EP 72: ADHD Myth Busting with Dr. Olivia Kessel

Please excuse any errors in this autogenerated transcript

Dr Olivia KesselHost00:06

Welcome to the Send Parenting Podcast. I'm your neurodiverse host, dr Olivia Kessel, and, more importantly, I'm mother to my wonderfully neurodivergent daughter, alexandra, who really inspired this podcast. As a veteran in navigating the world of neurodiversity in a UK education system, I've uncovered a wealth of misinformation, alongside many answers and solutions that were never taught to me in medical school or in any of the parenting handbooks. Each week on this podcast, I will be bringing the experts to your ears to empower you on your parenting crusade. Before we start this episode today on debunking ADHD myths, I wanted to have a big call out to all of my listeners who've enjoyed listening to this podcast on Apple Podcasts to please, please, please rate the show. It's not intuitive, but what you need to do is search for the Send Parenting Podcast show, which will take you to the homepage, not the episode. It has to be the homepage. You scroll all the way down to the bottom and you can click on how many stars you think this podcast deserves. We've had 19 reviews in the whole year that we've been going and, luckily, all five-star ratings, which is great. But we need more reviews in the whole year that we've been going, and, luckily, all five-star ratings, which is great, but we need more reviews because the algorithm with Apple Podcasts to be able to get it shown to other parents who might benefit from the information on this show, they need more reviews, otherwise they won't show it to other people. So your help and support is greatly appreciated. Please, please, please rate and I'll let you know how we're doing. Weekly In this two-part series I would like to share with you an ADHD workshop that I presented at a few weeks ago, called it Takes a Village to Raise a Child, which was hosted and created by Dr Marianne, who has her own podcast, how Not to Screw Up your Own Kids, which is fabulous if people haven't listened to it.

02:07

But basically, what I wanted to do in the first podcast is really discuss the myths surrounding ADHD, the misconceptions we have out there, and I'd really like to debunk some of those myths because they can really become a barrier to recognizing the signs of ADHD in your child and of an ADHD child in the classroom. So my aim in this first podcast is to debunk some of those preconceived notions and get some airtime. That gets such airtime on social media and can really be detrimental in getting the right support for children with ADHD. In the second podcast, which will be released next week. I'll share with you my journey to discovery of my daughter's ADHD and how she didn't present in a way that I thought was indicative of ADHD. We'll discuss some of the less known signs and also some of the ones that are more recognized. We'll unpick the science really behind the ADHD brain and why it causes some of the challenges that we see, because if we're really able to understand what's going on in the brain, then we're able to create solutions that can actually be used to help our children navigate this world. And finally, I will share with you four key factors for success that need to be met for an ADHD child to thrive.

03:31

So let's start off with ADHD myths debunked, and there are five myths that I would like to debunk with you today. The first one is that ADHD is overdiagnosed, that we're just diagnosing people willy-nilly and everyone. It's a catch-all for everything oh, they have ADHD. So that's the first myth. I want to look into the second myth and this is an important one, because I think this is a preconception of many parents out there that ADHD medications are dangerous and they're overprescribed and it's not something that they would ever consider for their children. And the next three myths kind of focus on what causes ADHD. Adhd is due to permissive parenting. Adhd is due to permissive parenting, and I know a lot of my listeners out there and a lot of the people that I've had on the podcast. They get blamed for their parenting and their lack of discipline with their child and that's actually causing their child's ADHD. Well, let me tell you that is not the case. Well, if it's not the parents, then it must be the children. The children are not trying hard enough. They're just badly behaved, they're just naughty. It's their fault. If they just fucked up, they wouldn't have these things that are making them look like they have ADHD. Again, not true. And the final myth I want to debunk because it's been on social media a bit right now and on the news as well is that ADHD can be caused by too much sugar or blue smarties, as Joe Wicks was unfortunate enough to infer on television a few weeks ago. So let's start for the first one. Adhd is overdiagnosed. Now there has been an increase in diagnosis and that's not meaning that there is an increase in the amount of ADHD. It's a very key differentiator there. We are more knowledgeable now about ADHD, although I would argue and I will discuss in this episode and next week's episode some of the misconceptions surrounding ADHD. There is definitely more awareness than there was, so more children that have this neurodevelopmental condition are being taken and assessed and being diagnosed.

05:53

But also the criteria for diagnosis has changed and this takes a little bit of explanation because it's kind of confusing. So there are manuals, basically that catalog what the criteria is for any diagnosis, whether that be ADHD, epilepsy, bipolar, the whole gamut of disease, and there are two different criteria. There's actually more than that, but there's two major ones. One is the DSM, which is the Diagnostic Science Manual, which is in the US and that's used by US clinicians to diagnose disease by certain sets of criteria. And then there's the ICD, which is the International Classification of Disease, which was developed by the WHO and is used in some countries in Europe and is used in the UK. Both of these classification systems sometimes are aligned with each other and sometimes go a bit out of alignment with each other. They go through different iterations. As we get more science, as we get more evidence, as our knowledge base grows, the criteria for how we diagnose disease and also how diagnostic tests change. You know we've gotten better at doing MRM imaging, genetic testing. So how we test or how we diagnose has changed. So the DSM has had five iterations and the ICD has had 10. And they are kind of right now at a kind of alignment in terms of the definition of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and we will talk about that a bit more in terms of what is the current diagnostic criteria. But also part of the reason why we have a perception of increased diagnosis is that we're starting, and we are just on the starting of this road to understanding that boys and girls and boys from ethnic backgrounds can present differently and boys from ethnic backgrounds can present differently.

07:49

So I know I was guilty of this, believing that actually, you know, adhd. It's a hyperactive little boy who can't sit in his seat and is. You know. And in fact that's what my brother was. He spent, I think it was year, his eighth year more. They actually put his desk in the hallway because he was so disruptive in the classroom that it was easier. He didn't. He didn't pass that year. He had to actually repeat it.

08:13

But actually the reality is only 25% of children have the symptom of hyperactivity and a lot of those grow out of it into adulthood. You only see hyperactivity in about 5% of adults. So hyperactivity is just one symptom of ADHD. But for some reason all the way back in history too, from the times of Fidgety Phil, which was the first written description of a hyperactive little boy, that's kind of what sticks out to us lay people, or even as a medical doctor, of what ADHD represents.

08:36

But actually girls present very differently and because they present very differently, they often don't get diagnosed until they're about 12 years old, so almost five years after boys who are presenting with that hyperactivity get diagnosed. Now boys who also don't have hyperactivity as a main symptom also don't get diagnosed. They struggle to get diagnosis and I've had some moms on the show share some of their stories about how challenging it was not getting a diagnosis till their boys were 14. Girls can present more with daydreaming, getting upset really easily, having problems with sleep off, with the fairies not paying attention, speaking out of turn. You're some of I guess you could call it softer signs, and when I talk about my story with my daughter, she definitely fit into that category and it wasn't something that was forefront of my mind in terms of, oh, that's what a girl with ADHD can actually present with. So I wasn't. You know, that's not what I was even looking for.

09:39

So we are now becoming more aware, and ethnic boys are often undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. So what's super interesting, though, is that I looked on the ADHD UK's website for some statistics and even with this perception that it's overdiagnosed, if you look at all children and adults and prevalence numbers, how many people should have ADHD in the UK? Actually, 80% of them have not been diagnosed. So I hope that this kind of data will stick in your head. So, when you think you know when, when you're thinking, oh, um, kids with ADHD and adults with ADHD, everyone's getting diagnosed. No, it's not true, and you have to banish that thought, because it has had a backlash of creating somewhat prejudice both in the education system and in the healthcare system, because the perception lays there as well, and so they kind of they think, oh, you just think that because it's a catch-all for all kids with naughty behavior, but actually you might really be missing out on some kids that actually have this condition, which is a neurodevelopmental. It's common as neurodevelopmental, so it's a condition of our brain and how our brain develops, and it's not just a catch-all for naughty behavior, because the reason why this is so important and why I get on my soapbox about this is there is a huge impact of not recognizing and not properly diagnosing children with ADHD.

11:11

Because children with ADHD who grow into adults and are not supportive have some very dire consequences of not being supported with ADHD. Consequences of not being supported with ADHD they have increased rates of convictions, arrests, incarcerations, poor academic performance, poor occupational outcomes, increased homelessness because of that, breakdowns in their families, in their relationships. They have increased substance abuse disorders. Oftentimes they'll self-medicate with amphetamines because it makes them feel normal. But I think the scariest statistic to me is their increased mortality. So it really impacts their life expectancy and overall their life expectancy of unsupported ADHD is reduced by 13 years and then if you include deaths due to suicide and due to accidental injury, which are also higher in ADHD, that number goes up to 21. So a decrease in their life expectancy of 21 years. That's more than the top five causes of reduction in life expectancy, and I'm sure you can think of a couple of those which include cancer, smoking, obesity, heart disease. All the top five all combined together are still less than the life expectancy reduction by unsupported ADHD.

12:35

Now, when I was deciding whether to get my daughter her diagnosis and her assessment. I didn't know that. I didn't know that a path of not recognizing she has it and not getting her the right support and treatment could lead her down that road. I thought it was just like, oh, maybe nice for me to have, and actually it would help me in terms of how I could support her and the problems we were having. I didn't realize how much I was going to impact her life as an adult. But the good news is there's also a whole bunch of research looking at what, if we do have a pharmacological and a therapeutic intervention with children with ADHD, and when you do do that and it's those two things combined you actually can have a statistically significant improvement in all of those poor outcomes and you can have a child who grows into a successful, achieving adult. So I cannot stress enough hopefully you've banished the thought that it's overdiagnosed and that you're on the lookout, because it's important to pick up these children and it's important to support them properly.

13:40

So myth number one out the door. The next myth. Oh, I forgot though I need to tell you about how we actually diagnose ADHD now. So, with those diagnostic criteria that I said, what you need to have is six or more symptoms of hyperactivity and impulsivity or six or more symptoms of inattention, and I will include these in the podcast notes and on my website so you can read a list of what's defined as those symptoms. And if you have both hyperactivity, impulsivity and inattention, it's called a combined presentation and you have six of those symptoms in each of those categories combined presentation and you have six of those symptoms in each of those categories. Now what's interesting is it is a bit misleading because this criteria is a criteria that's been construed to help us put children into boxes, but actually a child will often move through these subtypes because, as I'd said already, the hyperactivity type that you see in childhood often kids grow out of. As adults they might become more inattentive, they might have combined so they can move. Those are false buckets and actually kids can move within those different subtypes.

14:59

Also, what's interesting is that it lacks the emotional component of ADHD, which is really a key component in my opinion, because emotional dysregulation is something that most kids and adults can struggle with with ADHD, and that's been left out of the diagnostic criteria and, interestingly, it was DSM-2 in 1968 that decided to take out the emotional component. The 170 years previous to that where clinicians had been writing about ADHD, it had a different name. Then it's been called quite a few different names. It was was part of the neurodevelopmental condition, but I think because at the time of DSM-2, the whole field of child psychiatry was just evolving and they wanted to move away from Freudian psychoanalytic type of psychiatry and they wanted it to be very empirically based. And it's very hard to measure emotions. It's much easier to have these symptoms. So it's not a part of the diagnostic criteria. But I would say any good clinician that you go to for diagnosis will definitely be asking about emotional dysregulation and the emotional component of ADHD because it is so important. And maybe in the next iterations, as time goes by, it will come back into the DSM and ICD. One can only hope.

16:28

Now on to our second myth, and this is a big one ADHD medications are overprescribed and dangerous for children and adults. I think you know it's really interesting to me because parents are very hesitant understandably, I guess to put your children on medications, but it's only in certain, you know, instances. If your child had type 1 diabetes and their pancreas, which is a biological organ, just like the brain, is a biological organ, wasn't able to produce insulin. I don't think parents would struggle as much about giving them insulin injections as they do about giving their children ADHD medication to help them navigate the delay in their brain, their neurodevelopmental condition, their biological condition. They wouldn't have the same hesitancy. The same with inhalers. The data actually, if we look at ADHD, the number of children who currently have a diagnosis of ADHD there's 62% of them that are on medication right now, which is fabulous, right? You think oh, that's super.

17:36

But if I change that scenario in your head and I say we have 100 asthmatics in the room and I'm only going to give 60 of them an inhaler, I'm not going to give the other 40% an inhaler. You know they might not be able to breathe, they might really struggle, they might even die. But hey, no, I'm not going to give 40% of them and I find that that's acceptable. You wouldn't find that acceptable. Same, if you put that scenario with a type 1 diabetic that you only gave 60 of them insulin and the other 40 you didn't. You would think that's atrocious, you would think that that's child cruelty. But we don't think about medication in the same way when it's for ADHD and a neurodevelopmental condition of the brain. But I would like to challenge all those parents out there to actually educate themselves about ADHD medications, because they are actually the most effective psychiatric medication and in fact, they're even more effective than asthma medications for treating asthma. So they really they do what they're supposed to do and they really help our children navigate the challenges because of that developmental delay in the prefrontal cortex.

18:47

So parents will then say well, what about side effects? I don't want to have side effects, and every drug does have a side effect, so it's important. But they are low-risk side effects and they tend not to be severe enough to have to stop the medication. So loss of appetite, headache, dry mouth and they tend not to be severe enough to have to stop the medication. So loss of appetite, headache, dry mouth and some sleep issues. Interestingly, the medication actually can help some people with sleep issues, but for others it doesn't. So it's really important.

19:14

There are different types of drugs available and we'll talk about them more in next week's podcast and they can be used in different ways if side effects are an issue. But a lot of kids respond really well to the first line drug of treatment and they do really well and there's ways to navigate some of the side effects that other children do experience. And it's just really important that you are linked up with a clinician who could help you, because also, the dosage, the titration of the drug, how much drug your child needs, how fast they metabolize, it's very personalized and then when kids go through growth spurts, they have hormones, different points in their life. They might need to alter or change the prescription, the dosage, and so it's important to make sure that you're working with your clinician. And actually Dr Giaroli, who was on the podcast Send Parenting podcast episode 45, does a really great episode of explaining ADHD medication in a very lovely way, in a very unbiased and honest way, so I would recommend listening to that.

20:24

All I can say from my perspective, medication has dramatically changed my life with my daughter, basically in terms of the challenges that children have in terms of their executive functioning. In some children the medication can actually completely negate that. In other children, 55% actually can completely negate the challenges that they're having with their brain, their biological condition, and in 35% it can actually dramatically improve and my daughter falls into that 35%. So we also need to do accommodation and other things and it's not the only solution. It's a part of your arsenal, of your solution, and there are four key parts that are important to that solution that we'll also discuss next week. But, to give you a little spoiler, you've also got to make sure you have good sleep, nutrition and exercise and that the right accommodation is put in place both at school and at home to help with the challenges in terms of executive functioning.

21:26

So I really couldn't stress more the need for parents to rip that plaster off, not be scared of the medications and see the power of what they can actually do for your child and the impact it can have on them. My daughter can now do things that she wasn't able to do before. She says her brain has quieted down, she's able to focus, she's able to do her homework. It's made a huge difference and the proof is in the pudding. I forget to give her her second dose and she reminds me because it makes a big difference. Now. It's only as good as you have it in the system, and you got to remember when your kids don't have it in your system, that that's when the accommodation and other things really also need to come into play as well. So hopefully we have banished that myth I know there was on social media.

22:13

Recently, william came out and said the only reason we medicate our children is to help teachers in the classroom. That's not why you're medicating your child. You're medicating your child to help them with a neurodevelopmental, biological issue of delay in their brains, to help them navigate the world and make it easier for them. It is children-focused and children-centered. So the next three myths that I'm going to discuss is about the blame game, the ADHD blame game. Because we couldn't see ADHD previously. We couldn't, you know, we couldn't look inside people's brains. So we want to know why something happens. So we like to blame something. We like to see that there's a cause. This is a reason why this happened. But luckily, science has moved on and now we're actually able to look inside children's brains. That sounds terrible, but we're able to image their brains and we're able to do genetic testing too, so we're actually able to define why children have ADHD.

23:20

But before we did that and then we still have a hangover today let's blame the parents. It must be you, as the parents, that you caused your child's ADHD because of too permissive parenting, and I have had so many parents actually on the show I don't know if any of you've listened to Sarah Aquil Smith, who wrote, because I Said so and she's a great advocate of permissive parenting, passive parenting and also childism, and her whole career was based on that and supporting your child, a loving environment. And when she was fighting for her son to get diagnosed with ADHD, the school pushed back on her and said you know, we've become aware that you've written these books and that you know your parenting style and we believe that you're the one that has caused your son to have these problems in school, these behavior issues. And she said you know, she had an existential crisis almost because this was what her career, what her life was built on, and she really had to dig deep and really push back on that prejudice and say, no, that's not why and you know, I think it was at 14, she finally got him diagnosed as having ADHD. And there are other. You know it's not uncommon.

24:41

I've been recommended to read the book Scattered Minds by Dr Gabor Mate, who basically blames trauma in childhood, which is mainly due to mothers, by an inference on creating ADHD. And it's negligent he's negligent as a doctor to print that and to promote it because there has been so much research around this. Looking at the actual causes, we have the tools with which to diagnosis and it is not caused by bad parenting, and that has been proved over and over and over again. So his theory is wrong, and you might tell I get quite upset about this. But it's amazing to me that, with all neurodiversities, that usually the first person that gets blamed is the mother With dyslexia.

25:32

It was white, middle-class women that really picked up the baton with their dyslexic children, fighting for their rights, saying that they need more help in education, fighting in parliament, and they were accused of oh you know what? They're just white, middle-class mothers that can't accept the fact that their children are stupid and thick and they just they can't let it go. Well, look, I'm dyslexic, I'm a doctor, I'm not stupid, nor am I thick. But I had challenges that I needed help and support with. Same thing with mothers of autistic children. You know it must be due to the fact that they didn't love their children enough when they were young, they didn't make enough eye contact. They even had a name for it refrigerator moms. They are the refrigerator moms, and that's actually. You know, it's actually been rescinded, but you get my theme here.

26:21

It's like why not blame the mothers and actually it's not due to mothering, it is not due to parenting. Research has shown over and over and over again I think over 25,000 research studies over many years. You know huge, huge numbers it is inherited. So I guess it's inherited up. In different studies that shows different percentages, but between 70 to 88% inherited. So yes, you are to blame as their parents because it came from your genes, but you're not blamed because of your parenting style. Your child was born this way because the children that don't get it from inheritance the causes are not one of them is not bad parenting. Inheritance the causes are not one of them is not bad parenting. The causes are lead poisoning, alcohol in utero, low birth weight and actual head trauma, not trauma due to parenting, head trauma like hit in the head, traumatic head trauma.

27:19

So hopefully you know you're no longer going to accept any educator or healthcare professional who says to you it is your fault as their mother or their father that they have developed ADHD. It's not. It's the commonest neurodevelopmental disorder in childhood and luckily now we finally have the MRI imaging and genetic mapping that's able to prove that ADHD underline, underline, underline is a biologic disorder. So what's going on in our kids' brains. You know what is it. If it's not the parents, then it must maybe be due and this is myth number four it must be due to our children. They are naughty. If they tried hard enough, they really could do what we're asking of them. Well, contrary to popular belief with ADHD, kids that can't stay on task, that lose control of their emotions, get easily distracted. They are not bad kids who are being intentionally uncooperative and belligerent or just downright naughty.

28:23

There is a biological difference in our children's brains. Just like the type 1 diabetic that I mentioned earlier to you, they have a biological difference in their pancreas that doesn't produce insulin. So let's go over what is different in their brain. Well, there's three key elements to this. The ADHD brain structure is different, the networks are different and the chemistry is different. The networks are different and the chemistry is different. So if we look at the brain structure, there's a variation in size and there's a delay in development, especially in the prefrontal lobe, which is this area here behind your forehead. That's where your prefrontal lobe is and it controls all of your executive functioning skills. So there's about a 30% delay in that. So they develop that area of their brain 30% slower than other children. So that means that those children are going to have challenges organizing, focusing, planning and managing emotions. They will develop, but it is delayed. And it doesn't mean that their brains are smaller and that they're less intelligent. No, it's just a difference in structure. They have just as much knowledge and we'll talk about that in a little bit as other children. Then the networks.

29:46

So this imbalance in function and structure can cause the brain to transmit messages less effectively. So that can lead to difficulties with organization, prioritization, focus, remembering instructions if it's more than one, working to a goal or being more impulsive. And then the final thing that's different in this biologic condition more impulsive. And then the final thing that's different in this biologic condition underline, underline is their brain chemistry. There's genetically hypothesized effect in the neurotransmitter transporter gene for noradrenaline and dopamine. So they don't have enough of that available in the cells In between those synaptic junctions and dopamine and noradrenaline are really important in terms of our reward centers, our motivation, and also for the passing of those messages along from one nerve synapse to the other. So it can be hard for kids with ADHD to retain information, hard to keep those instructions and follow multiple instructions. It can lead to them having issues with inhibition, control, maintaining motivation, and they'll favor shorter-term rewards that are quick and have a high dopamine hit than ones that might be further out in the future, might be less evident or less obvious.

31:04

So it's not our kid's fault. It is due to real differences in our children's brain and I think it's also really important here because, just to clarify, it's not a knowledge disorder in ADHD. We contain most of our knowledge in the back of our brain and we send that up to our prefrontal cortex, that front area of the brain for performance. We have a two-part system and there's that dysfunction or disconnection between what we know and what we do with that information in the front of the brain. It's not a problem of what they know. And this is really important when we start thinking about solutions for our kids with ADHD, because if we keep hammering them with more information, more knowledge, more information, whether that be with us talking or whether that be at school, it's not going to help. It's not going to help where their biological problem is. Their biological problem is a performance problem. They know the same as other kids their age. The problem is putting it into practice. So teaching skills, increasing their knowledge. It doesn't work. They need help using that knowledge at the point of performance. So we really need to create a scaffolding to really help them.

32:18

And I'll use an example of my daughter. Right, so she knows how to make her bed, she knows how to brush her teeth, she knows how to get dressed, she knows what she should put in her backpack. She knows all of those things. But when I ask her to do them in rapid fire succession in the morning okay, I need you to get ready, brush your teeth, brush your hair, make your bed, get dressed, pack your backpack, eat your breakfast and off I go to do something else. She's not paying attention to me. She's already forgotten the list of orders that she's supposed to do. She's attracted to something over there and she doesn't pull through the performance. It doesn't work. But if I can scaffold her and can help her with that, so I can put sticky notes stick it notes, you know, like that you get in a pad like these ones here. If I put those step one, two, three, four, five, and once she finishes them she throws it away, then already I've helped her at the point of performance.

33:12

I then put on her Alexa, which has a little timer which shows her how much time she has and how much time is running out, because time management is also an issue with ADHD in terms of performance finishing something in a time limit. So now she's got the timer going, so she has got an external way to see how much time is passing, because it doesn't work really well in her brain. She has got her list of things. She likes scrunching them up and throwing them away and then she knows when she comes downstairs that I've created an Excel spreadsheet which has a list of all the things that she's supposed to do and she checks them off and then she gets pocket money. And because she likes that instant reward, she likes checking it off. She likes still getting a sticker. So I'll give her a sticker as well and then I give her pocket money every day because she likes, and she puts it in her pocket bank and she knows, and if she hasn't done something she gets less pocket money. So there's a consequence. So now getting ready in the morning is actually easy because I've taken and I've scaffolded her, so she doesn't need to struggle at the point of performance.

34:16

And, interestingly, when you do something enough and in order enough amount of times it becomes a behavior, rather like riding a bike. When you first try and ride a bike it's super, super difficult. You have to think, you know. You've got all this knowledge, you understand you're supposed to push the wheels, you're supposed to hold onto the handlebar, you're supposed to balance the bike, you know, and it's really challenging. But once you learn how to do it, it becomes a behavior and even if you don't pick up a bike for years, when you go back to get on that bike you don't really need to use the performance prefrontal cortex. It's a behavior and you just go back into it again. You can ride that bike. So eventually, by repetition, my daughter is wiring and firing and now she can sometimes get ready without all those prompts not always, but I'm hoping one day that when she's an adult she'll be able to get ready because she's wired and fired at it and it's become a behavior. So that is real important, I think, in terms of helping our children with ADHD.

35:14

Now the final myth that I would like to talk about today and this has been on social media. It's been talked about a lot about blue Smarties causing ADHD and the ADHD can be caused by too much sugar in their diet or made much worse by sugar in their diet. And I think the key point that I really want to debunk here is that sugar causes ADHD, or kids on sugar are kids with ADHD? They're not. Sugar ingestion does not lead to problematic behaviors in children with ADHD, and research has absolutely categorically shown to support this and has shown that sugar has no cognitive or behavioral effects on children with ADHD. So is eating sugar healthy? No, do our children have way too much sugar on their diet? Yes. Is it better for our children to have less sugar? Yes, they should have less than 5% or less than 25 grams per day. And if you look on the back of packets of things, sugar gets added to everything. But the key thing here that I really wanted to stress is that sugar doesn't cause it. Parenting doesn't cause it. It's not our naughty children. It's a neurodevelopmental, inherited condition, with a small percentage of children getting it from other causes, which are lead poisoning, alcohol in utero, low birth rate or head trauma.

36:44

So hopefully this little section on debunking five common ADH myths has been helpful to you.

36:55

Next week we're going to get into the nitty gritty of it.

36:59

Okay, we've debunked the myths now, so hopefully next week we'll be starting with a clean slate to actually look at what are some of the symptoms that are less well known or identified with ADHD, alongside the ones that are more well known, like hyperactivity and inattention and impulsivity, and then we're really going to dig deep into what's causing it in our brains, because understanding that helps us to understand what solutions we need to put in place to help our children meet their challenges so that they can go on to be successful adults and thrive in life.

37:36

So I look forward to speaking with you next week and talking more about a topic that's very near and dear to my heart, which is ADHD and how we can help our children have successful childhoods and become successful adults. Looking forward to you joining us next week. Thank you for listening. Send Parenting Try. Hopefully I've been able to open your mind up and debunk some of those common ADHD myths. Next week, in part two, we will explore the of adhd and really look into the science behind them what's going on in our kids brains because that is going to give us insight into what solutions can really work and be implemented right now. I look forward to you joining us next week and I wish you a great week ahead.

24:24