HealthyGamerGG - "Why Does My ADHD Kid Always Forget?"

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

In today's episode, Dr. K addresses a post from a concerned parent who can't wrap their head around why their child seems to be ignoring them when they make requests. We'll be covering how to understand your ADHD child's experience with the world around them, and how their ignorance of your requests may not be a conscious response. Learn more from Dr. K in his Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/3THwlO1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by CarMax. Want to buy a car the easy way? Start at CarMax. Want to browse with confidence? Get pre-qualified with no impact on your credit score and shop within your budget. From luxury to family rides. CarMax has options for almost every price range, including over 25,000 cars under $25,000.

Want to get started? Head to CarMax.com for details and get pre-qualified today. Want to drive? CarMax. Ambition comes in all shapes. and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we're fit for your ambitions, whatever shape they may take. Whether you're planning for today or tomorrow, we've got the flexibility and know-how to help you reach your goals because we're built for what you're building. First Citizens Bank, fit for your ambition. Learn more at firstcitizens.com slash ambition. So this is a huge problem, right, is that neurodiverse kids

oftentimes have neurodiverse parents. And so the beautiful thing is that once you figure out how to do this for yourself, you will be the best person on the planet to teach it to your child because you have the experience of struggling yourself. At my wits end with a nine-year-old boy ignoring basic requests.

I'm working on getting an official diagnosis for my son who's nine. In the meantime, I'm trying to alter his environment to make his life easier. However, he fights me on every little thing. He clearly needs structure, but when I try to do that for him, he fights it. He's been arguing with me whenever I ask him to do something simple.

Today, after finishing his homework, I told him he needed to put his paper in his folder and put the folder in his book bag because he has a habit of shoving things in his book bag and then he can't find anything. He proceeds to immediately stuff the paper into his book bag. I asked him why he did that and he said, I forgot. But that makes no sense because I gave the command like two seconds before he put the paper in his book bag. I want to be forgiving for stuff like this because I'm also neurodiverse and tend to forget things.

But this doesn't seem like forgetfulness. It just seems like blatantly ignoring me because he doesn't care about what I say. It's not just this, but other things too. I'm not sure whether to punish the back talk in ignoring my demands, but I also don't have the patience to be understanding of him in this area. So this is a very common example. So kid seems defiant. Kid ignores what you say.

kid seems to forget, even though you tell him two seconds right before. You tell him, giving him, kid doesn't like it. So if you all want to bypass this, and I have dealt with this myself, we have to start by understanding the brain of someone with ADHD. We have to start by understanding how their brain shapes their experience, because what you see as a parent is very different from what your child experiences. And once we understand how their brain works, we can craft a strategy that fits. the child and will result in the behavior that you want.

Okay, I know it sounds unbelievable, but let's understand this. So let's start by understanding the kid. This is the kid's experience. So the kid does homework. And at the very end of homework, parent says, put this in your bag. Put this in folder and then folder in bag. This seems very simple. You're just a parent.

You're just telling him, hey, like, just do this thing, bruh. It's easy. I just told you to do it. Just do it. But the kid seems like super, like the kid is. defiance. So let's understand literally what's going on in the kid's brain. So the first is when a child with a child with ADHD is doing homework, what this means is that after the homework, the child is exhausted. They are cognitively exhausted. So let's understand this. So the child has frontal lobes.

Frontal lobes allow them to restrain impulses. Pay attention. Focus. Okay. This is what the frontal lobes do. So normally, if you're a neurotypical person and you finish your homework, you have enough frontal lobes, gas in the tank that you can put things away properly because at the very end we'll get to this in a second. But with kids with ADHD, you don't have any gas in the tank, which means that they're exhausted, which means that they can't pay attention. It's very difficult for them to restrain their impulses and do what you ask. They can't focus. They're already empty, empty frontal lobes at the end of homework. Okay? This is the first problem. Second problem is I want y'all to think about the emotional experience of a child who is struggling to do homework.

So this is a kid that has been doing homework. Okay, I have to do homework. I have to force my mind to pay attention. I'm paying attention. I'm paying attention. I'm paying attention. I'm finally done. Holy shit. This is so hard, but I'm finished.

Now I'm free. I did it. This is so hard for me, but I did a good job. I did what mommy and daddy told me to do. I have my homework finished. I worked really hard. I succeeded.

I'm done. This is a win. I'm free. Now, in comes parent and says, no, no, no, you're not free. You have to do more. You have to do something else. You have to do one more thing and one more thing and one more thing. So think about the emotional experience. When you're done for the week and you've worked really hard, you've worked really hard for the whole week. And it's Friday at 6 p.m. and you're like, I'm done for the day. I'm done.

I'm going to head home. And your boss walks in and says, oh, by the way, can you do one more thing? It'll just take a minute. Think about your emotional experience in that moment and you are a full grown adult. This is what the child with ADHD experiences. The other thing to keep in mind is that the child with ADHD has a dysregulated limbic system. So remember that ADHD doesn't just affect the frontal lobes. It also affects our emotional circuitry, which means that the child with ADHD, when we can handle something, a kid with ADHD won't be able to handle it emotionally. So they experience more intense emotion. It is more difficult to control their emotion. So for you, it's just putting one piece of paper

in the folder and putting the folder in the book bag when you're cognitively exhausted. But for them, it's like, okay, now take these hundred papers and put them into a hundred different folders and organize them and then put them all in your book bag in order. So the emotional experience is literally more intense. We have fMRI studies that show that kids with ADHD suffer from emotional dysregulation because the literal signal in their brain is more intense than the signal that we experience. Furthermore, since their frontal lobes are empty, their ability to control this emotional outburst or this emotional response is weakened. So, let's look at this case again.

Trying to alter his environment. He fights me on every little thing. He's been arguing whenever I ask him to do something simple. So when the homework is done, the kid is already exhausted and then the parent says, oh, and there's one more thing to do. I asked him why he did that and he said, I forgot. But that makes no sense because I gave the command like two seconds before he put it in his book bag. Now, hold on a second. So this is really important.

When your child with ADHD gives you a answer that makes no sense, don't just assume that they are wrong. You don't do that. If it doesn't make sense to you, you all need to come to an accord because there is something that you may not understand. And this is what really frustrates parents because parents will say, I just told them two seconds ago, but they forget. How can they forget? So let's understand a third neuroscientific mechanism, attentional problems. So remember that in ADHD, people don't forget. This is a very common misconception.

People assume so forgetfulness in ADHD is not a memory deficit. So we see memory deficits in things like dementia or delirium. These are actually dementia is like a memory deficit. This is not, people with ADHD have memories that are totally fine. They can remember stuff fine. The problem with ADHD is that stuff does not sink in. This is the problem. They are not paying attention when you are speaking, so they never hear you in the first place.

So the more cognitively exhausted you are at the end of your homework, the harder it is to pay attention to one more thing. Right? So I want you all to imagine this. Imagine that you're at the end of a international flight and you've been on the plane for 24 hours. And then some dude in the airport gives you a list of like 16 things to do. And you just can't pay attention. you can listen to the first like two or three minutes, but at the end of it, you just can't pay attention to the rest of it.

It's not sinking in. It's not that they don't forget. They don't forget. It never goes in in the first place. So if your child says, I forgot, and you're like, that makes no sense. It's an attentional problem. Okay? So now these are the three problems that we have.

We have frontal lobes that are exhausted. We have a limbic system that is hyperactive. I was free, but now you're taking that away. There's one more thing. Oh, my God, one more thing. That's harder to regulate. And since their frontal lobes are exhausted, they have difficulty listening to what you're saying. Now, the good news is that we can fix all of them.

Once we understand how their brain works, we can institute systems to actually correct all of these. Okay? This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it.

Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. So this is where there's one big mistake that parents make, which is to think about when is the timing of the request. So remember that, let's say, here's your frontal lobe energy. So this is your child's ability to pay attention, follow through, even regular. emotions. Now here's homework over time. So as your child with ADHD does their homework, this is what happens to their attentional energy. And then you tell them down here, one more. So here's the key thing. This is what you, this is when you need to tell them. If you're trying to

create structure in your child's life, you cannot create structure and implement structure at the same time. You need to plan the structure. That's the whole point of structure, right? It's built ahead of time. So if we think about like, you know, structure in something like a house, we don't build the roof when it starts raining, right? That's absurd. You build the roof way ahead of time and then when it, when it rains, the roof is already ready. It's ready. It's there. Everything is set up. This is not what kids with 80, parents with ADHD do with their kids. They create the structure when things are burning down or when things are going wrong. Does that make sense. Oh, the kid did not put their thing in the proper folder. Therefore, let me teach the kid where

to put it. No, no, no, that's not creating structure that is dealing with a fire that has already gotten out of hand. Structure is created ahead of time, preemptively, not at the moment when you need it. So here is what I would recommend that we do. And there are a couple of other techniques that we can use here, okay? What I would do is literally practice and explain organization. So what we're going to do before we even start the homework is we're going to take the kid and we're going to say, hey, so let's talk a little bit about where our homework goes before we do our homework. Where does homework go? And there's a huge thing that parents miss out on, is that they try to explain things to their kid.

But if you've got a kid with ADHD, you need to leverage their understanding. Ask questions. So what we want to do is ask questions. You can ask them, okay, where should we put our homework when it's done? Why do we put it in there? Can we leave it out on the table and then put it in later? What happens if you leave it somewhere and then you're going to organize it later? What do you think will happen?

And the kid is smart. The kid knows, oh, maybe I'll forget where it is. Okay, so then what should you do about that? Leverage their understanding. And this is a big thing that a lot of neurotypical parents don't understand is you can't take for granted the stuff that is easy for you to learn. See, neurotypical people will connect the dots. And the whole challenge with raising a neurodiverse kid is that they don't connect the dots the same way that you do. So you have to spend time explaining things that otherwise don't need to be explained.

And if you take that step, all of the effort of the mess that you deal with down the road like this, this all gets fixed. You just have to do it up front and in the right way. So what I would recommend is that you first have a conversation with your child, right? So you have to like show up Tuesday at 5 p.m. when nothing else is going on. There's no homework being done. They have a full frontal lobe. They've just gotten back from their soccer class. We're going to sit down.

You've had a good day. Let's explain. Let's talk about homework. And then what we're going to do. So we're going to start with questions, right? go with understanding questions, okay? And then we're going to explain organization. So maybe I should do these in the opposite order.

Okay, so the first thing that you're going to do, number one, is ask questions and shoot for understanding. What does your child understand? Okay. Second thing that we're going to do is explain if you need to, because sometimes you'll need to explain. They won't understand. So you'll say, okay, like, this is why we do things so that we can find them.

Do you sometimes forget your homework? Do you have difficulty misplacing your homework? Okay. So here's the reason that we put it in the folder. And then all you have to remember is to check your folder. You don't have to remember where the homework is. What's easier? Checking your folder or trying to remember where your homework is.

Okay, good. And this is the third step that a lot of parents miss. 95% of parents miss. Practice. You have to literally practice this skill. So what I would say is that, okay, now what we're going to do is I've got three different pieces of paper that are in three different places in the house. What I want you to do is go get each of those three pieces of paper and then put them in your folder

and put your folder in your backpack. Now, this is really important. So you don't just do this once, you do this every day for one to two weeks. This is our task that we are going to learn. Three pieces of paper in three folders. It takes less than 60 seconds once they get good at it. And here's the beautiful thing.

In the ADHD brain, we know that these parts of the brain, right, our emotional system, our frontal lobes, we have attentional problems, but there is one circuit of the brain, not one. There are many circuits of the brain

that are completely intact, that function totally. fine for kids with ADHD. And as we use the intact circuits of the brain, their life will become extraordinarily easy. So the first circuit that we're going to talk about or the main one is the habit circuitry. This is completely fine. So the habit circuitry is the endocannabinoid system. So this system is not altered in ADHD. The problem with kids with ADHD is if you are constantly nagging them and they don't have, if there's no consistency, their habits can never form. This is the real tragedy of being a human being with ADHD. Is that the very circuit that can fix

all of your problems, which is the habit formation circuitry, never gets enough consistency to form a habit in the first place. So there's one thing that can save you and it's very hard to activate that thing. So as a parent, what we need to do is build these habits. So for two weeks, all we're going to do is practice putting our thing away, we're putting our paper away when we're done with our homework. And now what happens is if you institute this properly, what you'll find is that for two weeks, you're focusing on this. And then after that, the kid will know how to do that. to do it. And once they know how to do it, you will not have to nag them. You will not have to remind them. It'll become habit. Even if they're not paying attention, this is the key thing, right? So if we look at

this, remember that the whole point is you're asking the kid to pay attention, restrain their impulses, and do this extra step. If the child doesn't pay attention, they will end up habitually doing it anyway because it's a different part of their brain. So even if they're emotionally exhausted, if their frontal lobes are exhausted, the habits kick in. That's exactly what we want. When the child stops paying attention, they'll behave in the right way. It's beautiful. So someone's saying, like, what do your kids understand? Exactly. So the problem is also that, see, when we, oftentimes, if you're neurotypical, you can connect the dots. So it's obvious to you that if you put the homework in the folder, then you won't lose the homework. But sometimes if your kid has ADHD,

you have to connect those dots for them. When you're looking for your homework, where should it be in the folder? And even if they can come up with the right answer, it's not that they won't be able to come up with the right answer. You have to ask them a set of questions, and then those connections will form in their brain. They can come up with the right answer, but you have to ask them the question, and once they come up with the right answer, that's great. They may answer right away, but you're still like connecting those dots for them. What if the parent is ADHD and can't build any habit? Very good question. So this is a huge problem, right? Is that neurodiverse kids oftentimes have neurodiverse parents. And so the beautiful thing is that once you figure out how to do

this for yourself, you will be the best person on the planet to teach it to your child because you have the experience of struggling yourself. So if we look at our basic principles, remember that a habit formation is difficult at the end of the day. So what we need to do if you're a parent who has difficulty with structures, first you have to implement the structure yourself. And second is you should practice too, right? So practice putting your keys in the right place, your wallet in the right place. Literally what we'll do is like all with my kid, I will practice this three times in a row.

Go put your backpack here. Go put your water bottle in the sink. go put your snack in the snack container in the sink. And now we're going to pull them out of the sink. You're going to pack your bag again. We're going to walk out the door. And we're going to come in and we're going to do it two more times. We will practice this.

And once they do it three times a day, every day for one week, then they know how to do it. I never have to tell them again. So you should do the same thing as an adult. Implement that structure early on in the day when your frontal lobes still have some energy and literally go through the motions. Hey, y'all, if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we share to actually create change in your life, check out Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health. It combines over two decades of my experience of both being a monk and a psychiatrist and distills all of the most important things I've learned into a choose-your-own-adventure format. So check out the link in the bio and start your journey today.