Daniella Karidi
I have ADHD, and I forget a lot of things. When I had to choose my dissertation topic at Northwestern University for my PhD, originally I was going to go back to exploring reading because I have a master's in Learning Disabilities and Reading and ADHD, and I thought originally that's what I was going to do. My professor said, "You don't sound passionate about it, and you're not going to complete it if you're not passionate about it." He was a genius, by the way. We talked and brainstormed, and we realized we were really interested in why I keep forgetting to do things in the future, and whether this is unique to me. That's when I got into the research world of how to remember the future and why people forget, and whether other ADHDers struggle with that. After being in academia for a while, I realized I really want to help people, so I shifted to working in disability services in academic environments at universities.

I supported both faculty and students in disability services. Now I'm an ADHD coach. I support individuals in life transitions—moving from high school to college, or from college to a new job. My favorite group to help are ADHDers in retirement, because the number-one problem in retirement is you never get a day off.

Diane Dempster
You would think that—"Wow, you never get a day off." It's really funny, because when you were talking about why you have a hard time remembering the future, it intrigued me. I'm wondering whether there's an easy answer to why it's so hard to project ourselves into the future. Is that even the right question?

Daniella Karidi
I'll take a step backwards and say memory is very complex. It's not one thing. We have different types of memory and various processes involved. To remember the past—which is retrospective memory—we use three basic components: we encode the information (we learn it by hearing or experiencing it), we store it somewhere in our brain, and we retrieve it at the right time—when someone asks, "When did you graduate?" we retrieve that memory of the past. But to think about the future—if I tell you, "Take your antibiotics today at 7:00 PM"—we go through the same steps: we encode the information, we store it, but now we have to wait, we need a cue to execute that information (which is usually not a direct question), then we perform the task. Then—and this is one of the hardest stages for people with ADHD—we need to evaluate: did we perform the task? Can we close the loop or leave the loop of action open?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah. Did we complete this task, or do I remember doing it another time? Was it this time or another time?

Daniella Karidi
Right. Should I take it tonight or did I take it yesterday?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yes.

Daniella Karidi
Yes. Remembering the future is far more complex than remembering the past. It has many more steps and is therefore more fragile. Anything in our brain requiring more steps will be more fragile.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
What does "fragile" mean in that context?

Daniella Karidi
It has more chances of failure. OK. There's a greater likelihood you'll remember what you did in the past than remember what to do in the future.

Diane Dempster
I had a visual of a movie where the guy tied little strings around his fingers to remember different things. I think that illustrates the piece I heard before: we should not rely on our memory for future tasks. It's a setup for failure, I think. Yet there's a societal norm that we should remember because it's "remembering." Talk about that a little bit.

Daniella Karidi
So, I'm going to start with: forgetting is healthy, and we don't always give that credit. But if we remembered everything, we would most likely end up in a mental institute because we can't cope with so much information, and the ability to prioritize and make decisions requires us to have resources. If we remembered everything, we would have no resources to prioritize. So forgetting is a helpful mechanism—that's why we have it. Our brain has both because it's healthy for us. On the other side of that equation, we have the expectation that we're automatically going to remember things that are important—that important is enough or sufficient for us to remember. So your friend expects you to remember their birthday because it's an important date, and we assume that's sufficient, but it's not, because we have all those steps that need to happen, and they don't always happen in our ADHD brain.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So, can I break this apart a little bit? There's so much here and it's so good. First, you said there are three parts to memory: encode, store, and retrieve.

Daniella Karidi
Right—to retrospective memory.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yep. Retrospective memory—something that's happened in the past. Right. OK. So, where does forgetting come into that?

Daniella Karidi
It can come in at any part of the equation. We might not encode it properly—if we're in a noisy conversation and only catch half of it, we did not encode the information. That's why it's hard to remember what we didn't put in at the beginning. Or we might store it in the wrong place. Think of how a librarian uses the Dewey Decimal system to put books on the shelf. Our brain isn't set up like that; we store things very randomly and we put effort into storing. The more effort we put in, the higher the likelihood of retrieving it. But sometimes it's like a spider web—if the information's in the middle, we make connections, but we could pull the wrong link or not label the web properly. I use this picture of books on a shelf to remember if I read a book, because I don't remember names but I remember how the books look, so I sometimes miss that visual reference. Knowing that, when I try to remember a book, I use as many clues as I can to make as many connections to encode it. That's the storage component. And then what happened is...

Diane Dempster
Hold on. My mom, who has ADHD, used to say her brain was a Dewey Decimal system. Is part of this understanding how your brain stores it? Or is there a common web for everybody, or is everyone's web different?

Daniella Karidi
The web is very different for everyone. Even a Dewey system would be for one type of memory and not necessarily for all types.

Diane Dempster
OK. So it's not just one web for everybody; it's different for everybody. One web for recipes, another for books.

Daniella Karidi
Right. And those webs overlap. What can happen—say you have an anxiety attack, and you accidentally swipe up some webs, or a joyful event like the birth of a grandchild can bring up other webs. Our webs don't stay in place: they get entangled, swept away, mixed up, and then sometimes we sort them—like when studying for a test, we try to build a systematic web that we can retrieve during the exam.

Then there's the last part—retrieving. It's not enough to encode and store; we have to retrieve it when needed. The tip-of-the-tongue effect is a retrieval problem: "I know it, but I can't get it out."

Diane Dempster
I was curious—since forgetting is healthy, and ADHDers have so much going on, is it harder for an ADHD brain to forget because they have to weed through so much? Is it an information-sorting issue, or something different?

Daniella Karidi
So, because memory is complex, we can't separate it. We can't say it's just a sorting issue. We can go back to a specific incident and say, "That was a sorting incident," or "That was an encoding incident," and one person may have more of these issues than those. But as a group, ADHDers show that it's the combination of all the executive functions—planning, sorting, retrieving, remembering—that must work together. When we look at forgetting, we actually find that ADHDers do not forget more than non-ADHDers; they struggle more to retrieve at the right time in strict lab environments. In these very strict lab experiments—which I don't always transfer to everyday life—when you ask at the end, "Hey, do you remember what you were supposed to do with that task?"

And they're like, "Oh yeah, I was supposed to put the cookies in the oven—in the virtual oven—or I was supposed to tell you the names of the researchers who were in the lab," but they didn't execute it by themselves. They didn't start the task, and they didn't retrieve it by themselves. Versus older adults who come to our labs—or came, sorry, haven't been here for a while—didn't remember what the task was even. So if I said to them, "Oh, do you remember what you were supposed to do with the…" maybe "put them in the…" they didn't have the ability to recall the task. That's where aging is different sometimes than ADHD. Was that because they never encoded it? They never encoded it. Possibly also because they didn't store it in the right place—cookies got stored with the mix of 60, 80, 70 years of cookies, and suddenly it was harder, simply because they didn't attach importance to that instruction. As we age, we become more confident in our ability to choose what's important.

So we don't always follow instructions 'cause we think they might not be important, so we don't code them, and then we don't retrieve them.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Two things. I think you've given me this fabulous explanation for my kids—why I can't remember which kid did what. For those of you with multiple kids, if you get confused as to who did what, there's a good explanation whether or not you have ADHD. Yes, exactly. You were that. Di, go ahead—take it for Rebecca.

Diane Dempster
No, we could go a couple of different directions with this, but what I'm hearing is that there are these three components of memory, and I'm thinking about the common challenges with working memory and ADHD. I'm wondering whether it makes more sense. I don't know that it's going to be helpful to know what's underneath unless it's part of the solution for addressing them.

Daniella Karidi
Or this: let me explain what working memory is. I think it will really help listeners. We talked about short-term and memory being past memory—retroactive—and perspective memory—future—but we didn't define another type we have in memory: short-term and long-term. Short-term memory is anything up to a minute; many people confuse short-term and long-term. Long-term is everything above a minute. So anything between a second and a minute—for example, listening to a song for the first time and encoding the sounds, or sitting at your first Thanksgiving meal and tasting the turkey for the first time and forming that sensory memory—is short-term until you move it into long-term. Everything up to a minute is short-term, and then it goes to long-term if you encoded it.

Working memory is a type of short-term memory. It belongs in that zero-to-a-minute range, and it's complex in the way that if I give you a series of letters or numbers and ask you to manipulate them—to tell them back in the opposite order—that is working memory. I'll point out two things. When I say "choose one" in that millisecond that you're choosing, you're using your working memory to make that decision—that short window is working memory. Telephone numbers are limited; they're divided into groups of three because our short-term memory has limitations. In research, we call it seven plus two—our working memory can hold up to seven items. If you're really good, you can get to nine.

If you're not good at it, you'll get to five. That's our capacity for working memory. What we found in research on ADHD consistently is that working memory is not good in ADHD subjects in the lab. If I give you tasks to take and send letters and set them in a different order, or numbers and manipulate them, or do simple math—which is working memory too—consistently, even researchers like me who know what we're doing and can practice still struggle with working memory. I have ADHD too, so that challenge means we are not moving information after the decision or after we manipulate it into long-term memory.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Well, and so that means that for kids—and this is a big struggle for me—even if you ask a kid to pay attention to what a teacher is saying, by the time the teacher finishes speaking, the kid notices it, captures it, and writes it down, they may not have remembered what they heard long enough to capture it, much less store it in long-term memory. Is that accurate?

Daniella Karidi
Yeah. What's important there is that there's a processing component that has to happen—a manipulation from sound to a written word. It has to go from "Is this important?" to "Is it not important?" If there's no decision—if we just sit in front of a kid and say, "I'll say a word, you write a word; I'll say a word, you write a word"—then there's no working memory in action. If I say "five" and the kid writes "5," there's no processing; you usually won't find a challenge with ADHD unless there's also dyslexia. But let's say we have that unicorn kid with only ADHD. If I say, "I'm going to say a number, you write the number," or "I'll say the number and you hold up fingers," that's just repetition—no working memory, no manipulation, no problem.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Right?

Daniella Karidi
But the minute we say, "I'm going to say 'five,' and you convert it to the symbol '5' and write it on paper," there's manipulation—you heard the word "five," now you have to write it down. You have to control motor skills, which requires long-term motor memory (a different conversation), and then you have to put it down. If you struggle with working memory, there are many opportunities for that process to break down.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Right. So everyone has opportunities for those processes to break down, and—

Daniella Karidi
That's why we don't expect a two-year-old to write at a college level. We are developing working memory skills and the ability to rely on long-term memory. We teach processing of information, decision-making, and automation. If reading is automated, it's easier to use it to write.

Diane Dempster
But as you're saying that, I think there's interplay between working and long-term memory. I'm curious whether there's research on whether it's harder to push something into long-term memory so you can retrieve it into working memory. What's the order of operations and where's the breakdown? Parents will ask, "How do I help my kid with working memory problems? What are some…"

Daniella Karidi
The number-one thing is to understand how fragile working memory is. If we treat it as gentle and prone to breaking, and don't say, "Oh, you'll remember that," or "You should remember that," but approach it with empathy, we can support the process better.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Right. Start with empathy and compassion. When we say as adults, "Why can't you just remember that?" developmentally kids may not have the skills yet. Is that fair?

Daniella Karidi
Yes. And even if they've learned the skills, they might not have had enough opportunities to practice. That's my second tip: provide structured, age-appropriate opportunities for kids to practice remembering. When we play memory games with little kids—"Find the two that match"—we help them develop memory skills; we don't do that with teens, though we could. Part of this is clearly defining the cue and working together with them to identify it. For example, on the way home, I need you to pick up milk—that's the cue of "school is over" and "there's a grocery store." The worst cue is getting home and realizing there's no milk or Mom being mad. Instead, ask, "When you walk home, what stores do you pass?" "This one, this one, this one." Now they've walked home in their brain—"Which sell milk?" "This one." Then ask, "Why do we need it? For cereal? For coffee?" Give it context, define the cue, give it meaning, and ask, "How can we help you not forget this?"
"OK. If you're an adult on your way back from work, I need you to pick up milk in the car. The cue should be finishing school or work, and the next cue might be the grocery store. The worst cue is getting home and realizing you don't have milk, or your mom being mad because you didn't get it, or not having milk for your coffee in the morning. Those are all cues to execute the task. Instead of saying, "I'm going to pick up milk at the…" make it clearer. Say, "Hey, when you walk home, are there any stores on the way?" "Oh yeah, there's this store, that store, that store." Now they've walked home in their brain. "Do any of those stores sell milk?" "Yes, the grocery store, Ralph's, 7-Eleven…" Perfect. Then say, "I'd like you to stop and get oat milk for your cereal," or "2% milk for my coffee." Give it meaning. Define the cue, give it context, and think out loud: "How can we make sure you don't forget this because it's important? How can I support your memory?"

And then a lot of kids have good strategies: "Hey, can you send me a text?' or 'Can my phone beep every time I pass the library?" It can be geographically synced to remind me I have a library book—miracle of miracles, two years, no library fines. Every time I walk by the library, I get a reminder: "Do you have a book?" Find ways that support your specific challenges. Then I model the process, because sometimes kids don't grasp what's happening in our heads. By verbalizing—" Why do I need the milk? What could be the cue? How can we remember?"—and then the last step, which is my favorite: please explain which milk you want, because I don't know your house. We have oat milk, regular milk, 2% milk—adding that context gives another layer of memory. "It's not any milk; I'm looking for the oat milk for your breakfast."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And I'm hearing so many things. Was it helpful when I used to say, "It's so cute that you think you'll remember that," followed by, "So what can we do to help you remember?" What I like about what you're saying is: A) identify the need for help to remember; B) give it a cue—a link to something else; and C) make it as specific as possible. The more specific, the better.

Daniella Karidi
I agree. It needs to be specifically relatable to the child. The specification can't be too general, or you overwhelm them—especially if a kid has ADHD and autism. Too much specificity can backfire. For example, if you say, "Get the red milk," and there's only green, that's it. So put it in the context that works for the child's age and interests. If they love baseball and have practice, place the empty milk carton next to their baseball gear.

Diane Dempster
Yeah. The transparency in what's happening underneath is key. I'm thinking about an adult with ADHD and anxiety I'm dating. When we started, he was good at remembering a time but only one: he'd say, "I'll be home at 7:30," and then leave work at 7:30. Once I realized that, I could ask, "Are you leaving at 7:30 or arriving at 7:30?" Then he'd go, "Oh, I need to remember seven, not 7:30." If you're not aware how your brain remembers, it's hard to fix.

Daniella Karidi
And that's that. I mean, what you brought up brings up one of my favorite topics—the difference between time-based prospective memory and event-based prospective memory. So time-based prospective memory is: if I tell you, "Take your meds at 7:00 PM," OK. There's a time component to the cue of when you need to execute the task. Versus, "Drop this envelope in the mailbox on the way when you see a mailbox." That is executed by some kind of event, or "When you see me, give me this message." Again, events—when you talk about kids, the most common is "Please bring this signed note back to your teacher." That is one of the hardest for an ADHD child. What we found in the lab is that time-based is significantly harder than event-based.

Daniella Karidi
OK, so 7:00 PM is harder than "when you see the teacher," right? And that's where one of the easiest strategies comes in: convert time-based to event-based. I always tell people, "Why 7:00 PM? Instead, let's take the pill with dinner." That's an event. We can support it with an alarm—set one for 7:30 PM—but if we convert it to an event, especially for younger kids, there's a higher likelihood it will be executed.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So if somebody ties the ADHD meds pill bottle to the toothbrush, now you've got two different events—both of which you may still struggle with. Does attaching an event to an event—and the event is the hard thing to remember in the first place—does that help or not?

Daniella Karidi
Building habits is a theory many people support, and it helps—until it loses its shininess and newness. This is what happens with ADHD strategies in general. We find a great strategy, it's exciting and new, and then it expires—its shininess. When it loses its shininess, we struggle because it's no longer an event; it's just routine. We need to make it an event again for it to be noticeable. When we keep forgetting something, making it an event again could help.

Diane Dempster
Right. An example might be if the teacher makes seeing the student an event—a partnership between the kid and the teacher. Whenever the teacher sees the student, she gives them a high five and asks how their day was. That turns a meeting into an event, which might make it easier for the kid to remember to turn in the signed note. There are all kinds of hacks, but again, it's about understanding what's really going on underneath.

Daniella Karidi
Here's the biggest tip: as parents, we often make assumptions about how our kids are forgetting or remembering. We put intentionality where there might be none and emotions where there might be none. We can use the power of asking questions and clearly say to our kids—and to ourselves—"We're not having this conversation because we're mad or because we think you did something wrong, or as detective work. We want to find where the process is not working and make it better and easier." That suggestion to the teacher only works if the kid is part of the process and agrees that it will become an event. If kids are too young, that's where the teacher needs to ask, "Did you bring out the paper?" because the kid cannot retrieve it without the teacher's cue.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Right. As kids get older, the piece you're speaking to—and we talk a lot about in Impact—is collaboration and how important it is to collaborate with our kids, to work with them and help them be part of the solution. What happens with parents is, we say, "I gave them a planner," then we get frustrated that they're not using it right.

Daniella Karidi
We also don't share the same expiration date for a solution. Many of these strategies are like yogurt: they need to be replaced. They have an expiration date, but everyone's date is different. Some people have a more sensitive stomach, so the yogurt needs to be removed earlier. A strategy that works for the first three weeks of school might not work after winter break or when the teacher's schedule changes. Strategies are not permanent solutions; they're tools, and we should refresh our toolbox all the time.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I hear parents saying, "Wait, what?" And while I agree with you completely, I wanna take a minute to say that doesn't mean that you can't use strategies.

Daniella Karidi
No. We don't expect a 2-year-old to walk to school by themselves, right? So we should adjust strategies based on the child's capability and changes. But it doesn't mean you get to hold that 2-year-old's hand forever—you get a few good years of doing that before you need to let go and let them do things by themselves. Understanding that a strategy you choose or your child chooses might need to change is important, even though it's sometimes hard. It doesn't mean it's not worth it. It's a good strategy.

Diane Dempster
I think what you're saying—and this is key—is that curiosity is the underlying tool. It's about noticing that a strategy is no longer working the way it was supposed to, without assuming the child doesn't care or is lazy. The strategy worked before and now it's not. What do we want to do differently?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yep. In our work we talk about problem-solving: getting clear on what's working, what's not, and connecting to what is working. We stay aware that changes may be needed without judging it as wrong, disrespectful, unmotivated, or lazy—the assumptions we put on kids when their behavior doesn't follow through our expectations.

Daniella Karidi
If I ask you, "How many times did you remember to do things this morning?" it's a harder question than, "What did you forget to do?" Our brains are wired to negativity—we remember negative thoughts more easily. As parents, we have a tool to reflect the positives. That's my major takeaway: we can cheer, smile, and support when the system works, when the child does remember to return that signed note. It's hard enough for them. Imagine the child who keeps receiving negativity. We have the power to be a loud voice for the positives of remembering.

Diane Dempster
I love that.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I remember my kid coming home and saying, "I remembered to wear my shoes today, Mom."

Diane Dempster
Oh my God, you did! You know I'm watching our time, Elaine—we've got to figure out how to wrap up this delicious conversation, Daniella.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Let's take a second. Daniella, how can people find out more about you? Your website is adhdtime.com, right?

Daniella Karidi
Yup. On my website you can register for a newsletter for more information. I also have new groups coming in 2025, including for retirees, and one-on-one coaching with me.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
As we wrap, is there something we haven't talked about that you want to highlight? Or something we have talked about that you want to remind us?

Daniella Karidi
When I was younger, my mom used to say, "You need to say the same thing seven times in eight ways." I think we didn't talk about it, but in order to support memory for young kids and developing brains, we need to use more than one modality. It's not always enough to write a message; you might also say it or sing it. We have to use multiple ways to encode information, make connections, and retrieve it. Repetition in different ways is a better strategy than just repeating the same way.

Diane Dempster
I love that. I remember when my oldest remembered exactly how I did; my strategies worked well for them. My younger one struggled, so we had to try something different. Experimenting taught us that variety is key—So that what that brings in is helping your kids figure out what works for them and making it okay that sometimes it's not the same thing.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Well, and the other thing I hear in repetition in different ways is better than just repeating—what I just heard you say—I want to make sure we're not affirming that it's OK to nag, because you're not talking about nagging, right? And so what is the difference between nagging and reminding, maybe?

Daniella Karidi
So, there's an emotional component when you're reminding. I don't know, I grew up in an age where you could pick up the phone, call, and someone would tell you the time. Right? I would do that sometimes just to hear the time—"It's four o'clock. You should leave." That wasn't nagging; it was neutral information. Nagging has emotional negativity, whereas reminding provides support and information. It's hard—I sometimes nag myself, because we're human—but reminding doesn't carry that emotional load. I do sometimes come back and say, "Yeah, I was kind of a pain in the neck about that one, wasn't I?" We're human; we sometimes nag our spouses or children or parents, but reminding doesn't have that negativity.

Diane Dempster
And I'd add that if there's an agreement—when it went from me keeping track of the time to "Mom, you keep track of it"—everyone knew that was my job. That changed the emotion, right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah. Then here's the next layer: first we'd nag, saying, "It's seven o'clock. Seven o'clock." Then we got the kids to buy in: "If you let us know when it's seven o'clock, that would help." That shifts everything. Then we tied it to an event: at 6:54, whatever the kids requested, my husband would come out as the "weatherman" and say, "OK, here's the weather for the day." So they knew what to wear and what time it was.

Daniella Karidi
They loved it—making it fun works for ADHD. One great strategy is putting reminders in a positive, playful context instead of something boring like the weather. I kept forgetting to leave on time for important meetings to pick up my kids, so I made my alarm sound like zombies: "If I don't go, zombies will get my kids!" That fun context in my brain was my reminder. Fun can come externally from a parent or internally from you—and it always helps with ADHD, no matter the task.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Folks, thank you, Daniella. It's fascinating how you tap research and apply it to the world. Thank you for being here, and we'll see everyone in the next conversation. Take care, everybody.