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How To Make Family Dinner, Family Connection Time
Do you rush to get a healthy dinner on the table and find your hopes for a nice meal dashed immediately? Arguments between kids, trouble staying at the table, inadvertent spills can transform a lovely opportunity for connection into a battle zone. Instead of positivity, you can’t wait until everybody’s eaten and you can sit for a minute alone. 
Family dinners are not only an important way to come together as a family but also a time to teach social skills. Eating together, no matter how briefly, offers a chance to pay attention to each other. You practice listening, making eye contact and the ritual of sharing food. The trick is how to do this with less conflict and more enjoyment. Dinner time needs to be a tech-free time. Instead of checking with your phones, check in with each other. Try the ritual of asking for a high and low from the day. This gives each person a chance to share something that went well and something that didn’t. To keep the focus positive, you can follow up on the high note with a related question. Or ask a specific question about a class, lunch or recess related to who they sat next to or played with. Try to avoid general questions such as “How was your day?” or discussing potentially upsetting topics such as homework. You can discuss these after the meal. 
Many kids with ADHD have trouble sitting at the dinner table or even focusing on eating their food. If this is the case in your house, I’d recommend against turning on the television or iPad to distract them so they’ll eat and try these activities instead:listen to an engaging audio book, play a card game and offer small meals. Sometimes kids prefer grazing: eating a little bit, taking a break and coming back to the table. Work with your son or daughter to create a plan that makes sense to them and satisfies your goals of being sure they consume nutritious food. Bon Appetit! 
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Teen Hormones and the ADHD brain? Helping Kids in Transition
As they enter adolescence, boys and girls with ADHD may not be able to articulate what is swirling around inside of them. Quick to react and then make inappropriate choices, they may not be aware of what triggers them or how to manage themselves differently. When the floodgates release, their feelings overwhelm them. Sometimes the intensity of these moments reflects their changing hormones; other times, it's connected to their frustration of living with ADHD. It's hard to tell the difference.
The onset of puberty in boys and girls, especially those with ADHD, can also increase their reactivity and sensitivity to anxiety, anger and later, shame about how they've behaved. Both estrogen and testosterone have a direct effect on the brain’s neurotransmitters. Their outbursts are showing you that they need help developing skills for self-regulation and understanding what's happening in their bodies and brains.
Here are a few things you can do to assist them:
- Arrange an appointment with his or her pediatrician to discuss the behavioral changes you’ve been seeing at home and talk about how and why hormones contribute to them. It’s important that the doctor knows what is happening and may have some suggestions for both of you.
- Collaborate with your son or daughter to find ways to deal with their agitation. Given fluctuating hormones and the challenges of living with ADHD, you can’t expect to stop big feelings from happening. What you can do is create a plan to deal with them before they actually erupt. Sit down together and talk about the triggers that you both notice lead up to these explosions. Look for the patterns and focus on them instead of the content. Review any signs that indicate something’s changing. What does he notice is occurring in his body? What behaviors does she start to display? Make a list of these observations.
- When things heat up, you've got to slow them down. Talk about what has helped in the past when intense feeling arose. Which of these could be used now? Ask what you can do (and what you can avoid) that would support him or her in developing self-control in those moments? Connect these ideas to your previous observations. Write a list of these options and post them in your kitchen.
If your son or daughter continues to struggle, consider going to see a therapist. Counseling can be extremely useful in assisting kids with ADHD and their parents to understand triggers that set them off, improve their ability to talk about what’s happening and reduce anxiety and anger and create options when emotions run high.
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Strategize Now to Set up a Successful School Year
Gather your strength--it's time to set the alarms, make the lunches and buy the supplies. School is starting again. How can you avoid frustration and arguments to create the smooth transition that everybody wants? By relying on Compassion, Collaboration and Consistency, you can work with your child or teen to set a positive tone for the year.
Many kids with ADHD feel mixed about the return to school. While they may be excited to see their friends, they often dread the return to academics, waking up early and the responsibility of homework. If they struggled last year, they may worry about repeating the same challenges or facing new, unexpected ones.
- Before talking with them, take a few moments to summon your Compassion. Reflect on some of the highs and lows for your son or daughter from last year. How did they meet those challenges? What types of support from you or their teachers was helpful? Jot down some of your ideas. Before moving forward, remember that kids with ADHD are doing the best they can with the limited resources available to them in a given moment. They need you to understand this before approaching any plan for this year.
2. Make a time to talk with your child or teen about this upcoming year so you can Collaborate on a plan for success. Ask them to recall successes and challenges and, if they can't think of anything, offer some reminders from your notes. Together, make a list of useful supports--anything from setting several alarms in the morning to emailing a copy of homework in case they forget to turn it in to breaking up study periods with timed breaks. Then, make a list of common distractions or obstacles you both anticipate could arise this year.
3. Evaluate both your expectations for the year and theirs. Consistency relies on regular efforting, not perfection. We want to nurture resiliency by acknowledging how kids with ADHD are trying to do stuff and improve themselves. You're looking for progress, not perfection. There are three types of goals to consider: easily attainable (things they can definitely achieve or have already been doing), working on/within reach (things they accomplish but require supervision or help) and mostly reach goals (things that are sporadically achieved). For now focus on one easily attainable goal and one working on/within reach goal. You can expand this list as the year progresses. 
By keeping things simple, you increase the chance for success and we want children and teens to feel as positive as possible right now. Feeling successful early in the year has a snowball effect: they notice their competence and want to build on it. Using Compassion, Collaboration and Consistency, you'll create a strong foundation for a great year!
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Recent College Grads: Adjustments, Parents' Role, Jobs and Adult Life
What are some of the adjustments that recent college grad kids will be making?
Recent college grads have many adjustments to make. Not only are they saying good-bye to many of their friends, a familiar surrounding and a student lifestyle, but they are also facing the uncertainty of what comes next. Even if someone has a job and an apartment lined up (these are huge things to swing for many recent college grads), they are leaving behind a structure of going to school and an identity of being a student. Friends disperse, they are responsible for paying their own bills, and self-sufficient adulthood, while longed for, can be overwhelming. Many new college grads aren’t accustomed to creating and living on a budget, shopping for and cooking meals and making plans to spend time with friends instead of bumping into them at the cafeteria. It’s a huge shift in many areas simultaneously.
How can parents and loved ones can help ease the transition?
It’s important that parents and loved ones acknowledge the enormity of this transition and don’t compare their own experiences with those of their children. Things have changed a lot and many young adults struggle under the burden of huge financial debt, a high cost of living and a tight job market. Staying compassionate, offering to assist them and collaborate on tasks and being available to talk through emotions related to this change is most helpful. Don’t solve issues: offer your suggestions and avoid getting hurt if they aren’t taken. Young adults often like to figure things out for themselves, which means trial-and-error learning. Sometimes the best support you can give is managing your own frustrations, sharing your feelings without blame or guilt and validating their successes.
What are some tips for applying to jobs, moving home, and how to adapt a healthy routine in adult life?
Having a daily routine offers structure and freedom. It’s critical to set aside a specific period of time for applying to jobs each day so this activity has boundaries. Looking for job can be exciting but it’s also tedious and sometimes deflating. It can spread into all aspects of your life as the list of things you should be doing keeps growing. Avoidance accompanies discouragement and overwhelm. Talk with your son or daughter about marking off a few hours each day (preferably in the morning to get it over with) for job hunting online, responding to emails or dropping off resumes. This will assist them in feeling accomplished each day and competent as well because they’ve done something in a time frame that they laid out. Then they can do whatever they want. Help young adults limit screen time: advocate for doing other things that interest them and make them feel good. Exercise, time with friends, shopping and cooking with you--these are all activities that contribute to healthy living. Teach them how to shop, balance their bank account, make a budget and understand their health/car insurances. These skills are not necessarily second-nature and it’s very common for recent college grads to need extra support in learning them.