Child Psych Podcast Episode #115: ADHD: A No Nonsense Approach

[Tania Johnson] Hello, and welcome back to the Child Psych Podcast. You’re probably familiar with me—I’m Tania Johnson, a registered psychologist, registered play therapist, co-founder of the Institute of Child Psychology, and most importantly, a mom to two beautiful little girls. Today, we have Michael McLeod with us. Welcome, Michael!

[Michael Mccleod] Thank you so much for having me. It is such a privilege to be here with you. I’m a huge fan of your work and all the work done by the Institute of Child Psychology. The evidence-based information you share is incredibly valuable. I’m a big supporter of you and everything you do.

[Tania Johnson] Oh, Michael, I love it. Thank you so much. Michael’s background is really interesting. So, Michael, maybe you can share a bit about it—you can probably explain it better than I can. We were just chatting before we hit record, and I love that your background is actually in speech and language pathology. Now, you’re the owner of Grow Now ADHD, and your work focuses entirely on ADHD, specifically helping kids through your role as an executive functioning specialist. How did this happen? How did you transition from speech and language pathology to working with ADHD?

[Michael Mccleod] Yeah, yeah. So, overall, I’ve been working with youth since about 2004 or 2005, back when I was in high school. It’s been quite a long journey, and I’ve spent many years working with children and youth. Originally, I wanted to be a teacher, so I enrolled in the School of Education for my undergraduate degree. However, I quickly realized that I wanted to focus on improving the overall quality of life for youth, not just teaching academic subjects like math, science, and social studies. I really wanted to work with kids one-on-one rather than in large group settings. I wanted to help them develop skills that would enhance their lives because, as I got older, I noticed I wasn’t using things like the Pythagorean theorem in my daily life. I wanted to focus on practical, impactful work that could genuinely help people. After I graduated, I learned about speech pathology while working at a residential treatment facility in New York for kids with severe behavioral challenges. These children lived full-time on campus and attended school there. At the facility, many of the kids received speech and language therapy, and I had the opportunity to observe these sessions while working one-on-one with the children. I saw firsthand how improving communication skills—articulation, expressive language, and social skills—had a profound impact on their overall quality of life. I instantly fell in love with speech and language pathology. I went back to school to earn a second bachelor’s degree in speech and then completed my master’s degree. After graduation, I moved to Philadelphia, where I began my clinical fellowship year. This is a requirement where you must be supervised by a licensed speech pathologist to earn your credentials and licensure. My supervisor specialized in apraxia, a motor speech disorder. Many people think speech pathologists only work on articulation, stuttering, or pronunciation issues like “R” and “S” sounds, which is the speech side of the field. However, speech and language pathology also includes the language side, which focuses on expressive language, social skills, and receptive language. Language is a much broader field. My supervisor introduced me to the Focus Foundation in Annapolis, Maryland, which collaborates with incredible doctors and neuroscientists from the Children’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., among others. The boys they worked with had chromosomal disorders, and most of them had apraxia—hence my supervisor’s involvement—but they also had ADHD and executive functioning challenges. Through this experience, I gained in-depth training and firsthand knowledge of ADHD and executive dysfunction. I realized quickly that there weren’t many effective resources or services for kids with ADHD. Parents often spent money and time on interventions that yielded no results. Meanwhile, ADHD was strongly correlated with outcomes like substance abuse, job loss, and incarceration. Recognizing this gap, I developed my own approach—the Grow Now model—focused on internal skills development. We conducted a year-long research study on this model at a local private school, the Stratford Friends School, and saw incredible results. This success has allowed the model to grow and expand, and everything has taken off from there.

[Tania Johnson] Incredible. Yeah. And Michael, I know there are so many parents listening right now who can completely relate to the experience of going to a therapist week after week and not seeing the progress or changes they’re hoping for in their child.

[Michael Mccleod] Correct. The thing I keep hearing time and time again is, “Oh yeah, my son goes to therapy, my son goes to counseling, he’s in these social skills groups. I have no idea what they’re doing there. He enjoys the sessions, but I just don’t know what’s happening behind closed doors.” That’s a massive red flag. First of all, we’re talking about executive functioning skills, which are the greatest predictors of success for human beings—not IQ or anything else, but executive functions and independent skills. And we’ll definitely take a deeper dive into what executive functioning is today. Overall, though, sitting in a room with a counselor or therapist for an hour without any parent involvement to ensure carryover into the natural environment is really concerning. It’s not helpful at all, and it’s a total waste of money. When parents call me—that’s essentially how Grow Now ADHD works—they’ll visit the website, fill out the form, and schedule a call directly with me. When they call, I answer the phone, and they’re often surprised, saying, “Wow, it’s really you! That’s you from Instagram.” And I reply, “Yeah, it’s me—same voice, same person.” I hear the same story over and over: “We’ve been through it all. My son has been through so many therapies, and we’ve seen no progress. We’ve spent thousands of dollars and countless hours, and we’re right back where we started.” That’s because parents aren’t being guided with real, actionable recommendations. If you look at the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendations for ADHD and executive dysfunction, parent coaching is number one. Parent coaching and medication management—obviously under the supervision of a licensed physician—are essential. But there absolutely has to be parent coaching. Period. If your child is in any form of therapy or counseling and you, as the parent, are not involved, that’s a huge red flag. You need to evaluate whether this is truly worth your time and money.

Misconceptions About Executive Functions

[Tania Johnson] Beautiful. Such a great point, Michael. Okay, let’s rewind a little bit here. Executive functions—we’ve mentioned them a couple of times now. What are some of the common misconceptions that people have about executive functions?

[Michael Mccleod] Absolutely. When most people hear the term “executive functioning,” their minds instantly go to time management and organization, right? That’s what we’ve been taught. ADHD is often portrayed as a disorder that affects school performance—completing homework, staying on task, and paying attention in class. Executive functioning is seen as a school-based skill: having a clean backpack, organized locker, neat folders, and using an agenda book, Google Classroom, or Canvas effectively. This perspective, however, is unbelievably misleading. For all the parents listening right now: if your child has ADHD, why is your primary concern their behavior and dysregulation at home, rather than school issues? Many children with ADHD thrive in structured school environments. In fact, the vast majority struggle more at home, particularly with their parents, than at school. When discussing executive functioning, people often think of external time management and organization—clean backpacks, neat folders—and view ADHD as all about external hyperactivity and inattentiveness. Historically, ADHD and executive dysfunction were understood as external, behavior-based disorders: kids who couldn’t sit still, daydreamed, or had messy backpacks and folders. Now, we know it’s the internal executive functioning skills that are lacking. Those external issues with organization and time management are merely symptoms of deficient internal skills. I like to break executive functioning into four separate pillars of internal skills. But before diving into that, I highly recommend exploring what I call the “Mount Rushmore” of ADHD professionals:

• Dr. Russell Barkley: the worldwide leader in ADHD and executive functioning. Search his name on YouTube or in your podcast app—he’s truly the best of the best.
• Dr. George McCloskey
• Dr. Ned Hallowell
• Ryan Wexelblat (known as the ADHD Dude)
• Sarah Ward: a speech and language pathologist whose webinars are invaluable.

Now, let’s break down the four pillars of executive functioning:

1. Self-Awareness
   Self-awareness is the ability to understand your impact on your environment, recognize your strengths, and identify your needs. Parents often ask during intake calls, “How am I possibly going to get my child to agree to do this? How am I going to get them to engage with executive functioning coaching?” I remind them that ADHD is a disorder of self-awareness. Children with ADHD often don’t think they have a problem. They think you’re just an annoying parent who’s always on their back. They struggle to understand the negative impact of their behaviors on themselves and others.
2. Self-Evaluation
   This is the ability to learn from past experiences, apply those lessons to the present, and avoid repeating mistakes. For parents of children with ADHD, every day can feel like Groundhog Day—the same mistakes, the same behaviors, and seemingly no ability to learn from the past.
3. Self-Regulation
   Self-regulation is the ability to control your emotions, language, body, and behavior in different environments and in response to various stimuli. Dr. Russell Barkley refers to ADHD as “self-regulation deficit disorder.” Let’s stop talking about ADHD as an attention deficit or hyperactivity disorder. It’s really about self-regulation, particularly the regulation of emotions.
   When we look deeper into the brain of someone with ADHD—a neurodiverse brain—we see a smaller amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex. These are the parts of the brain responsible for managing emotions. They’re less active and have reduced regional volume in ADHD individuals. This makes self-regulation a significant challenge. Among the various stimuli that can cause dysregulation, parents are often the biggest trigger.
4. Self-Motivation Toward Non-Preferred Tasks
   Sure, your child with ADHD can play Fortnite, Minecraft, or Roblox for 15 hours a day. But can they shower? Can they brush their teeth? Can they do homework? Can they go outside? The challenge lies in motivating themselves toward tasks that don’t provide instant gratification.

[Tania] Huge! I love that: self-awareness, self-evaluation, self-regulation, and self-motivation.

[Michael] You got it.

[Tania] Shifts the conversation altogether. We’re no longer talking about hyperactivity, impulsivity, or lack of focus. This goes much deeper. 

[Michael] Exactly. It’s not so much about hyperactivity—”my kid can’t sit still”—or inattentiveness—”my kid can’t pay attention.” It’s really about self-regulation. They can’t regulate themselves internally, so they may appear hyperactive, or they can’t regulate their thoughts and what’s going on in their mind, so they seem inattentive or daydream a lot. It’s essentially an inability to regulate their body or mind. There’s a statistic—I don’t have it memorized—but a large percentage of kids labeled hyperactive when first diagnosed at a young age tend to outgrow that hyperactivity. After puberty, they’re often given the inattentive label instead. So, it really depends on what’s happening as they grow. At the end of the day, what most people don’t recognize about ADHD is that, just like autism, it’s a spectrum disorder—a very wide spectrum. For example, with autism, you have individuals who need significant support, may be nonverbal, and could pose a danger to themselves or others. On the other hand, some individuals with autism are highly successful, live independently, and accomplish great things. It’s the same label, but the spectrum is incredibly broad. ADHD works the same way. No two kids with ADHD are the same. Parents often get caught up in labels like ADHD hyperactive type, inattentive type, or combined type. But if we’re not looking at the unique individual—their day-to-day experiences, strengths, needs, likes, and dislikes—we’re not going to make much progress. We need to view them as unique individuals, like snowflakes, because every single one of them is different.

[Tania] Absolutely. I think that if we don’t partner with the kids, we lose them altogether.

[Michael]  Correct. You got it. Absolutely. Yep. We have to build that motivation. When parents express concern about whether their child will buy into the coaching, I tell them this: the buy-in for coaching is our responsibility, not yours. Don’t worry about convincing your child. Parents often ask me, “How am I supposed to convince them to do coaching?” My response is, “You’re not. It’s our job to show them that the strategies we’re going to teach—strategies to strengthen their internal skills—will improve their quality of life.” This means more free time, less stress, better social experiences, and more opportunities to enjoy life.

Understanding and Nurturing Internal Skills in Children

[Tania] Yeah, so Michael, those internal skills—because I know we have a lot of parents who are listening eagerly right now, thinking, ‘This makes so much sense.’ Where do parents even start? What’s actually happening for my kiddo here? What is the unique ingredient? How do I start to untangle all of this and work with it?

[Michael] So, that’s an amazing question. Uh, and really there’s a foundational set of skills. We describe the four pillars of executive functioning: self-awareness, evaluation, regulation, and motivation. But what I refer to as the foundation of those four pillars is both nonverbal and verbal working memory. At its core, ADHD is a disorder of working memory. Working memory is very different from short-term memory or long-term memory, which are memories that you hold onto for the short or long term. Think about working memory as memories we use in the present moment to educate ourselves and make healthy, positive choices. And that’s ADHD in a nutshell—they don’t use their working memory. They’re focused on the now, on instant gratification, and they make impulsive decisions. So, what’s the opposite of being impulsive? Stopping, thinking, and using your working memory. Working memory is a really, really important thing, and it’s two separate skills. The first is nonverbal working memory and the visual imagery system. This is one of my favorite things that Sarah Ward, a fellow speech and language pathologist, talks about. I could listen to her talk about nonverbal working memory all the time. She describes it beautifully, and we describe it as mental movies—the ability to make mental movies in the movie theater of your mind. Dr. Russell Barkley talks about this with the Barkley-Vygotskian model, where he uses Vygotsky’s model of internal speech. We’re also creating mental movies in our minds, using hindsight to learn from the past and foresight to predict the future, so we can plan, prioritize, problem-solve, and delay gratification. So that’s the first step. All executive functioning has to deal with and start with nonverbal working memory and the visual imagery system of the brain—the ability to make mental movies of the past and the future to help us make positive choices. Parents, all the parents listening should think to themselves: ‘Okay, my child is so impulsive. What’s the opposite of impulsive?’ Stop and think. But stop and think is a very vague phrase. It’s not just stop and think—it’s stop, visualize. Make a mental movie, visualize it to yourself, and then step three: stop, visualize, and talk to your brain. This is verbal working memory—the ability to have an internal dialogue. So, your child with ADHD probably isn’t having much of an internal conversation with their brain. They’re not talking to their brain coach, as my friend Ryan Wexelblat calls it. They’re not having an internal conversation. It’s so important that there’s a constant internal dialogue happening to self-regulate, self-motivate, and self-soothe. Your child with ADHD probably isn’t talking to themselves at all. If they are talking to themselves, it’s probably about their favorite YouTube video or meme or whatever it might be. They’re not actually coaching themselves to regulate their behavior. This internal system that we use to regulate, motivate, evaluate, be more aware, self-soothe, and make healthy, positive choices that benefit our future selves—that’s so unbelievably important. And this is what kids with ADHD are missing. They’re hardwired toward instant gratification, which is why they’re so prone to screen addictions. They don’t do things now that help them later—like getting homework done now to avoid trouble tomorrow, showering now so they don’t smell later, or being nice to their parents now so they don’t lose privileges later. So, the only way to do that is to stop, use your nonverbal working memory to visualize, use your verbal working memory to talk to your brain, and then do. So ‘stop and think’ really means stop, visualize, talk to yourself, and then do. It’s an internal process that kids need a lot of practice to start to use in the natural environment.

[Tania] Stop, visualize, talk, do.

[Michael] You got it.

[Tania] Yeah, which really, I’m guessing with our PhD kids, when they’re working with a coach, it’s that repeated practice so that it eventually becomes more of an innate skill for them. 

[Michael] Exactly. And what we’re talking about here is the prefrontal cortex of the brain, the part of the brain right behind the forehead. What parents really need to understand is that over the first 30 years of life, your brain develops from back to front. The front part of the brain isn’t fully developed until you’re 30 years old. So, the executive functioning system and the ability to gain these skills is one of the most malleable and plastic parts of the brain. These skills can absolutely be gained, strengthened, and secured. That’s such an important thing to note.

The more they practice stopping, visualizing, talking to themselves, regulating, motivating, and delaying gratification—parents can help by having chores, decreasing or eliminating screen time. One of the things that you and your Institute of Child Psychology talk about so beautifully is the benefits of play. ADHD kids need play, and we live in a world now where play is declining and even becoming extinct. Just look at The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. That unbelievable book has been a New York Times bestseller for over a year now. It should be mandatory reading for all parents and educators. One of the scariest things facing kids today is play becoming extinct—kids waking up, going to school, coming home, staying in the basement all day, sitting on their phones all day. If kids aren’t playing as kids, they won’t be ready for life later.

[Tania] Michael, I’m loving this. I’m really hearing the focus on, first of all, the client—the child. So, how do we get them to really harness those internal skills? And then I’m also hearing a lot from you about parenting itself—play, structure, chores, less screen time—all of these things that we can put in place that essentially support everyone’s wellness, irrespective of whether they have a label of ADHD or not.

[Michael] 100%. And if anybody follows me on Instagram, you know that I talk, you know, ad nauseam about screens. And that’s because I’m not going to cut corners. This is why I’m such a big fan of the Institute of Child Psychology and all the work that you guys do. Everything you post about is 100% evidence-based and research-based. You know, social media has caused the rise of pseudoscience and feel-good information, feeding into those fears, and parents, you don’t have to do the hard stuff. But you guys do an incredible job posting things that are literally evidence-based and research-based. Parents need to hear this because I’ve seen post after post claiming, ‘Screens regulate my child,’ ‘Screens are good for my child,’ ‘Screens help my child make friends,’ ‘Screens are teaching my child skills.’ All of that is nonsense and it’s being pushed on us by big tech. And there’s nothing big tech loves more than an ADHD child because they’re going to make a lot of money off of that. Take something like Fortnite—it’s free to download, but then you’ve got to save your parent’s credit card info to buy constant upgrades. There have already been class action lawsuits about that. So, parents, what I’m trying to express is that if you have an ADHD child, you’re probably going to need what’s going to look like a screen-free house. Yes, each screen is different. TV is the lesser of all evils because you just sit back and watch TV, which is more passive. You’re going to want to remove YouTube from a smart TV because they’ll overuse YouTube and watch videos of other kids playing video games. But you’re not going to want to have an Xbox, a PlayStation, a Switch, a tablet, a smartphone, or a computer with open access to the internet. You’re not going to want to bring those things into your house because your ADHD child won’t be able to regulate their ability to use them. They’ll overuse them, get dysregulated, and nothing will stimulate their brain the way those screens do. You might even limit it to one hour or two hours of Minecraft time, but after those two hours are up, what’s going to stimulate their brain the way Minecraft just did? You’ll ask them to do homework, go outside, take a shower, brush their teeth—good luck, because the little amount of dopamine in their brain is gone. You might see dysregulation as soon as Minecraft is over or even hours or days later, and it will lead to their inattentiveness, which even neurotypical kids can’t handle with excessive screen time. Screen time is unbelievably dangerous for ADHD kids, neurodiverse kids, and kids in general. Jonathan Haidt talks about it, and this is something we express to all the families we work with. We hold their hands through it because parents are scared. They know that if they remove screens, they might have to call 911. They might have to bring someone into the house because their son is going to attack them or break things, which just shows how serious this problem is. I’ve never heard of a parent having to call 911 when they take Legos away or action figures away. Screens are a dangerous drug. If you have screens in your house, you’re basically turning it into a casino, and your child is a gambling addict who can’t control themselves. Just like schools now giving out Chromebooks and putting kindergartners on iPads—it’s an absolute joke and a true disaster, one of the worst things to ever happen to education. But screens are very, very dangerous. In the past, the recommendation was to limit it—use it as a reward, take it away when they do the wrong thing, limit it to a couple of hours a day. But now it’s gotten so crazy with Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto, Brawl Stars, and all these crazy games. It’s just too much. Parents can’t handle the constant dangling of screens over their heads like a carrot. They can’t get their kids to do anything unless they threaten or reward them with screen time. It’s a losing proposition. So now, the recommendation is to just not have it in your house at all and get those kids outside.

[Tania] I can’t agree with you more. So, I know in our house, we follow Jonathan Haidt’s recommendations as well. And for my girls, I always say to them, ‘When I hand you a phone, we’re saying it’s the end of your childhood, and I don’t want your childhood to end.

[Michael] Yeah, there’s a great little comic strip in the book. Jonathan Haidt does a great job of including political cartoons in the middle of the book. In one, the young boy, just after turning 13 or 14, is sitting there when his parents approach him and say, ‘It’s been really nice getting to know you these past 14 years and conversing with you. Here’s a phone. Nice to meet you.’ And that’s basically it. When you give your child a smartphone, video games, and open access to the internet before their brains are ready for it, you’re essentially losing your child.

Key Parenting Strategies for Managing ADHD in Children

[Tania] We’re there. Yeah. So, I love that. A very strong recommendation. Again, screens, not even limiting—just get those screens out of your house. What are a few other parenting strategies that you love and recommend for parents?

[Michael] So, one of the number one things that we tend to see is that parents need to understand that language makes dysregulation worse. The more language you are constantly throwing at kids, the more it escalates. Parents often get stuck in these battles where, yes, ADHD kids have an executive functioning developmental disorder, and their executive functions are 3 to 5 years behind, but many kids with ADHD have an average to above-average IQ. What they’re really good at is pulling their parents into that argument vortex, that negotiation vortex, pulling at their heartstrings, and getting a dopamine rush by feeling a sense of control over their parents. Parents get stuck because they don’t realize that a child might have 5 to 10 minutes of homework to do, but it’s way more stimulating for the child to get into a 5-hour argument than to do 10 minutes of homework. And parents get sucked right into it. Parents need to realize that the more language and attention you’re giving your child, the more you are feeding into their negative attention-seeking behaviors. You are stimulating their brain. There are a lot of people on Instagram and social media talking about evidence-based facts. The ADHD brain is conflict-seeking. Just like how they get highly stimulated by screens, they also get highly stimulated by negative attention from parents. If there are two things that stimulate the ADHD brain, number one is screens, and number two is negative attention from parents. They get so stimulated by it, they love it, and they feel in control. If they can get you thrown off your game by their words, emotions, or choices, they’re loving every second of it, and they have you in the palm of their hands. So, parents end up over-prompting, keeping kids prompt-dependent. Kids then develop learned helplessness and will not do anything until parents do it for them. They’ll have parents emailing the school for them, checking their Google Classroom for them, getting them out the door on time so they never experience being late. It becomes a vicious cycle where parents end up doing everything for the child, keeping them prompt-dependent. They may end up with a massive IEP or a 504 plan, but when they graduate high school and go off to college, they may have the IQ to get good grades, but they won’t have the executive function skills. Without mom and dad prompting them, there’s no chance they’ll succeed in college dorms, setting office hours, going to the library, or turning their phones off. They’re still too prompt-dependent. So, what parents need to realize is that they have to use less language around their child and start modeling. Kids will learn a lot more by watching you than by listening to you. If they watch you do your tasks of daily living, if they see you stay calm in the face of stress, they will stay calm in the face of stress. But if they see you easily getting upset, rushing toward anger, screaming, yelling, or giving in to frustration, that’s what they’re going to do. Kids are going to learn by watching you. And, hey, if you’re a parent with ADHD, let’s be honest, it’s hereditary. Chances are, you are a parent with ADHD yourself. You can do it. That’s not an excuse. You can follow these strategies and model them for your child. You got through the first two years of having an infant; you can handle anything. So, the biggest thing is to use less language.

[Tania] I love it. I absolutely love it. So, those two tips, in and of themselves, are absolute gold: less screens, less language. Huge. Huge. 

[Michael] Yeah, that’s exactly it. One of the things we have to remember is that if your child has ADHD, you need to look at their lagging skills as prompt-dependent versus independent. The goal for your child is always to build independence. Start looking at the areas where your child is most prompt-dependent. Is it the morning routine? The nighttime routine? Going outside? Transitions? Where do they need the most prompting? Start asking yourself, ‘What am I doing for my child that they are capable of doing themselves?’ Can they email the teachers themselves? Can they get homework done independently in a different environment with teachers, a librarian, or a peer body double? You know, that’s a huge recommendation for ADHD parents: have your kids do homework somewhere else. What tends to happen with ADHD parents is they end up wearing way too many hats, where you’re not just a parent anymore—you’re also the homework secretary every single day. Parents will sit there anxiously for the two hours before their kids come home, knowing there’s going to be a five-hour fight over homework. Well, guess what? Set it up with the school, the IEP, or the 504 plan, where they’re getting the homework done at school. If that’s not possible, contact another family and have your child do homework in a pod with other classmates. You know, the whole ADHD body-doubling thing. Send them to the local library or the local YMCA. They need to do homework away from you because it’s going to be very hard for you as the parent to manage your emotions when you see your child not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. And that’s exactly what your ADHD child wants—they want you to see them doing what they’re not supposed to be doing because it sucks you in.

[Tania] I think that’s so counterintuitive to what parents naturally do, right? It’s like, ‘My kid struggles, they can’t sit still—I need to sit right next to them.’ I love that advice.

[Michael] Yeah, that’s exactly it. If you can sit there and work and model how to work, sure, but the second you realize your child is trying to suck you into the argument vortex to avoid having to do homework and get stimulated by fighting, then you need to back off. Parents need to learn how to give a prompt once, walk away, and let your child deal with the natural consequences. Then, when they come to you and ask for something else, they don’t get anything from you until they do what was asked of them earlier. That’s how they learn social reciprocity. This is another aspect of ADHD we didn’t even touch on today. I mentioned how most of the problems are in the home. We talked about executive functions, and most people think of executive functions as time management and organization towards school. I actually separate executive functioning into three separate zones. The first is academic executive functioning, which of course is getting your schoolwork done, time management, organization, and study skills—the things most people think about. But number two is home executive functioning, which is actually what most kids with ADHD struggle with. This includes self-regulation towards parents and the ability to initiate, persist, and complete non-screen-based tasks or non-preferred tasks in the home. The third is social executive functioning. Many kids with ADHD struggle very deeply socially, and it’s heartbreaking because these kids really want friends, they want peers, they want social groups, and they want to be included. But it’s hard for them because they lack perspective-taking skills, social reciprocity, social relatedness, and situational awareness—they can’t read the room. They’re going to learn a lot about social reciprocity and 50/50 relationships at home when they realize that parents aren’t constantly giving without taking. Your child does for you, you do for them. You can’t just give them every screen they ask for, every game they ask for, every phone they ask for. They have to do chores. And you guys do an amazing job talking about the research behind chores and the different battles to pick with your kids. I love the stuff you guys post because it’s real and evidence-based. So, there has to be a 50/50, reciprocal relationship between parent and child.

[Tania] Oh, I love that! Help starts at home. I mean, each one of those three areas is huge in itself, but I love that everything starts at home.

[Michael] You got it.

Final Thoughts for Parents

[Tania] Yeah, Michael, I feel like we could probably talk for another couple of hours. If there are any final thoughts we want to leave parents with, what would they be?

[Michael] Yeah. So, just like I was saying before, we touched on it a little bit. The number one way to strengthen executive functions — I don’t know where we got stuck on this idea that kids learn through lectures, sitting at a table doing worksheets, or through talking to a therapist in an office — but the best way to strengthen executive functioning is through play. Real play. If your child is not going outside for multiple hours a day after school, you’re going to see dysregulation. So, you need to set it up where your child is doing activities outside the house. Get your child out of the house as much as possible. Utilize your school’s sports, clubs, and activities, your local YMCA, or the Boys and Girls Club. Find ways to get your kids involved in the community and out of the house as much as possible. Most parents hear me say this and think, “Yeah, well, my son will just say no to all of that.” Well, I’m here to tell you, you’re the parent, and you know what’s best for them. You have a fully developed brain, whether you have ADHD or not, and you’re allowed to sign them up for something even if they say no. You can sign them up for debate club, robotics club, or anything else. We’re not asking them to do hard labor or stressful tasks; we’re just asking them to be around peers and engage in unstructured environments. Drop them off at the YMCA, drop them off at a playground — kids have to go outside and play. That’s where they’ll develop social executive functions, self-regulation skills, self-motivation, mental flexibility, and the ability to delay gratification. There’s unlimited research about how outdoor play helps kids, even with their eyesight. We’re seeing many kids now having issues with nearsightedness because they’re growing up on tablets, screens, and phones. What play, nature, and the outdoors do for the brain is truly magical, and we’ve gotten away from it. The news will tell you the outside world is too dangerous for kids, but that’s completely false. The world has never been safer for kids. If you need to take an Apple AirTag and put it in your kid’s shoe or backpack, go ahead. Get them a smart watch so you can track their location. Do what you have to do, but get them outside at all costs. It doesn’t matter if they say no — you’re the parent. You’re not asking them to do something difficult. You’re doing what you know is best for them because you have their best interests in mind.

[Tania] Well, Mike, you’re speaking my language completely. Where can everyone find you?

[Michael] Sure. So, my website is grownowadhd.com. You can learn more about our executive functioning coaching and parent coaching. Fill out the form there, and it will set up a call directly with me for a conversation. If you want to bring me into your school, that’s what I do now—I travel the country and internationally, training entire school districts, private schools, and large groups on the most up-to-date research on ADHD and executive functioning so they can better serve their entire student population, not just those with ADHD and executive function challenges. I do whole school district training and school-specific training. You can find more information there. You can also listen to the ADHD Guys podcast, which I host with the ADHD Dude, Ryan Wexelblat. Definitely check it out and leave a review! You can follow me on Instagram and watch some of my low-budget videos. On Instagram, it’s @grownowadhd. I promise I’ll never post a video of me dancing or posing with words—it’s all just real, practical information you can take home and start using with your child. So, grownowadhd.com, Instagram @grownowadhd, for school training and parent coaching, and the ADHD Guys podcast.

[Tania] Thanks, Mike. We’ll link all of those in the show notes.

[Michael] Awesome.

[Tania] Such a great conversation. Thank you so much.

[Michael] Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Please keep up the good work. You guys are doing an incredible service out there by spreading real information. It’s nothing short of a privilege to be here with you today.

[Tania] Oh, such an honor, Mike. Thanks.

[Michael] Thank you so much.”