Answering Parents' Questions

Introduction

0:00This 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. In today's episode, we're back with another listener Q&A,

0:31answering real questions from parents who are in the thick of ADHD at home. We dig into bedtime anxiety that's spiraled out of control, emotional meltdowns, and constant attention-seeking, medication concerns, and mood changes, and even how to think about summer camps for kids with ADHD. As always, we focus on what's really driving these behaviors, where well-intentioned parenting can accidentally reinforce them, and what actually helps kids build independence while protecting your own sanity at home.

Host Introduction

0:59Welcome to the ADHD Parenting Podcast with Mike McLeod of Grow Now ADHD and Ryan Wechselblatt of ADHD Dude. Learn about parenting kids with ADHD from a licensed clinical social worker and speech-language pathologist who specializes in ADHD. No fluffy parenting advice, only practical information that will equip you to help your child with ADHD effectively. Hello, Mr. Mike. Hi, Ryan. How are you? I'm good. So, somebody told Mike

1:29that we should do a little back-and-forth during the beginning of the episodes. Mike and I typically just get straight into it because I think maybe this is a male thing. I don't know about you, Mike, but when I listen to podcasts or something and I hear people talking about their kids for an hour beforehand, I just get annoyed and want them to get to the point. You know, where there's 50 ads before a podcast starts, so I think that's why we kind of get into it. But, yeah, if you want us to talk a little bit, we'll talk a little bit. So, why don't we... Yeah. Yeah, I would say overall, you know, it's definitely a double-edged sword.

2:01You know, number one, I don't think Ryan and I really like talking about ourselves. I think we kind of like being very practical to the point. And, you know, we never make this about ourselves. This is about helping people. It's not about our own lives. But also, it's, you know, I guess it's a little bit of a compliment that people like want to know more about us and know more about our personal sides and not just us giving advice and more about that kind of stuff. So, yeah, there's definitely, you know, a positive side to it and also sort of an uncomfortable side as well. Yes, there is. So, we will do that from now on.

2:32So, whoever gave us that suggestion, thank you very much.

Q&A Session Introduction

2:35All right. So, for today's episode, this is going to be on answering parents' questions episode because we've got a lot of good questions. So, Mike, I'm just going to get into it if that's all right with you. Of course. Okay. Did we meet the quota for small talk at the beginning? Well, I thought we were going to very quickly mention something. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. So, I am excited for Mike because Mike got today the first set of copies of his upcoming book, The Executive Function Playbook

3:06and The Executive Function Playbook Workbook, which are coming out. Mike, what's the date, actually? January 13th. Yeah. So, both the books, we have The Executive Functioning Playbook for parents, educators, and professionals really breaking down ADHD, executive functions, the most up-to-date research. And it's an incredibly practical book about building independence in youth with ADHD. And there's the accompanying workbook, The Executive Functioning Playbook in Action, which is, I'm surprised at how thick it is.

3:36It's about 400 pages of worksheets and different things for parents, educators, and professionals to bring executive functioning into the work they do. So, if you're interested, head over to grownowedht.com. You can click right on the book link and order the books yourselves and send me a message and I'll send you some freebies. And I appreciate all the support. And let's mention that the book has been the number one seller in this category on Amazon for quite a few weeks now, right? Yeah, both of them. At number one and number two in its category, they've been...

4:08That's amazing. The pre-orders have definitely exceeded expectations, which is great. You know, being an author is a whole new level of anxiety and fear of, you know, people reading your information just like we just talked about. But I'm very excited about it. So, the pre-orders have been out there and, you know, it's a really great book for, you know, parents, professionals, teachers, schools. And I'm excited to see it bring about some positive change. And we're going to do a whole episode actually about the book. But as I told Mike, I want to have a copy of the book and workbook

4:39before we do that episode. So... It's on its way. Hopefully, yeah. The next few episodes, you'll hear that. So, all right. Anything else you want to mention, Mike, about the book? Well, anything exciting about your life, Ryan?

4:53Well, I can tell you real quick what I'm going to be working on in 2026. My big thing that I'm going to be working on is a certification program for coaches and clinicians because I really kind of want them to take the stuff from my membership site and run with it and work directly with families because I realize a lot of families, that's what they want. They want to work directly with somebody. And obviously, I don't have the time for that. And I'm really fortunate that I get emails every week from, you know, a coach or clinician asking, you know, if they can use the material.

5:25And I always say, yes, absolutely. And I give them suggestions and they ask if I have any kind of training program. So, that's going to be my thing because, you know, at the end of the day, really what I'm doing is a method. It's not about me. So, it's going to be called the Confident Parents Capable Kids Method. And we're going to have the Confident Parents Capable Kid training. And that's probably going to be a year in the making. But that's going to be my big thing for this upcoming year. That's been a long time coming. It's been years and years where people have been reaching out to you asking basically, hey, can I get trained

5:55in the ADHD Dude methodology? Can I get trained in this program? So, you finally, you know, realizing, you know, this is something I should do because it's so, it allows your method to help more and more people, the more people you get trained in it. That's incredibly exciting. Yeah, thank you. So, I'm looking forward to that. All right. So, we're going to get started with some questions.

Bedtime Anxiety Question

6:17All right.

Bedtime Anxiety Question

6:17The first one is, my almost eight-year-old started ADHD medication, Vyvanse, with a small lunchtime Adderall dose in September. And we saw immediate improvements in behavior and sleep. The sleep regressed. Guantacine caused an adverse reaction and was stopped. So, we shifted to a behavioral approach. What began as night wakings has turned into major difficulty falling asleep despite consistent routines, exercise, minimal screen time, and other sleep supports. After sleeping outside

6:47his door for a month, I tried a calm, predictable check-in plan we could fade out. Instead of improving, things worsened. Any reduction in support triggers intense meltdowns and regression, and now it looks like separation anxiety with some OCD-like behaviors. I feel trapped each evening, and this isn't working for our family. I'd appreciate guidance on what may be happening and what to do next. You want to start this or you want me to start? So, these behaviors began when they started medication?

7:19No, I think she was just, you know, explaining, you know, that they shifted away from medicine to more of a behavioral approach. You know, I think the medicine piece was there because we asked people to mention that in case it has something to do with their question. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, yes. So, why don't you start and we'll go back and forth on this. Okay. So, one, this is exhausting and, you know, you deserve to sleep and you need some downtime yourself and what you're doing right now, you can't have that downtime. So, yes, this absolutely needs to change not just for your son

7:50but for, you know, your well-being as well. Okay. So, I want to explain that the sleeping outside his door, that's what we call a safety behavior. A safety behavior is one when a child has anxiety that we do to kind of reduce the anxiety. So, obviously, safety behaviors are done out of love. Okay. But what it is, a safety behavior is a form of parental accommodation. So, when we talk about parental accommodation, what we mean is when parents change their behavior to alleviate or avoid their child's temporary distress or, in this case,

8:22anxiety. So, while it's making your son, you know, feel better if you're sleeping outside his door, the thing is it's actually making things worse. Why is it making things worse? Because, again, it's reinforcing to him that he cannot handle being on his own and he needs to have you sleeping outside his door, you know, in order for him to go to sleep. So, he cannot learn that he can, you know, move through the anxiety and this discomfort as long as there's a safety behavior in place. So, what needs to happen here

8:52is, unfortunately, we're going to have to, you know, let him, you know, turn, have these, you know, meltdowns and everything. So, he understands that, you know, this is, you know, we're not going to accommodate your anxiety around this. Now, this is a little more complicated than that because there's other pieces we have to do. We need to have, you know, kind of announced to him how we're going to be changing our behavior in response to him. So, this is not a surprise. He knows what's coming. We need to do it in a supportive way so he understands that we, you know, have faith in his ability

9:23to handle sleeping on his own. Um, and we also should, you know, do what I call enlisting supporters. So, people who he respects who can offer support to him when he's having difficulty with this. And that's not to give him reassurance but to say, hey, you know what, I know what's happening and I know you can do this. And that's the role of the supporter in this particular context. So, what I'm going to suggest to you is you get the book by Dr. Ellie Leibovitz called Breaking Free of Child Anxiety and OCD. Dr. Leibovitz is a creator of SPACE which is an

9:53evidence-based intervention. To help parents learn to not accommodate their child's anxiety. If you think it would be helpful, I also think that you should work with a space-trained clinician. And the beautiful thing about that is they don't have to be nearby. You can do it online, you know, as long as they're licensed in your state. So, I'm trained in space. You know, it's not something I have time to do but I'm a big fan of it and I actually have an interview with Dr. Leibovitz on my YouTube channel. So, if you type in ADHD dude, Ellie Leibovitz, you know, or spelled Eli,

10:23you can see it and I think that would be helpful as well. Yeah, and you really took the exact direction with this that I would have. You know, the biggest thing is you being outside the door. Number one, that's really blurring sort of the hierarchy of relationships and sort of that safety net that kids need, especially ADHD kids need to feel safe. But we have to remember with this ADHD brain, it's almost as if, you know, them knowing that you're there outside the room,

10:54on the floor, outside the bedroom door, it's almost too tempting for them to get out of bed and sort of mess with you or talk to you or engage with you. You know, that's like letting a kid go to bed and having, you know, an iPad a foot away. Like, they're going to want to go for that iPad. So, knowing that you were there is going to be far too tempting for him to just lay in bed, quiet his mind, you know, shut his mind off and do those things. You know, one of the biggest things that you tend to see with ADHD is, you know, it's a directive of go in your room,

11:25turn the lights off, lay in bed, go to sleep. Sometimes these ADHD kids sort of need a little bit more time to slow things down on their own. So, if the room is a controlled environment where there's no screens, there's no Alexa, there's nothing electronic, just books and magazines or coloring or whatever there needs to be in there for quiet activities for them to do on their own and they eventually fall asleep at their own pace instead of when you tell them to. So, try to shift the focus from being asleep

11:56and getting that deep REM sleep to them being in their room and not affecting the other people in the house. And to Mike's point, I should have mentioned, I actually have a course called Better Bedtime Scaffolding where I teach exactly what Mike just mentioned, which is how to create a sequence for bedtime so that transition becomes easier and I think that would also help you in terms of when you stop accommodating him because obviously that needs to happen because if you don't stop this, we'll get worse eventually with time.

12:28Correct. More importantly, he's not going to recognize how capable he is and that he can get through this. So, all right, thank you for your question. All right, so Mike, our next question, this medication does matter in this one so I'm going to read it. I have a 12-year-old son turning 13 next month. He was diagnosed with ADHD very young and has been on medication since then. He is currently on guamfacine and Adderall, both XR. He has been prescribed an afternoon dose of Adderall, fluoxetine, and clonidine but I have not been making him take those.

12:58Just so everyone knows, Adderall is a stimulant. Fluoxetine is what people know as Prozac. That's an SSRI and clonidine it's what's called an alpha agonist. That is a medication used for ADHD often used in conjunction with a stimulant to help reduce impulsivity you know, or oppositional behavior. So, again, I've not been making him take those. He is opposed to taking his meds because he doesn't like how they make him feel. The past two days he was very defiant, angry, argumentative, reactive.

13:29Today, I picked him up and he was happy, funny, and kind. He told me that he did not take his meds today. I was not at home this morning to watch and take them. Is it possible the meds can change his mood to be angry or is it him coming off his meds? I agree with him that his personality comes through a lot more when he is not on the meds. However, we have tried and he cannot succeed at school without them. He's had classmates tell him that they like him better when he is not on his medication. He will actually hug me when he is not on his meds. He still has very negative days,

13:59but it's less consistent. One of my son's friends asked me about his anger issues. Another kid asked me if my son was bipolar because of his mood swings at his anger. Is this a common issue with ADHD or these meds? Okay, so first thing we have to say, Mike and I are not licensed medical professionals. We cannot give medical advice, but we can share what we've seen with other families. All right, so first thing, Mike, I want to mention here that the medications that your son is on, these cannot be used like they're Tylenol.

14:29All right, that you just kind of take them here and there and particularly with an SSRI like Prozac. Prozac is not a medicine like a stimulant that it's in and out of your system the same day. Same with guanfacine actually. They have to build up in your system. All right, so if you just stop taking fluoxetine cold like that, you can have what's called SSRI withdrawal. It can cause problems. And that's the mood swings right there. It could be, yeah. Yeah. So bottom line is you cannot be

15:00treating these meds as if they're PRNs and taking it like that, okay? Meds need to be taken consistently. The one caveat with that is that stimulants, there's more leeway with that, but this is a question to ask your prescriber, okay? But you can't just kind of pick and choose like that and be inconsistent like this. And to Mike's point, yes, I think a part of his mood swings is a result of this. The other thing I want to mention is that Adderall can cause, even though it's one of the most prescribed stimulants, can cause irritability more than some of the other stimulants. I can tell you

15:31my son's psychiatrist, she rarely uses Adderall because she thinks the negative outweighs the benefits. So that can be another variable here. So the point I'm trying to make is that, you know, we might not be able to parse this out completely, but what we should do is we should, you know, defer to his prescriber and if he doesn't like the way they make him feel, let him talk about that with the prescriber and let them come up with something together because that's teaching him self-advocacy skills. Number two, it's giving him some agency and some ownership

16:01in the process and two, it's important that, you know, the prescriber knows what he likes and doesn't like and they can work together to come up with a solution and of course you should be involved in that but it's really important to let him speak for himself rather than you speaking for him. And, you know, I hear what you're saying that maybe his, you know, personality is flattened a bit when he's on them but I think, and, you know, Mike, I'll let you talk to this, I think that the fact that, you know, kids have asked about his anger issues and a kid asks if he's, you know, bipolar,

16:33that's significant and what that is saying to me, Mike, is that his behavior makes other kids uncomfortable at times. Correct, yeah, and that's all part of ADHD and with ADHD, you know, one of the common themes that Ryan and I are talking about are these power struggles with parents and one of the worst power struggles between ADHD kids and their parents is power struggles over medication and that tends to be the most frustrating thing where the kid feels like they have the power in their hand to manipulate the situation,

17:03take it sometimes, not take it sometimes, you know, hug you only when you're not taking medication. You know, a lot of these things can be, you know, manipulative behaviors as well as power struggles. Obviously, I don't know you guys individually but it's typically best practice to follow the prescription by the doctor in terms of what was prescribed of this medication, this dosage, this many times a day. Follow that until, as Ryan stated, you're able to have a conversation with the provider and your child

17:33should be a major part of that conversation. So follow the licensed physician's directives until you are able to have another meeting to maybe change the game or change things up. But the last thing you want is a power struggle where there are certain behaviors here, certain behaviors there. The fact that the other boys are coming up to you saying these things, it sounds like, you know, there are some pretty significant needs here and it's not just him, you know, taking his meds and doing better in school. ADHD is not just

18:04a school-based problem. It's a quality-of-life issue and clearly, based on what these other boys are saying, it's affecting him socially. And the last thing we want is for him to receive some sort of negative reputation. That's Ryan and I talk about it all the time. This is the true heartbreak of ADHD is the lack of friendships and relationships when they truly want to be loved and cared for and have friends. But it's hard for them to do it, especially when there's mood swings and anger. Nothing is going to destroy an ADHD friendship more,

18:34especially with boys, when that individual is getting angry all the time towards their peers and develops a little bit of a mean streak here. So, you know, don't focus on grades. Don't focus on paying attention in class. This is a quality-of-life issue. Yeah, exactly. And, Mike, one last thing I want to say about this. Let's remember what Dr. Barkley says that, you know, other kids will forgive you if you are spacey, if your executive functioning is not great, if you're disorganized. What other kids will not forgive is your abrasiveness, is your lashing out at them

19:05because that's offensive to other people. And these other boys wouldn't be coming up to you and asking this if it weren't bothering them. So, I think that's important to keep in mind. And he also describes, Dr. Barkley also describes ADHD as the diabetes of psychiatry because it needs that, just like with diabetes, you need insulin every single day. And to Ryan's point earlier, you need those medications every single day. You can't take your insulin sometimes or it's not going to work. So, this whole regimen you're on right now of taking it sometimes, not taking it the other,

19:35it's not working to its full effect.

Medication and Mood Swings Question

19:37Yeah.

Medication and Mood Swings Question

19:37All right. Our next question, this is from the mom of a six-year-old. She said, Hi, Mike and Ryan. My daughter is six and on 20 milligrams Ritalin. I'm looking for guidance on how to handle a situation with my daughter. When she becomes dysregulated, she makes constant noise, follows me from room to room and insists on having me right next to her. I've started responding with, I will not respond to this behavior and I try not to engage, but she will continue for an hour or more. I've considered having her stay in her room lock,

20:07but when I've tried this in the past, it escalated into loud banging and a more intense meltdown. Should I continue ignoring and calmly restating my boundary or is there a more effective strategy for situations like this? You want to start? Sure. This is a big one. This is a big one. And this is what we always talk about. So, the number one area where ADHD tends to be at its worst and executive dysfunction tends to be at worst is the home. So, piggybacking off of the last question where everyone thinks ADHD and executive

20:38functioning is all about school and paying attention and grades, it's actually in the home towards parents where the vast majority of behaviors are seen. And I always talk about how the ADHD brain is a negative attention-seeking instant gratification brain. So, it's either seeking out screens or conflict. So, in this situation, if the daughter is chasing around the mom, I'm going to safely assume there's little to no screens in the environment. So, number one, good job, mom. Then, number two, she's literally chasing you around

21:09asking for you to be next to her. And that's all the proof you need to know that your attention is a drug. And that's one of the most important messages that parents can get from listening to this episode is recognize your attention is the drug. And that's the biggest thing. Just like a screen being a negative influence on their brain and dysregulating them, so is your attention. And the fact that they're willing to chase you around the house is all the proof you need to know that your attention is a negative drug for them. So, one of the things that we do

21:40in our parent training is we coach the parents to use very specific and very basic language. So, let's say this girl's name is, you know, Veronica. Okay? So, there's ready Veronica and not ready Veronica. I am able to tell by seeing you, not by you telling me you're ready or telling me you're not ready. I can tell by looking at you when you are ready and you are not ready. When you're ready, you look like this and you say these things.

22:10When you're not ready, you look like this and you say these things. When you're not ready, it is my job as a parent to give you space, not talk to you, and allow you to calm down and self-regulate and figure things out yourself. That's my job as a parent to give you space so you can learn to self-regulate, self-soothe, self-calm, whatever basic language you have to use for a young person. And then, when you're ready, I'm here for you. I can listen to you, I can talk to you, I can help you, we can have a conversation,

22:41but the second I see that you're not ready again, it is my responsibility to leave and give you space. So, you need to keep that boundary or this is going to snowball into a bigger thing. And chances are this young girl is not following around her teacher all day at school saying, sit next to me, sit next to me or hopefully she doesn't have an aide saying, you know, giving her lots of one-to-one attention and alienating her, you know, amongst her peers. But your attention is a drug and you need to keep that boundary or this will get worse.

23:12And what I'm going to start off with is saying, you know, saying I will not respond to this behavior. I think that's a little of abstract language for a six-year-old. Yes. So, what we want to do, number one, we want to give her context for understanding what's happening. Okay, she's behaving like this likely because she's stuck because she's not getting her way. So, we want to give her language at an, you know, age, developmentally appropriate level she can understand.