From me to you

I was talking to a teen recently who announced that she was seeing the psychiatrist next week to be tested for autism. She was very brave in her sharing of this information and seemed positive about it. The week after she was on Ritalin. She seemed as shocked as I was. He diagnosed her with ADHD and started medication immediately. I asked her all about the experience of taking the drug, and what else he had put in place for her support – the answer was nothing. We had a good chat yet was really surprised. This is a highly intelligent child with two engaged and interested parents. Granted, she has many ADHD symptoms and spends most of her life flicking at the screen of her phone (like most teens). But I just couldn’t believe that was it. Despite her obvious distress and high awareness of her own character and behaviours, and failing at schoolwork, medication was going to be the only strategy. I’m not at all anti-medication, it has its useful place. But what happens next – you take Ritalin for life? We’re not living in the dark ages anymore -  there is a lot of information about ADHD and ways of supporting, parenting and treating it available. So this newsletter is about that – trusting it will reach a few more people who will demand more from the medical and educational system than a prescription. Information is power, and spreading knowledge can get things changed.

ARTICLE: Beyond Ritalin: Resources for ADHD parents and children 

Introduction

I have been working with children with ADHD symptoms for over thirty years – well before ADHD was a widely recognised thing. Concentration and attention span have always been issues for anyone trying to teach children. A large part of this used to be that teachers weren’t engaging children’s interest. However in the previous decade, there has been a surge of ADHD recorded and diagnosed. This is surely in part due to increasing awareness of the difficulty some children have. And yet since COVID the rise has been exponential. The role that technology plays in exacerbating symptoms is increasingly coming into public awareness and yet still children are being medicated as a frontline strategy. It doesn’t make sense to medicate a child for using their phone too much. Does it? Isn’t it more logical to ask why they were on the phone so much in the first place and look at the unmet need that phone is meeting?

ADHD – what it looks like

This isn’t meant as a definitive article on ADHD. I just want to give some pointers and avenues for parents to investigate, as you feel called or inspired. There is so much information available now in addition to medication on forms of parenting that work and don’t and other issues to look into and consider. Many of these treat the symptoms and not the cause which is why there is understandably a lot of disillusionment and disapointment. If you’re after lasting and fundamental change then you may want to take on board additional expertise.

Most people identify ADHD as an attention deficit. Children can’t focus. Generally they appear anxious or fidgety, speak fast and can’t sit still. In fact there is a whole cluster of behaviours and symptoms which go together. They include being chaotic, messy, forgetful, accident prone, talking incessantly, fidgety behaviour, hyper fixating on one or two pet topics (eg star-wars, or global warming) flitting from subject to subject, doing ten tasks in an hour, some kind of repeated physical activity that is self-calming or just scrolling aimlessly on the phone. Ironically the last one is so common that it makes me wonder. In my own experience phone scrolling can be a kind of distressed way of trying to find constancy and connection which should be coming from connection with people, from inside oneself and from a sense of self. It indicates a profound lostness, lack of motivation and inability to function in reality.

ADHD and the body – diet, excercise

Movement often helps children with ADHD symptoms – as this study shows:

“Even a single, 20-minute bout of aerobic exercise improves attention and academic performance in this group, according to one study. Another small study of children with ADHD found that acute exercise normalizes arousal and alertness levels, based on findings from EEG readings”.

So if movement improves symptoms then ADHD is definitely an embodiment or inner connection issue, not just one of focus.

We also know that certain foods – like sugar and food additives, dyes etc make children hyperactive – or seem to give them ADHD symptoms. Any parent whose child eats chocolate or sweets right before bed knows about this.

So we have a condition that is improved by exercise, clean diet, and being kept away from metabolic poisons. Other studies show that spending time outdoors in nature is also hugely beneficial.

I have been suggesting for over thirty years that ADHD is an embodiment issue. There are two things going on at once - both an inability to shut out external stimulae as well as inability to process internal sensation. When a child has any kind of sensitivity or trauma, it can be hard to stay internally connected when triggered. A triggered child will go blank, talk a lot, be unable to focus and generally disconnect and space out. Learning can’t happen in the fight or flight state. So it’s no wonder they can’t develop or learn. Diet, excercise, nature, movement all help calm the nervous system and reconnect with body sensation.

In terms of parenting - when we see a child with these symptoms (not behaviours – they are symptoms) then it can be very helpful to stop and pay full attention. Shouting and correcting only makes the child more stressed because they can’t actually help what they are doing.

By not judging, just being with and listening, children can often say what is going on for them in more and more detail that helps us as adults and parents help them get what they need. There are so many accomodations that can be made in the routine and the environment that can support these children.

The Research – ADHD and online/phone use

There is more and more research, and some of it looks well conducted and relevant. I’ve just cut and pasted some key elements here to give you some idea:

“The new research, involving 2,587 sophomores and juniors attending public schools in Los Angeles County, raises the possibility that, for some, ADHD symptoms are brought on or exacerbated by the hyper-stimulating entreaties of a winking, pinging, vibrating, always-on marketplace of digital offerings that is as close as the wireless device in their pocket.

“We believe we are studying the occurrence of new symptoms that weren’t present at the beginning of the study,” said USC psychologist Adam M. Leventhal, the study’s senior author.

This means that kids who frequently engage in online activities are more likely to show ADHD symptoms.

The study “is just the latest in a series of research findings showing that excessive use of digital media may have consequences for teens’ well-being,” said San Diego State University psychologist Jean M. Twenge, who has conducted research on teens and smartphone use but was not involved in the new work.

Twenge’s research, published this year in the journal Emotion, explored a sharp decline in U.S. teens’ happiness and satisfaction since 2012. Combing through the data from 1.1 million teens, Twenge and her colleagues found dissatisfaction highest among those who spent the most time locked onto a screen. As time spent in offline activities increased, so did happiness.

I have observed and talked to numerous children, teens and adults with ADHD symptoms about their phone use, and why they need it. Some say it calms them down – it certainly seems to fulfil a need. Others say it makes them feel safe, connected, helps them focus. They panic severely if their phone is taken away. This indicates that the phone or being online is fulfilling some fundamental need for connecting with a sense of safety in oneself. Another way of talking about it might be to say it helps people with ADHD to ground. Whilst that might seem strange to others, it does seem to provide an anchor or some kind of safety where something is lacking or not connecting otherwise.

I get annoyed when I see specialists writing about apps that help focus and cognitive behavioural therapy because we know that children develop bottom-up - from body sensations to emotion to mind, and that there is a specific order in which things need to happen. We also know that grounding can be re-established through embodiment practices and therapies that integrate traumatic body memory. Neuroscience is far enough developed that we know the brain is neuroplastic and new brain patterns can be established. We know it is more than possible to restore a sense of embodied safety without constant anxiety and without drugs. So why are we still paying so much attention to improving symptoms? The fundamentals of lasting change for someone with these kind of ADHD symptoms are based in learning to regulate inner and outer stimulae and how they are process in relational safety with another live human, not with an electrical device. This includes integrating trauma. This is in part what I have been working on the last thirty years and there are many other practitioners who also focus on similar issues. We need to be training more people in high quality relationship and embodied therapeutic touch rather than creating new aps and meditation programmes.

Closing Remarks

By observing the teenage girl mentioned in the introduction it was very apparent to me that she has some kind of developmental trauma and is mostly disconnected from sensation in the body below the neck. Like many ADHD-diagnosed children she has the appearance of a disconnected, over-functioning, anxious head floating around on an adult body far from her feet.

The priority in my view could be finding ways to get children reconnected with their own bodies, their emotions and their ability to talk about their inner world. This doesn’t happen overnight – but it can happen over time.

ADHD is not incurable – I was one of those children that couldn’t stop talking and didn’t feel anything. Or rather I felt, smelt, heard and perceived far too much. I feel lucky that I was never medicated because it forced me to go on a long journey of discovery to figure out how to function. I still do ten things in an hour and about fifty each day – however this comes from creativity and curiosity now rather than anxiety. I have resolved a lot of the embodiment issues that I had. And in the process I have learnt a wealth of information about how the human mind, nervous system, body, digestion, emotions and soul work together.

There is no conclusion to this article except to say that Ritalin is not the only answer. Nor should it be the first option. Neither is coginitive behavioural therapy or another focusing app. There is so much more available now in terms of re-establishing healthy neural patterns and inner body awareness – and I hope the resources below will inspire you. Ultimately the lack of focus that expresses as ADHD can be tackled by working on reactions to external stimulae as well as helping process internal sensation and triggers. Both involve human support- and the kind of attention that parents and other adults provide through relationship.

For a quick checklist of the sequence of avenues that I recommend you explore to help yourself or your child if you have ADHD symptoms, please click here to download this checklist.

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