Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Hi everybody. Welcome to another conversation in the Parenting with Impact Podcast. I'm Elaine.

Diane Dempster: I'm Diane. It's just us today. Sometimes that's more fun.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And what we've decided to do—here’s the context—years ago, like 10 years ago, when we came back from what used to be called the CHADD Conference. It’s now the International Conference on ADHD, which, by the way, I’m hoping they start calling Chaddaco. That’s my...

Diane Dempster: Chaddaco? I like that.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Chadd, add an "aco." Those are the three organizations that sponsor this international conference.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, but they’re probably trying to figure out and fight over which name goes first.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Exactly. I think they’re working on it.

Diane Dempster: Added or something.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I just think it should be called Chaddaco. But anyway, because people still call it the CHADD conference.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And it’s not anymore because it’s three major organizations. So, 10 years ago, Diane and I came back, and for a couple of years, we would write up—not our notes, but we would write up what we learned. We would do, like, the bullet points of what we were taking away from the conference. And it was cool, right? So we thought today it might be fun for us to share with you. I was on a group coaching call this weekend. I was talking to some parents about some of the stuff I learned in one of the gaming presentations, and I thought, well, let’s talk about what we learned at the conference. But we can talk about it instead of trying to write it in a nice, neat little blog.

Diane Dempster: I already wrote a little blog, or we could do one more PowerPoint. We just got so many of those. It’s just...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, we just want to share some of what we learned, and as Diane said a minute ago, our brains work very differently.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, no, it was really funny because you said, “Let’s talk about what we learned,” and I’m like, “Shit. Do I remember what I learned?” It’s like, because it goes in and sits there in the back of my head until I need it. But, like, being able to call it out to share it with somebody else doesn’t happen unless it’s in context. So just know, I’m gonna talk about, like, from a 30,000-foot view, what it was like and what I noticed, and that sort of stuff. And maybe Elaine will share some details from some of the presentations, and maybe I’ll remember some of the details from some of the presentations, and maybe...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I wouldn’t remember it if I didn’t take notes, let’s be honest.

Diane Dempster: Well, yeah, and even when I take notes.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. So where do you want to start? Like, what’s the one or few presentations or concepts that are jumping out at you? Or what’s one presentation?

Diane Dempster: Well, like, let’s... I mean, I really would love to start at 30,000 feet, for a couple of reasons. Not everybody knows this story, but you and I, our first kind of engagement together was at the International ADHD Conference, at the CHADD Conference, in 2010. So there’s a lot of great memories. And the other thing not everybody knows is that I met my partner at the conference five years later. So, I have this personal attachment to the National Conference, and we've been going to this for 13 years. Technically, I think you've been to 13, and I’ve been to 12.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. Maybe we’ve attended every single International Conference on ADHD since 2010.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Or technically, 2011. We were one of the innovative programs.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That was the very start of Impact. What was then Impact ADHD, now... we had parents start as an innovative program.

Diane Dempster: Well, what I was thinking about is kind of how different it is and how the same it is now versus then. And so that’s what I wanted to reflect on first—there’s a lot of people who have been doing this work even longer than we have. Twelve years is a long time in this industry, and there’s been so much that’s happened in brain science and education, and in the world in general, over the last 12 or 13 years. And there are still people who’ve been there even longer than we have, sharing their information, sharing their wisdom, doing their research... all of that sort of stuff.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: So there’s some consistency and similarity, and that’s great because we have that foundation.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And that’s important, yeah.

Diane Dempster: It’s important. And there’s this new breath of fresh air. It’s like, looking around, going, “Wait, there are a lot of people here that I just don’t know.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: And I think part of it was through the pandemic and through the time period over the last three years, the growth in supporting our industry, particularly in supporting adults with ADHD.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: Has definitely grown. It’s become more commonplace—“commonplace” is such a weird word, but you know what I mean. It’s become more accepted. So it was like the juxtaposition of the old and the new together—it was just kind of this overarching feeling I was getting from the conference.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I love that.

Diane Dempster: What is there an overarching thing?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I couldn’t wait. I just want to stick with that one for a minute, because I was right there with you. And let’s be really specific—there were more people of color at the conference than there have ever been before, and there were younger people than there ever were before.

Diane Dempster: And they were speaking. They weren’t just sitting there trying to learn for themselves. They were the experts.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: They were leading. That’s right.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, and just to say it, Elaine, we’re almost 60. So that’s pretty normal—that at some point, the younger people are going to step into the roles.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right? But we are more along the older guard...

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Versus, we always still see ourselves as these kind of young upstarts in this industry.

Diane Dempster: Right.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And in the larger realm of mental health, when it comes to bringing coaching to that realm, we are. But in the realm of ADHD consciousness, like, there were hundreds and hundreds of coaches there who work in the realm of neurodiversity and ADHD—that’s a big shift. I mean, 10 years ago, that conference had some coaches, but it wasn’t so prevalent. And now, the coaches are one of the sponsors of the conference.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That’s a big shift. So, well...

Diane Dempster: That’s the growth in that industry.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right.

Diane Dempster: And the growth in supporting adults. I mean, I think that when you and I started, one of the things we always used to say is that there was lots of help for kids and no help for parents, and there was, like, a little teeny tiny bit of help for adults.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It was ADA.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Has always been there for the adults.

Diane Dempster: I’m trying to remember when your ADA started. I don’t even...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It predates, maybe not CHADD, but it certainly predates ACO. That’s been known for decades as the ADHD adult organization, basically, and they do amazing work and support groups. Big fan, big fan. And it was around, and they had an annual conference. Just a little bit of history, just for the fun of it—there used to be three conferences a year: the CHADD Conference, which is Children and Adults with ADD, an international nonprofit that was the biggest one; a smaller conference, usually in the summer, that ADDUs sponsored; and an even smaller conference that the ACO sponsored.

And in about 20... I think Jeff said it was 2015 or 2016—Jeff Cooper made this suggestion, and Jeff and I coordinated this meeting at an ACO conference in Maryland to bring the three organizations together to talk about joining forces to create one organization, one conference, because it was depleting resources.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: To have it—just wasn’t an efficient use of resources. And it started, I think 2016 was the first year. I can’t remember exactly.

Diane Dempster: But I think maybe after that it was, I think it was later than that, maybe.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Maybe 2017, right? But yeah, that may be right. But now, to see all of these organizations coming together, working together, all these different professionals coming together and working together in a much more fluid way—it was kind of radical five years ago, and now it’s the norm. And it’s bringing in all of this new energy.

You’ve got people who are educators, people who were social media people, people doing research, and coaching. So, I’m with you, Diane— from a macro lens, it was a very different conference than it’s ever been. It was more inclusive, more integrated, more comprehensive.

Diane Dempster: Well, and I want to say, so I was joking because I don’t know if anybody heard—I did, I think, was it ADD? I did a pre-conference webinar that I participated in. Yeah, it was sort of...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Sponsored by the conference, yeah.

Diane Dempster: But okay, so we did, like, an hour-long "hey, come to the conference, it’s awesome" thing. And I was joking about the fact that my neurodiversity is introversion, and I go to these conferences, and they just exhaust me because it’s hard to be out with people, period. And a lot of people with ADHD have a lot of energy, and so it can be really exhausting. But the thing that—one of the things I liked was that we were doing it hybrid, right?

So, yes, we were so excited to be together with each other, and the fact that we were hybrid, and there were some people that were still able to participate from their homes, from their communities, in a more affordable way, a more cost-effective way. And there were a couple of times I snuck up to my room and, like, listened to the keynote from my hotel room instead of in the big giant conference room with 250 people in it, just because it felt more balanced, right? It’s a sort of a nice way to do it well.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And then for those of us who do have ADHD, even as an introvert, being with your people just feels so fun.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So like the second day, there was some woman walking through this hallway, this one main hallway, saying, “Has anyone lost their cellphone? Has anyone lost their cellphone?” And then... because you just don’t see that at other spaces and conferences, but no, at an international conference on ADHD, it’s kind of the norm. So it was really fun.

It was great to reconnect with our friends and colleagues and to meet people we’ve been working with for years that we’ve never met. I got to meet Liz Angoff and so many people—Renee Brooks, I hadn’t... I’d worked with, but never met. There were so many people.

Diane Dempster: Yeah. Well, and so then the other thing... So, yes, the crowd and the people that were there has expanded. The other thing was just kind of watching the information expand.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: We joke about just how fast neuroscience has grown over the last 20 years, but it really has. I mean...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: It’s astonishing just how much information we have about the brain and about emotions and about everything, right? And so part of what was cool about the conference is that there’s some people that go there that are like, brand new to this.

They don’t even understand executive function. What is ADHD? What’s really going on in my brain? My kid’s brain? My partner’s brain? Whoever we’re there for. And there’s, like, cutting-edge stuff for the people who have been doing this for 20-30 years to go, “That’s new, that’s interesting. I never knew that.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. I mean, there was stuff about polyvagal theory and the vagus nerve. There was somatic work happening. There were lots of mindfulness opportunities. All of that is something that shifted in the last 10 years. Yeah, there was a lot of innovation happening.

And one of the things I’ve been aware of is there’s all this stuff on neuroscience, and we’re really all about neurodiversity, and this is one of those rare places where there’s this application of neuroscience to neurodiversity, right? We’re not just talking about the objectivity of what neuroscience is, but we’re applying it to say, how does that apply to people who are neurodiverse?

Diane Dempster: Well, and I think that’s really an interesting thing, because there are a lot of people in neuroscience. There were a couple of situations where I noticed I was sitting in the room, and there were neuroscientists in the room that had a really great understanding of the neuroscience. They didn’t quite understand the ADHD diversity, or they didn’t quite understand the reality of it.

So there were times that they would make suggestions, and we’re all kind of sitting there scratching our heads and going, wait, have you ever lived with a person with ADHD? That’s really—may not be a realistic suggestion.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Just say no, may not be there.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, exactly.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So, I want to watch our time. Let’s talk about some of the presentations we attended. One of the ones I want to talk about... So, I want to look at the—we both went to some on technology and gaming. We both went to some on emotional management.

Diane Dempster: Well, and just to say, like, yeah. And so those of you—I don’t even know when this is airing—but we did, if this is airing in January, we did two webinars in December that were with people that—so Randy Coleman and Sharon Celine both. So Sharon was talking about anxiety and ADHD, and Randy was talking about technology, and so those are examples of stuff that kind of fit in those two realms that we thought were great to bring to our audience as well. So, if you’re in our community already...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: More also in January, what we’d like to do with the conferences is take some of the most applicable presentations to our audience and then invite those guests, those experts, to bring them to our audience in December and January. So we’re doing that again this year.

Diane Dempster: So if you’re not on our mailing list already, get on our mailing list, right? You can listen to the recordings. We usually leave them up until February or March at least. And so you can always ask us, “Hey, let me listen to those webinars you did in December,” or “This May,” or “In December, I don’t know when, whenever you’re listening.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We’re gonna put a link in the show notes.

Diane Dempster: There we go.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And you can join our community and get notices about upcoming events. Okay, so what I want to do is talk. So, can we talk about some of the emotional stuff first, before we go to the screen stuff?

Diane Dempster: Yeah?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Because the two presentations that jumped out to me, one is Larry Leads, did a piece on the ABCs of emotional self-regulation. I think you were in there.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, I was.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I think we were both there for that one. So I wanted that one. And Liz Anjos are the two I want to talk about first.

Diane Dempster: Well, and I was in Marcy Caldwell. Is that right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Caldwell. She’s awesome, so great.

Diane Dempster: I think she might be—we’re gonna either have her on the podcast or we’re gonna have her kind of going through some of this stuff with us too.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: No question. So that’s the other thing. You’ve got lots of great podcasts to look forward to.

Diane Dempster: Yes, because we met a lot, really.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: In 2022. Okay, so I want to talk about Larry’s ABCs first. Because what really struck me was his thesis: we need a better relationship with our emotional selves that is less dismissive and more understanding.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Which is exactly what we’re all about. And so what I loved about some of these presentations—maybe this is my ego, whatever—but some of them were like, “What I love about it was it validates our work.”

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And sometimes then we go, “Yeah, that’s it. That’s what we’re teaching.”

Diane Dempster: Well, and I got about halfway through his presentation, and I’m like, “Hey, wait, this is internal family systems,” which is something I’ve been studying a lot and using a lot in my private client situations and groups, I guess. But it’s this concept that if we’re dysregulated or whatever emotions we’re experiencing, it’s not necessarily all of us that’s angry.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right.

Diane Dempster: It’s not necessarily all of us that’s disappointed or grieving or whatever else. And if we can see it as a part of us, rather than being taken over and consumed by the emotion, we can say, "Okay, wait, a part of me is really angry right now." This is really helpful for me in my personal relationship because, like, I’ll make a face and my partner will be like, "Wait, are you mad at me?" And I’m like, “Well, part of me is mad at you, and it’s in charge of my face right now, but part of me is okay.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I love that.

Diane Dempster: So it’s that idea that the emotions are real, and if we try to shut them down, or we try to turn them off, or we try to flip them, we’re gonna handle this situation really differently than if we go, "Okay, wait, this is real for me. This is part of what’s going on. I gotta create a relationship with this part of me and figure out what this part of me needs so that I can move through the emotion more effectively."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That's—I actually took notes on this one. So I'm gonna run through some notes a little bit because it was really interesting. So again, we need a better relationship with our emotional selves. That's not dismissive and that’s more understanding, right? So we talked about interoception, which is sensing that internal state of the body, both the conscious and the unconscious, which is kind of what Diane’s speaking to—like doing a status report.

Diane Dempster: Like the meta. What’s my brain doing? What’s my body doing?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. And he talked about all the systems that are combining to create this, and I’m not gonna go into all the detail, but one of the things that really struck me, he said, "We translate feelings into thoughts with judgments and self-judgments, and it becomes a feedback loop." So we have thought-driven emotions, and I think we talk about this a lot—it’s like the thought. We have this feeling, and then we tell ourselves something based on the feeling, and then we act based on the thought, as if that thought is true.

Diane Dempster: Rather than...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It doesn't have anything to do with truth; it has to do with what our body is sensing as a feeling.

Diane Dempster: Well, and the thing that comes up — I don't know if you're going there next, but I've heard this so many times — the emotion, the thing in our body, actually lasts about 90 seconds. And if we can just sit with it, like going, "sad, sad, sad," right? But the minute we add a thought to it, it can last for years. It's like, I can remember that thing that happened to me in fifth grade and immediately recall that emotion, because I created a story about what happened when I felt embarrassed in fifth grade.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. So, yes. And basically, what he said is, our feelings are complex bodily signals, and if they're rooted in self-protection or safety — you're embarrassed, right?

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That experience overrules everything else. And so part of what happens in our family dynamics is when our kids are trying to protect themselves, when we're trying to protect ourselves, when we feel threatened, when they feel threatened, that tends to overrule everything else. So the "I'm mad at you" becomes more prominent than "I love you."

He talked about the ABCs of emotional connection. This is based on the book and work called Focusing by Eugene Gendlin, and I think also by Weiser Cornell. So ABC — and this, again, was really validating. A is acknowledging without judging or fixing. B is being with — being with what's present as part of yourself, just like Diane was describing. And then C is bringing compassion and empathy. This is when those of you who know we teach ACE — another note — if you'll write it down to put ACE in the show notes.

Diane Dempster: Yep.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: A C, E is a method we teach: Acknowledgment, Compassion before you Explore your options. There's this pause. So he's talking about the ABCs: acknowledging, being with, and compassion. That's the A-C-A-C-A-C.

Diane Dempster: So we can ACE ourselves.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right.

Diane Dempster: And not just ACE the other person, right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Exactly. So I won't get too much deeper into that now, but he said we’ve learned to relate to our feelings, and our feelings are subverbal. So what we really want to do is begin paying attention to how we're relating to our own feelings, without judging ourselves or judging other people for the way we're feeling. We want to notice them and be with them well.

Diane Dempster: And it's the distinction, I think, and I'm watching our time here. We need to figure out how many hours we're gonna talk about this, but the difference between a thought and an emotion, or the feeling — between a feeling and an emotion. And I think that's really the thing that's most telling for me, like this sort of reaction that our body has as a protective response. And the minute our brain gets involved, it becomes complicated and convoluted.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. So that. So anything else you want to add? Let's just stick with emotion and that stuff for today, and then maybe we can do another one about screens and videos. How about that?

Diane Dempster: Sure. So, I mean, I think the other thing about emotional regulation is just this — the brain and body’s need to be safe, right? It’s kind of like, a lot of times we talk about, and we think about, the anatomy of a trigger, right? It’s just how automatic this stuff is. And I think sometimes we pretend — "pretend" is such a weird word — but pretend that we can control it, right? This is...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We tell ourselves.

Diane Dempster: We tell ourselves, "Okay, yeah, I'm just not gonna get mad," or "I'm just not gonna do this or not do that." And that's a very different perspective than saying, "Okay, you’re gonna do that. You do it automatically. You actually don’t have control over the fact that you do it, but you can do it with grace and ease, and more..."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Gentleness.

Diane Dempster: Gentleness, maybe, or compassion for yourself in a way that doesn’t damage your personal relationships. I mean, all those sorts of things, right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: You can do it without judgment.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It’s that you can do it. In fact, you can do it. I often say we’re not responsible for our first thought, but we are responsible for our second one, right? We can catch ourselves and reframe and redirect. We can slow ourselves down. We can give ourselves a breath. We can take a time out. We may not be able to stop that initial trigger, but we can shift what happens after it.

Diane Dempster: Well, and I think that one of the things that I wrote down is that we're not choosing to overreact, right? Our kids are not choosing to overreact. It’s like when we look at our kids and say, "You're overreacting," but it’s not like they’re doing it on purpose. It’s literally a bodily response, an amygdala response to fear, insecurity, and lack of safety.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. So, anything else you want to bring in from Mercy Caldwell? Because Mercy's was so good. Diane texted me, and she was like, "This one's great, you’ve got to come." I dropped whatever I was doing and went.

Diane Dempster: Well, again, it’s like we liked it so much we really want to. I think the thing I loved, and it’s more than just about triggers, is understanding what’s going on in the brain. We talk about executive function as a thing, it’s a problem of executive function.

But if we really go back and look at what leads to dysregulation, what makes it hard for a dysregulated person to even engage and follow up? I mean, she was talking about this dad who was losing his cool with his kids trying to get out the door in the morning. And it went all the way back to the night before.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It usually does.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, and the things that we say — well, if you prepare the night before. And she was explaining why it’s like virtually impossible for someone with ADHD to prepare the night before, because the impetus to prepare isn’t there. It’s not now.

It’s like, just kind of — this sort of explains the perfect storm that those of us who are more neurotypical, I’m gonna say it that way, more neurotypical don’t get, right? Because we say, "Well, if you just..." Mom was saying this yesterday. She’s like, "Well, I sat down with my kids and I said, here are all the things you have to do the night before to make your morning easier."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, that’s just even the idea that they’re on a list.

Diane Dempster: Just even the idea of doing something the night before when you’re completely thinking you’re somewhere else the night before. You’re not in school the night before; you’re not getting ready the night before.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And a lot of our kids are in "there's now" and "there's not now," and the night before is not now.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Not the next morning.

Diane Dempster: Yeah. So, it just was this great convolution, and I’m not gonna explain it well, which is why we’re gonna have Mercy come and explain it to you.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We are definitely having Mercy come.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, because Diane doesn’t remember all the details well enough to explain it, um, without going back and reading it seven more times.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Alright, I've got one more thing I want to talk about in this conversation. There's a phenomenal woman named Liz Angoff, and I've had her on the podcast before. I'm going to have her come back. One of our clients introduced me to her, and I’m so thrilled she was at the conference and presented because I was like, “You’re going to present at the conference, right?" So, I’m owning her. I’m taking responsibility for it — wait until you see her speak.

She’s amazing. She’s a psychologist, and what she does is come up with this really interesting way to explain complex brains to kids, so that... And right now, she has books out for professionals, for psychologists and people who are diagnosing, to use with kids. She’s got one book for younger kids, another for teens, on how to talk to kids about their diagnosis. She’s now working on a book for parents, and she actually gave me the first draft to review.

I’m going to talk about it this week. I’m very excited. So I love her work, y’all, and I’m so excited to see where she’s going in the coming years. Her promise is that if we talk to kids in a way that’s non-confrontational, that relates to the way they think, that connects to metaphors that speak to them, we can really invite them to understand their own neurodiversity, whatever that is. She goes through some examples, and her books are great about how to attach.

So much of it is a coach approach. It's attaching to what's in it for them, connecting instead of lecturing them or talking at them. It’s asking questions to enroll them, to get their engagement, their buy-in, and understanding themselves and their brains. She talks about how she uses acronyms for how to do it: keep it short, revisit it, validate. But the most interesting part of what she does, and here's another note, Diane — we need to start sharing her in our social media feeds a little more, and also Dani Donovan, because she uses a lot of her work.

So, she uses this metaphor of highways and construction zones to help kids see how their brain works — literally, neurons and pathways and all that. She talks about when you’re on a highway and you hit a construction zone. What comes easily is what happens when you’re cruising down the highway, and what the challenge areas are, what happens when you go through a construction zone. And so, they’re not roadblocks, they’re just construction zones — just challenge areas. It might be that it’s hard to focus on boring things, or you get stressed out when there’s too much to do, or you don’t want to work so hard, whatever it is.

It’s helping kids understand their construction zone. So, it’s just a new, different language. It’s very much in alignment with the coach approach. She had all of us go through this exercise, and rather than doing it for one of my kids or a kid in my practice, I actually did it for myself. And what I came up with was that for me, ADHD brain means that my brain works best when it’s really super clear what it’s supposed to be doing and when to do it, and when it doesn’t take too long.

That was a great awareness for me, and I’m 58 years old, but that hurt. She took us through a very simple process to help me understand when my brain works well, rather than only looking at where it has trouble.

Diane Dempster: Well, and that’s — so, let’s kind of wrap that back into the message for parents, because there are so many messages in this.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: Part of what I take away from those conferences is just how many people at that conference are thriving with neurodiverse brains, right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: And a lot of times, as parents, we come in here and think, “My kid’s stuck, my kid’s not going to school, my kid’s not whatever else,” right? It’s just sort of, you... The idea that our kids need role models, that our kids need inspiration, that our kids need to focus on their strengths. Our kids need to... I mean, I’m saying “need” too much — it’s like, the tools that can be helpful in getting our kids out of that stuck place are like, all of our kids have some superpower. It’s about helping them find out what it is.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yes.

Diane Dempster: And there wasn’t, I don’t think I saw — I’m sure there was — that sort of focus on strengths. Ned Hallowell wasn’t there this year. We missed him, but he’s always the one that reminds us, “Let’s celebrate and focus on the strengths,” but just the beauty of all the strengths at that conference.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. Well, I’m reminded of when you and I did a podcast with Jonathan Mooney, which, if you haven’t listened to it, I highly recommend. And one of the things he talked about was referencing someone who said, “Tutor the strengths, right? Don’t tutor the deficits.” I mean, sure, tutor the deficits, but tutor the strengths. Cultivate the strengths.

And there’s a lot in this emotional regulation that’s about acknowledging and recognizing the emotional challenges, or difficulties, or feelings, or concerns. Be gentle with ourselves around them. Be gentle with our kids. Be kind, right? Take out the judgment, say it matter-of-factly, and then lean into the strengths, look at the capacity, and help ourselves and our kids understand how we are successful, instead of only looking at how we’re not.

Diane Dempster: Well, and the challenges are going to happen.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right.

Diane Dempster: And the reality is, everybody has challenges. It’s just a matter of what flavor they are, right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right.

Diane Dempster: And so...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We have to wrap this up because I have a client in one minute.

Diane Dempster: So, thanks for letting us talk, everybody.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We hope you join us next year at the conference, whether you join us live in Maryland or Hybrid. Lots of great stuff coming to you in 2023 from the conference, from people we met, talked to, and learned from, and learned with. Anything else?

Diane Dempster: Thanks for what you’re doing for yourself and for your kids. At the end of the day, it makes a difference.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Take care, everyone. Bye.