PODCAST. ADHD Parenting, Mindfulness, and Technology Dangers with Dr. Mark Bertin, M.D., PLLC.

Exploring ADHD, Mindfulness, and Parenting with Dr. Mark Bertin, M.D., PLLC.

In this enlightening episode of ADHD Wise Squirrels, we sit down with Dr. Mark Bertin, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician and author of "Mindful Parenting for ADHD," "Mindfulness and Self Compassion for Teen ADHD," and "How Children Thrive" to explore the challenges of ADHD and the transformative role mindfulness plays in supporting children and families.

Dr. Bertin shares his journey, insights, and practical strategies for integrating mindfulness into daily life, offering hope and tools for those navigating ADHD as individuals and within families.

Episode Highlights

1. Understanding Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics

• Dr. Bertin explains his work supporting children with ADHD, autism, and learning differences.

• Emphasis on a whole-family approach to addressing developmental challenges.

2. The Role of Mindfulness in ADHD Management

• How mindfulness became a cornerstone of Dr. Bertin's practice after seeing its benefits in his personal life.

• The science behind mindfulness: neuroplasticity and its impact on emotional regulation, resilience, and executive functioning.

• Practical, evidence-based mindfulness techniques tailored to ADHD.

3. ADHD in Families

• The hereditary nature of ADHD and how parents often discover their own ADHD through their child's diagnosis.

• Addressing undiagnosed ADHD in adults and its impact on parenting and family dynamics.

• Strategies for supporting children’s development and your own through structured routines and compassionate interventions.

4. Tackling Stigma Around ADHD

• Dispelling myths about ADHD causes, including misinformation about trauma and overdiagnosis.

• Addressing the stigma around ADHD medication and highlighting its potential benefits when used appropriately.

5. Technology and ADHD

• The link between ADHD traits (e.g., hyperfocus, novelty-seeking) and the challenges of managing addictive technology.

• How to set boundaries with devices for both children and adults, fostering healthier relationships with technology.

6. Mindfulness and Time Perception

• Exploring how mindfulness helps break cycles of reactivity and fosters presence in the moment.

• The relationship between attention, memory, and slowing the perception of time through intentional living.

Key Takeaways

• Mindfulness for ADHD: Mindfulness doesn’t replace other treatments but complements them, helping individuals manage challenges with patience and clarity. Mindfulness isn’t about shutting off thoughts—it’s about building awareness and patience to navigate challenges with clarity.

• Family-Centered Care: Supporting children with ADHD starts with empowering parents through understanding and self-compassion.

• Technology Awareness: Being intentional about technology use is vital, especially for individuals with ADHD who are particularly susceptible to its addictive designs. Technology isn’t inherently bad—it’s how we manage it that matters. Mindfulness can help us find balance.

• Breaking Stigmas: ADHD is a medical condition—not a personal failing. Compassionate awareness and informed decision-making are crucial to effective management.

This episode is a must-listen for parents, educators, and anyone seeking practical tools to manage ADHD or to foster resilience and intentional living through mindfulness. Don’t miss this deep dive into the intersection of science, compassion, and practical strategies for thriving in a complex world.

• Transcript

  I'm in a field called developmental behavioral pediatrics. So I work really with kids having various types of developmental challenges. Could be around learning, could be around ADHD. Some of the kids in my practice have autism. Thankfully, sometimes I see families help them sort out that nothing's going on, but just when people are having challenges, that's when I'm helping them sort out.

  Guess I would say something's going on, but nothing, uh, diagnostic. And, um, so that's part of my day to day practice. And then, um, More and more over the years, there's been a lot of interest in the fact that I integrate mindfulness into all of that as a practice. Um, really that started because for me personally, I had seen the benefit of my, in my own life and kept it to myself for a long time.

  And then when the science started taking off and I was working with families and I was younger, just realizing that families are under a lot of stress when it comes to raising kids who have, you know, if your kids are having a hard time, that's stressful. So, um, much less the actual specifics of like raising kids with ADHD, which is really challenging.

  So, I started integrating mindfulness more and more into my clinical practice. And that's also been a big part of what I do. And I, um, hopefully very grounded in a practical way is always my goal. What's your history with mindfulness? Like you mentioned doing it, meditating mindfulness, like for your own personal use.

  Tell me about that. Sure, and we can probably begin to define some terms around it too, but I feel like I got really lucky on two fronts. First is, while I was in residency still, which would have been in the, like, mid 90s, one of the doctors actually introduced us to a meditation practice, like a stress reduction practice, like for her.

  There's more to mindfulness than stress reduction we can talk about today, but that was her purpose, like, here's a tool to manage some of the stuff you're living with. And honestly, that for me, it's like it kind of clicked for me from the beginning. I think it might be because I'm a, I would, I still am, but I used to a lot more do things like bed backing and, um, and it had that same feel of like, you know, something just taking a serious moment to settle when things are tough and, uh, but you can't backpack every day and you can meditate every day.

  If you just, you don't have to, by the way, but you can. And um, so I started practicing then and it kind of clicked for me. And so I started exploring. You know, books and guided practices eventually went to some, I mean, the cool thing, like I said, two things, the second thing is the cool thing was as I started doing this, if you look at their, uh, I think there's a famous slide that's used for speakers of laying out the, um, the exponential growth of research around mindfulness, um, which is crazy.

  I mean, how quickly it's changed. It started with like almost no research in the mid nineties to like hundreds and hundreds of studies coming out now. Yeah. Yeah. And what I feel really fortunate about is that, like, I happened to be introduced to it right before that curve took off. So I practiced on my own for a while and found it very settling.

  And then just as I was getting confident in my clinical practice and getting familiar with the idea that, like, this is all not working with the whole family and people are really under a lot of stress here. Um, I went to a couple of conferences where like the lightbulb went on for me. I was like, wait, I say, why am I keeping this to myself?

  I started looking for ways to integrate it into more traditional Western medicine that way. It's interesting too, because with mindfulness and meditation. So I'll just give you my quick version, which is I've always dabbled on and off with mindfulness. I was diagnosed with ADHD last year at 50. Um, just before my 51st birthday.

  So I'm 52 now and I've gone obviously hyper focused into ADHD because I want to learn and I want to share this with folks and smart people like yourself. But in 2020, I was under a great deal of stress with all the obvious reasons, pandemic and so on. And I started a daily meditation practice, and I think there's often confusion between meditation and mindfulness and, and that there's this automatic, I know people, obviously, like when you talk to your friends about meditation, they're like, Oh, woo, woo, you know, but, and they, they think of like sitting on a mountaintop with your legs crossed and so on, um, I feel personally, and you can correct me where I'm wrong here, but I feel like mindfulness, although it is a type of mind of meditation, I believe that mindfulness comes as a result of meditation and that I can, I have been way better at reframing my thoughts and slowing myself down and pausing in the moment as a result of meditating.

  Yeah. I mean, that's a pretty, that's a pretty good summary. I mean, I, I would, um, like two or three starting points, I think, in terms of talking about all that. One of my favorites is a more general one before I start, which is there's a famous very old teaching around all this to say whatever I say next about mindfulness, ask yourself, is it true?

  Like, don't take it on faith. Be skeptical. It's all meant to be like understandable and practical. So starting from the reframe of meditation is actually possible for everybody because there's an idea in brain science called neuroplasticity. It's like anything we do repetitively starts to rewire the brain.

  So the practice of meditation isn't trying to shut off your thoughts and isn't trying to be calm all the time. Both of those are totally impossible. And to understand meditation and stick with it, you just need to reframe it as you're trying to develop awareness of and then patience around things like your emotional state or staying grounded and intentional in the face of challenges.

  My, my favorite, well, I guess I was about to jump terms, so I'll say it and then I'll come back to it. But my favorite one line description of the practice of mindfulness. Is that really we're just trying to intentionally build the traits that help us manage life as easily as possible. Because we can easily stay caught up in reactivity and distraction and autopilot and all these other, you know, just sort of like, you know, putting our head down and doing things like we've always done.

  Or we can just go out and try to build traits that make some of those things, some of the challenges of life easier to live with. So meditation is like a gym program almost. Which, if that's triggering, that's okay a little bit. I mean, you know, to get anything out of meditation, you just got to practice regularly, anyone can do it because you're kind of giving yourself permission and you can work on different things.

  You can work on developing self compassion, you can work on developing attention, you can work on developing emotional awareness. So you're working, you're giving yourself permission for 10 or 15 minutes a day to just sit with whatever's happening without all the reactivity and habit. Doesn't mean the rest of the day you might not go out and be really active and taking care of problems.

  And then like you said, what that develops, it's not, meditation isn't the point, which is another important thing to just sort of let go of. Like you're not going to relax every time you meditate. Right. The goal is just to build these traits that develop what, like you said, this concept of mindfulness. Um, even though that's actually used in a way in the West that's, that's actually limited, it's really more than, I mean, I could explain.

  So, so mindfulness means, Basically non judgmental awareness. So it's just like seeing reality as it is, even if reality in this moment is I'm so distracted, I can't have a conversation, that's still mindfulness. So, you know, this is, uh, so, so, you know, two things around that. On the one hand, that means that, again, And anyone can practice because whatever you're doing in any moment, you're going to handle it better, get more out of it.

  If it's a positive experience, manage a challenge with more skill. If you're just settled and aware of what's going on, I mean, it doesn't mean it's a good thing, but mindfulness helps. So mindfulness as a concept is just like trying to develop that more. That's part of why I think it's such a valuable part of ADHD care of like, there's an awful lot that goes into managing ADHD.

  So if you can understand ADHD fully, that helps you make strong decisions around it, productive decisions around it, like mindfulness isn't going to replace anything else. It just supports it all. And then, and then the second thing I was going to say around mindfulness is that in the, um, in the context of the sort of the Eastern psychology that comes out of, it's actually.

  Part of multiple different traits you can develop. So in the West, it's sort of this global term for a mindfulness program, whereas, you know, really it's more nuanced than that. Like I'm recording a big Mindful ADHD program right now, and the last two sessions we did are on, A, developing compassion. So working with the inner critic and, you know, all the.

  internal dialogue that develops in life for everybody, but that might be potentiated by ADHD. And then, and then it's a domino effect. You know, you start feeling defensive and rotten about yourself and that undermines your resilience. And when your resilience is starting to wane, that makes it harder to manage ADHD.

  And then you, so it's like breaking that cycle. Yeah. And then we were talking about mindfulness and communication, which again, it's that concept of like, ask yourself, is it true? It's like, don't get that. That may sound weird. Like, you know, mindfulness and communication, it sounds like another wooboo strange thing.

  You know, but that one's working with the fact that just the reality in life is reactivity met by reactivity leads to more reactivity. Like, who else would respond otherwise when someone gets in their face, right? So, if you want to Practice mindfulness with communication, that means staying strong, but trying to be aware and empathetic and responsive and, and just to lead a different type of communication through practice and repetition.

  So mindfulness is a term that talks about confession, talks about awareness, talks about, Are we living intentionally in terms of the choices we're living? Mindfulness is like just trying to be aware about all these things. And meditation is just the tool to help that make, to make that happen. Yeah, makes sense.

  That makes complete sense. Well said. Um, so, and I know you work primarily with children and with families. So, and you know, for the purposes of this podcast, talking about ADHD specifically, being diagnosed last year at 50, just before my 51st birthday. Like that's. I'm very careful. And I always urge folks, um, who have, you know, fellow wise squirrels, as I say, people that are adults that are diagnosed late in life, not to dwell on the past, I mean, certainly reflections fine, but like.

  Not think about all the what ifs or what I, you know, all these things I could have been, could have done, could have been a content, uh, you know, all that stuff, but instead focus, focusing and getting back to the mindfulness piece, like focusing on the present, because, you know, as the line says, like the past can lead to depressive thoughts or depression and the, and the future can lead to anxiety, which, and I definitely am, I'm being treated for anxiety.

  Um, but when you're present and you're focused on, it doesn't mean like as a business owner, yeah, you've got a forecasting, you've got to figure out things, but it's about not think not dwelling on the what ifs I just had I done this, I could have done that. Um, I find with parents, like some of the stuff I learned about ADHD is fascinating to the point that like how hereditary it is.

  And, and, you know, and before we hit record, we were talking about that for a second about how, you know, you mentioned pediatrics and I'm like, yeah, but with, if you're a child, you have parents and with ADHD, especially there's a pretty high likeliness that one or both parents may have ADHD as well. And that's also how my understanding, a lot of people are learning that adults are learning.

  They have ADHD is after their children are diagnosed. Is that something you're seeing as well? Oh, that's a constant part of my practice. There's a lot to what you've said, but, um, but, um, yeah, so when it comes to ADHD, it's a delicate discussion sometimes, not everyone wants to have it, but, you know, the genetics are incredibly strong.

  Yeah. And a lot of what you need to do to manage ADHD is harder if you have untreated ADHD. So, you know, as a parent, you're being asked to be consistent with the behavioral program or to communicate differently, like I just described, or anything else. And, um, it can be really helpful then to, um, if you have undiagn I mean, I think one of the things, I never want people to get overly stressed if there's something not there.

  I mean, one of the most important things to recognize is that having some sort of chronic impact, chronic impairment is part of a diagnosis of ADHD. So, if you're the parent of a child with ADHD, There's no need to be like overly worried about if you have it, as long as it's going well. But if you're living a life of chronic struggle in some way, which could be like all the surface measures are totally fine.

  But internally, there's just, you know, exhaustion and burnout and a little behind the eight ball all the time. Or, you know, kind of have a lot of great ideas and never quite finished them up. But you live, you know, it's like, it isn't like, yeah, so it isn't like, it isn't like, you know, you're failing out of life or something.

  It's just that ADHD has impact. So. If that's the situation, it actually is a conversation I try to get going at the start of working with any family. It ties back to what I said about my influence before. I don't think you can work with kids without working with whole families. When kids have executive function issues, they're behind in the skills that let them be independent, which impacts their parents.

  We're knowing. Not, we have to leave the witcher, like all of us are unhappy when our kids are struggling. So on the one hand, there's that aspect of it. And then on the other hand, There's the fact that often if you're a parent and you have undiagnosed or under treated ADHD, that getting on top of it will help the whole family also.

  So you just gotta, to me, you gotta just put it all out on the table. Again, it really does, you know, the concepts around mindfulness, I think, kind of a framework to see things through, you could call it whatever you want, but, you know, If you're going to help a whole family, that idea of non judgmental awareness, like, no one should be blamed for any of this, but this is what's going on nationally.

  And it's, and it causes like a heartfelt way of like, this is overwhelming. This is causing a lot of struggle. This is, you know, this is tough, but it is what's going on. So let's look at the whole picture and see what supports we can get in place, you know, can be really helpful. And it's made me like, I just.

  For me being like, I am now more empathetic and even sympathetic to my parents who were split when I was quite young. And my dad, unfortunately is no longer with us, but knowing who they are with undiagnosed ADHD, possibly one or both of them, which knowing what I know now would not surprise me if they were both diagnosed with ADHD, but that's such an interesting point because.

  Like there's, there's misinformation out there about trauma causing ADHD, which we know my understanding is that's not accurate unless there's like head trauma and that's a mental. It's typically something heredit, hereditable, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but the trauma comes and this is what I've been learning a lot about.

  In the form of undiagnosed ADHD can lead to addictions. Right? And so my father was a heavy drinker and a bastard when I was a kid. And I too was a heavy drinker as a kid and also a bit of a bastard myself. And so business man, dad, punk rock son, you know, we're going to, we're going to butt heads and it's not going to be pretty.

  And so like, had he been diagnosed with ADHD and treated, you know, And understood this about himself and again, not blaming him for anything here, but had he known this, he may not have been an alcoholic for a long time and and things like that. And I too might have been different. But again, I'm not dwelling on the past, but so I feel that there's this level of empathy and getting back to mindfulness and meditation and like meta like love and kindness and this idea of like, Spreading the love, find that really an interesting practice as well in, in meditation, wouldn't it?

  Well, now you're jumping into the thick of it some, but I, I would, I'm happy, yeah, so, um, but there's two things you're saying, and I think are, um, uh, you know, one of which is like anybody can apply, and then we can certainly talk about the practice itself. But I think, um, it is, I think it's unfair to people how much misinformation there is around ADHD, wherever it comes from.

  Yeah, and many many variables because in the end it's a highly impactful condition for people. It's nobody's fault. As far as we know, like you said, short of an injury, it's a genetic disorder. Um, it leads to a lot of challenging outcomes if it's not treated. Um, obviously not for everybody, which is part of why the storytelling online can be so misleading.

  But the odds of challenging things happening are way up if you have untreated ADHD. So the fact that it is like, mislabeled means people don't even know to go looking for it, or they avoid looking for it, or they think it's, you know, they don't even want to know when It really on some impersonal, yeah. I always hesitate when I say that it's personal in that it affects people.

  It's impersonal in that it's nobody's fault. You know, it's, no, there's nothing to feel bad about. It's not a, I mean, you feel bad maybe because you, you know, because of the impact it's had on your life. That makes sense. Especially if that impacted other people around you. Um, but it's impersonal in that it's not your fault, you know, it's just, it's a really challenging medical condition to try to manage.

  Same thing goes with the treatments, by the way. I think it's totally unfair to people. Uh, that the medication in particular has been demonized. It's like, it's just a, you know, no one should use medication for anything in life they don't need. There's nothing inherently good or bad about the ADHD medications.

  You know, people go, like, feel stigmatized because they want them or need them or, or, you know, tie themselves in knots to avoid them, but if they're used appropriately, they can be immensely helpful. You know, it doesn't have to be more complicated than that. You can use an asthma medicine if you don't need an asthma medicine, you know.

  And it's like it doesn't, and the judgment and weight of it, it's like a hard enough decision to make already without all the extras being tacked on. Yeah, so, so there's a lot to talk about, just about A DHD as a whole in that way. I mean, you know, just, I mean that, and then it gets really confusing. 'cause if you look at the actual numbers, you know, everyone's, everyone's being diagnosed with a DH, adhd.

  It's like, well, the problem of, I mean, it's, it's, there's three bullet points there to me. I mean, it, you know, when you understand that science of A DHD, the actual rage isn't changing much. Mm-Hmm. , you know, our society technology can. exacerbate things, but it's not causing it. And so, you know, it's been described for a century, it gets overdiagnosed in kids who are misbehaved, it gets underdiagnosed in kids who have ADHD and are well behaved.

  So it's really complicated. And again, um, the reason I'm bringing it up in terms of this sense of judgment and compassion you're talking about is, you know, it doesn't matter to an individual who has ADHD that there's a public health level. It's not fair that the perception on a public health level is that everyone's got ADHD.

  You know, so therefore you have it and, you know, somebody judges you for it, you know, because they lump you in with that. Like for an individual who has ADHD, they have ADHD. It doesn't matter that there's a diagnostic issue, you know, somewhere else. Um, so that's one side of things I think that is really important to put out in the open.

  And, you know, I've seen studies on the public health, you know, the public health impact of ADHD, the, you know, the costs in education, the, there's new, more and more research about the, Uh, increasing, increasing, um, expenses around medical disorders when you have ADHD. So it's a broadly impactful condition that we all should be talking about, you know, honestly, I mean, I get, I have that lens, whatever word you want to use, non judgmental awareness.

  It's like, don't, it's just, it's just what's happening. And if we address it better, a lot of people are going to feel better. And on a global public health level, it'll have benefit too. So. Yeah. So that's one thing I think you were alluding to a little bit. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think like I went through a period where for a moment it didn't last long and for a moment where I regretted being diagnosed, I regretted knowing that I'm a Y score and again, it was a moment because I was like with my wife and I was in tears about it and cause.

  Part of the diagnosis came as a result of my business struggling and trying to just frustration with that. And then, you know, and then suddenly like going through my, my old report cards, because God bless my mom, she kept them and, and reading the review, reading the reviews, reading the comments from the teachers and knowing, like, my wife also is a school teacher.

  So she, she writes kids of all different shapes and sizes and neurotypes. I, I, obviously I feel great that I do know. And then I'm learning more and more about ADHD and trying to remove myths and, and help. Inform people better about this as a, you know, and not platforming freaks like so many other podcasters do, or, you know, and trying to correct.

  And again, it's science. Like I, like on my, on an episode recently, I corrected myself because I kept, I kept saying there are three types of ADHD. I now know that's incorrect. There's one type of ADHD and three presentations of ADHD, and we all are one or both or, or the combined presentation. And we kind of go back and forth through life.

  As we get, I was the Bart Simpson, but now I'm more of the Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, right? Who is the, uh, and then, and with a, with a hint of Lisa here and there as well, Lisa Simpson. But those are the three characters I use to kind of describe, describe these presentations. No Bill the Cat. Yeah, I guess I should add that.

  You know, I think what you're getting at though, a little bit in terms of like not wanting to know, is that place that can tie together again, the same thing I've said it multiple times today of like just living with ADHD, but also mindfulness if you want, which is the thing about, I often bring this up when people ask if their kid should be evaluated, like, you know, like a friend asked me or so school, you know, whatever you think about all the different treatments, you can't address anything in life unless you're aware of it.

  You know, so a lot of change starts with awareness, right? So ADHD, right? Okay. It's this very wide ranging condition that because it affects executive function, which is like all of our organization planning and life management skills, potentially it's different for everybody, like you said, but you know, potentially has this wide ranging impact.

  If you want to start mitigating around that and want to start supporting someone, be compact, you know, develop compassion, feel better about themselves, all these sorts of things. You know, the, really the, the starting point for getting on top of anything in life is you got to see what's going on with some clarity, you know, all that mind, call that mindfulness or not.

  So once you see you have ADHD, then you can start exploring ADHD and then you can start saying like, Oh, right. There's this emotional component. I wonder how I can work on that. Or there's this time management piece. You know, I wonder what a good plan would be there with compassion, because the unique thing about ADHD is since it affects.

  Planning and persistence like the plans you set out to do to manage your ADHD tend to be harder because you have ADHD and it's rough, but you get on top of it eventually. It's just hard. But you know, the more clearly you can see all of that, that's what lets you start, you know, taking care of things. You know, if you just don't even know you have it, that's where a lot of the emotional self criticism and internalized messages that are, you know, that aren't so healthy start happening.

  Healthy is a word, not so helpful is a better way of saying it. Yeah. Or self medicating and then that leading to addiction and things like that. Because the bigger problems like that too, like people don't know, you know, for example, Russ Barkley's new research points to all these different health impacts of ADHD, because you need to, you know, you need strong executive function to maintain healthy living habits in the face of the fact that life is pushing us, tends to be pushing us the other direction, right?

  You get busy and you're overwhelmed and they're trying to sell you stuff. So you get swept up in it and then you stop. They're doing the basics. Yeah. And if you want to break that cycle, sometimes, you know, you need to recognize like, Oh, the reason I'm having such a hard time sticking to my exercise routine isn't because I'm lazy.

  It's because time management's really hard for me. So the solutions are going to have to come out of understanding time management, not understanding myself as like someone who hates the gym and can't stick to a plan. Where does that come in with, and again, like the show is typically for adults, obviously, but your, your wheelhouse and specialty is in children.

  Yeah. And I almost picture, like, if a child is diagnosed with ADHD, how are you best able to convince that child, and maybe convince is the wrong word, to start Meditation and mindfulness to start. Well, no, that's not what we're talking about here. I just want to be clear about that. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

  Meditation and mindfulness is just, that's a whole other discussion. Yes. And getting, and getting kids to do it as a whole other discussion. You know, it's like, it's like with kids, you're like, you know. So that, that isn't where I start with families. Usually I start with the adults. It's, you can't force anyone to meditate with kids.

  No, no, it's a side discussion. You're trying to get them interested. And there are ways you can work with kids. I do. When you see the opportunity, there's things we could talk about today, but big picture, the only person, any of us ever make decisions for in life is ourselves. Yeah. You know, parent practices, mindfulness that brings that that's how you start teaching kids, mindfulness.

  Uh, and I think that's what I was driving out at actually, as, as I question, really not to, not to force a child to meditate, but even as parents, you know, we have to make decisions through a lens of understanding child development. And when it comes to the practice of mindfulness, that might mean realizing like, we'd really like our kids to meditate.

  But first, you know, we have to, we can just model ourselves and then ride and make it interesting to them. Amen. You know, there are like little meditation practices that are really naturally easy to fold into bedtime and there's ways to start introducing it, but you got to do it in a way that developmentally makes sense and demystify it like there's nothing perfect supposed to happen and all of that.

  Right. Same thing goes for ADHD though, which is, uh, which is actually where I thought you were going a minute ago, which is to say that, you know, a lot of the, Like forming a new habit is hard for anybody, right? So, like, it's just, it's a lot of effort, it's a slog, it never feels good. Well, never, it rarely feels good when you're trying to force yourself to do something that you haven't been doing habitually for a long time.

  That's, Certainly true on ADHD, where some of the, the interventions are, are labor intensive. You're going to learn how to manage time differently. There ain't no quick fix there. You just got to like, work with someone who can teach you some system to help manage it differently. As an adult, you can make the decision to do that.

  The question I think you might, I thought you were getting at, but it's an important point, because it parallels the concept of meditation, is You know, younger kids, when they have a disorder of planning and features thinking and time and judgment, they learn a lot when they're younger, often, like a lot of the work I do in my practice is with the grown ups in the room.

  It's like the kids are too young to fully understand what's going on yet. Like long term, you need them to understand their ADHD. Short term, you just need to get homework done. Which means that short term, it's about like, And now that you understand ADHD as a parent, you know, some people say it can be up to like a one third delay in self management skills, for example.

  So you can be like nine in a demanding school district going on six in terms of your ability to manage your homework. And that means in the short run, one of the ways we're going to help make sure you feel successful And help make sure you, um, develop the skills you need is like, we need to create the homework routine in our household that becomes the structure you're learning from, you know, that becomes the, you know, sometimes, I mean, and there's so much, there's, there's kind of, there, broadly speaking, I find there's a couple of approaches that can be helpful there, depending on, you know, the situation, your family, your child's temperament, I mean, sometimes I like approaching these things like, uh, with the attitude of like brushing your teeth, like some kids fight about brushing your teeth, but in the end, you're never debating it.

  It's like, yeah, you can brush your teeth. You know, so sometimes you want to approach some things like, yeah, what we do in our house is you get your homework done first. And they might not love it and they drag their heels. And for some kids, just the fact that we're doing that is the beginning to learn how to manage time management and procrastination and things, because you're just trying to develop this habit of like, ADHD symptoms include delaying, you know, harder work and procrastinating and poor time management.

  Some of those things, you know, instead of fighting over homework, you just throw like, no, now that you're in middle school, this is what we're going to do. Now, for a lot of other kids, it's why we also need like a really structured behavioral plan. Because we're not going to talk them into it. So in order to get them to do it, it might need to be more like, this is the kind of homework routine we need and this is a reward plan we're going to, you know, implement if you follow along.

  But again, that's seeing with clarity. This is what ADHD is. The kids are behind in the skills they would need to manage ADHD in the first place. So the initial solutions are often very top down until we can do enough intervention that a child is able to do it themselves. Got it. Yeah. And is it accurate?

  I've understood that your prefrontal cortex is roughly three years or so delayed in its growth or in its development as a child, um, with ADHD. Is that accurate? That's just a rule of thumb. I mean, some people say it's up to a one third delay. Some people say it's a few years behind. Yeah. Um, I mean, it is interesting to note that one of the major chips in our understanding of brain development in the last couple of decades is that we now know the brain matures until our mid twenties.

  Yeah. And the part of the brain that's maturing primarily is the frontal lobes, which are related to executive function. So the But skills related to ADHD do tend to keep improving for all kids, by the way. It's an interesting thing in general child development that I don't think is really emphasized enough is that teens need to be teens and I'm certainly not an advocate of helicopter parenting.

  But at the same time, teens really still rely on us to be their parents because they're 10 years away from having a mature frontal lobe. You know, it's like just because they think they're young grownups and the internet gives them access to like everything all the time, uh, doesn't mean that they don't need guardrails and supervision because.

  You know, this, this is just normal brain development, you know, the, the, the average person isn't fully, you know, that part of their brain isn't fully mature until their mid twenties, which also gets back to the mindfulness power of. As a parent, if you practice mindfulness and, and study up on mindfulness and meditation, ultimately, if you're, it's not so much about like being in bliss or something, it's, it's more about just being a better human as a result of it.

  And because you become a better person and you slow down and you consider the moment and what you're doing and, and all these things, when you're approaching life in that way, you become a better person and ultimately a better parent. And then your kids too. See you do that, as opposed to see you do the opposite, which would be yelling and screaming towards the audience.

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, we can't avoid, first of all, we can't avoid the fact for starters that we're imperfect as parents. So we're working on stuff, including letting go of any expectation that we're gonna, like, never lose our stuff or be right all the time. We're just doing our best, which is one of the things you directly work with through mindfulness practice if you want, is just like, how do you work with the inner critic and perfectionism?

  And develop a more balanced, healthy inner dialogue almost. And that's something you can directly practice. There's a program out of, uh, Austin called the Self Compassion Program that, you know, is just fully developed around this idea that, you know, we can kind of rewire that habit. We can sort of learn to treat ourselves mentally like we were our best friend instead of the same, the harsh inner critic we usually live with.

  And, and I do think, you know, I started today by saying something about how, like, ask yourself, is it true? I mean, the words that are honestly just, you know, to. Call you on a little bit. It's like the word better is kind of loaded. I mean, it's not about good and bad. It's about, it's about living with our best intentions.

  And, you know, the exercise I sometimes ask people to do thinking about it is hopefully intuitive, which is to say that, you know, if you think about, let's just say we're fortunate enough to get a month off from work, go do whatever you find most relaxing and peaceful in life. And then you come back and someone throws a problem at you, you know, then as you come home, right?

  And then you think about a month of just complete, absolute miserable chaos at home and school and work and everything's falling apart and you haven't slept and you're just stressed, you know, to the n, nth degree. And then someone shows the same problem at you. You know, how are you gonna manage it? Yeah.

  So, you know, that's, that's, I mean. The signposts that we were pointing towards with mindfulness, there's never a perfection, but you can recognize that like the more we practice these skills, which are all again, totally common sense, we're not stilling our mind, we're quieting a little bit where one of the things you mentioned earlier, we didn't come back to is, yeah, our minds making thoughts and stories up all the time.

  And the research does suggest that it tends to get caught up in anxiety, provoking thoughts of past and present and yeah. You know, the, the awful cliche would be in the moment, you know, I hate the cliches, but the reality of it is, that's where life is. And if you're paying attention to what's going on right now, for a moment, you've stepped out of all those anxiety provoking stories.

  So you're just breaking that loop. So yeah, these are all like practical skills to work on. And it's also like the other analogy that's just like a gym program is, um, you know, it doesn't really end because if you practice mindfulness for a while, you know, you might develop these traits of a more compassionate self awareness.

  Um, and if you stop practicing mindfulness, you know, the world tends to push you around and you start falling back into more reactive, destructive habits because that's what happens when you stop exercising. So it's just an ongoing trying to build skills. So when I said, when I said about the word better.

  Obviously, it is better in the broadest sense, I don't want to correct you, but at the same time, we don't always get things right, because that's life, so what we're trying to do though, is we're trying to build traits that help us stay in touch with our best intentions, it's like, you know, if we're settled, and we're seeing things clearly, and we've developed a little bit of patience, and we've developed You know, then we're, like I said, with the vacation example, then we're just going to handle things differently.

  And that's what we're trying to do. Yeah. And I'm being mindful of the time here, which is racing past and I hate it because, because I'm bloody time blindness. I'll get you next time. Um, but I wanted to ask you about, cause this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart, which is addictive technology.

  And something that obviously see, I mean, I, I have two teen teens myself. Talk a little bit about your thoughts on helping, you know, it also gets back to like, if the parent is always on the phone, it's not looking great for the kid because the kid sees the parent. So can you talk a little bit about maybe your thoughts and curbing addictions on, on devices and all that stuff?

  Solve that problem in five minutes. Go. Exactly. And so a little, that's the hard part of it. Um, yeah, I think there's a few different things to understand about it and then talk about, you know, actually helping adults and kids. Yeah. Um, from a child development point of view first, really adults, from an ADHD point of view is a better way of saying it.

  Um, ADHD symptoms of like hyper focus, time blindness, easily bored, novelty seeking are like a total setup when it comes to technology. Mm hmm. Because the second thing to know. Which is really important, I think, to understand because this is not just an inevitable evolution of our society. This is a product that has been designed in conjunction with psychologists to be as disruptive as possible because they're making money off of our data and attention.

  It doesn't mean you should never use it. I love my smart phone. I just got a new one. It just means you really aware that that's what it's designed to do. So you want to stay intentional and you want to be looking at the big picture of like, am I using this product? Am I using this tool? In ways that are healthy and helping me, or am I using in ways that are hurtful and undermining me?

  And it takes a lot of willpower and effort to do that, especially if you have ADHD and you're easily bored and novelty seeking and losing track of time. Yeah. So, what that really, you know, what it filters down to is, I mean, you know, there's adult, you know, as we're talking, it's like, there's adults, there's parents, there's families, like, it's all kind of the same.

  I mean, it starts with awareness. I mean, it really just starts with like, it isn't asbestos. It's not inherently good or bad. There's tons of research showing that under managed tech is bad for kids. It isn't ambiguous in spite of how some people try to undermine that discussion. I mean, under managed, it's a problem.

  It's a problem directly, probably. in some of the things that it trains in the brain. And it's a huge problem because of whatever place it is. So it's, you know, it's into exercise, time, and nature, and reading, and sleep, and all these other things. So, when you then add on to the fact that, you know, kids with ADHD are behind with Organizing, planning, all the ADHD stuff we've kind of touched on a little bit today.

  It really comes down to the adults deciding, like, what is balanced? Really objectively looking at what's healthy and not healthy. There's no yes, no answers to it. And the bottom line bullet point is, many or most kids with ADHD need adult supervision to use technology in a healthy way. They're not going to do it on their own because the product is like, it's like a, it's like a war against them.

  I mean, it's like, you know, the power of the technology to manipulate attention and grab attention and gamify things and is just. Bigger than most kids can manage. Look, I've told both my kids who are both 18. Well, actually my son just turned 19 today. So, uh, he's no longer, thank you. Yeah, there he's no longer much, uh, to his happiness.

  He's no longer the same age as his sister. Cause they're Irish twins. I've taught both the kids are not taught about the kids, but I've talked to, or I have talked to them a lot about technology and addictive technology. And social and algorithms and all that stuff, but I've told them now that they're older, that I think in their lifetime or possibly my grandkids lifetime, they will compare our phones to cigarettes.

  The phones will be the cigarettes of our generation that we look back and go, I can't believe I used to smoke. I can't believe they used to recommend it. And with smartphones now, I feel that without any sort of guardrails in place, whether it's. Through legislation or whether it's through, well, I guess that's the only way.

  And, and also parents really understanding the dangers involved in just handing a phone off to a child. What are your thoughts on that? Um, well, a couple. Um, I mean, one is, is that's one of the slides I use when I give my talk on this topic is like in the sixties, doctors used to advertise cigarettes. Like it was considered so normal, you know, doctors smoke camels, you know, that type of thing.

  So right now I think we're in a period of time I totally agree with you, where it's like, Oh, well this is just how things are, so we You know, that's the perception, even though it's just not true. It's a, it's an industry messing with our kids and, you know, we want to get ahead of that again. Um, so I think you're totally, I mean, I, I don't know if tech, I don't need to go back to, you know, you know, no technology, but I hope we're going to learn to live with it differently.

  Um, one thing I would actually just nuance a little bit, but it's in my experience, it changes the discussion a lot is I'm not actually concerned about addiction exactly. Because addiction is really extreme. And, uh, and when you, and what I find is when you start talking about addiction, a lot of people rationalize the other 99.

  5 percent of it as like, Oh, well, you know, I'm not addicted because I'm still not addicted. It's not about addiction to me. It's about disruption. I mean, it's just about like. You know, if people aren't managing it well, it undermines all the things they just said a few minutes ago. Addiction is just an extreme term that's a little controversial.

  I think probably there is internet addiction, but that's not That's not even the issue. The issue is like the average teenager spending too much time on social media is going to start feeling worse about themselves, totally separate from addiction, you know, and, and I'm not saying, by the way, it all has to be limit setting.

  Of course, you want to have conversations and talk to kids and for each individual child, you want to, you know, individualize the response to how they're interacting with it. Okay. But at the same time, the expectation, the understanding, like when you have an impulsive teenager who does something dumb online, it's like kind of a moment of, well, that's, you know, again, you try to help them, but at the same time, there's a little bit of like, of course, you know, or if you have someone who is kind of bored and not feeling so great about themselves and gets, you know, starts spending too many hours on social media, it's like, well, that's what it's designed to do.

  I mean, it turns out just to end up back with mindfulness as we're ending, there's a psychology program called ACT that based on mindfulness that came up with the idea of something called a happiness trap. And what the happiness trap is, is like, we get in these cycles in life very easily and you can apply it to almost anything where, you know, we're feeling off in some way, we want relief, that all makes sense, you know, but then we grab onto something quite often, habitually, that is kind of, Not gonna bring us relief in the long run.

  You know, so we had a little dopamine rush from going to your phone. It's like you feel better for a second, but then it's gone. So what do you need? You need another, you need more, you need the next one, you know, and that can be anything that fills that, that gap, but technology particularly panders to it.

  So you're in this constant cycle of, you know, you're trying to resolve the fact that you don't feel great by getting on social media to distract yourself. And it sort of gives you this little bandaid effect for a moment, but really in the end, it's making you feel worse. So then you do more, you know, and the only way to see through those types of cycles in life is to just break them, is to see them, it's awareness again.

  And then recognize like, okay, I can't live this lifestyle anymore. You know, even with technology, there are some perfectly healthy, you know, like using technology, just stay in touch with the people who actually support you and care for you is an awesomely powerful thing to do. I got through the pandemic.

  Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. I mean, I was a speaker for Google for six years. So like, There's a lot of great benefits, obviously, with technology. Certainly we have talked about AI, you know, and especially in the future of healthcare too. I mean, with AI being able to, you know, run different DNA sequences and try to cure diseases and things.

  I mean, the chances of that happening through AI are pretty high. I would expect just the abilities to be able to do this kind of stuff. It's not that I'm poo-pooing technology, but I love the line. Whoever invented the ship, invented the shipwreck and I think I, I, yeah, there are measures you need to put that really well.

  It's overly optimistic, I think, just to get myself in a lot of trouble, but I will just say it. I think, you know, what we've seen in our country over and over again is big industries take over, like the smoking industry, it's a big, you know, and they just impose themselves until someone says, stop. And right now, actually speaking of Google, one of the best sources of this pushback is Tristan Harris and this technology because in the end that's what this is.

  It's like no one, there's an industry pushing to have influence and impact how people behave. And I've heard somebody, it might've been Tristan say, it's like a psychology experiment gone wrong. I mean, they used. Yeah. All this data on how to manipulate attention, but then because of the power of the device itself to collect data, you know, the power to influence just like took off exponentially because they're constantly re evaluating what they're doing.

  And it's just disruptive the way it's being done now. And, um, and like I said, it doesn't mean it can't be used. Like I said, I mean, it doesn't mean it can't be used well. And I'm not sure I always use it well, but I do my best, you know. But for a parent or an adult or someone with ADHD, just to end with that, you know, living with ADHD, it's always about balance.

  I mean, you know, sometimes it's about like literally taking, take your calendar out. And like, it's almost like the balanced food plate where it's like, you know, to eat healthy and eat a little of this, a little of that. It's like, look at your weekly lifestyle and are you, are you prioritizing the things that will keep you resilient over time?

  And if not, how could you get closer to doing that, you know? Because if you let technology take over, that's very rarely true. Yeah, no, it makes complete sense. Um, yeah, this has been awesome. And time is flying by mark. Uh, what, um, where can people find you? I want to make sure that that folks can get in touch and learn more about your work because you've written multiple books that are excellent and the level of dedication and work that you put into this is just incredible.

  So I want to make sure. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me here. And, um, uh, my website is, is, uh, developmental doctor. com all spelled out. Yeah. And, uh, everything, it's the simplest thing to say, everything's there, you know, I have, but I, what I would say just to pitch it a little bit, like I really glad I might be able to have evidence based, practical, unbiased information up there.

  So there's an ADHD page and a childhood element page and a mindfulness page of just resources that people want. Yeah, that's great. And that's always what I'm trying to do here too, is course correct. If I say something that's incorrect, I want to make sure to, uh, to fix it. And yeah, yeah. Just. I think, I think an important point that, you know, you mentioned too, and for folks is that if your child has ADHD or has been diagnosed with ADHD, there is a high liveliness that one of the parents also has ADHD.

  And so maybe start looking at after yourself in that way too, because, you know, you mentioned Russ Barkley, you know, his, this passion project of why squirrels became sort of a mission when I learned. That with undiagnosed and untreated ADHD, life expectancy can be up to 13 years less. Yeah, that was the health research I was referring to, yeah.

  Yeah, and when I learned that, I realized, and I can even think of my own life in moments where things could have gone differently. And it's important. Yeah, I mean, if it's not intuitive, just to, you know, we're ending, but I'll just say, I mean, the reason that's true for everybody who's listening is that ADHD doesn't directly affect your health, but it undermines, like if you, that research was done looking at life insurance tables and um, you know, what they do in a life insurance table is they try to estimate, you know, when they're insuring you, which are likely, you know, all these health risks.

  And what Ross found basically is that, you know, basically ADHD is potentiating every risk on the chart. So that ADHD alone. You know, impacts everything else that could keep you healthy, if it's unfeeded or underfeeded. That's the important point. Yeah, cause the, cause there are comorbidities like anxiety and depression and other things like OCD and bipolar that can be.

  Oh, that's awesome, car accidents and car accidents and stress and diabetes and smoke. Yeah. That's what the list is that you're looking at. Yeah. Do you have a heart stop right at one? I got you. Yeah. I got it. I got it. That's okay. That's okay. Yeah. I wanted to ask you one other thing actually very quickly because we have six minutes very quickly.

  I do want to ask you this. And it's something that came up recently in a conversation with someone. Do you think that people with ADHD undiagnosed and untreated have shorter lives? And what I mean by that is the perception of time as it pertains to time blindness. Wow. That is, um, I'm not going to give you a good answer to that.

  That's too philosophical and open ended for me. I don't know. You'd have to talk to people with ADHD and compare it in some way. I mean, I think the issue of time blindness certainly must affect how people feel day to day and like the days just go by without. I mean, I'll turn it around. Maybe I'll end with a mindfulness point that probably relates to what you're saying, which is, um, you know, there is certainly research that memories are formed from giving things your full attention.

  Um, so, uh, there was a cool study I saw recently where they looked at like, Or maybe it was, I don't remember, a study or a body of research, it was an article on a neuroscientist looking at memory who's shown that, um, in his research that if people take pictures with a smartphone, for example, they're less likely to have their own memory of that moment.

  So, um, so there, there, there, you know, I think it is intuitive that there'd be some impact, you know, to living life without giving it much attention. Yeah, I love, I love, I interviewed someone a long time ago for a different podcast and she pointed out that like this phenomenon of time passing as you get older and how time seems to, regardless of your neurotype, you know, time seems to go by faster as you get older, but if you try, if you, it's, and everybody has that one summer that was like the longest summer and now I'm quoting Don Henley or something.

  Um, but, uh, yeah. But the point there is that time slows down when there is novel things involved, when you are doing something different, like for the first time. So that summer was the first kiss, the first whatever, um, and so there, there's this theory of time slowing down if you're trying new things and being more novel in your life.

  And that's why I'm a big proponent of travel, travel and backpacking as well, because that's how I met my wife in Ireland. Sure. I think all that's true, but, and then, not but, and for anyone listening, I think probably the same thing goes for any moment you cut yourself and just try to get full attention to whatever is actually going on.

  Yeah. Uh, Mark, this has been awesome. Thanks a million for joining me. Uh, thanks so much for the invitation.