Penny Williams [00:00:03]: What I want to do with this particular summit is for us to step outside of the box, for us to then flatten the box, fold it up and put it in the recycling, and I want you to go, like, two miles down the road and start there. Our kids don't fit in the proverbial box nor should they have to. No one should have to fit in a box. We are all individuals. Welcome to the Beautifully Complex podcast, where I share insights and strategies on parenting neurodivergent kids straight from the trenches. I'm your host, Penny Williams. I'm a parenting coach, author, and mindset mama, honored to guide you on the journey of raising your atypical kid. Let's get started.

Penny Williams [00:00:54]: Welcome back to Beautifully Complex. Today, I want to talk to you about some crucial elements of parenting kids with ADHD, and these are coming from the upcoming unlocking ADHD summit. I have finished all of the interviews around 25 of them or so, and there were some recurring themes, some things that kept coming up over and over with different experts talking about different topics around ADHD. And so I kind of wanted to pull all of those out and make an episode for you about them because, obviously, they're really important crucial elements if every expert or almost every expert is talking about them and bringing them up. So I will give you some more information about the free unlocking ADHD summit that's happening March. Later at the end of the episode, I will let you know how you can participate in that for free and some other options there as well, but I want to just dive right into these main themes, these things that keep coming up again and again between different experts and different topics about parenting or educating kids with ADHD. The first one is that we have to be open to doing it differently. We cannot continue to be worried about fitting in, having our kid fit, having us fit, being a stereotypical parent, falling in line with, you know, those social norms around parenting, those social norms about educating, but being open to getting outside of the box, to being creative, to letting our kids guide the journey.

Penny Williams [00:02:59]: This journey is theirs. It's not ours. We are the guide. We are not the doers. We are not the deciders. Yes. We're there to keep our kids safe, to help them figure out where to go on this journey, how to do different things, what's important, what's not so important, what they have control of, what they don't have control of. Right? All of those things, we are kind of the Sherpa on that journey that they are on because it's their life.

Penny Williams [00:03:31]: They are not many versions of us. Their childhood shouldn't be a version of our childhood. You know, their interest may vary greatly from our interest. And even if you also have ADHD, their strengths and struggles are going to be different than yours. We are raising individuals. We are educating individuals. You guys have heard me talk about this on the podcast many times before. It is so so important.

Penny Williams [00:04:02]: Look at your child and see them as a unique individual. It will help you to be willing to do things how they lead to do them, how they say they need to do them, how they want to try to do them, and it will help you to really be able to get out of the box. What I want to do with this particular summit is for us to step outside of the box, for us to then flatten the box, fold it up, and put it in the recycling, and I want you to go, like, two miles down the road and start there. Our kids don't fit in the proverbial box, nor should they have to. No one should have to fit in a box. We are all individuals. So let's get okay with shifting your mindset to where it's okay to do things differently. That is going to help you enormously, and it's going to help your kid enormously as well.

Penny Williams [00:05:01]: Second is using strengths to overcome areas of weakness, and this is actually what the entire focus of this summit is on. I have done summits on parenting kids with ADHD in the past, and I've done lots of workshops and all these sorts of things over the years, and we end up talking a lot about the identifying characteristics of ADHD, inattention, impulsivity, hyperactivity, but we don't often get into how we can use strengths, how we can take a more positive approach, and use that to help them with the struggles, with the challenges. And that is really the most crucial way to approach parenting a kid with ADHD because that is the only way that they are also going to learn to see the ADHD as part of them, but only part of them. Everybody has strengths and struggles. Your kids' strengths and struggles, some of that comes from ADHD, but they can succeed. They can have a joyous, wonderful, happy life where they feel fulfilled and successful in whatever way they define that for themselves. And so when we really lean into strengths, really lean into interest and talents, We are helping them to figure out how to use the things they're good at to get through, get around, work with the things that are a struggle. So it was very important for me in this particular summit that we take that strengths based neuro affirming approach to ADHD.

Penny Williams [00:06:49]: Yes. You have ADHD. I'm not here to change you. I'm here to help you figure out a life that's wonderful with ADHD. I'm here to help you notice some of the strengths that ADHD actually brings to the table for you. So that is number two. Number three is felt safety. Almost every workshop we have talked about felt safety because if we do not feel safe, either physically, emotionally, psychologically, or socially, then our thinking brain isn't fully online, and things are not doable.

Penny Williams [00:07:32]: When we don't feel safe, our autonomic nervous system sends out an alarm, and it is trying to keep us safe. So we go into fight, flight, or freeze, and from there, things just aren't doable. Our thinking brain is less, if not completely inaccessible. So that felt safety has to be at the core of everything that we're doing with kids, teens, young adults with ADHD. We have to provide environments where they feel safe. We have to have a relationship with them where they feel safe with us, and you will learn in the summit from different workshops a lot of the strategies and ways to do that. Number four, and this is a biggie, you have to be regulated if you're going to help your kid. When you come into a situation as the adult, dysregulated, not in control of your actions and your thoughts and the words that you say, you cannot help your kid.

Penny Williams [00:08:46]: So when your kid is having a meltdown and you're asking me, what do I do? How do I make this better? What what do they need from me? The very number one first thing is that you need to deal with what you need and how you're feeling first, and that can only take a moment. It can be a really quick, deep, empathetic breath. It can be taking care of yourself outside of these moments so that you can come into these moments with confidence and staying settled and regulated. A dysregulated adult will never, I want you to hear me, never be able to regulate a dysregulated child. Not possible. And so how we are feeling and our self care and our self management is vital to being able to do our best for our kids. And you're going to learn strategies in a few of the different workshops in unlocking ADHD on how to get yourself regulated, how to make sure you're able to feel okay before you're trying to help your kid. Number five, talk less.

Penny Williams [00:10:09]: Just talk less. When you talk, you use less words, but open the door and then wait for your kid to respond. Talk less. We make assumptions. We try to feel silences. We want them to talk even when they're not ready to talk, and we do all of this through talking, talking, talking, adding a ton of language that, remember, when you're dysregulated, you can't process. So very often, we're using all these words, and we're trying to help. Our intention is to help.

Penny Williams [00:10:39]: We're actually just making our kid more overwhelmed, more dysregulated, and less able to do what we're asking or to feel better or to get regulated. We need to talk so much less, and you'll learn when and why during the workshops inside of unlocking ADHD. Number six is to start small, and this is something my own therapist taught me. Yes. We might have these really big goals, right, that we want to achieve somewhere down the road, but we can't go from zero to a thousand by flipping a switch. We can't do it in the blink of an eye. You can't go from being super unfit to being a bodybuilder competing in competitions just because you decided that's what you want to do. Right? There's a process to change, and part of that is giving it the time and the space to happen.

Penny Williams [00:11:41]: So start very small. If you want your kid to learn how to manage their morning routine on their own, let's say, start with one thing that they can manage maybe only halfway on their own. Right? Not even all the way on their own. What supports can you put in place? What tools might help? Right? Looking at why that's a struggle and then figuring out what is doable, how much is doable, because we need successes as human beings to keep going and keep trying. If I keep trying to build my muscles and become a bodybuilder, and I'm not getting there, and I'm never achieving even a step in that direction, I will quit trying. Right? This is why New Year's resolutions so often fail because we make these huge resolutions that would take us probably the whole year, if not longer, to achieve, and then we expect to achieve them in a really short amount of time, like in January, and then we give up because it didn't happen. We set ourselves up to fail in that situation. We need to set our kids and ourselves up for success.

Penny Williams [00:13:00]: So when we make things doable, they feel that success. Their brain is wiring for more success. Their brain is wiring that this is doable. They can do this, and then they are more willing to keep stepping up and keep trying. And that takes me right into number seven, which is offering just right challenges. When we offer a just right challenge, it's a bit of a challenge, but we know that it's achievable for our kid right now given whatever supports we want to offer, but it is a doable thing. A not just right challenge is something that our kids just aren't going to be able to succeed at. And it's not to say that they'll never be able to succeed at it, but they can't right now, today, in this moment at the skill level that they're at and at the mood, you know, the energy in the room, all of these things that come into play when we are talking about doability.

Penny Williams [00:14:03]: We must challenge a little bit because that's required for growth. Right? But only in a just right amount, what is just right for your kid right now, right, in this situation, in this environment today. And then the last one that is just this main theme that keeps coming up and coming up and coming up in these workshops is that you need to focus your energy on what you can control. You have to identify and be mindful of what you can and can't influence, and stop spinning your wheels on things that you just don't have any influence over. Because when you're spending and sort of wasting all of that energy, you have less in your tank to help your kid, and you're also modeling this sort of maybe obsession or compulsion to worry and spend a lot of energy on things that you can't change, and you don't want that for your kid, and you don't want that for yourself. And as we talked about earlier on in my list of recurring themes in this summit is that you need to take care of yourself in order to be the best that you can for your kid. So if you're not taking care of yourself, then you can't be helping them, but that's what you're wanting. That's your whole goal.

Penny Williams [00:15:33]: So be mindful that self care, that focusing on things that you can control and letting go of things that you can't control are part of parenting. They are part of doing your very best for your kid. So let's recap. We have doing it differently. You've got to get outside the box, get creative, let your child lead, lean into their interests in order to create environments and opportunities for success. We want to use strengths to overcome areas of weakness. We must provide felt safety. And we must understand when our kids are feeling safe and when they're not, and taking those signals from them to make changes and add supports so that they have those opportunities to feel good and to be successful.

Penny Williams [00:16:26]: You have to regulate before you can help your kid. You need to talk less, a lot less. You need to start small and celebrate small wins as they happen. Remember that you want to offer just right challenge, not too much or not too little. That just right challenge is that sweet spot of growth. And lastly, you need to let go of what you can't control and have more energy to work on the things that you can influence. So I wanna take a second here to tell you about the unlocking ADHD summit. It is March 3 through the sixth of twenty twenty five, and each day, nine workshops are available free for twenty four hours.

Penny Williams [00:17:16]: If you want longer access, if you want to spread out your learning, if you want to have these workshops forever as a resource, you can purchase an all access pass. It will be different prices right now. It is on sale for early bird, and the price goes up through the summit, And then after the summit, you can purchase the package, but it's a hundred and $77 US. It is much, much, much, much less than that before that. You also get with that ongoing access a workbook that is designed to help you individualize what you're learning, tailor it, and make a plan of action. It also lists all the key themes and key things that you're learning in each of the workshops, so it's a great resource as well. You'll get bonuses from the speakers, and I'm also hosting a live expert panel q and a on March the seventh of twenty twenty five. That is part of that past purchase as well, and there will be a recording after and a way to submit your questions before if you can't be on the live call.

Penny Williams [00:18:32]: So go to unlocking-ADHD.com. You'll get all the details about the summit. You can sign up for your free access there. You can purchase the pass there if that's what you prefer to do, but you can participate 100% free. I have people that do it in every summit. They get all of this great expert learning for free. So the summit is designed to be accessible no matter what your financial status is. You can take advantage of these expert insights, and I really hope that you will do that.

Penny Williams [00:19:05]: I will also link it up in the show notes, which you can find at parentingADHD and autism.com/302 for episode 302. And I hope to see you in the summit, but I will definitely see you in the next episode of Beautifully Complex. Take good care. Thanks for joining me on the Beautifully Complex podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share, and don't forget to check out my online courses and parent coaching at parentingADHDandautism.com and at thebehaviorrevolution.com.