The statistics regarding ADHD are sobering at best with real impacts in building and sustaining relationships, success and consistency in school and career, quality of life issues and even life expectancy. Yet living a fulfilling and rewarding life with ADHD is possible.

For a recent presentation to parents from the Philadelphia CHADD chapter I’ve collected a few practices I’ve noticed my clients tend to consistently engage to overcome their ADHD challenges. I wanted to instill hope in these parents - that there are adults with ADHD who defy the statistics. Furthermore, I shared six ‘active terms’ that I borrowed from coaching that parents, kids or adults with ADHD can employ to strengthen these six practices and strengthen the neural pathways impacted by ADHD.

The Active Coaching Terms are:

• Modeling - As opposed to telling or suggesting. Show by example for others and yourself

• Prompting - As opposed to nagging. ADHD has us come up just short of a new awareness or engaging in a new action or a new completion. Prompting can draw the recipient to an informed choice point.

• Listening - With curiosity and compassion so one can articulate thoughts and feelings into meaningful language.

• Normalizing - That the behavior witnessed is in the realm of accepted behavior. Does it really matter how the goal was achieved?

• Distinguishing - Because the ADHD brain collapses thoughts, feelings and meanings. Distinguishing is a necessary process before one can prioritize intentions into action.

• Linking - Connecting one’s experience to causation. This is the elemental dilemma of ADHD - a breakdown between linking cause and effect. So important in learning and processes of change. Linking is an ADHD superpower in the right context. My visionary clients are at the core excellent linkers of complex processes and trends.

The Six Practices are:

• Become a student of your ADHD - Your ADHD is impacting your day and relationships. Be curious about how it shows up and does not show up. Many people will migrate to two camps, one of denial (nothing is ADHD) and one of immersion (everything is ADHD). The truth lies in the middle but ADHD makes it hard to notice the ADHD in the day. This is utilizing curiosity and the distinguishing skill.

• Envision success like a charismatic leader - To hold a bigger positive image of an outcome in the midst of the ups and downs of every day. This is not to be confused with ‘A Plan’. This is positive imagery or a vision of success. Secondly, articulating the vision to others gives it meaning and agency. It also enrolls champions and supporters. Barkley talks about how positive images and positive words are not present in children with ADHD. When we imagine and articulate our pictures of success we can strengthen the neural connections here. Listening, prompting, linking and normalizing are all in play here.

• Solve problems like Ms. Rocket - Ms. Rocket is my daughter’s Algebra teacher and she is brilliant. She instills in the students a practice mindset and not a performance mindset. She gives students opportunities to retake quizzes to master concepts. My daughter loves math again. A practice mindset lets individuals practice getting through the ‘activation energy’ to get to action. Modeling, prompting and linking are at play here.

• Strength before challenges - So often people think they have to erase challenges first then they get to step into and discover strengths. I know no client who created real change by just addressing challenges. Modeling and prompting, linking and listening (for strengths).

• See failure as a temporary setback - Distinguishing is the big skill here as we tend to lump our sense of self into our last failure grinding everything to a halt. Separating and distinguishing who we are from our experiences is the practice here. Modeling is in play too.

• Build a healthy reflective practice - Few people ND or NT develop a healthy reflective practice yet research shows we can be so much more effective just asking a few questions at the end of our day: What worked? What didn’t? What am I proud of? What will I do differently? Linking, prompting and modeling are key here.

Pick one or two of the practices to focus on utilizing the active terms when appropriate and you can build some hope, awareness and resilience too.