Summer can feel like a relief and a challenge for families living with ADHD. The break from school may remove daily academic pressures but it also leaves wide open spaces that are easily filled with screens for stimulation, comfort or escape. Before you know it, the battle over technology begins. Here are five empowering and practical strategies that meet kids where they are– without shaming or unrealistic expectations.

Remember the old poem about the secret ingredients for boys and girls? Snips and snails for boys, sugar and spice for girls. It wasn't just a silly rhyme; it hinted at a truth: boys and girls experience the world differently. This applies to neurodivergence too. Autism and ADHD can manifest differently in males and females, leading to misdiagnosis or underdiagnosis in women. For parents, this raises a crucial question: how can we ensure that neurodiverse children, regardless of gender, feel seen, understood, and supported? On this episode, our expert panel will discuss how boys and girls experience neurodivergence differently and offer strategies for parents and educators.

Join renowned clinical psychologist and ADHD specialist, Dr. Sharon Saline, in this enlightening episode by Kate Brownfield from ADHDKidsCanThrive.com. Dr. Saline, the award-winning author of "What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew," offers a deep-dive into the complexities and challenges of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children, teens, and young adults.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, known as ADHD, is among the most common mental conditions in children with an estimated 6 million kids having been diagnosed with the disorder.

Children with ADHD often feel misunderstood, and their parents often feel uncertain about the best way to be there for their child.

What is ADHD, and how does it impact children? What should parents and educators know about the disorder? And how can we best support students with ADHD?

In this episode, Dr. Sharon Saline joins Kevin to discuss how we can best support students with ADHD.

Meet Sharon:

Dr. Sharon Saline is a clinical psychologist & ADHD expert.

She specializes in an integrative approach to managing ADHD, anxiety, executive functioning skills, learning differences, and mental health in neurodivergent children, teens, and adults.

You may have heard about the “lost generation of autistic women,” which refers to those women whose diagnoses were missed when they were younger because of the male gender bias in the diagnostic criteria. But that phenomenon doesn’t just apply to autism – the same thing goes for girls and ADHD. There’s actually been a lot written about this in recent years, including a popular 2020 article in The Guardian called The Lost Girls: Chaotic and Curious, Women with ADHD All Have Missed Red Flags That Haunt Us.

Dr. Dan interviews Sharon Saline, award-winning author and licensed clinical psychologist, about parenting an ADHD child.

Dr. Saline is a top expert on ADHD, anxiety, learning differences and mental health challenges and their impact on school and family dynamics. Her unique perspective – a sibling of a child who wrestled with untreated ADHD – combined with decades of academic excellence and clinical experience, assists her in guiding families as they navigate from the confusing maze of diagnoses and conflict to successful interventions and connections. 

On this episode, Dr. Dan and Dr. Saline also discuss her book What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew: Working Together to Empower Kinds for Success in School and Life, Dr. Saline’s advice and real-world examples reveal how parents can shift the dynamic and truly help kids succeed. This is a great episode for families and caregivers living with ADHD.

We've talked about parenting with her. We've talked about therapy and ADHD. But my favorite episode with Dr. Sharon Saline was all about sinking thinking and self-compassion with ADHD. So, you can imagine that embarking on this series on that very subject would bring her back to the show.

Sharon is the author of the award-winning book, What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew: Working Together to Empower Kids for Success in School and Life and The ADHD solution card deck.  She specializes in working with neurodiverse children, teens, young adults, and families and aims to help outside-the-box thinkers improve executive functioning and social-emotional skills while also building practical communication tools and self-esteem.

Sharon says that she, herself, is a perfectionist in recovery, and she offers key insights into perfectionism and its impact on ADHD. How does perfectionism drive self-compassion down? How can you use "just one thing" to turn what seems to be impossible into a daily practice? How do you avoid compare-and-despair? All that and more this week with our great friend Sharon Saline!

Are you a parent who has ADHD? It can be so challenging to navigate parenting while also navigating ADHD - and Dr. Sharon Saline joins us this week to talk about this very thing. We talk about the common struggles that we hear within the ADHD community and what we can do to ease some of the stress/anxiety around parenting while ADHD-ing.

Do you know what kind of unique brain your child has? Listen in to learn from Dr. Saline as she explains ADHD and how we can support those struggling with it.

What We Talked About:

• 5 C's of ADHD Parenting

• Strength-based thinking and attentive awareness

• ADHD Awareness

• Motivation outside-the-box thinkers

• Executive functioning skills

• Managing yourself first so you can be there for others effectively.

Things to Remember

"Development is in the child's favor. The brain matures over time."

"Remember that ADHD is a disorder of self-regulation. Children cannot manage themselves the way they want to."

"We wanna help children try to feel good about what they are able to do. It's critical."

-Dr. Sharon Saline