the heritability rate of ADHD meaning the rate of when it's passed down from parent to child [00:26:00] is, you know, approximately 70%. So in most cases, we will see in a family, either you know, a parent or an aunt and uncle, or even sometimes a grandparent might have had, you know, diagnosed or often undiagnosed ADHD.
So that's the first thing I want people to understand. The other part of that is what I explained to parents is do not try to get your other kids to be overly empathetic to your child with ADHD. Okay? Because they're not an adult, they don't see them the same way. So what we want them to understand is kind of, you know, that Ryan's brain works a little differently than yours.
Here's how, you know, he might get frustrated easier, or he might say things he doesn't mean more frequently, you know, or he, you know, might get upset, you know, or it might have more difficulty with being flexible and that's just how his brain works right now, and it'll get better with age. But I just want you to understand that, you know, everyone's brain works differently and this is how his brain works.
And I say leave it at that. Don't try to convince them about, you know, how that, you know, ADHD is a disability or a [00:27:00] gift or anything like that, because kids don't want to hear that about their siblings. 
Margaret: Because it puts distance between them. 
Ryan: Well, think of, I say it this way, if I'm living with a sibling who I feel resentful towards because they get more attention than I do, or I feel resentful towards because of their emotional dysregulation and how that brings stress into our home, you know, don't ask me to be more empathetic to them, right? You can explain how their brain works, you know, so they have more understanding. But I tell parents, you know, don't expect them to be where you are in terms of your unconditional love for your child with ADHD.
You know, hopefully as they get older their relationship will improve, but don't try to force that on them. 
Margaret: Another question that we get a lot around this topic, and there's a lot of discussions on our page around the topic, is the idea of motivation and consequences and that it seems to parents who are parenting kids with ADHD that getting them to find this internal...and I think as you talked about with self-esteem, we sometimes feel like motivation, like lives in a secret box that we have to [00:28:00] find and unlock the key for, and unfortunately it's not quite that easy, but motivations and consequences to the degree that they're linked.
How do you find people effectively helping their kids find their own internal motivations and understand the internal or external consequences for their behavior and helping them to make those links?
Ryan: Yeah, so I think we have to separate motivation from behavior in a way. So motivation, you know, is an emotion of the future. So in order to be motivated, I have to be able to visualize how I'll feel when I've completed something or accomplished something. Okay. So for example, you know, I'll go back to the cleaning my room example. If I know that I'll feel good when my room is. clean, then that's going to help, you know, drive my behavior.
If I know that I'll feel good when I'm done my homework, that can also help me. But what happens is because for a lot of kids with ADHD, well not a lot, let me say it this way, the ADHD brain lives in the present. It has difficulty remembering [00:29:00] emotions from past experiences and has difficulty with what I referred to as future thinking skills.
So in order to motivate kids, we have to incentivize things by having some kind of tangible reward within their time horizon or their ability to visualize the future. So for example, I do a thing with kids where we structure homework in an order for how their brain works. So we go from most boring subject to easiest.
And within homework, you know, after you finish two subjects, you know, you can get, you know, five minutes of YouTube time, and if you finish your homework by eight o'clock, Well, then you get an hour of gaming. Whereas if you don't finish by 8:30, then you know you can have, you know, an hour of TV. So there's still an incentive there, but one is better than the other.
So we have to teach kids to kind of incentivize themselves to help build their own motivation. Same things with adults, actually, with ADHD, they have to learn how to incentivize themselves. 
Margaret: And how do we connect the consequences? It's the disconnect between: if I do this thing, it will have these consequences and that we find that missing piece as well.
[00:30:00] Like how do we bring those consequences closer? If you do act this way in class, you are going to have to stay after, and then you're gonna miss, like, it's hard for kids sometimes to connect these four dots, then they're furious that they're missing their special thing they wanted to do, but it's a consequence of something they did three days ago. How do we bring those closer for them? 
Ryan: So for, let's use this example. So let's say they have a book report to do, okay? And they wait till the last minute. Well, they're not thinking a week ahead of time. That consequence is gonna be that I have to, you know, do it all in one night because that time horizon, that their ability to visualize the future is, that's too far.
Okay? So in that sense, they can't really visualize the consequence. If we're talking about something like behavior, okay, and if they know like, okay, well if I call out or if I do something impulsive in class, I'm not going to, you know, be able to have my Xbox later that night. Well, impulsivity is not controlled by foresight.
When things are done impulsively, they don't have the foresight to think ahead to the, you know, particular [00:31:00] consequence. When I talk about consequences, I do believe we do need to let kids experience natural consequences 'cause there's something to be learned from that. But we don't let them experience natural consequences without implementing scaffolding and change the way they use language.
I think the most important lesson for where consequences come into play is within inflexibility, because if you're not willing to accept help, if you're not willing to be flexible, you do need to experience natural consequences for your inflexibility. And when we rescue kids from experiencing natural consequences, we're doing them a disservice.
Margaret: Well, we could have probably 45 more questions, but tell us for people who are interested to hear more of your work, where they can find you and where they can find your work. 
Ryan: So, the ADHD Dude YouTube channel is where I have videos. They're organized into playlists to make it easier for folks to find things.
And I also post the same content on my Facebook page. One of the things I just want everyone to take away from this is I follow the American Academy of Pediatrics treatment recommendations for ADHD, [00:32:00] which I will tell you most pediatricians and most, you know, psychiatrists, mental health professionals do not know.
So I always want people to know them. The recommendations are for children under six, it's parent behavior training first, followed by medication management for children six and up. The recommendations are parent behavior training in conjunction with medication management. I provide parent training through my membership site. And if people are not ready to dive into that, then there's hours of free content on the YouTube channel where they can kind of get started. 
Margaret: Fantastic. We will link to all of those places on the show page. And Ryan, thank you so much for talking to us today. 
Amy: Thanks, Ryan. This was amazing. 
Ryan: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.