“Jack, weren’t you paying attention when the teacher gave your class the assignment? And it’s all on the website, anyway. Did you check the web portal?” DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR? For many students with ADHD, keeping track of assignments, and getting them completed and turned in—especially on time—can be challenging. This is true under normal…

How to Deal with Situational Variability in Adults with ADHD YOU HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFUL at your job for years, but struggle with it now because you are working from home. You can plan and execute all the elements of a large project, but have difficulty planning a trip. Your child can design and code the…

This time last year wE ANNOUNCeD that our Annual International Conference on ADHD for 2020 was going virtual. And go virtual it did! We scrambled around learning new skills and developing new ways of doing a conference. While most of us lament the not getting together, it turns out that the feedback from the 2020 conference…

I have been thinking a lot this past year about the prevalence of shame in our society. In her book Daring Greatly, self-proclaimed “shame researcher” Brené Brown defines this emotion as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” She goes on to say…

If Johnny is six years old, would it seem odd to you to treat him like a three-year-old with regard to bedtime, getting him dressed, and enforcing screen limits? How about facilitating his playdates the same way you would for a three-year-old? How do you think Johnny and his friends might perceive this? There is…

ADHD is not overdiagnosed, but it may be often misdiagnosed. Sometimes people think ADHD is overdiagnosed because diagnoses have increased over time. It could be true that some diagnosed people do not really have ADHD. There are college students who fake ADHD to get medications that help them study faster. There are people experiencing depression,…

Many people hold that long-standing and widespread belief that only boys have ADHD—but it is a myth. For almost a century, the majority of clinic referrals were for young hyperactive boys who were impulsive and unmanageable. Researchers used the data describing the behaviors of those boys as the basis for the early diagnostic criteria. Since…

While it is now well recognized that kids with ADHD who struggle in school may be entitled to receive services under an IEP or a Section 504 plan, many students with ADHD continued to struggle prior to the pandemic, either despite these services or protections or because schools were still not willing or sufficiently trained…

Are children with ADHD more likely to have difficulty following healthy lifestyle behaviors compared to children who don’t have ADHD? This research update will focus on two studies that considered different aspects of that question. The first study examined a number of different lifestyle factors, such as water intake, consumption of sweetened beverages, multivitamin and…

Making small talk is a critical life skill and the foundation for all friendships. A conversation can increase your level of intimacy with someone. Small talk allows you to see if you have mutual interests and to get a sense of who they are and what they like. It can introduce you to a new…

For parents of preschool-age children prone to behavior that is very hard to manage, many experts currently recommend Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, or PCIT, as an effective treatment intervention. Among them is Paulo Graziano, PhD, a PCIT practitioner who is an associate professor at Florida International University. He notes that PCIT sessions generally occur weekly, however,…