My newsletter today is going to be two fold. The lighthearted topic is back-to-school. It's coming quick. I'm going to provide some fun ideas and resources to help get you ready.
The next topic is going to focus on having uniquely wired kids. I want to share a few of my thoughts, having raised a neurodivergent kiddo myself and then provide some resources from my blog on the topic.
Back to School
Parenting Uniquely Wired Kids
This topic is one close to my heart, and it's coming to the surface because I had a guest writer provide an article for my blog this week.
I want to share with you that I get multiple requests for guest writers at Meaningful Mama. I am very particular about who I invite in to share. My goal has always been to remain authentic with you and stay true with my vision to help equip parents.
Many of these requests, even requests that involve paying me, come at a cost. They want me to do what is called "link stuffing." It's basically a way for people to get a link to their product or site. Most of these have nothing to do with my purpose at Meaningful Mama.
Therefore, I turn down hundredss of "opportunities" and thousands of dollars a year just so I can keep my site pure and true for my audience.
This guest author was different. Dr. Kahn is a licensed phycologist with an focus on ADHD and other neurotypical disorders. Because this aligns with content I've written in the past and resonates with me deeply, I responded yes for his request to write for me. Here is the result:
A few thoughts before I share some more resources:
I recently was in a conversation with a friend who is raising a uniquely wired child, similar to my own. We have been able to chat over the years and share experiences. It's lovely to have friends who are walking some of the same roads so you feel not so alone.
The discussion was about whether a diagnosis is helpful. Her opinion is that so many these days use their diagnosis as an excuse. These kids need to learn how to function in the real world, and having a diagnosis can become a crutch. We need to teach kids that certain behaviors just aren't acceptable. They shouldn't be defined by a diagnosis and need to learn to obey or act appropriately even if they are uniquely wired.
Their oldest daughter has been working with kids that have been given diagnosis, and she has observed that they just use it as an excuse for bad behavior.
I understood their points, but I had some of my own.
For us, I found a diagnosis very helpful. It was helpful for me to learn that my neurotypical child was actually typical within this diagnosis, so I could anticipate, learn, and know how to adapt some of my own parenting techniques based on what I learned.
It helped me have more compassion as I parented, but it also helped her to feel like she wasn't on an island.
We never wanted our child to use it as an excuse but only as a tool for better self-awareness and understanding. I told this child something along the lines of, "Yes, you have ADHD. It is going to be mean in ways you are have super powers, but it is also going to present some challenges. We won't use it as an excuse, but it can helps us understand more about how your brain works. We want to understand this more, so you can learn the tools necessary to thrive despite the hard bits."
Here's one helpful example in my own parenting:
We learned that some kids can go from 0-60 quickly. Some kids are prone to more epic meltdowns. Some brain researchers in China were studying this severe emotional disregulation and found that kids with the most pronounced changes had 45 abnormal brain regions versus 26 in other ADHD groups. Knowing this and other components about this help parents and kids know that, in the disregulated state, the frontal cortex has shut down and so reasoning or disiciplining in this moment isn't helpful. We learned that there needed to be time for the body to self-regulate before we could engage. Saying, "I want to talk about this with you, but we need to do it in a way that is healthy, so we both need to take a bit of time and then address the issue. I will connect with you about this when emotions aren't so high. Then, space is what our family needed before we could come back in and be effective.
If this wasn't explained more directly to me and my child during our counseling sessions, it would be harder to not continue to knock our head into the wall trying to address the behavior or the issue at hand in the moment.
Wherever you land on the question: Are diagnosis helpful, I hope we can have compassion with one another as we do our best to raise the unique kids we have with the information we have been given.
I want to provide some more helpful resources I've written over the years. The first article has meant so much to so many.
