Maintaining Friendships

Social Guidance for Adults with ADHD Maintaining friendships can be a struggle for those with ADHD, but positive relationships are important. Without them, we can feel isolated and alone. With them, we feel connected and valued. How can ADHD negatively affect social relationships? Recently, the headline on a news site listed the five best ways…

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Your Keys to a Happier ADHD Relationship

Your Keys to a Happier ADHD Relationship

In unhappy relationships, both partners blame the other person for why things are so bad. And they’re half right—their partner is indeed responsible for the problems, but so are they. This is actually good news—if you aren’t part of the problem, you can’t be part of the solution. Otherwise, you need to hope that your partner…

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Stimming and Fidgeting to Calm and Focus

Stimming and Fidgeting to Calm and Focus

Maybe you’ve lost count of the times you’ve told your child to stop biting their nails, bouncing their legs, or twirling their hair. What seems like annoying behavior may actually serve a purpose, like helping your child to self-soothe or increase focus. “I don’t even realize I’m doing it,” says an adult who has ADHD…

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Embrace Miscellaneous Organization for Your Ideas

Embrace Miscellaneous Organization for Your Ideas

The topic of getting organized comes up frequently in coaching, and I can relate to that personally. For instance, there’s a “miscellaneous” drawer in my kitchen. It’s the depository for things that don’t have a home. The top drawer of my bedroom chest serves the same purpose. Ditto my workbench in the garage. If something is unique…

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Fidget-to-Focus Strategies

Fidget-to-Focus Strategies

How do people with ADHD and executive function challenges stay focused on important yet uninteresting tasks? Tasks they know they need to complete, but ones they find dull, tedious, and mundane? It’s a question that clinical psychologist Roland Rotz has been exploring for decades, and a question he continues to ask those attending the adult…

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Routines for Times of Uncertainty

Routines for Times of Uncertainty

Establishing and maintaining routines can be difficult for individuals with ADHD. They are also especially prone to being thrown off easily by deviations from routine, and often experience increased trouble getting back on task. While everyone’s experience with ADHD is not the same, it is probably safe to say that many people—whether they have ADHD…

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New Research Shows ADHD Symptoms Can Go Up and Down: What Does This Mean?

ADHD Symptoms Can Go Up and Down

The Multimodal Treatment StudY OF ADHD (MTA) was a large study conducted in the 1990s that compared different treatments for children with ADHD to see which was most effective. As part of this research, the elementary school children who joined the study were visited by researchers every two years until they were in their mid-twenties. There…

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Asking Powerful Questions

How to Help Kids Become Independent and Productive Over the years, my tutors and I have homed in on many strategies to help kids with ADHD in school, no matter the area. In math, we’ve taught tricks to learn the multiplication tables and games to master the Pythagorean theorem. For our reluctant writers, we’ve developed…

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How to Say the Right Thing at the Right Time

How to Say the Right Thing at the Right Time

Often people with ADHD have a history of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Maybe we make a cringe-worthy comment we wish we could immediately take back. Other times we don’t know what to say and we just fumble along. Or we monologue and stumble into inappropriate comments. This history makes us afraid…

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TOOLS: Teaching Online Organizational and Virtual Learning Skills

TOOLS

TOOLS is a new video series that describes evidence-based strategies for youth with ADHD and their adult supports—parents, caregivers, teachers, and clinicians. These behavioral and organizational strategies are aimed to support learning and academic success for youth with ADHD. Academic success requires ingredients such as planning, organization, persistence toward long-term goals, and the ability to…

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Promoting Connection, Community, and Compassion: TAASG

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The Toronto Adult ADHD Support Group, or TAASG, has dedicated itself to serving the needs of adults with ADHD for over twenty-five years. Through its impressive ongoing speaker series, participants have enjoyed access to leading experts in the field—Ned Hallowell, John Ratey, and Ari Tuckman, to name just a few. Since presentations are now being…

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