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Ep. 37: Normalising ADHD Through Talking About the Signs with Ella Tabb from @PurpleElla
150 Plays3 years ago
This episode starts a new mini-series on ADHD. Helen Wills talks to Ella Tabb from Purple Ella about her family's diagnoses of autism and ADHD, including her own diagnosis at the age of 36.
What is ADHD?
ADHD is a neurological condition that affects mood and behaviour. It's often diagnosed in childhood, but can persist into adulthood, with adult diagnoses becoming more common.
Symptoms of ADHD
Symptoms can vary, and are often different in women and men. Boys are sometimes diagnosed during school years due to restlessness and impulsive behaviour (hyperactive ADHD), while girls often mask their symptoms, trying to live up to school expectations. As a result they are more likely to find it hard to focus, pay attention , and remember details.
Ella talks about how it was only when getting a diagnosis of ADHD for her daughter that she recognised the symptoms in herself.
Here's what we discussed:
- She was labelled difficult, naughty and weird during her school years.
- She was bullied at secondary school and suffered low self-esteem.
- Her strong moral code meant she would say things out loud that other teenagers might ridicule.
- Ella describes herself as having no filter between her brain and her mouth. She talked AT people rather than with them.
- This would make her panic after a conversation that she may have offended people.
- Aspects of the ADOS test used to diagnose autism and ADHD - Ella was asked do you struggle with queues, can you watch a sunset, do you have intense interests?
What should parents do if they think their child might have ADHD?
Ella details a great set of resources to arm yourself with the knowledge you need to decide whether to pursue a diagnosis. She says it's important to write down the categories that fit ADHD with as much evidence as you can before visiting your GP.
Parents do need to intervene. Ella says as a teenager with ADHD she couldn't see what her own problems were. She just felt really bad about herself and didn't understand that there was more to it.
Scroll down for organisations that can help.
Who is Purple Ella?
Purple Ella is a disabled content creator with a focus on autism and ADHD. She draws on her experience of her own life as an autistic adult with ADHD and as the mother to three children who are all neurodivergent.
She says "all behaviour is communication" and wants all neurodivergent people to know that they are perfect just the way they are. Ella also lives with her husband, her assistance dog Coco and her cat Katsu.
Where to find support and advice on getting an ADHD diagnosis
- Ella's YouTube channel Purple Ella
- Purple Ella and Coco on TikTok
- Ella on Instagram
- How to ADHD on YouTube
- National Autistic Society
- ADDitude Magazine
- Counselling for ADHD
- The Pomodoro Technique
Listen to the podcast for more information and advice from Ella on everything from getting a diagnosis to techniques to help with concentration at school when you have ADHD.
More teenage parenting tips from Helen Wills:
Helen wills is a teen mental health podcaster and blogger at
Recommended
Transcript
Misconceptions About ADHD
00:00:00
Speaker
Not everyone with ADHD is bouncing off the walls all the time. I think you have this image in your head of a boy, generally, with ADHD climbing on the tables and throwing stuff around. And that's not me.
Introducing Teenage Kicks Podcast
00:00:18
Speaker
Welcome to the Teenage Kicks podcast where we take the fear out of parenting or becoming a teenager. Every week I talk to somebody who's been through something difficult as a teenager but come out the other side in a really good place and has insight to offer to families who may be going through something similar.
ADHD Mini-Series and Purple Ella
00:00:38
Speaker
This week I've got an interesting one though because I'm talking to a mum of a child with autism who's recently been diagnosed with ADHD herself. This podcast is part of the mini-series that I'm doing on ADHD so if you go back through previous episodes I'm forward to next episodes.
00:00:58
Speaker
You'll find more insight and inspiration on coping with an ADHD diagnosis, whether you're an adult now or a child or teenager just getting started. I just felt too much. I think that's how I would describe the way I felt. I felt like in every situation, I was just too much, too loud, too chatty, too in your face, too quick to fly off the handle, just everything just right there at the surface.
00:01:27
Speaker
Ella. Ella Tab is a mum off and she's going to tell me because I haven't got it in rather me. I'm a mum of three and I'm generally known by the name Purple Ella on the internet. Exactly right and I've known you Ella for such a long time because we started blogging together when our children were little and we were mommy bloggers.
00:01:49
Speaker
That's right, but don't tell anyone. Aw, do you know what? Mummy Blogger gets a bad rap. It's done me very well in the last 10 years, and I'm still going with it. Absolutely, I'm only joking. But Ella, I've known about the autism diagnosis in your family for a long time. Obviously, we've talked a lot on Twitter about it in the past, but I've never really gone there with you in a conversation with it, probably because I feel a little bit out of my depth, if I'm honest.
Challenges for Neurodivergent Individuals
00:02:18
Speaker
And I feel like that's something that a lot of people with so-called neurotypical children do. They just kind of stand away from it a little bit. Is that your experience? And I'm sorry for diving straight in with a really big question. No, that's okay. In fact, one of the things that neurodivergent people tend to do is dive straight in with the juicy information and skip the small talk. So you're hitting the right note for me. Yeah.
00:02:43
Speaker
I think there is a challenge with having conversations around neurodivergence. So we're talking about autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, those kinds of conditions where people are so worried about saying the wrong thing that those conversations don't end up being had. And I think this is perpetuated by the fact that it's very clear on spaces like Twitter that it's really easy to say the wrong thing. And so the approach that I tend to have as an advocate is to be like, there is no getting it wrong.
00:03:10
Speaker
as long as you're willing for me to kind of explain to you why we might prefer a certain language or certain approaches because I'd really like to see these conversations being had more. Exactly that, that is perfect to hear and exactly what I need for the podcast because
00:03:25
Speaker
The listeners who tune in to hear up the stories on this podcast are people who quite often have felt judged in the past or who are feeling out of their depth with something new and not sure how to handle it within their own family. So this is exactly what I want to do and try and
00:03:47
Speaker
kind of bring it down to facts, I suppose, rather than myths, right? Right. And just that if we're not talking about these things and we're not having conversations, then it's always going to be this unknown, frightening difference that people aren't sure how to approach. So there's only one way forward and that's to put it out there, really, I think.
00:04:07
Speaker
I've just finished editing a podcast with Nathan, who has cerebral palsy and has had all his life. And he said exactly that it's very easy to talk about amongst yourselves in a group of people who have similar challenges to yourself.
00:04:22
Speaker
and feel quite negative and find the world very difficult and that almost, he said, gives an even bigger divide and makes the challenges more difficult to deal with and actually what you need to do, this is what he said and it's different for every person I know, is have those difficult conversations with people who don't understand you and what your needs are and what needs to happen for you because otherwise you don't change anything.
Family's Neurodivergent Journey
00:04:51
Speaker
So Ella, normally I start with tell me a bit about life growing up for you and your teenagers and that is possibly quite relevant because you have an autism diagnosis, is that right? Yeah, so I am autistic, I recently was diagnosed with ADHD and I also have a historical diagnosis from childhood of dyspraxia.
00:05:12
Speaker
Right, okay. I'm not going to make any assumptions about all of those. I'm going to get you to describe those, but as we go on. So we're here to talk about your ADHD diagnosis first and foremost, but I also want to weave in the fact that you have a child with an autism diagnosis and just
00:05:35
Speaker
It feels like a very big sort of nest of complications that you've had to get used to living with. So, shall I just explain my family a little bit? Yeah, do that. So, I have three children. My eldest is autistic.
00:05:50
Speaker
And my middle child is currently undergoing assessment for ADHD. And my youngest child is autistic, has an ADHD diagnosis, and also has dyslexia and dyspraxia. So in our household, out of five of us, there is only one neurotypical person, which makes for an interesting dynamic for sure.
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah I bet and have you always known that there were those diagnoses needing to happen or a diagnosis needing to happen with your children? Was it obvious from the beginning or have those just grown on you over time? I think with my eldest we kind of realized that she wasn't entirely typical when she was a small baby because as a small baby she wouldn't
00:06:34
Speaker
She didn't behave how you typically expect babies to behave. She wasn't very cuddly. She was very interested in what was going on around her at a time when you expected her to be quite focused on you. So we knew there was something different, but it wasn't until she was around maybe two or three that we actually realized that we needed to go and see a pediatrician and start some investigations.
00:06:55
Speaker
And interestingly, my mom actually worked in an autism language unit all throughout my childhood and teenage years. So I did have some knowledge about autism having volunteered during the school holidays or helped out with school plays with the children that she worked with. So as soon as my eldest started to do some of the very stereotypical autism things like lining things up and staring at the washing machine weirdly is quite a common one.
00:07:21
Speaker
and reacting to things in a way that wasn't typical so you'd give her a birthday present and she'd just kind of look at it. When you know as a parent you're really looking for that, yay you bought me this thing I really want. So there were lots of things that kind of added up and so we did take her when she was about three but she didn't actually receive her autism diagnosis till she was seven.
00:07:40
Speaker
And then my youngest child, because by the time we got my youngest child diagnosed, I was diagnosed and my eldest was diagnosed and I was working as an autism advocate, I guess I was quite on it. So she received her diagnosis at five, but because of this
Realization of ADHD in Family
00:07:55
Speaker
being focused on ADHD I'll bring that in. I hadn't considered ADHD as a diagnosis for any of us at all up until about a year ago when my youngest child actually was unable to attend school anymore because of the challenges that she was having she started school refusing and absolutely just we were told by her pediatrician her anxiety is so high she needs to be taught at home for now.
00:08:17
Speaker
And because I was at home having to deliver the curriculum to her, I noticed that she could not focus for more than a couple of seconds on anything. And she was very hyperactive. And that's when I kind of went, oh, oh, wait a minute. Hang on. These things seem like ADHD. So I raised that with a paediatrician, which is when she was investigated for ADHD. And I guess that after that, I started to learn more about ADHD because it hadn't been my specialist area of interest until that point and basically went, but oh my God, this is me.
00:08:47
Speaker
and started to look for investigation on that and I would say that in some ways the ADHD probably had the bigger impact on my teenage years anyway in terms of not being able to function at school and in friendship groups.
00:08:59
Speaker
That's what I was interested to ask with you saying that your mum was working in an autism field and yet that wasn't something that ever got picked up with you. I would never have been diagnosed as an autistic person in the 80s when I was growing up
00:09:17
Speaker
because Asperger's in terms of the label that was often given to people who were autistic but without an intellectual disability was only being handed out as a diagnosis really from the early 90s so that would never have been a possibility for me but my mum did notice that there was something different about me
00:09:35
Speaker
And she took me to see an educational psychologist at the school where she worked in a more informal, can you have a look at my child to a colleague kind of way, which is when I received my dyspraxia diagnosis, because I guess at the time I was dyspraxic and quite clumsy as well. Just tell me what dyspraxia is.
00:09:52
Speaker
Okay, so for those of you that don't know, dyspraxia is a neurodivergent condition where the predominant disability is extreme clumsiness. But much like all the neurodivergent conditions, there are some overlaps with them all in terms of working memory and executive functioning and emotional regulation.
00:10:09
Speaker
So she would have tied all those things together and got okay dyspraxia because she wouldn't have been looking for autism in someone like me at that point in time.
School Experiences and Challenges
00:10:18
Speaker
So you got a dyspraxia diagnosis but not an Asperger's or any other kind of autism diagnosis? No, so I was diagnosed
00:10:24
Speaker
diagnosed with dyspraxia I think I was probably about six or seven and definitely throughout my childhood and my teenage years I was witness to lots of conversations because my mum was a single mum she leaned quite heavily on my older sister who's 11 years older than me for kind of guidance and support parenting a child who wasn't typical and I do remember a lot of conversations around what's going on with Ella what can we do about it
00:10:48
Speaker
But like I say, there just wasn't anywhere to go with a child like me. We were the children that basically ended up being labeled difficult, naughty, weird children. And I remember that at the time I was growing up, probably a little bit earlier, but other kids who typically ended up outside the classroom for a long periods of time, or in my day it was looking at a corner of the wall. I mean, what a way to treat what you thought was just a naughty kid. But I've just been having a conversation on a walk with a friend
00:11:18
Speaker
who said it dawned on me that there aren't really naughty kids, there are just kids that aren't coping with the setup that they're in at that point in time, right? Well I like to say, because I work with a lot of parents now of neurodivergent children as an autism advocate, and I like to say that all behaviour essentially is communication. They're trying to tell us something. That makes total sense. So how did it, thinking about a school setup, how did it affect you?
00:11:45
Speaker
So in primary school I, I mean obviously this was a long time ago so you'll have to bear with my memory especially since I have ADHD so my memory isn't that great. In primary school I recollect kind of getting through okay because my best friend kind of guided me which is actually really typical for neurodivergent children particularly girls to kind of find a role model friend who they can just attach themselves to and go right I'm just going to do everything that she does and get through.
00:12:10
Speaker
So the problems really started when I was sent to a different secondary school to this girl and really, really struggled to fit in. My secondary school experience was just horrendous. It was just horrendous. I was very, very badly bullied throughout secondary school, in large part now looking back on it because of the ways that I behaved because of my neurodivergence, which is not at all
00:12:30
Speaker
accusing them bullying me more just it gives me a slant to look at it from. I really struggled with the way that education was delivered in secondary school. So I don't feel like I reached my potential. And so by the time I got to the end of what is it, five, six, seven years that you do in secondary school, I had incredibly low self-esteem.
00:12:53
Speaker
Is that fairly common to be bullied? You call it neurodivergent, so I'm gonna go that direction as well. Is that reasonably common? It is, because I think some of the characteristics, so for example, because I've got ADHD, I don't have a very good filter between my brain and my mouth. So essentially, whatever comes into my head will generally come out of my mouth at 100 miles an hour. And I also have a tendency to talk at people rather than with people, because again, my brain is just firing out information.
00:13:23
Speaker
And then if you combine that with people who are autistic tend to have really specialist interests that they become really absorbed in. I really want to talk a lot about. So I probably spent a lot of time talking to the kids about things that weren't of interest. And then the other aspect that I think was really relevant was that.
00:13:38
Speaker
Another thing I've noticed about neurodivergent people is that they tend to have a really strong moral code, a really strong sense of right or wrong in maybe a bit of a black and white way, and a really hard time restraining that. So, for example, in my secondary school in the 80s, it was very common for people to make homophobic remarks or racist remarks about the other children.
00:14:02
Speaker
And where your average child would kind of keep their head under the radar and go, okay, I don't agree with that, but I'm not going to stand up and say anything about it. I would get up at the front of class and go, here's why lesbians are okay. Which basically resulted in me being called a lesbian throughout school. It's brilliant what you did there.
00:14:21
Speaker
it's utterly brilliant and it's what we're trying to teach our kids to do now but I'm laughing because yeah you can see how that would go down right at that point so this essentially resulted in the school kind of I think seeing the bullying that I was experiencing as my problem I remember
00:14:39
Speaker
One year I decided that I wasn't sending Christmas cards to the girls who were mean to me you know because you're expected to send out these cards aren't you when you're in school so I deliberately didn't write Christmas cards for these five or six girls and I remember my teacher my form teacher at the time coming up to me and saying you do realize that you should have written them cards that this is why you get bullied you get bullied because of the way that you behave you just really need to be a bit more normal Ella and then they'll start picking on you.
00:15:05
Speaker
That word normal is becoming so problematic, isn't it? I'm fast realising that there is no such thing as normal. Normal is basically someone you haven't got to know yet, right? Or somebody that is able to see what boxes have to be ticked and ticks them despite how they feel, whatever they really are. And I couldn't do that. And I think that's one of the things that, okay, just a quick, so we hear the word neurodivergence quite a lot.
00:15:31
Speaker
And we hear the word neurodiverse and people mix those two up. So the reason I'm using the term neurodivergent is that's the word for people that have neurological differences. Neurodiverse literally just means that the population as a whole has people in it that are different. I just thought I'd throw that in there. Neurodiverse is normal.
00:15:48
Speaker
No, neurodiverse is the whole population. There are some typical brains, there are some neurodivergent brains. Oh, I see, right. Okay, so I'm thinking neurodiverse is what we all are, but it actually covers neurotypical and neurodivergent. Yeah, so when you say diversity, you mean a range, don't you? When you say divergent, you mean different from the typical. So I use the word neurodivergent to describe all these conditions because it's the right word and I've got autism, so I need to be grammatically correct.
00:16:16
Speaker
No, you do. You absolutely do. And going back to what we were talking about at the beginning, unless you actually put that out there and educate people, well, it's the same with Black Lives Matter. It's the same with the LGBTQ community. It's everything. It's the same with us in our family and our Type 1 diabetes diagnosis. Unless you put it out there and correct people and tell them, this is the right word to describe this, and this is actually what's going on beneath that word, nobody learns, do they? And that's the goal.
00:16:45
Speaker
Right, so I actually have a really good picture of you as a teenager in school now because I know people or knew people at the time that had that. And to a varying degree, I had that because I had a fairly strong moral code and I also did all my work on time. I did quite well in it. So I got called Swati Dotty. It was fairly benign, but it was the kids that didn't get the grades and didn't do the homework that called me that, but it still hurt.
00:17:12
Speaker
and any names that you're being called or any judgments that are being made about you.
Struggle to Conform
00:17:18
Speaker
Well at any age actually I was going to say as a teenager when your ego actually is quite fragile already
00:17:25
Speaker
it's really tough to take and probably exacerbate whatever behavior you've got going on in you at the time. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, sorry, my brain has gone blank. That's because I rambled quite a bit. To get to my point in that question, we were talking though, about how you were bullied and how that's quite common and quite normal. And actually, my point is that your behavior wasn't that abnormal, given the circumstances, but I wanted to take you on anyway to how
00:17:56
Speaker
you came to get your autism diagnosis because you had dyspraxia first and then autism and then ADHD diagnosis. Is that the order it went? Yeah, that's correct. I hadn't really thought a lot about the dyspraxia diagnosis, to be honest with you. Since my teenage years, I'd spent the preceding 20 years just trying to perfect normal, essentially. That's what I took from my school experience. You need to be different and these are the ways in which you need to be different, which is obviously
00:18:24
Speaker
awful for the self-esteem. So fast forward to having had my children and my eldest child receiving her diagnosis. So I'd been through the diagnostic procedure with her. I'd also got a history of mental health problems, particularly in my 20s, but then also when I actually had my children. So I knew there was something different about me. But when we got that diagnosis, it kind of got me thinking,
00:18:50
Speaker
about the aspects of autism that I could relate to. But I still didn't really think too much about it until one day I took her out to a cafe. I was like, I'm going to be a good mum and do some one-on-one time and I'm going to drive to this cafe and I'm going to park in this parking spot and it's going to be marvelous and it's going to be so bonding and brilliant. And we got there and like every good autistic person, I decided exactly where I was going to park. And when I got there, they had turned that parking entirely into residence only parking and I couldn't park.
00:19:16
Speaker
So I drove around getting more and more stressed and had what I now know is a meltdown, one of my episodes in which I'm sat in the car pulled over somewhere kind of weeping and losing it. And I looked in the back at my daughter and in that moment, I kid you not, I went, oh my God, I'm autistic. It was like a light bulb.
00:19:35
Speaker
So I went away and thought about it because there is a part of you when you have these things about yourself that you think, maybe I'm just being really neurotic or I'm making excuses for myself. So I thought I'll talk to my friends and my family and see what they think. And surprisingly, first of all, I spoke to my husband who said, yeah, I think you might be onto something. And then I spoke to a few friends who went, what? You mean you didn't know?
00:19:58
Speaker
Quite revealing. Brilliant. Yeah. So then I went to the GP and I was referred for an assessment with the autistic diagnostic services here where I live. And I had a four hour assessment at the start of which the clinician went, this isn't going to be a hard one. Yeah. And then I was diagnosed that day. I was 36, so that was six years ago now.
00:20:26
Speaker
you if you can remember. What kind of things did you say to her to make her realise so quickly? Well it was a man. Oh sorry, him. He, Dr Peter Carpenter who actually wrote the nice guidelines along with Simon Baron Cohen on how to diagnose autistic adults so I really got the man. Well the first sign for him I think was that he came out of the waiting room to bring me into the room and he went to shake my hand and I just kind of went, this is not good on a podcast, I'm used to videos.
00:20:53
Speaker
I just kind of looked at him in a startled way and then grabbed his hand and just like did what I thought you do because I don't understand handshakes, to be honest. You can act it out, it's absolutely fine because I just describe it for the podcast. I quite often say, and I'm doing air quotes here. Yeah, how does this work? I do a lot of gesturing, you don't get to see any of it. So I just kind of grabbed, looked at him for longer than you should when someone's holding out their hand to you and then just kind of quickly grabbed it and squeezed it and then let go.
00:21:22
Speaker
It wasn't short to do. And then I think what really helped was that we'd filled out some forms before I went and that my husband had come with me to the assessment and so was able to provide a lot of information. And he asked me questions about things like, how did I do with waiting in queues for things? Would I sit and watch a sunset in a relaxed and enjoyable way? Which is a bit random now looking back on it.
00:21:48
Speaker
He asked me about whether I'd had any intense interests as a child. You know, questions like that. And it was after he'd asked those questions that he then said, oh, I don't think this is going to be a hard one. And then he went into some sections of the test, which are called the ADOS test, which is a standardized test that's used to diagnose autistic children and adults. There are different ones at this time in the UK, generally.
00:22:12
Speaker
OK, so that was fairly cut and dried and straightforward. Yeah, it really was, which is unusual. I would like to say this is really unusual. Most women and men who present like me, as in we've got good at what we call masking, and masking applies to autism and ADHD in terms of what I described as I left school going, how do I fit in and layered other people's personalities onto myself in order to do so, never very successfully.
00:22:38
Speaker
Most people who go having already developed these skills are often told that they couldn't be autistic because a friend of mine went recently and was told she couldn't be autistic because she can make eye contact and she'd maintained a friendship for more than a few months. Which is absolute nonsense but people are being denied the diagnosis for some really crazy reasons so the fact that it was really straightforward kind of freaks me out in a way because I'm like oh my god I must be really obviously autistic and also really lucky I guess.
00:23:06
Speaker
I'm going to ask a question now because it feels relevant. In terms of, for example, parents who might be wondering, is this what's going on with my teenager or my child?
Hurdles in ADHD Diagnosis
00:23:20
Speaker
Do you think that the powers that be do make it deliberately difficult to give this diagnosis, first of all?
00:23:27
Speaker
I don't know, however, I have had a conversation with someone who works at the Bristol Adult Diagnostic Service who did tell me that sometimes they don't diagnose people who they think might be autistic actually because they have limited funding for supporting autistic people and therefore have to make sure that they reserve it for people who really need that support. So I know that that's the case in that particular adult services.
00:23:53
Speaker
In terms of children, I think when my youngest, because my eldest received her diagnosis really easily because she is quite a stereotypical autistic child of her type, but my youngest who presents more like me had the assessment and we were initially told that they weren't going to diagnose her despite the fact that they absolutely thought she was autistic because they need to be 100% sure
00:24:15
Speaker
so that if that child then came back to them at 19 or 20 and said, why did you put this label on me, they are able to justify that. But at the same time, there's a bit of a problem in terms of diagnosing children in that you have to have evidence for both autism and ADHD to receive a diagnosis as a child. The pediatrician has to see evidence from both the home and the school.
00:24:37
Speaker
that these behaviours are presenting in two different environments. Otherwise, you can't give, it's just, that's one of the rules for the diagnostic process. So if you've got a child like my youngest who is masking in school, in fact, and my middle child now with the ADHD, who is holding it together desperately all day in school, and then coming home and it's all kind of falling out all over the place because they've worked so hard, you're only then getting evidence from the home.
00:25:01
Speaker
So what they said with my youngest was, we're not getting evidence from the school. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna wait a few years. And then when the wheels fall off, which they will as she gets older, we'll diagnose her. And I was like, no, no, that really doesn't work for me. I'd rather we didn't let the wheels fall off. So I actually made them go into the school and do detailed observations so that they could see that. In fact, if they look closely and you know about autism, they could see those behaviors in the school after which they straight away diagnosed her.
00:25:30
Speaker
Right. So that was the second part of the question I was going to ask is, as a parent, who's worried that this may be something that they need to begin a process with, or make a decision about?
00:25:44
Speaker
would it be best to go armed with as many of the facts as possible and where might they, as someone who knows about these things so clearly, where might they find out about it so that they can be well informed when they start to ask the questions first of all?
00:26:04
Speaker
This is a good question. I actually do locally support a number of families and have supported a number of families through the diagnostic process. So from the first asking for referral, so I know about this. I would always suggest before going into that initial appointment where they basically decide whether or not they're going to do a full assessment that you go in armed with as much evidence and the information as you can. And what I actually recommend families do is write down the categories which
00:26:30
Speaker
fits say the autism or the ADHD diagnosis so in terms of autism we're talking about repetitive behaviours, difficulties with social stuff, sensory needs and with ADHD we're talking about things like distractibility, emotional ability, impulsivity. I would actually write those headers and then I would write the evidence for the behaviour that you have seen that fits within that diagnostic criteria and I would go in and I would give that to the doctor. That's a good starting point.
00:26:57
Speaker
I've forgotten now because I've got ADHD. I forgot the second half of the question. I'm learning as we go that I need to phrase things differently. That's not a bad thing. That's not a reflection on you. It's a reflection on me and my tendency to ramble. And in order to be a better interviewer, generally, I need to think about how I phrase my stuff. So thank you. The second part of the question was where do you find that information? So if you're completely not in the know and you're worried, where do you go to get that?
00:27:24
Speaker
Well, you could start with my YouTube channel. Yes! Very good point, actually. But yes, seriously, I would start with a combination of things. I would start with there are lots of adults on the internet talking about autism, talking about ADHD. I have a recommendation for an ADHD channel too, if that's helpful, as well as my own. I would go look at how to ADHD on YouTube. Jessica's absolutely fantastic and makes everything really clear.
00:27:51
Speaker
I also talk about autism and ADHD but if you have a look there's so many people doing that and it's such a useful insight to hear from an adult who has been through their childhood with that condition and can really articulate what their experience was in a way that a child might not be able to.
Resources for ADHD and Autism
00:28:05
Speaker
I would also recommend the National Autistic Society and Attitude for people with ADHD. Attitude magazine has a lot of really great articles so basically
00:28:16
Speaker
go on the internet and find trusted resources and just learn as much as you possibly can about these conditions because it can feel, I think often parents feel a little bit like I want to put it in the hands of the doctor because I don't want to feel like I'm influencing them and I don't want to feel like I'm getting my child labelled with something that they don't have so I'm just gonna wait and see what they say which should be how it works.
00:28:41
Speaker
But unfortunately, because of the criteria around getting the diagnosis, because of the long wait times and because of the masking and the way that that's not accommodated for, it is helpful to go in with as much information as you can, safe in the knowledge that they still won't diagnose your child if they don't have that condition.
00:28:58
Speaker
Okay that makes sense and actually Ella will you send me all of those links when we're finished so that I can put them in the show notes and then people can just carry on listening and then pop down and visit your site which I know to be brilliant and all the ones that you've recommended. Yeah absolutely I'll send you a bunch of links. Excellent.
00:29:14
Speaker
So, okay, just let's move on to the ADHD diagnosis. Because what grabbed me in terms of wanting to talk to you was being diagnosed with ADHD as a fully fledged adult, not even as a young person who is coming out the other side, but is still really young as an adult, a mom, a person with a fully sorted life, if we can ever get one of those.
00:29:42
Speaker
Not sure mine is. How did you first start to think, okay, look, I think ADHD is something worth investigating for me? I think when I realized that ADHD wasn't what I thought it was. So first of all, I thought ADHD was something that children grew out of. Adults can mature and some of the ADHD traits can certainly change as you mature, but most adults still experience challenges because of their ADHD.
00:30:10
Speaker
And I think when I realised that not everyone with ADHD is bouncing off the walls all the time, I think you have this image in your head of a boy generally with ADHD climbing on the tables and throwing stuff around and that's not me. And I think when my daughter was diagnosed and I realised that ADHD can actually be
00:30:30
Speaker
quieter you can be not concentrating whilst not making any noise you can be sat at the back of the class daydreaming and not be noticed but you're still distracted and you're still not concentrating and when i realized that impulsivity doesn't i think it's how you define these things because when you think of impulsivity you would think maybe of someone who spends money
00:30:49
Speaker
rashly or really wants to do bungee jumping on a whim. Whereas for me, my impulsivity, I'm actually really cautious, but my impulsivity comes in my reactions to things. So for example, my husband and I have found that we row a lot less since I realised that I'd got ADHD because what was happening was he would say something and I would just fly off the handle in an instance, which is impulsiveness.
00:31:15
Speaker
but you wouldn't necessarily think of it that way. I guess I started to think about ADHD when I realised that it's not the stereotypical view that the media is presenting us with of what ADHD is and that in fact a lot of the things that I was still having difficulty with despite having spent so many years working on my autism strategies could be explained by ADHD. Right, can you tell me more things about how it manifested for you?
00:31:41
Speaker
I think the really interesting one is I think most people, before they do things or before they react to things, have like a pause point where their brain goes, oh, this thing has happened. I should react like this. Yeah, is that your experience? Well, I'm wondering actually now because I'm a fly off the handle kind of piece. You'll be like, oh my God, I've got ADHD by the end of this interview. Yeah, that's going to get a diagnosis for me. That must be so annoying when people do that because it must come across as so flippant. I think I might be autistic.
00:32:10
Speaker
I'm not easily offended. I like to aim to be the friendly, not easily offended advocate because there are a lot of people out there on the internet flying off the handle so I'm trying not to add to that. And this is where, if you're listening, you should go follow Ella on all the platforms for that reason because it is a voice of reason that is educational rather than angry, although anger comes into it and I know that but that's natural. But yes, you're right, going back to your point, I do
00:32:38
Speaker
or have taught myself to think, okay, how do I feel about this? And for what reasons before I act on it? Right, exactly. So for me, my entire day, it was a series of reactions to things, impulsive reactions to things without any pause point to think about what to do. So for example, I'll give you an example. I recently got a new GoPro Hero camera, which I'm very excited about when I hit 10k subscribers on YouTube.
00:33:08
Speaker
about four months ago. I'm at 15k now just putting that out there. By this point I've been diagnosed with ADHD and I also do take medication for that and I was trying to set it up and nothing would work and it was all just really annoying as things often are with new technological things and I went, this is frustrating. I should put it back in the box and go and sit on the sofa, maybe have a cup of tea, come back to it later.
00:33:32
Speaker
And there is absolutely no way prior to me starting on ADHD meds that that would have ended in anything other than a huge meltdown. I would never have had the thought, go and do this later. And I think that's the biggest kind of impact on me in terms of my ADHD.
Impact of ADHD on Daily Life
00:33:49
Speaker
Well, that and the inability to learn stuff the traditional way.
00:33:53
Speaker
And now that I know that I've got ADHD and I'm not at all saying that meds are the answer for everyone and that everyone should be on meds, it's just that for me, it's worked really efficiently. Being on meds, I don't really notice any sort of feeling from being on the meds, but I get to the end of the day and go, oh, look, another day in which I just dealt with stuff like people do.
00:34:15
Speaker
No, I do know. Yeah, instead of, yes, the way you describe lurching from one kind of panicky moment, fresh, stressful moment. Do you know what? This is me. This is what I do. Everything. Does it feel overwhelming to live with ADHD before you've learned how to manage it?
00:34:35
Speaker
Yes, I just felt too much. I think that's how I would describe the way I felt. I felt like in every situation, I was just too much, too loud, too chatty, too in your face, too quick to fly off the handle, just everything just right there at the surface.
00:34:53
Speaker
But having received the diagnosis, I feel like things have really changed for me and that's been a really positive thing. Like, I remember this is not a good one. This is gonna sound awful, so please bear with. But when I got my diagnosis and as I say started meds, I would be having conversations with people and I'd be sat there going, oh my god, I'm listening to them.
00:35:11
Speaker
oh my god they're saying things and I understand what they're saying and it's going into my brain and I would say to my friends like oh my god I'm listening to you because they know me well and they're used to me and they would go well what were you doing before I was like probably either thinking about what I'm gonna say back to you
00:35:28
Speaker
or thinking about something completely different whilst nodding and smiling at you so that was quite a big one being able to engage in so yeah you can see what a massive impact that's had on my life where up until six months ago i've not been able to have conversations in which i could actually take in what was being said to me
00:35:45
Speaker
Yeah, and you've just said you're what, 36? 42. I was 36. Who was 36 that I expected? No, I said I was 36. It's my scatter break. But interestingly, I was recently, I've just joined TikTok, because you know, I'm not too old for TikTok, right? Yeah, why not? It's fine. And I put up a video in which I said that I was 42 and everyone went, Oh my God, you're never any older than 20. So I'm feeling quite good about that. Oh, no, you don't look 42. 36 seemed plausible to me. Okay, cool.
00:36:10
Speaker
Maybe I just made that up. So if you put that not being able to absorb that conversational input into a classroom context for example and we're talking about people who might have teenagers with ADHD who are expected to learn from someone standing at the front of the class saying things to them, you can see where that's really problematic. Well you probably do know because you've got children with diagnosis but I was going to ask what advice you would give
00:36:34
Speaker
to, well, let's have what advice would you give to teenagers if they're listening and they think this might be them?
00:36:42
Speaker
what to look out for when they're at school, what to think about if they even can. I mean I think if you've got undiagnosed ADHD and you're in a school setting, ideally you really need the support of your parents to access a diagnosis that comes with support for you but also the knowledge that you have ADHD to the people that are around you and therefore that's going to change their experience of you because
00:37:04
Speaker
In all honesty, I really don't feel like if I couldn't in 42 years, figure out how to manage my ADHD until I received that support. I just, I'm not sure it's actually possible. No. Do you think it might not have even dawned on you that think, did you, did it dawn on you when you were 14, 15 and struggling to be accepted that you were different for a reason?
00:37:27
Speaker
No, I just felt bad about myself and really desperately have spent kind of the last 30 years really trying to stop talking. Oh bless you and yet talking is exactly the right thing to do but I guess do you feel like you do it more productively?
00:37:45
Speaker
No. And that's the other thing to mention. I would say, oh, I have got a recommendation for teenagers who might have ADHD here at school. The Pomodoro technique is really useful for people with ADHD. So if you have problems and you're sitting down and you're trying to do your homework or you're studying or whatever, and instead you're on TikTok cleaning bits of fluff from the side of your room and thinking about rainbows, my recommendation is to get a timer. Everyone's got a timer on their phone or whatever, right?
00:38:10
Speaker
Set a timer for 20 minutes, put your stuff away and promise yourself that you will focus on the thing that you are doing for 20 minutes and that at the end of that you can do whatever distractable thing it is that you thought you wanted to do. And working in chunks of focused time like that has really improved my workflow to the point where I was spending entire days thinking I was working but only really achieving a couple of hours worth of work.
00:38:33
Speaker
I think that's so common for a lot of people, but I can see it heightened in that process. Do you know what? That technique will work for me as well. She's really helpful.
00:38:45
Speaker
Brilliant. Okay. I'll do some research on that and find a... I'm sure there's... I'll send you a link. Send me links. Send me all the links, Ella. I think you've answered pretty much everything that I wanted to ask. This has been incredibly efficient. Has there been... Do you know what? Is that part of it? Are you quite efficient once you get focused?
00:39:06
Speaker
Do you think it's that much of a change? Well, there is a thing with people who have ADHD, but also autistic people, there's so much crossover that I'm mentioning them both, called hyperfocus, which I have a video about on my channel, but in a nutshell, hyperfocus is when someone who has ADHD manages to engage in a state of being where they can massively focus on what they're doing for great stretches of time and achieve an incredible amount of productivity.
00:39:33
Speaker
The problem is that you don't get to choose what you hyper focus on. So I hyper focused on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Nintendo games throughout my teenage years. Fair enough. I really wish I'd hyper focused on like learning to play the guitar or possibly my GCSEs instead. Oh, but what teenagers do that? Surely most teenagers find it really difficult to focus solidly on their work.
00:39:58
Speaker
I think so, but I think it's next level not focusing when you've got ADHD in that I think most teenagers, in fact, most people really struggle to focus, but when it comes down to it, they get it done. Whereas for me, I literally, I don't even know how I got GCSEs because I, I hope my mum's not listening to this.
00:40:16
Speaker
I literally did no revision, just not none at all. I spent my revision time eating crisps and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Oh my god, that sounds like the perfect teenager. But yes, for me, I would have been the same. Except I didn't have a TV in my room, so... And there was nothing on.
00:40:35
Speaker
Right. So what, you grew up in the 20s? It's not a comment on you. Sorry, that was ADHD brain, totally threw that out there without thinking it through. Do you know what, there's another question. That's good. Are you quite funny? Do you have quite a good sense of humour? I mean, I think I'm hilarious. Yeah. You are funny, making me laugh.
00:40:52
Speaker
I am known for being funny, absolutely, but that can really go one of two ways. So I'm known for being funny by generally saying things that you don't expect people to say. And quite often I'll say things to kind of see how people react to them. But because I really struggle with that brain-mouth connectivity, sometimes the things that I throw out there are just too inappropriate.
00:41:13
Speaker
Right and did you go home afterwards and stress about the things that you said and how it might have come across or did you not? Yeah and I think that's something that people don't realise about both autistic people and people with ADHD is that actually we massively analyse the heck out of any social interactions that we've had and what I used to do is I used to send apology texts
00:41:36
Speaker
So I'd hang out with people being my usual jolly, either I'm hilarious or I'm really offending you self, and then they'd get a text like half an hour later like, hey, sorry that I was me today, you know, to try and deal with it, which obviously I don't do anymore because now that I recognise my awesomeness, I appreciate how lucky they were to spend time with me, but I hope that sounds less, that would sound less arrogant if I could see my face.
00:42:00
Speaker
Ellen's wondering if she's just made a mistake by saying that. Did I say that? When are people going to be complaining about me on Twitter? Yeah, I think I genuinely just kind of always came away with that cringe factor. Thinking back to the blogging days when we met and we would go to kind of blogging conferences and things, yeah. A, I wasn't taking anything that was being said in those sessions in whatsoever. So there was no point in me being there. And B, it was such a challenging social environment that I would go back to the hotel room every night and kind of go,
00:42:29
Speaker
Why? Why? Well, I totally understand that. And it contributes to the exhaustion, doesn't it, at the end of the day, because you can't just walk away from it and leave it behind. You have to analyse it all. Yeah, exactly. Overthinking and then catastrophising that what you've done is going to lead to some devastating outcome in which nobody likes you and your entire career is over.
00:42:50
Speaker
Is that another thing actually? Is that another part of it projecting forward to the worst possible outcomes and imagining them in great detail? This is how I think of it. I don't even get on a flare ground ride without predicting the bolt that comes loose and my carriage flying off into the distance and the end of Ella. You've seen Final Destination. Is it Final Destination? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:43:09
Speaker
Yeah, that wasn't really good for my catastrophizing tendencies. You know what, I mean, I don't really, I mean, all of these things, I have gotten better at managing, but I don't really do
Appreciating Neurodivergence
00:43:20
Speaker
anything. Even when I put out a new video or a new project, and I'm sure everyone gets this to some extent, but it will keep me awake at night thinking, oh my goodness, people are gonna see this, then they're gonna think this, and that's gonna lead to this, and you know, eventually leading to me on the front of the Daily Mail, which would be my worst nightmare newspaper to appear on the front of.
00:43:39
Speaker
as an idiot? Has the country's biggest idiot? I think you're a long way off that, Ella. Actually, you just said something, though, that I want to just explore a bit further. These things happen to everyone to some extent. And as you've been talking all the way through, I've been going, yeah.
00:43:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's me. I do that. I've done that. I'm a catastrophiser. I'm all of that. Perhaps I'm just a little bit on the extreme of neurotypical. Is it? I don't want to trivialise it, Ella, but is it like just an extreme version of stuff that everybody has?
00:44:14
Speaker
Well, I have a good answer for this because I answer this question a lot. So obviously people say, oh, I've got a bit of ADHD. I've got a bit of autism, which is quite a bit with OCD as well. I'm a little bit OCD, all of these conditions. And it's obviously trivializing and minimizing the experience of someone that has that. But I understand why people say it. It's because both ADHD and autism, the traits that are put together to diagnose those conditions are human traits.
00:44:39
Speaker
that everybody has some of. Everybody has the tendency to talk too much or to be distracted or to have a fixation on a particular interest. And so that can lead to people thinking, oh, maybe I've got this thing. But the major difference is that to be diagnosed with these conditions, you have to have a particular collection of these traits that add up together to be this particular diagnostic label. So just being a little bit distractible and prone to talking too much does not mean you have ADHD.
00:45:08
Speaker
you have to tick a certain number of boxes. But that's why people do it because they're not alien traits that only people with autism or ADHD have, they are all human traits. Yeah, and presumably that's why it takes such a long time for a lot of people to even go and ask.
00:45:24
Speaker
Ella, I do feel like we've covered everything but that's not possible. Is there anything else that you would say definitely needs to be said on this podcast? Oh gosh, that's a big ask. I mean, I would say that it takes all kinds of minds for a society to work and neurodivergence is essentially the collection of different kinds of minds that it takes
00:45:49
Speaker
for a society to work and therefore if we can learn to appreciate people with ADHD and autistic people and people with dyslexia and dyspraxia and Tourette's for the skills that they offer as much as we notice the challenges that they have, we're gonna live in a better, more efficient world. So my main kind of takeout that I always want to say on these things is if you are autistic or you have an autistic child or an ADHD child, you're brilliant just the way you are. And if everyone could believe that about themselves,
00:46:19
Speaker
then everyone's just going to be happier and my aim in life is for people to be happier. Ta-da! No, I think that's perfect. And if everyone can believe that and behave in that way, as in allow themselves to be out there,
00:46:34
Speaker
and engaging as them, then that makes everyone else in the world who doesn't get it necessarily much more informed, educated, diverse, interesting individuals as well. Right, exactly. So that's why I do what I do really. It's terrifying sometimes to be so vulnerable on the internet as myself, but if I can do it, then hopefully it will inspire other people to feel comfortable in their own skins too.
00:47:02
Speaker
And I don't want to be all Brene Brown because I know she's overused. I love Brene Brown. I've never mentioned Brene Brown on a podcast episode. So it's about time. In the wilderness, we all need to be vulnerable. You need vulnerability is the key to understanding anybody and their relationship to you. And so it is really, really important.
00:47:27
Speaker
Ella, thank you so much. Where can people find you, you specifically?
Connect with Purple Ella
00:47:32
Speaker
I know you're going to send me a raft of links, but where can people find you? Basically, on YouTube and Facebook, I am Purple Ella. On TikTok and Instagram, I am Purple Ella and Coco because I talk about my assistant's dog there. Where else might I be? Oh yeah, on Twitter, I am also Purple Ella. Do you know, this is where I normally round up and say, thank you very much, but
00:47:52
Speaker
You have an assistant's dog? Let's just have another question. I do. Yeah, I have an assistant's dog. I trained her myself using an organisation in the UK who support autistic people to train their own service dogs and put them through the public access test. And she has given me a level of independence in the world that I previously didn't have, which is amazing.
00:48:11
Speaker
she interrupts me if I look like I'm heading towards a meltdown so she'll come up to me and be like hey maybe you want to do something else she provides me with proprioceptive input when I'm stressed or anxious or post meltdown by putting her weight on top of me by basically lying on top of me and then
00:48:28
Speaker
Additionally, she just provides me with another focus if I'm out in the world from the chaos that is the outside world. I'm kind of entirely zoned on her, which makes it more possible for me to be there. I've had her for three years, but she's been my assistant's dog for about nine months now. She was in training for six months and then she passed her test in December.
00:48:47
Speaker
I've actually got goosebumps at the thought of a dog passing an assistance dog test. I love that. I need to talk to you more about that, but for another time. Yeah. So if you'd like to find out more about that, I have got videos about that on my channel, but also I'm particularly on TikTok and Instagram where I'm purple Ella and Coco. Not because someone had already taken purple Ella, although that is actually why.
00:49:07
Speaker
But because I can also talk about her on there. That's brilliant. I want to find out about that now anyway. What a lovely channel. Right. Okay. Ella, thank you so much for being with me today. I feel like that was super slick and really, really informative and a brilliant place for anyone who's an adult who thinks that ADHD might be in them or in their child or teenager to start. And I will definitely say, and I'm pointing down,
00:49:37
Speaker
It is down on YouTube as well as in podcast, isn't it? It is down. Yeah, that's correct. Go and look at all of Ella's links. Thank you, Ella, for everything. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for listening. If you like the podcast, please hit the subscribe button. And if you think this episode might help someone else that you know, please do share it with them.
00:50:03
Speaker
There are lots more episodes of the Teenage Kicks podcast. Do have a browse and see if I've covered anything else you might find useful. And if you have a suggestion of something you'd like to see talked about on the podcast, please do email me on teenagekickspodcast at gmail.com or send me a message on Instagram or Twitter at I am Helen Wills.
00:50:26
Speaker
I love to hear from my listeners and I'm always keen to hear how I can help more families cope with what can be some of the most complicated, but also the most wonderful years of parenting. Bye for now and see you next week.