Cindy Lopez: Welcome. My name is Cindy Lopez, the host of this CHC podcast, Voices of Compassion. We hope you find a little courage, feel connected and experience compassion every time you listen.

When your young child with ADHD has an explosive meltdown over something seemingly small, it’s not manipulation, it’s neurobiology. In this Voices of Compassion podcast episode, we talk with CHC experts, Dr. Neilson Chan and Dr. Marjan Ebadi about emotional dysregulation in young children with ADHD, exploring why their emotions feel bigger, last longer, and seem to come up more rapidly than their neurotypical peers. So, listen in as we discuss why children with ADHD are at a higher risk for emotional regulation challenges and how executive function plays a role, along with common triggers and strategies that parents and caregivers can use to support their young children. This episode is perfect for parents, educators, and caregivers looking for compassionate approaches to supporting young children with ADHD through their biggest emotional moments.

So, welcome Dr. Chan and Dr. Ebadi. Thank you for joining us today. And, this topic about young children and ADHD and meltdowns, I think lots of our listeners are joining in today because they experience that. So, before we launch into our conversation, love to hear a little bit more from you about yourselves. Dr. Chan, why don’t you start.

Neilson Chan, PhD: Thanks for having us, Cindy. So, my name is Dr. Nielsen Chan. I am a licensed psychologist here at CHC. Primarily what I do here at CHC is I conduct evaluations. And it was interesting, right before we started recording, I was actually chatting with Dr. Ebadi about how we’ve been receiving an influx of referrals for younger children, specifically with requests to see whether ADHD was part of the picture. And so happy to talk a little bit further about this in this podcast episode.

Marjan Ebadi, PhD: Hi. I am Dr. Marjan Ebadi, thanks for having us. I also do psychological assessment at CHC mostly for kids with ADHD, learning disability, mood disorders. And there is a lot of questions about parents about what’s normal meltdown or what is this ADHD or what attention looks like in little kids. And I always joke that with little ones under four, everything looks like ADHD. So, it’s always interesting about like what parents are trying to figure out what it means. 

Cindy Lopez: So, as we get into our conversation today, let’s give some context for our listeners. So, for this episode specifically, we’re focused on young children with ADHD. So, what is ADHD and what are the ages we’re talking about today?

Neilson Chan, PhD: So ADHD or Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, this is what we call a neurodevelopmental disorder. And what that means, breaking down the word neuro, meaning that there are differences in how the brain develops that leads to some of these behaviors that we commonly associate with ADHD – some of the inattentive behavior, some hyperactivity, some impulsivity, and as we’ll discuss a lot more in this episode – maybe some difficulties with emotion regulation. Now the second part of neurodevelopmental is the word developmental. So, this is something that we see across the individual’s developmental trajectory. So symptoms of ADHD may emerge very early on from childhood and may persist into adulthood.

Marjan Ebadi, PhD: And it can look like, Dr. Chan said it could look different. So, what might look like in when you’re little will look a lot different when you’re older. And then things that used to work when you’re younger might not work when you’re older. So, it is something that changes and shifts as people grow. And most often, you can see the symptoms early on, but then they tend to emerge a lot, or become a lot more noticeable, when they start preschool or kindergarten because there’s a lot of structure that’s coming in. So, you can see a lot more of those symptoms or emotion dysregulation or inattentiveness in multiple settings. So, at school and at home. And we tend to tell parents, always monitor, as you are, you’re monitoring your kids about what’s working for them and what doesn’t. So, based on, AAP which is American…

Neilson Chan, PhD: American Academy of Pediatrics.

Marjan Ebadi, PhD: Yes. You can technically diagnose at age four, but we tend to tell parents like, depending on the severity of the symptoms and then also seeing like how kids will do at school because sometimes you will see like it’s better to test them when they’re around 6-years-old because then you can see them at school. Teachers have comments and what’s happening, but also there are symptoms that are a lot more severe and is just impacting across the different function of life. So, then if it’s a lot more severe, you can always look into it around four as well.

Cindy Lopez: My background is education and I started in early childhood, and so it’s interesting because as you already noted, Dr. Ebadi, like as children are starting to socialize more, as they get in more structured kinds of situations, where they have to deal with their own wants and desires and someone else’s, we can see more meltdowns or more kind of emotional dysregulation. That doesn’t mean that it’s ADHD necessarily. So, I think that’s just important for our listeners to hear too. 

Today, we are really talking about young child with ADHD. So, I am wondering, as we think about children with ADHD, they seem to be at higher risk for challenges with emotional regulation. So, what can those challenges look like? And specifically as we think about ADHD in young children.

Neilson Chan, PhD: Sure. That’s a great question, Cindy. Let me actually try to take a few steps back first and provide a little bit more background about what ADHD is and how that might contribute to some of these difficulties with emotion regulation. So, when we talked about ADHD being a neurodevelopmental disorder, the part of the brain that is most impacted is the part of our brain called the frontal lobes. And the frontal lobes of the brain really control a lot of what we call our executive functioning skills. And we might hear this term a lot whenever we’re talking about ADHD, and when we’re thinking about executive functioning, I think a lot of people think about the skills that we need to basically get things done, right to execute a task, whether it’s planning, organizing, multitasking, things like that. But I think one very commonly overlooked aspect of executive functioning is how we regulate our emotions. How do we be aware of what it is that we’re feeling and how do we respond to those emotions when they do come up? And so, because ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition there are differences with how the brain develops. These are skills that, it’s not necessarily that children with ADHD can’t have or don’t have, but the way that I think about it and the way that it commonly shows up is that there might be a delay. So, compared to other people of the same age, those skills to regulate emotions may come across as a little bit more immature and developing at slightly different rates.

Marjan Ebadi, PhD: As Dr. Chan has been saying with kids with ADHD or young kids, there is executive functioning difficulties. So, it makes it harder for them to notice, like when the emotions start brewing. For most often what happens is by the time we see the tantrum, it’s kind of like a volcano. It’s been brewing for a really long time and then you just see the explosion. So for them, a lot of times is one, they forget how to pull the brakes for things that are working or they’re thinking through, so they can’t slow down. Also they fail to recognize the emotions before they build up. So then by the time, if there’s any coping skills, that’s going to get applied is just already kind of late, right? So, it’s like a bandaid for what is going to help. And again, it’s pretty typical for young kids to have difficulty noticing those because again, their brain is still very little. They still are learning about the world themselves. And as we know for even little ones, they forget, like if they’re tired, so they might fall asleep while they’re playing. So, there’s things that they miss when they’re younger anyway.

So, with kids with ADHD too one thing that can be helpful for parents is to also like help them recognize these before they brew. So, if you start noticing things, that you know, as you learn about your kids, what can trigger them, like if it’s better for them to eat and then, this new setting, they’re going to need a lot more buffering – like, things that you need to plan for them. It helps them to also name things for them too, like, “Oh, it looks like you’re a little tired. Oh, that looks frustrating.” So, kind of naming the emotions. So, then it helps their brain pick it up earlier so we’re not seeing the end of the tantrum. And then again, like we’re not building robots or machines. So, people have dysregulation all the time. So, we want to make sure that we are not looking for a hundred percent compliance or like, oh, my kid needs to be a hundred percent quiet because that’s not even great. That just means they’re internalizing. So, we always want to make sure we balancing like when it’s okay to be like, “I’m really frustrated,” like as adults we get very frustrated, we want to scream, but like, when is to apply the right coping skills and how to help them express things and again, for their age as well. Like, you know, always want to make it developmentally appropriate for what is expected of them to do.

Neilson Chan, PhD: That’s actually a really great point Dr. Ebadi because all of us have emotions and when we talk about our executive functioning, it’s utilizing skills to help us achieve a task, to achieve a goal, and our emotions are actually really useful when we can communicate them appropriately in order to do whatever it is that we need to get done. I think the area where some children with ADHD might struggle a little bit more with is when these emotions don’t help us with the goal we’re trying to achieve or the task that we’re trying to get done. And so sometimes in children with ADHD, these emotions can feel bigger or they might last longer or they might come on more rapidly then maybe somebody who doesn’t have ADHD. And that’s really where, kind of like what you were saying, Dr. Ebadi, having some supports and providing different strategies for these younger children with ADHD to regulate their emotions can really come in handy.

Cindy Lopez: Yeah, I think that’s really interesting Dr. Chan because my experience in early childhood is just like all of those things. Students who really want to participate and, for example, even play with another child, right? Their emotional dysregulation interrupts that and they don’t know what to do about that. So, it is kind of a typical part of growing up and with kids with ADHD, you know, we see that more often, or like you just said, Dr. Chan, like it seems bigger, last longer, all of those kinds of things. So, for our listeners who are probably a lot of parents and some educators, what are some early warning signs that parents and educators might see that indicate this meltdown is building, like something’s about to happen?

Marjan Ebadi, PhD: You know, every child is different. So, there’s no booklet about like, this is what it will look like and you go from A to B to C and ways to recognize it. But what tends to happen is, as we said, it has to do a lot with they tend to last longer. Sometimes the meltdown, it looks very silly for the actual trigger. You’re like, why are you crying over this little thing? But what tends to happen is they’ve been dealing with that emotion kind of all day, right? Like they’re, again, because it’s executive functioning difficulty, so it is things that they’re dealing with like transitions throughout the day, things that come out as unexpected, or I really want to look like a good kid, so I held it in really well at daycare or at school. And then now you’re getting your full meltdown in front of parents because it’s a little safer, but what tends to happen is for a lot of these is for parents to also start noticing the little triggers, their day-to-day things, right? And then kind of estimating like, how long is this tantrum lasting for? When can we start applying the coping skills? And then if it’s starting to impact their friendships, you know, it is going to start impacting people. Being a parent is difficult anyway. So, do you start feeling more stressed because they’re having a lot more tantrums, so it’s impacting your relationship with like, I don’t know, grandparents or cousins. So, that’s when you’re like, okay, compared to kids, it’s not good to compare, but we tend to compare kids to each other. And then once you notice it’s getting a lot more intense and it’s just your coping skills and stuff is not working. That’s one of your signs that it’s just happening way more frequent and the tantrum where crying is just a lot more intense than it needs to be for a little thing.

Neilson Chan, PhD: Yeah. And to add on to that, like you said, Dr. Ebadi, each child is different. Now, a lot of parents do say, you know, I can also read my child like a book sometimes, right. Each child has their own tells, whether it’s a certain facial expression that they’re making or certain behaviors that might come up. You know, maybe it’s refusing to eat or not wanting to go to bed, whatever it might be. Right now, I think one of the challenges that a lot of parents might bring to our attention is that sometimes it feels like a light switch, where it’s just like the emotion just kind of comes on really suddenly. And so I think that really is one of the challenges when it comes to some of these emotional dysregulation moments with children with ADHD is just a sudden onset, and so I think one of the things that we talk a lot about in parent coaching to support parents of children with ADHD is just trying to stay ahead of the game. Knowing what some of the more common stressors might be can be helpful in anticipating some of these meltdowns. Maybe there’s a transition that the child might need to make from a preferred activity to a non-preferred activity. And we’ve noticed a pattern, you know, where little Johnny might get upset when it goes from screen time to dinner time or something like that. Being ahead of the game and knowing what these common stressors are helps us to maybe employ certain strategies to help support the child as they need to regulate through those emotions as we’re going through those stressors.

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Cindy Lopez: As you’re talking Dr. Chan, I’m thinking about yes, it’s great when you can anticipate and hopefully maybe prevent or channel that energy in a different direction. What advice or tips or guidance do you have for our listeners about what to do in the moment when the child is having a meltdown? Are there things they should do, things they shouldn’t do?

Marjan Ebadi, PhD: So, usually with a lot of kids, they learn most from modeling because they’re learning about how to interact with the world. And the parents or caregivers are usually the first person they look to, to figure out how to assess this situation. So, one of the best things you can do at first is one, to assess and regulate your own emotions, right? How you’re reacting, is it appropriate? Is this helping your child or is it giving them so much information because they’re already having a full blown tantrum. They’re probably not thinking or listening–that part of the brain is shut off right now. You’re just dealing with all the intense emotions. So, talking to them loudly or explaining it to like, be quiet, sit down, that’s not going to help anybody. It’s going to make you more angry and it’s going to make kids more frustrated. So, definitely learning how to one, regulate your own emotion and staying calm and help them if you can, again, with modeling, like you can start breathing because then again, that can help trigger their mind to also start using their coping skills. 

If they can listen and you can feel like they’re listening to you, like offer different coping skills, either showing it to them or show either through visual cues or talking to them in little short sentences about how to regulate. The other thing is with kids, they get very smart about and again, I always say like behavior – always have a goal. There’s something that they’re looking for, even consciously or unconsciously, the behavior is trying to achieve something. So, we want to make sure that whoever is a caregiver, whoever’s in the scene where kids are on the same team, right? Because we want to make sure like, if we are helping kids co-regulate or whatever caused the trigger, they’re not going to the other caregiver and then they do different things, right? Because that’s just going to give mixed messages. So, one thing is always remind yourself, you as caregivers or whoever’s in the scene, you’re working as a team helping your child co-regulate. So, if you decide to stay calm, we want the other partner or parent to also remain calm and help with co-regulation. Or if you feel like I actually can’t manage my own emotions, you tag team it and have the other person be like, okay, you do this, I’m going to go calm down and then come back. So, I think like making sure we can learn how to communicate during those times with whoever is helping with our kids. It could be grandparents, you know, just being able to actually pass this information or communication to them as well. So, it’s not escalating with everyone yelling and screaming at each other.

Neilson Chan, PhD: You know, Dr. Ebadi, that that’s actually really important because, and I don’t think we can underemphasize how important it is as a first step to first check in with ourselves as the adult in the situation. And I think that goes back to thinking about developmentally where the child is at right now. You know, right now we’re talking about young children, maybe preschool aged children. Even for children without ADHD, we don’t necessarily, like you said earlier, expect for them to perfectly regulate their emotions in every situation and taking into account that for children with ADHD, again, they might come across as a little bit more young in some of these skills. And so co-regulation is really key in these situations, and that really starts with how we’re regulating our own emotions to begin with. I want to acknowledge that for a lot of parents, it’s not uncommon for us to feel stressed when we’re noticing our child engaging in some disruptive behaviors or having a tantrum – that is really stressful. And so sometimes it’s helpful just to take a quick step back if the situation allows for it, calm ourselves down because what often happens and is maybe less productive is when we get stressed and then we escalate ourselves. And then the most common thing that happens after that is a child might escalate, right? And sometimes a power struggle comes up and that’s something that usually doesn’t help us achieve what we need to do in the moment. So again, just  going back to check in with ourselves to help our child co-regulate.

Cindy Lopez: While you’re both talking, I was also thinking about this idea of co-regulating because the young child’s prefrontal cortex is not developed and that really doesn’t happen until well into, you know… yeah, I was going to say young adulthood. So, the parent is acting as part of their child’s prefrontal cortex, right? They’re acting as that because that’s what the child needs. And so that aspect of co-regulating that you talked about Dr. Ebadi too, is really important. 

Let’s talk about strategies. What additional strategies can you share with our listeners?

Neilson Chan, PhD: That’s a great question, Cindy. So, when I think about teaching emotion regulation skills, I kind of separate it into two different categories: one category is to build emotional literacy. Because the first part of it is just being aware of what those emotions are. Okay. And then the second part of it is how do we respond once we are aware of what those emotions are? And so, kind of like what Dr. Ebadi was saying, a good first step for a lot of parents is simply modeling. So when we talk about building emotional literacy, part of that is also just expanding the child’s emotional vocabulary. So, giving them labels in words, “Oh, Johnny, I know that you couldn’t go to the park today. You must be sad.” “That must have been really frustrating when your sister took your toy away from you.” “Oh, you look so excited when you got that new toy.” You know, giving them these specific labels and building that emotional literacy, you might’ve heard people say before, with our emotions, we name it to tame it. And I think that’s absolutely true, it’s always the first step is labeling it. And that can start just with the parent or the teacher modeling it and labeling it for them.

Cindy Lopez: So Dr. Chan, as I’m listening to you, so many things are coming to mind and I have heard over and over again from clinicians in the various episodes that I’ve hosted with them is modeling, modeling, modeling – like that’s such an important piece. And that language you were just talking about. Are there additional strategies that you would recommend as well?

Neilson Chan, PhD: Yeah. And so like I said, the second part of emotion regulation is teaching the child how to respond when those big emotions come up. And, you know, you might commonly hear people talk about different kind of relaxation strategies for this, things like deep breathing, maybe distraction strategies, things like that. And all of those are wonderful strategies. But the child with ADHD, the way that they learn best is we want to make a lot of these strategies less abstract, more concrete, something that they can visualize. So, let me give an example. Deep breathing is a wonderful strategy, you know, to help calm your body down. But for your young ADHD child, if you say, breathe in, breathe out, that’s fine. But they may or may not do that, right. And so some of the ways that can be helpful in guiding your child through some of these relaxation strategies is, again, one, let’s try to visualize it, and second, let’s try to make it more concrete, right?

So, there are those like expandable spherical balls or something like that. And so we might coach them and say, okay, when the ball gets bigger and we’re showing them the ball expanding. That’s when we breathe in, just like we’re filling your belly with air, right? And so when we breathe in, we expand. When we breathe out, the ball gets smaller and smaller, just like we’re letting the air out. That way the child can visualize. They can anchor and distractions become a lot less frequent, you know, in those kinds of situations. And so that’s just one recommendation in terms of how to guide a young child with ADHD through some of these strategies.

Cindy Lopez: So, as we think about strategies, I’m also wondering about routine and predictability – an important aspect for young children, but what about those young children with ADHD?

Marjan Ebadi, PhD: So routine, as you said, Cindy, routine and the structure helps everybody, right, if you know what your day’s supposed to look like, what we expect. And then like, you know, young children of ADHD, it does help to have expectations about what to expect in a new setting. Like they’re starting at daycare, modeling or practice with them what that could look like for them. But we also want to, as you’ve been saying, want to be mindful that we also want to give them the strategies because it’s real life, things can happen, things can shift, to be able to manage like if things go sideways, what are you supposed to do? It works best to practice those in a calm, neutral setting, right? So, you can use it in a game and pretend things go sideways or like you build something and it break it and it’s like, all right, it’s fine. We can rebuild it, right? So, I think as much as the structured routine will help a lot of people, especially with kids with executive functioning, because it kind of helps them organize and plan better. It kind of reduces some of the anticipatory and anxiety about what to expect and what to do. It is also helpful to give them enough tools to be able to manage that again for a young child expectable for developmentally, for them to be able to manage. So, like, okay, we can expect a whole day to go well or go as we planned it. So, again, for me it’s always about the balancing act of naming things and then also giving the tools in case the world decides to go sideways.

Cindy Lopez: As parents are encountering these meltdowns in their children, sometimes parent, educator, caregiver, sometimes they might see that behavior as communication. And it is communication as you noted previously, Dr. Ebadi. It is communication or a goal, they’re trying to reach a goal and it’s getting in the way of it. But what do you think are some of the biggest myths about these meltdowns in young children with ADHD, and what thoughts do you want to share right now with our listeners about that?

Marjan Ebadi, PhD: I think one thing that I hear a lot from parents that do tend to call us, especially for consults or just figuring out what’s normal, is they’re doing it for attention or they just don’t want to do this so they’re being a bad kid or mainly like, they just want attention. One myth for me is, one attention is how we connect to people. As you and I are talking, we’re making eye contact, we’re looking at each other, right? So, that’s how we connect and make friends or feel validated in our life. When it comes to little ones, they still have a harder time again, one, with noticing how to do that well. And one thing that I hear from or see with most parents is, you know, as long as the kid is quiet or doing fine, like whatever, we just kind of ignore it. But then as soon as something goes sideways, they’re like, what are you doing? That’s attention, right? So, then it kind of gives kids with ADHD or typical kid as well that like, unless I’m doing something wrong, parents might not talk to me. So, sometimes things happen because we want that attention seeking behavior. Just be able to connect to our parents because they’re busy with their lives and work and most parents work.

So, one thing is figuring out that behavior. Is it because I haven’t actually played with my kid or paid attention to him all day or her all day, and that’s why it’s causing them to have meltdowns and tantrums, or they haven’t slept enough or we forgot to eat enough today, or we feeling kind of sick, right? So, first thing is take a step back. One, again, regulate yourself. What am I feeling? Am I getting angry? And how do I manage to hold my anger and interact with my kid? And then two is like, okay, what is triggering this behavior? What happened before? Kind of like backtracking, figuring out what is causing their kid to have this tantrum behavior. And then once we can identify that, applying the intervention will be a lot more successful, right? So, if it’s like, oh, it’s because I wasn’t paying attention to it all day. It’s like, all right, we’re going to ignore the negative behavior, and then once they’re talking calmly, I’m going to focus on them and then be like, oh, thanks so much for talking quietly to me, right, instead of shouting in my face–but you obviously don’t want to phrase the negative part. So, saying like, thank you for staying calmly or telling me calmly. And then if it’s something to do with like, oh, they probably had a really rough day at school today, you know, let’s just say like, “Oh, you must have had a hard day at school today. What happened?” Or sometimes it’s also hard for kids to recall what happened, so you might have to do a lot of scaffolding for them as well. So, it’s a bit of like guessing what is causing it, and then adjusting as you go, which can be as, I feel like with parents, you do it often anyway because with the little ones, they’re kind of figuring things out. So, you have to be that external executive functioning as you said earlier. So, you kind of playing that again in that setting and making sure we always checking with ourselves because it’s something causing this behavior, right? And let’s figure that out instead of, oh, you’re just trying too hard or you are being annoying because you just want me to talk to you.

Neilson Chan, PhD: And you know, I think another important thing is for parents and educators and adults is to manage our expectations and understand how some of these tantrums or meltdowns, how ADHD might be playing a role in this. And what I mean by that is I think,it’s not uncommon for me to hear, for example, maybe parents saying, “You know, Johnny’s older brother when he was at his age was able to calm himself down. He was able to get through these transitions just fine. I don’t understand maybe why Johnny is having such a hard time.” And so part of that is just understanding a little bit more about ADHD. You know, it’s not all kids with ADHD are going to have meltdowns or tantrums and things like that, but ADHD does place a child at higher risk. And so just understanding that and understanding how we can scaffold our child and we can’t expect them necessarily to be at the same level as their same age peers who may not have ADHD.

Cindy Lopez: I really appreciate this conversation today, especially this focus on young child. We’ve talked a lot about ADHD on our podcast in the past, but this focus on ADHD in young children is really important and valuable, and I appreciate you both taking the time today to share your expertise with us. I’m wondering if there are some of our listeners who are saying, wow, this is really helpful, but I feel like I need more than that. I feel like my child needs more support or intense help. What advice do you have for families? When should they seek additional support or additional help?

Marjan Ebadi, PhD: I think one of the important thing is again, monitoring how the symptoms is impacting the whole family or like how the tantrums or the meltdowns is impacting your child’s, their attendance at daycare or school. How is it impacting your relationship with them too because I also heard a lot of parents saying, “I love my kid. I just don’t like them at this point,” right. So, when you feel like, “I’m in my own island. I can’t help my kid,” or feeling disconnected. I think that’s a good time to, you can always do consults. We do offer consults so you can, do free consult to figure out what’s appropriate. Is it like parents’ expectation? Is it child temperament? Is it, some behavioral regulation that needs to happen, right? So, that could be a good starting point to figure out what you need. Some of the services that have been found to help young kids Parent Child Interaction Therapy is one of the therapy that has been found research wise that helps kids with ADHD a lot or like is created around social learning, which is what modeling we’ve been talking about for a really long time. And also attachment, right? And then one cool thing about the PCIT is it takes the therapist out of the room and turns the parents into a play therapist. So, instead of having therapists work with your child in their individual setting and then teaching you those skills, they’re teaching you directly in the session about how to work with the emotional outbursts that is happening. And, you know, sometimes with kids with ADHD saying no can also trigger a lot of stuff. Like, how do you create the right structure? What’s your expectation? So one, really cool thing that I like about PCIT is that it helps parents. It’s like a bug in an ear. So, then they’re talking to you and helping you like work with that instead of they modeling it for you. So, then you can take those skills and then also generalize it to the other setting because you’re the one that learning the skills yourself. So, that could be one of the helpful therapy settings that can help.

Neilson Chan, PhD: And, just to kind of reiterate, parent coaching is really kind of the gold standard when it comes to supporting young children with ADHD, and a big part of that is that co-regulation piece. Now, sometimes parents do wonder, well, is there anything for my child? You know, I’m happy to gain strategies for myself and happy to support my child, but is there any kind of therapy or intervention that might be helpful for my child? One helpful type of therapy is occupational therapy in terms of helping the child to gain some of these regulation skills. You know, one of the things that we didn’t talk too much about today in this podcast, but that sometimes does come up in young children with ADHD is some sensory processing differences. And oftentimes when a child processes the sensory information in a different way, that can lead to difficulties with emotion regulation, with tantrums, things like that as well. And so working with an OT to kind of understand that kind of sensory profile and to learn strategies with how to regulate the sensory aspect of our experiences can also have some downstream benefits to how we regulate our emotions.

Cindy Lopez: Yeah. All of this has been so great. What you’ve shared with us from your own expertise and experience, and I think really helpful to our listeners. So, as we wrap up this conversation today, is there anything that you want to reiterate or anything that you really hope that the listeners take away from this conversation today?

Marjan Ebadi, PhD: One thing to remind ourselves is, as we said earlier, we can’t expect kids to regulate themselves really well. I think it’s expected for a young child with ADHD or without ADHD to have a difficulty regulating throughout the day. So, one being kind to ourself and to our child to figure out what’s causing the dysregulation. And then I think the other thing is to continue to monitor and see what is appropriate for their age developmentally. And if you feel confused or unsure, you can always seek help. You don’t have to do this alone. There’s a lot of parents that deal with kids with different temperaments, and then I just hope you don’t feel that you’re in your own island, and you can either reach out to us or look at some help books that are out there or other parents that have similar experience because there’s going to be a lot that people just don’t talk about it.

Neilson Chan, PhD: Yeah, I agree Dr. Ebadi. And, as we talked about earlier, we know that when your child is having these tantrums or meltdowns, it can feel really stressful. So again, just being kind to yourself, taking a step back and taking a moment for yourself, knowing that that’s also going to have downstream benefits for your child, and if you need any additional support as we were talking about in this podcast, CHC is here for you, and we’re happy to consult and provide any additional supports.

Cindy Lopez: Thank you so much. To our listeners, we mentioned occupational therapy. We mentioned parent child interactive therapy or PCIT. We also do parent coaching in addition to all that. So, please reach out as Dr. Ebadi said, just know that you’re not alone and there is help. You can reach our care team online via email at [email protected]. Or you can call us at 650-688-3625. So, thank you so much, Dr. Chan and Dr. Ebadi for joining us today for giving your time to this important topic and to our listeners as well. Thank you for joining us.

Marjan Ebadi, PhD: Thanks for having us.

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