One question on so many parents' minds is, "When and how do I talk to my child about their diagnosis?" Today, Jessica Snider is sharing her journey over the summer diving into ADHD resources for tweens. After doing endless searches to find tools for her daughter to learn more about her ADHD, she came up empty handed. So she set out to create a presentation to educate her daughter about ADHD and empower her with the unique strengths that she has resulting from her ADHD. Thank you, Jessica and Bailey, for sharing your story on the blog today!

ADHD Resources for Tweens are in Small Supply

If you are like me, a mom of a “tween” struggling to balance maturing hormones along with her ADHD, all the while being stuck, um, I mean safe at home, you may be finding yourself at a loss on how to help! My daughter Bailey is 12 going on 20!  She is full of spunk and happiest when she is busy. 

Thankfully she understands the safety reasons for quarantine, but understanding doesn’t decrease ...

"There are no right answers to wrong questions.” – Urusla K. Le Guin

I (Lori) once had a father come in for testing for his 5-year-old son. The father noticed sensory differences with his son (e.g., overreaction to noises, sensitivity to touch, clothing), so he had taken him to an occupational therapist for testing and treatment. After a few months, he was making some progress, but his kindergarten teacher was still very concerned about his behavior. His father was then referred to me, a psychologist, for more testing to look into ADHD. When I first met with the father, he expressed the typical ADHD concerns: his son had difficulty paying attention, was very distractible, disrupted the learning of other children, and was constantly moving and talking. He was completing little work at school due to his lack of focus.

However, there were also other concerns which were characteristics of autism. For instance, he had never really made friends with anyone and was often fighting with other children at recess. He liked to spend a lot of time at home lining up...

You know when you first have a baby, and everyone says things like, "The days are long but the years go by fast!" and other irritating, um, insightful comments like that? In some ways, parenting during this pandemic feels very similar. On one hand, my (Katie's) kids have already eaten all of the snacks and done every single thing on the to-do list by 8:47 a.m., leaving me to wonder how we are ever going to make it through the day! On the other hand, it's already well into April... excuse me, what? How is time able to go so fast and yet so slow at the same time? For all of us, things are just crazy right now.

Check in time 

So... we want to check in with you! Tell us, how are you doing? Let me just say that you are all on our minds these days. Truly, we just want to know how we can serve you best. As we Skyped for our team meeting last week, our originally planned blog post topics seemed a little bit trivial when we started thinking about everything going on in the world. So we shifte...

April is autism awareness month, and we want to do our part in increasing awareness and *acceptance*, as well as answer all of your autism-related questions. Our team at The Childhood Collective has a huge heart for autistic children and their families! All of us have spent our careers specializing in diagnostic evaluations and therapy for these children, and have seen many changes occur over the past decade. We hope to offer you some professional insights and share a bit about our own experiences. Let's start with the basics: what is autism? 

What is Autism?

Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder that impacts a child’s ability to communicate and socially interact with others. Children with autism also show repetitive behaviors and special, focused interests.

The current diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder is made when a child shows differences in communicating and interacting with others and either (currently or in the past) has shown challenges in ALL of...

Navigating the school system with an exceptional child can be stressful. As a parent, you’re looking to get your child the help they need, while being thrust into a new world of acronyms, policies, and procedures that can feel downright mysterious.

Back when I was still a practicing child psychologist, I lost count of the number of families who, in complete sincerity, asked me where to move in the entire Phoenix-metro area in order to go to the school that would best support their exceptional child. Countless families were prepared to go to the lengths of a significant life event (moving!) in order to make the school process even just a little bit easier!

Understanding Individualized Education Programs (IEP) and 504 Plans, their similarities, and their differences is a great place to start in your advocacy journey. While there is a lot to know about these two documents (seriously, I took a semester-long course in graduate school focused almost solely IEPs and 504 Plans), I’ve narrowe...

Seeing your child anxious can be one of the hardest things as a parent. It is hard because none of us like to see our children in pain, and we often don’t know the best way to respond or help. In our last blog post, we discussed ways to teach your child to talk back to anxiety. If you didn’t have a chance to read the blog, check it out here.

Now, we are going to be diving deeper into arguably one of the best ways to help your child minimize anxiety, which is something we call exposure. Exposure simply means taking steps to intentionally do the things your child fears. Remember what we learned in the last blog — Anxiety grows bigger through avoidance. Thus, the primary way for your child to learn that their fears don’t come true is by putting themselves in the feared situation, so they can learn through experience. No more avoidance! And in that process, sometimes your child’s fears do actually come true. However, what children often learn is that it wasn’t as bad as they thought, and ...

Years ago, I worked with a little boy who was terrified to separate from his mother. Even in their home, his mother could not go into another room (not even the bathroom!) to be by herself. Her son was extremely fearful, and she was beyond exhausted by it. After the first session with me, the little boy refused to come back to see me. He didn’t like me, and I had offended him in some way. The mother asked for referrals to another therapist, but I told her to try and give it a shot a little longer. I explained that sometimes children avoid going to therapy because it causes them anxiety to come and talk about their anxiety. The mother agreed, and we continued.

The second meeting, we named his worry and talked about what his worries were telling him. After several questions, he began telling me that his worries told him that while he was in the office with me, his mother would leave and never come back. We then used a worry thermometer to identify how worried he was that this would happ...

Raise your hand if you have ever asked your child to do something (e.g., finish their math homework, put away their laundry, or pick up toys in the backyard), only to be frustrated when the final result isn’t what you expected? As a momma to two little ones, this can be so irritating to me! It can be discouraging when we have an expectation and it isn’t met. The truth is, we often develop our expectations from a “future picture” in our mind. And when it doesn’t work out the way we planned, we are disappointed. Have you ever…

• Been on a tropical vacation, expecting it to be sunny, and then had stormy weather instead?
• Started on a loop-trail hike, and realized that the trail was much longer than you expected, but you have to keep going in order to get to the end?
• Baked two dozen cookie monster cupcakes, only to have them turn out like this?!?!

If you have ever been disappointed because the outcome didn’t match your expectation, or thrilled because it was even better than you i...