Unlocking Your Inner Superhero

[Upbeat Guitar Music]

Mike: Welcome everybody. This is Avoiding the Addiction Affliction, brought to you by Westwords Consulting, the Kenosha County Substance Use Disorder Coalition, and by a grant from the state of Wisconsin's Dose Reality: Real Talks reminding you that opioids are powerful drugs and that one pill can kill. I'm Mike McGowan.

Mike: My guest today, Hannah Bookbinder has said that being a kid today has its challenges.

Mike: Being a kid who has learning disabilities, ADHD, nonverbal learning disorder, autism spectrum disorder, or anxiety related to academic performance, clearly adds an element of complexity to navigating their academic career. Well, let alone life.

Mike: Hannah is a licensed social worker and owner of Academic Ally. She's also the author of Unlock Your Inner Superhero, Conquering The Challenges of ADHD. And developer of the MyTOAD App, which focuses on executive functioning skills. Links to all of that is attached to the podcast blurb.

Mike: Welcome, Hannah. Thanks so much for being with us.

Hannah: It's my pleasure, Mike. Thank you for having me.

Mike: I always like to start these with something really simple. So let's start with, oh, I don't know the brain, right.

Hannah: Yeah, it's a very simple organ.

Mike: (laughs) Okay, so I love research and science. We understand a lot more about the brain than when I was younger, but I think we got a ways to go, right?

Hannah: I think that we're just beginning to scratch the surface. We know a lot particularly, I mean for me my interest is obviously in ADHD and executive functioning skills. So we have been able to map out some of the more specific areas in the brain that help to facilitate executive functioning. Like within the prefrontal cortex, which is where all the executive functioning operations take place. You have the TPN, which is a Task Positive Network, which helps us to do things like planning things out and foreshadowing any problems that are going to occur. So that's like the forward momentum part of the planning. And then there's the default mode network, which is the one that sort of detracts from the TPN and, but interestingly they have found that there's a lot of value and functionality in the DMN.

Hannah: Some people call say that it's short for damn because it's just so frustrating. The default network is where we are able to tap into our creative abilities and we tap into our memories, and that's where all the magic kind of happens. So there needs to be a way to balance those two areas out in the brain.

Hannah: And the more research we do, the more that we're discovering different phenomenons and areas that are responsible for different things, which I think in the end is gonna be very helpful for us to address things like ADHD and other challenges that people face that are brain related.

Mike: And when something, for lack of a better word, glitches. We don't always understand that, and I always cringe a little bit when we assign it to something prematurely. Oh, it's because of this or because of that.

Hannah: I think that we have to be careful about, hanging our hats on one cause.

Hannah: There are a lot of people, for example, in my practice who come in and experience anxiety, and then there's the question of the chicken and the egg. Is the anxiety causing the executive functioning difficulties or are the executive functioning difficulties causing the anxiety? And maybe it's a collection of both.

Hannah: And you can sit here and argue that there's a primary cause for some of these things, which I think is true in many cases. But I think that every person that we encounter, you have to be careful to not just make a blanketed statement and look at the individual for who they are, for what they're bringing to the table with their profile and their all of the variables that they're encountering on a regular basis.

Mike: Yeah. Well, and then on top of that, there's the developing brain of children. That adds a layer, right?

Hannah: Yes, so what's amazing about children's brains is that there's a high level of plasticity. So it's constantly growing and evolving, probably till about 25, 27.

Hannah: And so there are neural pathways that are forming early on in the children's brains. And that's why having things like early education is so important and having routines and patterns established and role modeling for what's appropriate versus not, because we're establishing those neural pathways pretty early on.

Hannah: When you start to expose that brain to things like trauma or prenatally if mom's drinking or doing drugs while she's pregnant, exposure to environmental issues or variables like lead consumption. Those can all impact those neural pathways and disrupt things that help the kids to grow.

Hannah: So we also have to be careful about those things and making sure also that, u've heard of shaken baby syndrome. Anything that causes physical trauma too can disrupt that process. So we have to watch out for our kids.

Mike: And as far as working with all of this stigma still plays a huge role.

Mike: This sounds almost weird to say, but when I was younger, people will oftentimes say at my age, we didn't have these problems. We didn't see 'em. We had a school in my school district, a wing of a school where all of these kids were. They were never in our classrooms, we never interact.

Mike: We never saw them.

Hannah: S omebody was seeing them though to know that they needed to be...

Mike: Yeah. Somebody Not us though, right? Yeah.

Hannah: Yeah.

Mike: And so people make judgements about it without knowing what it is. What are the challenges when you say there's no room for judgment or punitive measures?

Mike: I love that, but there's a lot of judgment.

Hannah: There's a lot of judgment, especially for things that we don't understand and for things that are different from quote normal, and that's such a subjective word these days. (laughs) The thing about things that are different is what I try to do with my clients when I'm meeting with them or if I'm speaking with somebody about ADHD or something that's different, is I try to establish some level of commonality.

Hannah: Everybody has something that they bring to the table, so in the form of a challenge. So whether it's a physical ailment, like they have asthma or diabetes, or there's an emotional health component, or there's something really bad going on at home, somebody has a challenge at some point in their lives, and that is part of that common thread that we all share.

Hannah: And you can choose to let it define you and just surrender to it. Or you can choose to capitalize on your strengths that you carry to overcome or to address those things so that you can rise above it or tango with it however it presents. So when I can establish that thread of commonality between you, Susie and who seemingly doesn't have anything problematic, and this other child who's acting up in class, maybe allowing them to walk a mile in their shoes will help them to have a better understanding of what the challenges are that this child is facing, which is exactly why I created the book. Because I wanted, first of all for the reader to be able to understand that there's somebody out there who understands what they've been experiencing. I personally don't have ADHD, but I've been working with this population for almost 30 years. So we do understand the nuances, and I know the tales that come into my office all the time about how they're misunderstood and they're mislabeled, they're lazy, they're not motivated, they're difficult, defiant, et cetera.

Hannah: With that ease that we slap labels on comes with a lack of understanding. If you read the book, then you understand that there's more to the situation and a lot of parents and teachers and coaches who work with, live with, love these individuals. They're getting some better insight into what makes these kids tick and what the challenges are and the toll that it's taking, but also recognizing that they bring a lot to the table themselves.

Mike: Yeah. I work a lot with kids, so kids will use the word weird a lot if it's different behavior. But what you just said is so important I think, 'cause education is crucial. I have found kids to be much more accepting.

Hannah: Yes.

Mike: The minute they find out that what something is, they get it, they understand it.

Hannah: Yeah.

Mike: And are much more accepting. Weird is only weird if you don't understand it.

Hannah: That's a great quote. We should make a t-shirt outta that.

Mike: (laughs) Okay.

Hannah: Yeah.

Mike: I could use another $6. (laughs)

Hannah: (laughs) Yeah, I completely agree with you. And quite frankly, I think that kids are very much an untapped resource that we haven't taken advantage of. Because they have a new perspective on what we adults have come to look at, judge, decide how everything is. And that's part of what I love about my job because kids walk in the door and they have, not just because of the neurodivergence, but because they're kids, they have this perspective that's fresh and reminds you of the magic and the potential that there is out in the world.

Hannah: So maybe if we could make them, I don't know, presidents of the United States for a little while, we can right our ship a little bit.

Mike: I totally agree with that. I'm ready to turn it over. And, talk about, I think it's also interesting and I'll, this sounds silly. It's not silly though.

Mike: When one of my kids got asthma earlier in their life, I had asthma. So I felt guilty as a parent. I think parents have a hard, caregivers have a hard time when their kid has some kind of different diagnosis, right? That sets 'em apart. And some parents, I would think Hannah, accept it.

Mike: What can we do? And yet others I think go, Nope nope. How do you deal with that?

Hannah: So again, it's that strategy and that technique of saying, okay let's peel away the layers here and let's you know, let's first talk about what's going on with the parent. Why is this so difficult for them to accept?

Hannah: And a lot of parents finally will divulge that they too have had these same challenges. Interestingly, some of them didn't realize that it's possible that they had ADHD themselves.

Mike: I hear that a lot.

Hannah: And still do. And there's a remarkable number of adults right now who are being diagnosed later on in life.

Hannah: We just didn't have that level of awareness and understanding of what ADHD was. There's a reason why Bobby or Susie were bouncing off the wall in class or were distracted and what was daydreaming back then. And it's the first step, I think, is meeting the parent where they're at, and then from there bringing in the child. Sometimes I will allow the child to join us in these meetings to shed some light and serve as the intermediary between the parents and the kids so that the kid feels comfortable enough. This is the first time parent and child are having these conversations, and the parents are then saying, oh, okay. I get it.

Hannah: Because parents will call me and they'll say. In my vetting process, I do a 15 minute complimentary phone consultation just to make sure that this is gonna be a good fit. And the parents will say he can sit there and he can play video games for five hours. I don't see why he can't just sit down and write a paper.

Mike: (laughs)

Hannah: Well, you're tapping into a different area of the brain. And also, there's something that's far more appealing. Gimme a second and I'll think of why, to playing video games than writing a paper. And there's a different kind of attention and the ADHD neurodivergent brain craves dopamine.

Hannah: There's no dopamine that's going off when you're writing about the causes of World War II versus, playing a game of Mario, i'm dating myself by saying that. That's just how it works and that's why your kid can sit there and play video games for five hours. But if you can educate them and if you can give them insight simultaneously about what their kid's experience is then there is like this aha moment that happens and then we can walk together.

Hannah: It doesn't always work, but I would say most of the time it does.

Mike: There's so much misinformation too, right? Speaking of Bobby, since she brought Bobby up, we don't yet know what the causes of autism, Neurodivergence, ADHD. We don't really know, do we? The root causes.

Hannah: There are some factors that influence the likelihood of having ADHD.

Hannah: What we know for sure does not cause ADHD, listen up parents, is parenting style. Parenting style does not cause ADHD. The phone is not the primary root cause of ADHD. Yes, does it cause some difficulty with attention and is it causing difficulty with things like needing to have instantaneous gratification?

Hannah: A hundred percent, but that is not the root cause of ADHD. Prenatally if, like I said before, if mom is drinking or doing drugs while she's pregnant, you're gonna see an increased likelihood of your child having ADHD. If the child is born prematurely, mom did everything right, but for whatever reason the child was born prematurely, that can also sometimes lead to ADHD.

Hannah: Things like the environmental factors of lead, that's gonna be problematic too. Now, just because these things happen doesn't guarantee that your kid is gonna have ADHD. Traumatic brain injury can also lead to that. Those are just some of the causes that we know for sure. And, who knows what they're gonna find out in another year, five years, 10 years.

Mike: But it takes that long sometimes for longitudinal research to point to a cause and effect rather than just it just happens to be there.

Hannah: Correct.

Mike: Yeah. I'm in schools a lot, almost every day, and they're very concerned about funding for special education right now. Where's the advocacy come in to make sure that the playing field is as level as it can be for these families and kids?

Hannah: I think this is critical. You know that there's no if and or but about it and it would be like saying, I use analogies all the time, but if you had classrooms full of kids who had asthma, are you gonna deny them their medication and their inhalers? And modified activity because some of them can't run because they have exercise induced asthma.

Hannah: It's the same thing. Your kids, these kids need to have the support that is necessary for them to succeed in the classroom. And you're not giving a leg up to these children. And point of fact, I say this all the time when we're coming up with accommodations, IEPs, 504's, that a lot of the accommodations that are put in place for neurodivergent kids are going to be equally helpful to all children!

Mike: Yes.

Hannah: It's just common sense. If we could look at it that way and then perhaps alter some of our classroom instruction for all of our kids, I think everybody's gonna benefit from it.

Mike: Yeah. Talk about your book a little bit because you wrote it for a reason. Unlock Your Inner Superhero. I love that.

Mike: The cover is great, by the way.

Hannah: Thank you. Yeah. It was really important for me to remind, first and foremost the reader who is the kid, that they are bringing their amazing talents to whatever they do. So their resilience, these kids have been knocked down over and over again and what I'm saying is not necessarily applicable for every single person who has ADHD.

Hannah: A lot of them have been, insulted, humiliated by their peers, by teachers. Teachers get very impatient with kids who are disrupting or who are off the mark. Not all teachers, some teachers. And it's really important for them to remember how resourceful they are. They know how to find the help that they need.

Hannah: They are excellent self advocates, many of them. Many of them are creative with how they look at the world and troubleshoot and problem solve. They're some of the most compassionate people again, because they know what it's like to live in a world that's not going to bend and accommodate them.

Hannah: So when they see other people who are (finger quotes) "different", "weird", whatever the label is that we're using to describe them. They're some of the first individuals to reach out to that individual. And just again, like I said at the beginning of this interview, finding that commonality, like you and I are both different. Let's talk about this. This is cool!

Hannah: So I wanted them to hear that they are superheroes. Is that to say that ADHD gives you superhero powers. No, I'm not gonna say that. But it does set you apart in that you have all of these capabilities that unfortunately, are overshadowed by the struggles that you have. And by validating that with the book I wanted them to be empowered and then, it's an amazing handbook for the adults who work with them.

Mike: Yeah, it really is. What I really like, just the fact that it's a book. I hear oftentimes from kids, I never see people like me. I never read about people like me. I never see them through the media and for those of us in the mainstream. We see ourselves all the time.

Mike: But when they do, that's incredibly empowering for them.

Hannah: Absolutely. And the cool thing about the book is that it's ADHD friendly. You don't have to read it cover to cover to benefit from it. You can go through the chapters and even within the chapters there are sections that are pertinent to their experience and irrelevant to in others.

Hannah: And there are points of reflection too, because I really wanted them to feel like they're in a coaching session with me. We're having this conversation, I'm making these suggestions. Now, reader, how are you going to apply some of these things to your life? How do you feel about some of these things? I really wanted them to challenge themselves and take ownership of this because at the end of the day, it's all about their owning the process.They have to have buy-in order to grow.

Mike: When I do a group project or an activity with a group of kids, oftentimes the children we're talking about here are incredibly creative, but not listened to. And I think I'm a pretty good listener. And so when they say something, there's a buzz in the room and nobody heard it, and I'll quiet the room and say, hold on a minute. Trevor just said something and I think all of you should hear.

Hannah: Yeah.

Mike: And then when he says it, it validates, and what I find is it shifts the room a little bit. Where now they begin to ask Trevor his ideas. It doesn't take much for kids to swing into another lane.

Hannah: Yeah. Yeah. You just empowered him by doing that. He's becoming the expert and he is being validated by these interactions, which is so powerful for these kids.

Mike: Yeah. Speaking of the brain, we will talk about mind 'cause you did something that mind... I think, okay, don't disagree with me. I don't think mine is ever gonna be wired to do, I don't even know how you would do this.

Hannah: I dunno. You never know, Mike.

Mike: Oh, come on, you created an app. I had to ask my son what a podcast was when they asked me to do this. I suppose I could learn, but. Talk about your app. It's called the MyToad app.

Hannah: You know that neural plasticity I was talking about? You never know. So MyToad app, toad stands for Time Management Organization Accountability and Dialing In.

Hannah: And in order to understand the app, you have to understand the challenges that people with ADHD have. Again, not all of them, many of them do struggle with things like being late for appointments, missing deadlines altogether because they didn't even know that they existed. They are leaving a trail behind them.

Hannah: Like some of my students, you could literally follow them throughout the house and figure out where they've been because they're just leaving a trail of stuff behind them. They are disorganized. They don't know how to advocate for themselves, and they're very unfocused. So I wanted to provide a tool that would take all of these challenges and distill them into one location where they could organize themselves, account for their time, learn how to develop their time management and their sense of time. Be able to have some kind of level of organization. There's a lost and found tool in there, for example, that trains you how to place your things and keep track of them. And just to make things as simple as possible because that constant disruption of checking multiple apps and going out to different places can really disrupt their flow process and flow is so important for these kids and these individuals.

Hannah: The app is for everybody, whether you're a professional, a student athlete, a stay at home parent. We even have some grandparents who are using it to help them to remember to take their medication. It's really an amazing life altering tool and I would encourage anybody who struggles with any of these issues, whether they have ADHD or not, this is something that's gonna change their lives.

Mike: Okay, speaking of that, I have a podcast coming up with a woman who, a mom whose son was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 11. And one of the challenges for the parents was taking his meds.

Hannah: Yup.

Mike: And so your app would help with that. So the parents can let it go and it's no longer on them to follow their kid around, and then it fractures the relationship.

Hannah: Yes.

Mike: There it is.

Hannah: Yeah. This tool and the book, they're both two life altering tools, both for the individuals who struggle with these things, but also the families and the networks, whether it's the boss or teachers or coaches. It's a far reaching change for everybody. Reducing stress level, reducing anxiety,

Mike: I thought it was great. And given that families have to learn skill sets too, right? It's not just the kids.

Hannah: No. You are correct. When people are living in a family, it's like a system. So there need to be structures in place and as much as sometimes we'd like to walk in the house and just chuck everything by the wayside. We need to know that when you walk in the house, you need to hang up your hook in the mud room and you need to put your keys in the bowl by the door. And yes, we are going to set the table, we're gonna clean it, and we're gonna walk the dog and we're gonna take out the trash.

Hannah: And there are certain days and times of the year that we're, at times of the day that we're doing this. So when we can get into those habits, particularly when the kids are younger, again, establishing those neural pathways. That's all very beneficial to the entire system. Being able to make sure that the home is a place that is a safe place.

Hannah: We're not judging, we are speaking our minds, but in a way that's respectful. We're listening to each other. And we are also honoring each other in their abilities. You're not gonna expect, a nine month old to go wash the clothing and fold. You wanna be developmentally appropriate with what your expectations are as well.

Hannah: Similarly, if you have a child who's neurodivergent, you're going to maybe lower the bar or adjust the bar to meet their abilities. And then you're not setting the individual up for failure or you as the parent, there has to be a level of compassion and understanding too.

Mike: Wow. I'll let you go with this 'cause I love this quote from you and I'm gonna use it again. You say on your website, it takes a collaborative team to get where the individual can go.

Hannah: Yes. Everybody has to work together. The parents need to reach out to the teachers and vice versa. I have students who I work with who have a whole team of psychiatrists to manage the meds, the psychologist to manage the emotion, myself as the coach, the parents.

Hannah: We all work together on behalf of Team (finger quotes) "Bobby", if you will, so that he can better understand himself, the parents can understand him, and then he can start being successful with meeting his deadlines, staying organized, et cetera.

Mike: Wow. This is so interesting. It's just fascinating. As I said before, there are links to Hannah's app, to the book, her website attached to the podcast. Thanks for your creativity.

Mike: For those of you listening, watching, we hope you find hope, insight, courage, and support wherever you are. As always, thanks for listening. Be safe and I'll add this, follow the science.