Over the past few months, we have been sharing lots of tools we can use to raise confident children. Let’s face it: we all want to raise amazing kids who KNOW they are amazing! 

The truth is, when you’re raising a child with ADHD, or anxiety, or learning differences… it can feel absolutely defeating when they speak negatively about themselves. Research has shown that children who learn differently often have lower self-esteem than their peers. They also receive more negative feedback than their peers, and it quickly becomes a cycle. 

The good news: there are ways we can help!

You don’t have to be a psychologist or a speech language pathologist to promote your child’s confidence! Keep these simple tips in mind to help grow your child’s self-esteem:  

1. Set reasonable expectations.

A child cannot (consistently) do something well that is outside of their developmental skill level. When children are presented with tasks day after day that are outside their skill level, they are left...

A few years ago, I was at a friend’s house hanging out for a much-needed girl’s night (ahhhh…remember those carefree, pre-COVID days). One of the women there started talking about her son’s test anxiety at school. Her son would panic during tests and could not complete the work. When the mother had a meeting with the school to discuss her son’s test anxiety, she was met with an unexpected response.

One of the school staff stated that children don’t have anxiety!

Wow, I felt for this mom. She had painfully endured hearing her son complain of tummy aches at school, freezing and not being able to write during tests, and trying to hide tears running down his cheeks, so his friends couldn’t see. And now, it was affecting his grades because he was not able to show his knowledge. When she finally met with the team, she was met with misinformation and resistance.

To set the record straight, children DO experience anxiety (and every other emotion that we adults feel!). In fact, the CDC es...

I once had a patient named Jerry (a fake name to protect his identity, but with permission to share his story from Jerry and his family).  Jerry was in high school and was very anxious anytime he went out in public. 

His mother reported concerns that they were not able to live a life they wanted because of Jerry’s anxiety. They couldn’t go to the mall, eat out at a restaurant, or go out to stores because he just felt too overwhelmed. And when he did go out, he would wear earplugs AND headphones to avoid his anxiety, neither of which helped. Needless to say, he and his family were ready for change!

I can tell you that after some therapy and LOTS of hard work, I received an email filled with pictures of Jerry at prom, which was attended by over 1,000 people. Now when Jerry goes places, he states, “I’m gonna Lori Long this sh**!"

As much as I love that Jerry made my name into a verb, I can’t take the credit. The techniques we used were from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). And today...

How’s school going for your child? In Arizona, we just finished up the school year – which is a welcome break for all of us parents who have been homeschooling our kids for the past two months! How did distance learning go in your family? Each of us at The Childhood Collective have had different experiences.

Mallory’s oldest is in preschool, so they didn’t have any specific homework. She has been doing all kinds of creative activities to keep her little ones busy and engaged. Lori and I (Katie) each have daughters in kindergarten, so we got to dive head first into distance learning! My daughter loves reading and is now reading everything in the house… which wasn’t awesome when I left myself a note to remember my tooth fairy responsibilities (oops, had to think fast to get out of that one!). Of course, each day when it was time for my daughter to do math, she would immediately need a snack, find a random bug bite that needed attention, or have an emergency trip to the bathroom. Full di...

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...

Your child is having difficulty focusing and seems constantly distracted by the smallest things. Homework and morning routines take hours to complete. Your child is rarely able to stay seated at dinner or at a desk, interrupts constantly, blurts out funny comments at the most inconvenient times, and climbs literally everything in sight. After years of concerns from yourself and teachers, you finally make the decision to seek out an evaluation and treatment for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, after a quick google search in your area for specialists who diagnose and treat ADHD, it becomes clear that there are too many options. Hello, overwhelm and confusion! In this blog post, I am going to provide you with a little information on ADHD, why a comprehensive evaluation is important, and advantages/drawbacks of various specialists who diagnose and treat ADHD.

What is ADHD?

Before I get into answering the question of which specialist to choose, let’s first disc...