Newsletter #6: ADHD diagnosis in older adulthood and finding a work-from-home routine!

Alright, it’s been a weird month for a lot of us, and maybe even a downright scary one, with cities all over the world going into lockdown due to COVID-19. But here’s one way it’s like every other month: we have to keep adapting to life with ADHD.

On that theme, don’t forget to check out our article on 4 Ways to Cope With Hyperactivity Without Leaving Home. And as usual, here are one scientific study, one news article and one coping tip for the month.

 

Study of the Month: Parents of Kids With ADHD Invest More Time in Academic Support

Helping a child cope with ADHD is a full-time job, and a new study out this month confirms that idea. The authors of the study surveyed 1,600 parents of children with ADHD and 11,923 parents of children without ADHD. They found that the parents of kids with ADHD tended to put more time into helping with homework, talking to their kids about school issues, and teaching time management skills.

Time is, of course, a finite resource, so that additional time investment came at the expense of other areas. For example, parents of children with ADHD were less likely to invest time in taking their children to the library or participating in sports. Overall, the findings highlight the time management challenges that come with parenting a child with ADHD. Those challenges mean it’s necessary not just that kids with ADHD have support but that their parents do too — especially since many of those parents have ADHD themselves!

 

Article of the Month: ADHD Diagnosis in Older Adults

ADHD sometimes gets stereotyped in the media as a condition for little boys, which is why it was refreshing this month to see an article in the Wall Street Journal about people being diagnosed with ADHD in older age. As the article points out, many people with ADHD make it to older adulthood without being recognized, but they still stand to benefit from diagnosis and treatment. Many have collected incorrect diagnoses along the way. Sometimes they’ve even been misdiagnosed with dementia due to the cognitive symptoms that come with ADHD.

Unfortunately, the WSJ article is paywalled. However, if you copy and paste the title of the article into Google, you should be able to find non-paywalled versions on other websites!

 

Coping Tip of the Month: Finding a Work-From-Home Routine

If your work has gone remote in the last few weeks, it’s important to find a work-from-home routine that fits your brain and accommodates your ADHD symptoms. For me, there are three strategies that help me stay productive at home: 1) always do my work first thing in the day, 2) listen to music while I work, and 3) do some of my work standing at the counter so I don’t feel stuck in a chair all day.

You’re free to steal any of those tips, but the key is to experiment and find what works for you. Generally, what will help with that is asking when you do your work, where in your home you do it, and how you interleave it with other activities in your day.

 

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Image: Flickr/Simon Evans

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