When Love and Empathy Turn into Disabling

Today's episode is a re-release of episode 23. We wanted to bring this episode back because it gets to the core of what Mike and I are always trying to teach parents. Helping kids with ADHD move from dependence to independence so they can feel capable. This conversation started with a powerful listener email about how doing everything out of love can actually leave kids feeling helpless and incapable. That story struck with us. It perfectly illustrates what happens when empathy turns into over accommodation. In this episode, Mike and I talk about why confidence comes from experience, not protection, and how kids only build real executive function skills when they're trusted to try, fail, and try again. We also dig into why therapy, too much prompting, and too much hovering can actually hold kids back. We decided to re-release this episode now because this message matters more than ever. If you've ever wondered how to balance empathy with accountability, this is the episode you want to listen to. Welcome to the ADHD Parenting Podcast with Mike MacLeod of Grow Now ADHD and Ryan Wexelblatt 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. Welcome to another episode of the ADHD Parenting Podcast. My name is Ryan Wexelblatt. I'm a licensed clinical social worker and a former school social worker and a father to a son with ADHD and learning differences. And I also happen to create content for this thing called ADHD Dude. And my name is Michael MacLeod. I am a speech and language pathologist specializing in ADHD and executive functioning. And I create content for families through Grow Now ADHD. So we're going to do a bit of a different episode today. And I'll tell you why. So I had a video that I posted last week about helping kids move from, you know, what we call prompt dependence towards independence. And this is just an older video I had that I just, you know, put up again. But one of the comments I received from it, I thought was one of the most important comments I've ever had in my, whatever it is, five years of having this YouTube channel. So I said it to Mike and I said, I really think we should do an episode about this. And here is the comment that we received that we wanted to make today's episode about. A really great insightful comment. Let's call this, oh, I'll do it parenting. What it really is enabling and creating dependency. My husband has ADHD and although we are still in love and married, when we first were married, he didn't know how to do laundry, cook, even make a grilled cheese, change the oil in his car, wash dishes, or balance his checkbook. I feel like I had married in 11 year old. And in many ways, I had. His parents had just thought that it would be more loving to do it all for him. The result was a 27 year old man who truly believed that he was just incompetent, helpless and dumb because his parents hadn't trusted him enough to teach him anything. Now he does half of our domestic duties is an encouraging father who lets his kids succeed on their own before jumping in. He even makes a meal, a mean grilled cheese, changes the oil in our cars, and is a math professor at our community college. People with ADHD can learn executive functioning skills, but we need to make a safe environment where we can try new skills, make mistakes, and gently be held accountable. - So Mike, one of the things that really struck me about this, I mean, there was a bunch of things, but I wanna mention that yesterday, you sent me some feedback we were getting about the podcast. And I saw one comment that was basically saying that I was a little too harsh. And what I wanna say to that person, or anybody thinks that is, this is a reason why, okay? Because nobody wants to marry somebody, or be in a relationship with somebody, or have a roommate who is basically an 11 year old and an adult's body, right? Because that is something that is avoidable and preventable. And by teaching skills, this is something that we can, yeah, we can avoid happening to kids, but this is very real. And this is why I wanted to make an episode about this, because I really think that people need to hear this. Because this is not something like that. I think we would agree most people here, right? They don't hear this story. - And another reason why Ryan and I get so passionate about this topic, and sometimes it could be perceived as harsh, is because we know we follow the research, and we understand that executive functions can be gained. The prefrontal cortex is the most malleable and plastic part of the brain. At the end of the day, Ryan and I believe in these kids. We believe in our ADHD youth. We want the parents of kids with ADHD, and all of our listeners to this podcast, to have hope your child can live an independent life. We can gain these skills if we follow research to base strategies, not some of the pseudoscience that we get so worked up about. - Mike, I want to reread a line from this comment here, but I want to preface it first by saying, I think this really ties into something that Dr. Ortiz said in our recent episode with him, which is that a lot of parents right now are confusing empathy for permissiveness, and how that is actually selfish, maybe not intentionally selfish, okay? But it's selfish because it's denying kids the opportunity to build skills, you know, with the belief that somehow you're being empathetic and loving. So I'm going to read this line again. His parents had just thought that it was more loving to do it all for him. The result was a 27 year old man who truly believed he was incompetent, helpless, and dumb, because his parents hadn't trusted him enough to teach him anything. So the three words I want everybody to think about there is that he felt incompetent, helpless, and dumb. So he felt incapable because he never taught, he was never taught that he was capable. - Exactly, and one of the best ways to reframe ADHD for parents to really understand this exact scenario we're talking about is what Dr. Russell Barkley says about ADHD, it's a performance disorder. It's not an attention disorder, it's a performance disorder. The ability to show what you know. Because what do we know about so many kids at ADHD? It's not correlated to IQ, so many of them even have an average to above average IQ, right? So they know what to do. It's the ability to just perform in the natural environment. And a lot of the pseudoscience out there and a lot of what we're seeing really talks about, you know, over accommodating the kids and doing stepping in and not allowing them to experience discomfort because we're afraid it's gonna give them anxiety or cause other issues. Kids with ADHD, it's all about the ability to self-regulate and self-motivate in the moment and show what you know and show what you're capable of. And I think one of the best messages that Ryan and I want to share at this podcast is that your child is capable. They can do great things. We talk about how kids are anti-fragile. Your child can persevere through these experiences. And I think one thing that we really need to understand, executive functions are the greatest predictor of success for human beings. And somewhere along the line, we learned or we came under the impression that kids learn through lectures and work sheets and us talking to them. Executive functions are developed through experience. Kids experience things and they strengthen their executive functioning system. And a lot of those experiences are negative experiences. They learn how to be more productive in their morning routine when they experience the feeling of missing the bus or having to sign in late. You know, they learn to study when they get that S. You know, when it starts to pile up. And I'm sure a lot of parents are hearing me say this and thinking, oh, my son will never care. He'll take all the Fs he can get. He'll be late all he wants. We have to allow them to experience life. They're not going to learn through your lectures. And Mike, I want to add something onto what you said, which is we come to this belief that lecturing or whatever will help with this. The one thing we left out is a lot of parents have been led to believe that the more therapy their kids are in, the more it'll help them develop these skills. And this is something I want to acknowledge. Therapists get angry when we talk about this. And I'm not saying there's not a place for services whether that's speech language or mental health services, whatever it is, but you can't rely on those people to teach your kids skills that are going to be generalized into the natural environment. That is something that parents and teachers have to do because to Mike's point, kids with ADHD learn in the moment. This is, we know this through research state. Okay, this is not an opinion. And that is why, as I always try to explain to people, why parent training, teaching in the moment, school supports, those are the recommended treatments for kids with ADHD and not therapy, talk therapy, play therapy, whatever it is. Okay, so one of the things, you know, also Mike, I wanted to mention is that, you know, I think for, I want parents of the younger kids particularly to hear this, you know, think about as you were getting older and you had more independence, right? And you develop more skills. So whether that was driving or whether it was learning, you know, to use an ATM card or deposit a check, you know, where to make eggs for yourself, you know, as we get older, we acquire skills. And one of the things, you know, that we often see, and I think this is just a natural thing, no judgment about this. That happens in many families of kids with neurodevelopmental differences, such as ADHD, is parents just get used to doing everything for them, right? And as we know, whether that's because they make a lot of noise, you know, or they get into learn helplessness where they act that they can't do something or, you know, it's, you know, whatever it is, they just argue about it because it's a not prefer task. You know, but at the end of the day, the more you're doing for your child, you know, I should say this way, the more you're doing for them, what they are capable of learning to do themselves, you know, that is actually what we could call creating disability, right? And that's not a term you hear a whole lot, but you know, what creating disability means is you're creating a disability where there is none. And I think in this case, Mike, you know, this is exactly what these well-intended, well-intended parents did. The created a disability in this guy and they were, they thought it was loving to do that. But in the process, right, they made him feel completely incompetent and that he, you know, wasn't capable of learning these skills. - Of course. And, you know, let's be realistic with our parent listeners. You know, obviously the vast majority of our listeners here are parents of kids with ADHD. Let's be honest, these kids can be relentless. You know, at the end of the day, ADHD is a dysregulation disorder and inability to regulate your emotions, your language, your body, your behavior. And who tends to get the worst of those behaviors? Mom and dad, because you have that unconditional law factor. So once again, we talk about all these misconceptions about ADHD, how it's an academic-based disorder about being able to listen in school and learn materials. No, it's really home executive functioning. That is the most common symptom of ADHD. Disregulation in the home and an inability to do non-screen-based, non-stimulating tasks in the home. That's what the vast majority of ADHD symptoms are. It's in the home towards parents. And this trend we've seen over these past couple of months, these past couple of years of kids waking up, going to school, coming home, staying home. There's a great graph, I share all the time. And it's from the anxious generation and all these other people have shared it of a declining rate of various age groups of time spent face to face, time spent outside. That's really a major reason for this youth mental health crisis we're dealing with right now, is kids are spending too much time at home within the walls of the home. And not only is that unhealthy for the kids, it's also unhealthy for the parents for you to just constantly be in the same environment as your child, where they're constantly under your supervision. They're going to get burnt out. So so much of our parenting strategies that Ryan talks about so greatly with affective calmness and all of these, and be sure and stay on message. All these great messages from his parent site is it's so important because number one, it requires the parent to practice self-care, to practice self-regulation. And if you're constantly around your child and they're constantly under your microscope 'cause they're never going outside. They're never doing free, 100% free, doesn't cost anything, go outside and play. They're not going outside, they're home too much. Parents are getting burnt out. And when the parents dysregulated, the child gets stimulated. They are stimulated by dysregulated parents, just like they get stimulated by screens. So it's a vicious cycle that parents get stuck in. And let's also remember as well that kids need to have varied experiences and independent experiences away from their parents. And this is going back to the episode with Dr. Ortiz. This is about the work he created, Independence Therapy, which is giving kids independent experiences to help them lower their anxiety and build that sense of competency. So I think we also need to mention that, right? That if you are always there, they're not going to develop that, okay? Because they need to have that space away from you to learn these skills, you know? And of course you can scaffold for them and you should and we can put all these things in place to help them, but the end of the day they have to be able to do things on their own, right? You know, in an age-appropriate way, without your hovering or watching them or directing them. - Yeah, and I guarantee you a lot of our listeners right now have three main things on their mind. Number one, the morning routine, getting ready and getting out the door on time. Number two, homework, number three, evening routine. Those are the three main sources of stress and anxiety in home, those three things. And there's a very good chance during those three things, you as the parent are just doing too much. You know, you're just on top of your child providing too much language. We remember language makes this regulation worse. So the more verbal prompting you're doing, you know, we have to remember the ADHD brain can be conflict seeking. So let's think about it. You say to your child, go brush your teeth. What's more stimulating to the ADHD brain? Brushing their teeth on time and hearing a quick good job. You did it, or saying no mom, and a bunch of really disrespectful things, and then having your mom or dad chase you around for 15, 20 minutes. So it's much more than, exactly. It's much more than my three-year-old daughter does it. You know, like it's always a cat and mouse game to get her to brush her teeth at night, but that's what's stimulating to a kid's brain. They're not going to do things on your time just because you said so. I've worked with so many families that have gained success during the morning routine by sitting downstairs, drinking their coffee, having their alone time, doing what makes them happy, and letting the kids do things themselves, experience lateness at first, and then gain the skills because you are removing the stimuli. And 99.9% of the time, the stimuli is you. The parent, you're doing too much, and they are getting stimulated by your negative attention. So we remove that stimuli, and let's be honest, you're doing it because you love your child. You love your child, you love them unconditionally, you want to help them. But when we remove that stimuli, we gain independence. Like as you're talking about this, I just think of how many mornings I spent with my son, you know, with getting into these power battles because he was being oppositional for the one single reason it was being oppositional, it was nothing sensory or anything like that, okay? It's because he wanted to drive me crazy in the morning and get a reaction out of me. And he was successful at it many, many times for years until I learned that this engage. But that's for another episode. - But that's a great point though, is let's be honest with parents. You're going to get dysregulated. Don't beat yourself up. A lot of that advice you see on Instagram really pushes this whole perfect parenting mentality of just love your child, hold them, hug them. There is no such thing. Here we are talking to Ryan himself who admits he didn't follow his own advice and got dysregulated. So let's be honest, you are going to get burnt out. There is nothing more challenging you are ever going to do in your life than raise a child. It is the most challenging and most rewarding thing you will ever do period. And every single parent makes mistakes on a daily basis. A daily basis, every single day. Even your parenting gurus and millions of followers on Instagram, they make mistakes. They are kids yell at them. They are kids experience discomfort. So there's no such thing as a perfect parent. You're going to get mad. You're going to yell. You're going to scream. You're gonna get frustrated. It happens to everyone. - You know Mike, the other thing I want to mention going back to this comment is, you know, this woman who wrote this comment is very unique because let's be realistic about this. Most people are not going to have the empathy or the patience to want to enter into a relationship with somebody. And again, whether that's a roommate, whether that's a partner, whether that's, you know, a boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, they're not going to have the patience or the interest in entering into any kind of relationship with somebody who, number one, you know, just lacks these, you know, basic skills that other people their age have. And most likely, you're not going to want to enter into a relationship with somebody who feels so incompetent, right? Because their parents lovingly disabled them, you know. So I do want to, you know, give her credit because this is somebody who is very unique and patient and this is not the norm. This is the exception. And that's why I thought it was important that we have an episode, you know, about this comment. Mike, let's do this. Let's give our top four takeaways for parents to talk about things that you need to do to get your child to become, you know, a functional adult who feels competent and recognizes their abilities within themselves because that's what builds self-confidence. Beautiful. So number one, let's go back to what I mentioned earlier, eliminate verbal prompting. You had like, it's, take a look back right now, take a second to yourself and think to yourself, how often do I say a sentence and then my child instantly follows it? Your verbal prompts are not working. They are not helpful. They are disregulating to the ADHD brain. So whether you are creating a visual, creating some sort of visual checklist, setting those expectations and your ADHD child is not going to do things on your watch, on your time. If you set that expectation, you know, learn some declarative language and different ways to use it if you need to, but set that expectation and fade back and allow them to do it. And then when they inevitably come to you for something, you just very quickly say like, oh, oh, did you remember to shower? Did you shower yet? Can you come to me when you're ready? Did you brush your teeth yet? Did you get your homework done? You know, just find different ways to throw it in there and set that expectation. You just prompting, prompting, prompting with words is not getting us anywhere. - So I think my first one is the saying I have, which is your child is not your partner in parenting. And what I mean by that is that parenting is not a collaboration between you and your child. And that is something that's become very popular on social media because it's a very appealing message that everything can be negotiated and collaborated. And, you know, but here, at the end of the day, you know, if you need your child to be able to do things on their own, you need them to do things on their own and you deserve to have them do things independently on their own. So my point being, you know, can you, you know, talk about or negotiate something? So of course you can. I'm not saying be inflexible because we always need to model flexibility to an extent. But what I am saying is that you have to say to your child, you know, I need you to start doing this. So we're gonna work on you doing this independently. And it doesn't matter if they make a lot of noise, you know, which is my term for arguing or complaining for the sake of arguing or complaining. It doesn't matter if they engage and learn helplessness and just pretend they can't do it or make self-defeating comments like, you know, I'm stupid, I can't do it. You know, and it doesn't matter if they try to manipulate your emotions by saying, you know, well, if you love me, you wouldn't make me do this. Or you obviously don't care about me, okay? Those things don't matter. What matters is that you are teaching them these skills because you are leading them because that is all of our jobs as parents or educators, whatever is that we have to lead kids and teach them these skills so they grow into being competent, functional young adults. - Beautiful. And for my second, I'm gonna go with my favorite thing that my favorite thing to talk about is make sure your child has varied experiences and outdoor play. Just like I mentioned earlier, if kids are stuck in the house all day, whether they're watching TV, on their phone, on screens, they're in within the walls of the home, that's going to cause stress and chaos. We mentioned earlier how kids are being over-therapies now and, you know, because therapy's being pushed in various ways, you know, outdoor play is never pushed and not talked about enough because nobody makes money off of it. Nobody makes money when a kid goes outside, goes and plays in the park or goes and plays in the woods or the street or the basketball court, whatever it is, there is nothing more important than outdoor play for the birth to 18, 19, 20-year-old brain. The brain is not fully developed until 30 years old and what truly builds executive functions is being outside in nature, playing face-to-face with peers. Talking to you doing FaceTime, doing Discord, doing online games is not a social experience, does not build those social skills. We have to get kids outside again. That is, you know, I don't know if that is, overall, the foundation of this mental health crisis. When kids went inside, the mental health crisis went up. So getting them outside, you know, one thing that fascinates me is with this entire generation of youth now, we're seeing an epidemic now of near-sightedness. Kids are growing up that we're seeing like, double triple the diagnoses rates of kids with near-sightedness because everything they're looking at all day is right in front of them. They're at school all day with a Chromebook in their face, they're watching TV, they're on their phone, they're on video games, they're not outside, where they're looking miles away at trees and things like that, so kids are getting near-sighted. And that's a real, real problem. You make sure that outdoor play is a structured thing they do every single day after school and on the weekends. The outdoors is safe, don't listen to the 24 hour news media that makes the suburbs and makes, you know, various places seem like they're dangerous places. Outdoor is safe, it's actually the virtual world where things are not safe. So, you know, get your kids outside, get them playing, get them, you know, give them their childhood back. You know, that's where they really build self-regulation, self-motivation skills and social skills is the outdoors. - And Mike, I just want to mention two things about what you said. Number one, I think we should mention, okay, in the access generation, I'm sure you've seen this. There's also the graphic that shows that decline in time kids are spending with peers in real life, right? And there's been this decline since, you know, this, you know, cuts and screens were introduced. - Social deprivation. - Right, and what we know is the way you develop executive function skills and social skills organically is through this unstructured play and hanging out like Mike just mentioned. So, this is incredibly important. And Mike, one more thing I just want to add to what you said, you know, because as I see, you know, how many comments when you talk about screens on social media and you get these pushback comments, you know, like, you know, my son's made friends through Roblox and like, no, it is social in this and that. I'm sorry, nothing is, nothing wonderful will ever happen to your child in front of a screen. I took that from Scott Galloway and I'm going to say it one more time. Nothing wonderful or, you know, great in their life will ever happen to your child in front of a screen. They will not make shared memories in front of a screen. They will not have, you know, the best memories from growing up when they're sitting in front of a screen. And I don't think anybody can debate that. - Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, many parents now, you know, especially after COVID feel like they're in an uphill battle against screens. They feel like they're just stuck. My kids addicted, there's nothing I can do. If I take it away, I'm going to have to hospitalize them, call 911, do something. You know, this is where you have to reach out to a professional. You know, you need to have someone to walk you through this process because I see far too many parents spending so much money on advocates and therapies and evaluations and all these issues where the real problem is this kid is spending the vast majority of their day in the virtual world. The real world is anxiety producing to them because they're spending their entire life in the virtual world. The virtual world, they're in full control. They're in full control of everything. The real world, they're not. So the real world is very anxiety producing. The virtual world is where they're comfortable. And if they're spending the majority of their life in the virtual world, the real world's going to give them a lot of anxiety. So all that money you're spending on therapies and everything else, really it's, we just need to get rid of these screens. And reality check, okay, anxiety does not improve by avoiding things. Anxiety improves by somebody putting themselves in the anxiety producing situation and realizing that they have the capacity and resiliency to persevere through it because they realize that anxiety is just a temporary feeling like any other feeling, okay? So just please keep that in mind. So my last one is something I said a little earlier, but I want to reiterate, which is self-confidence is built through kids recognizing their abilities within themselves. And if you want your child self-confidence to improve, they need to have these varied experiences. They need to spend time with peers and realize that other kids like being with them and to the point of this woman's comment, they need to develop these independent skills and learn how to do things on their own because that gives them a sense of competency. So I know that a lot of people are doing too much for their kids and they're doing it out of love, okay? But at the end of the day, that's not gonna help them build self-confidence. And again, to this woman's point about her husband, say that he felt incompetent, helpless, and dumb, because what his parents did out of love, that somebody shouldn't have to start developing self-confidence or self-esteem at 27, right? It should happen before that. And the last thing I want to mention about this is to, and another thing people push back on, self-confidence is not developed by sitting in a therapist office doing CBT work sheets, okay? Or anything like that. It develops again through kids recognizing their abilities within themselves and saying, "Hey, look what I did, I did this for myself. Wow, I feel good about myself." And even if they complain about it or make a lot of noise 'cause it's a non-profit test, that doesn't mean it doesn't make them feel good learning something new. Okay, so just please keep that in mind. I saw that many times, you know, with my son growing up, Mike, I'm sure you see that with your daughter, right? That she feels good about herself when she, you know, can do, you know, a new state on her own. - Yeah, absolutely. And just to summarize it all, you know, Ryan and I made this podcast because we felt the need to spread the truth, to spread research-based practices in this era of social media information and, you know, pseudoscience. We want it to give parents real, factual information, not that fluffy stuff. And, you know, sometimes the truth is hard to hear. And some, especially in this time, in this nowadays. And then, you know, sometimes the best advice you hear in life is the hardest to hear. If you're getting advice that makes you feel good, is it really advice or is it just support? You know, do we really need some advice and some coaching here? Sometimes it's the hardest to hear. But overall, this is a podcast of ADHD Hope. It's all about understanding that your child is capable. Your child can do those hard things. Obviously, you were blessed with an ADHD child. We have the parent a little differently, but we need to have high expectations and lots of hope for our child. - And I'd like what Dr. Ortiz said, which he said, "High expectations combined with high empathy." Not, you know, low expectations combined with high empathy. That is what is going to create disability as it did for, you know, this guy, who was mentioned in the comments here. So just please keep that in mind, okay? So thank you so much for listening or watching, we really appreciate it. If you find the podcast helpful, please know that, you know, we don't make any money doing this. We're just doing this as a service to our community. So if you could please leave a positive comment on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or YouTube, wherever you're listening, we would really appreciate it 'cause it lets other people know that the podcast is helpful. And again, you know, there's no financial benefit to us in this, we're just doing this as a service to everybody. So we would really appreciate it, thank you. - Yeah, and I would just add, if you do take the time to leave a review, also send us an email to the podcast email or send a DM to Ryan and I and send us a question that you have for yourself. And if you take the time to leave a review, we'd be happy to answer your questions directly on the podcast as well. - Absolutely, we'll have some episodes coming up where we answer questions from parents. So just keep that in mind. - Thank you all so much for listening. - Thanks. - Thanks for listening. To learn more about Mike's practice, growNowADHD, please visit his website, growNowADHD.com. To learn about the services Ryan provides, please visit ADHDDude.com. You can find Mike on Instagram at growNowADHD and Ryan on the ADHDDudeYouTube channel. We'd love to hear your feedback or questions. So feel free to contact us at the ADHD Parenting Podcast at gmail.com. The ADHD Parenting Podcast and content posted by growNowADHD or ADHDDude are presented solely for general information and educational purposes. Our goal is to provide valuable insights and knowledge, not to replace professional services. Mike and Ryan cannot provide clinical consultation or free advice through social media or other forms of communication. The information on this podcast is not a substitute for professional advice. If you or your child have any medical or mental health concerns, please consult your healthcare professionals.