Collected Wisdom

Focus attention, plan activities, stay organized

Category: Adults with ADHD

• Beat Overwhelm Back to School: How to Help Your Child with ADHD
  It’s not surprising that last school year's reduced in-person classroom time and online learning may have you currently uneasy about providing adequate academic support for your child. Here are five strategies to get results for your child and some peace of mind for yourself now.

• Make Confident Decisions: How to be Bold and Really Commit with ADHD

  When living with ADHD there’s a tendency to get caught up in decision-making dilemmas. It’s not uncommon to get overwhelmed by mountains of information and details and get lost in the pros and cons. Here are four strategies for making decisions so you can make confident choices and commit to your decisions.   


• Strengthen Memory Abilities: Five Proven Ways to Really Boost Your Unique ADHD Brain

  Do you struggle with keeping up with important details in conversations? Does your mind ping with everything you need to do, so you "do it all" right away before you forget? Do you make a mental list for the grocery store, but then forget the list and what you need?  You may be struggling with working memory challenges. When you live with ADHD and other brain-based conditions, working memory can become chaotic and incomplete. Here are five strategies to build your working memory so you can follow through, stay accountable, and remember what’s most important to you.


• Empower Your Young Adult with ADHD in Three Inspiring Ways

  Discussions of young adults with ADHD who live with their parents often focus on whether these young adults will ever leave, but it's useful to address what young adults can gain from life at home as parents balance support and independence.  Here are four inspiring ways to empower your young adult with ADHD so they can take more ownership, develop resilience, and ultimately become independent.


• Fear of Failure: Strengthen Confidence in Three Powerful Ways Living with ADHD

  When live you with ADHD, it’s not uncommon to feel as if you can’t do anything right. If you experience Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), to give something your best shot and fail is a threat that’s so distressing that it feels unsafe. Here are three ways to confront the fear of failure so you can strengthen your confidence and achieve what’s most important to you.   


• Emotional Flare-Ups with ADHD Getting the Best of You? Four Ways to Pull Through

  Individuals with ADHD can act without thinking with regular temper flare-ups and impulsive outbursts. This is difficult to tolerate and can lead to embarrassment and shame for the person with ADHD. Here are four ways to pull through so emotional flare-ups don't get the best of you. 


• Eliminate Guesswork with Marketing Schedule by Coschedule for Entrepreneurs with ADHD!
  When you live with ADHD, it can be tough to stay on track of all the moving parts of running a business from triaging endless emails, managing multiple projects, and sharing lots of great content with your customers and clients.

• Build Strong Connection with Loved Ones in Three Genuine Ways Living with ADHD

  Living with ADHD can be intense, and life with those we love can sometimes feel strained. When we take a moment to connect, this adds warmth and closeness to the relationships that are most precious to us. Here are three genuine ways to build a strong connection with those you love when you live with ADHD. 


• Unlock Meaningful Change in Three Proven Ways Living with ADHD

  When living with ADHD and related challenges, there can be a history of failures and missed opportunities, making it difficult to move forward with meaningful change. Here are three proven ways to help yourself and your loved ones unlock resistance to change and stay on track.   


• Discouraged Over Technology Use with ADHD? Take these Steps!

  When living with ADHD, impulsivity, distractibility, difficulty focusing, and restlessness are common symptoms that can impact the over-use of technology. With consistent interruptions and bouncing between devices, each media-related task gets partial attention. In a world where we crave human connection, we feel drained, cheated, and frustrated.  Here are three strategies to help you address technology overuse when living with ADHD. 


• ADHD and Delegating: How to Stop the Panic

  Whether you run your own business, have a crazy-busy home life, or want to involve the kids more, delegating helps you focus your time and energy on the activities that are meaningful. Delegating requires planning and organization that doesn't always come naturally to the ADHD brain, and as a result, can be stressful to take on. Here are three ways to get the ball rolling with delegating when you live with ADHD.  


• Overcome the Burdens of High Achievement and ADHD

  You’re the accomplished, go-to person whom people count on, and just about everyone does. But the piled-up projects, numerous spinning plates, and mounting stress have gotten to be too much. Here are three strategies to assist you in overcoming the burdens of living with high achievement and ADHD.


• How to Conquer the Misery of Getting Started with ADHD

  Procrastination isn’t unique to people with ADHD, but it’s experienced more extremely and more consistently. For the ADHD'er, consistent feelings of “I’m not good enough,” “what will people think of me,” “this is hard,” or “what if I do a bad job,” are negative associations with doing certain tasks that tend to worsen putting them off. 


• How to Prioritize When You Live with ADHD

  Prioritizing is tough for everyone these days. But it can be especially stressful to prioritize for individuals and families living with ADHD, when there’s so much that needs to get done and just about everything wins out as equally important. 


• Racism: How to Talk About it with Your ADHD'er

  How parents choose to discuss the Black Lives Matter movement, anti-racism and systemic racism is influenced by each family's experience. Our kids will benefit from the opportunity to talk about what’s happening which can reassure them and help promote change. 


• How to Beat the Boredom Nightmare with ADHD

  Whether camp has already been canceled or you’re uneasy about sending your kids to a modified version, it's troubling to plan for this summer of 2020.  Whatever your choices are, the threat of boredom can feel like a nightmare for individuals and families living with ADHD. 


• ADHD and Vulnerability: How to Reboot Under Stress

  As the world’s shifted over the past month, it’s logical to tell ourselves to crank it up and knock off the projects looming on our to-do list.  But when the ADHD brain senses danger or stress it powers down to survival mode causing less effective problem-solving and vulnerability to perceived failure.


• How to Transition in These Scary Times with ADHD

  With COVID-19 and shelter-in-place recommendations, the transition to staying at home isn't easy. It's understandable to have challenges balancing your kids' e-learning with working at home, or keeping up with your business while staying motivated. 


• ADHD and Uncertain Times: How to Get Things Done Now!

  In these uncertain times, it’s tough to manage our work, our families, and ourselves. Add the extra layer of living with ADHD and related challenges, and it can be overwhelming to problem-solve, make decisions, communicate and follow-through. 


• How to Stop the Tug of War with Routines and ADHD

  When you live with ADHD, you face the ongoing tug-of-war between your need for structure and order and your craving to appeal to the creative, spontaneous side of who you are. 


• ADHD in Relationships: How to Overcome Frustration Now!

  Living with ADHD can contribute to misunderstandings, frustration, and resentment in relationships. It's important to understand that the symptoms of ADHD aren’t what’s causing challenges, but rather how each person responds to the symptoms. The first step to transforming your relationships, whether it be with a partner, child, or colleague, is to understand how ADHD is showing up. 


• Overcome Hidden Obstacles Living With ADHD

  For people with ADHD, motivation for satisfying intentions, goals and commitments can become muddied by self-judgment, self-criticism, and underlying messages that “I’m not good enough.”  


• Stop Burnout: How to Find Your Joy with ADHD

  For individuals and families living with ADHD, this time of year can be a spell of more chaos, burnout, and stress. Here are three ways to bring in the season with lasting joy so we can practice resilience in even the toughest of times. 


• Stuck in the Dependency Trap? Launch Your Adult with ADHD

  As parents we know all too well how living with our complex kids have shaped our lives. We are used to fiercely advocating and navigating our lives around our kids’ needs. But over time, our well-meaning, painstaking and often enervating accommodation routines can unintentionally strengthen dependency. 


• How to Crush Screen Overuse with ADHD

  Many adults and parents living with ADHD are anxious and concerned about their experience with a magnetic attraction to the internet, mobile technology, and videogames. Here are four strategies you can put into place to monitor and curb screen time when living with ADHD. 


• ADHD Stressing You Out? How to Gain Control Now!

  Stress has a way of finding a constant place in our lives. Tack on living with challenges such as hyperactivity, trouble focusing, and poor organizational skills, stress comes with the territory. Living with ADHD can lead to feelings of overwhelm, hopelessness and loss of control as well as co-existing mental health conditions. However, no matter how stressful things get, you can regain control.


• Help for Outbursts and Frustration in ADHD Now

  Summer’s in full swing and for families living with ADHD that means freedom from homework headaches and school stress. The hope is a more relaxed, less structured summer. That said, we know all too well that small setbacks can blow up into frustration, outbursts and meltdowns. With summer finally here, how do we manage these long sunny days, so “the livin’ is easy?” 


• The Best Chicago Summer Fun & How to Calm the ADHD Chaos

  Summer. Sunshine. Play. Chicago summers mean sandy beaches, troll hunts and fireworks all season long. Chicago has a lot to offer families, whether you live here, or are visiting for a Chicago adventure. We need to hold in mind that transitions are tough when we live with ADHD so we can prepare for and enjoy our summer bucket list. 


• Why ADHD and Mindfulness are a Promising Twosome

  When it comes to ADHD, mindfulness develops awareness and attention.  Mindfulness is learning to step back and observe one’s thoughts and feelings, without judgment. What results is a resilient, more positive self-image for adults and kids with ADHD. 


• Three Laws to Support ADHD Students

  School can be tough for learners with ADHD. It can be challenging to keep track of assignments and follow through on projects. On top of that, it's tough to keep track of the various services available to our students with ADHD. 


• Four Tips to Reduce Clutter and Stress with ADHD

  If you or a loved one has ADHD, you know all too well that managing things and stuff can be overwhelming. Unless those things involve your personal interests, your mind may focus on other things that interest you.


• Stay Mindful with Intentions

  I believe in goals and resolutions; I’m a coach, after all! I work with parents and families as we set goals together. Personally, I set annual business goals and biweekly goals with my accountability partner. Goals help us plan and accomplish our dreams. But what happens when life gets in the way? How do we manage the bumps in the road? That’s when intentions are helpful for managing the load.


• Four Ways to Make the Most of Family Time

  Our three kids loved the Chicago Museum of Science of Industry, with so many fascinating exhibits you could barely cover it all in a day! Plenty of preparation went into planning this day-long trip to the south side of Chicago.


• Go To Bed, Stay In Bed

  “I just want to tell you one more thing before I go to bed!” “Can I have a banana? I’m hungry!” “I need to cuddle the dog one more time.” “I barely got any screen time!” Settling down to bed, staying there, and surrendering to sleep can be challenging for our kids with ADHD.  


• Three Ways to Talk to Siblings About ADHD

  To this day I don’t know what it was that upset my son with ADHD; it all happened so fast. Finally off with our three kids on our cross country driving trip, we stopped for lunch in a small country town. Angry and upset, our son disappeared at a brisk pace across the street and out of sight. 


• Are You Having Fun With Your ADHD Kids?

  I swore I would never turn into The Taskmaster. But here I was, about to lose it over yet another of my son's missed homework assignments.


• Six Strategies to Manage Your Emotions and Problem-Solve

  If you're a person with ADHD you may feel your emotions more strongly and react to them more immediately. 


• Three Ways to Make a Decision and Get Things Done

  If you are a person living with ADHD, chances are decision-making can at times be overwhelming and can delay getting things done.