Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Maggie.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Nicole, and welcome to the DAC Dyslexia and Coffee podcast. We are so happy you could join us. We are both moms and dyslexia interventionists who want to talk about our students and children. What dyslexia is, how it affects our kids. Strategies to help and topics related to other learning disabilities will also be covered in this podcast.
Parents are not alone, and we want to give voice to the concerns and struggles we are all having. This is a safe place to learn more about how to help our children grow and succeed in school and the world. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the conversation.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Hi, everybody. So, at the beginning of our show, we like to always start with the concept of the week. Concept of the Week is our opportunity as practitioners to kind of pull back the curtain a little bit and talk about topics that we would talk about in intervention sessions. So today's concept of the week is grapheme. A grapheme is a letter or group of letters that represent a single sound.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: This is really hard for me to learn, so can you give some examples?
[00:01:11] Speaker A: I absolutely can give some examples. So, some sounds in English are actually represented by two or more letters. So all the group would be one single grapheme, right. So if we're talking about, let's say the sound p, the grapheme would be the letter p.
But if we're talking about the sound ch, the grapheme would be ch or tcH.
Thank you.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: So we are going to be talking about codiagnoses, and this is a very big topic. Dyslexia is frequently will occur alongside another diagnosis. So our first diagnosis that we're going to talk about is ADHD.
It is very prevalent as a co diagnosis with dyslexia. Between 25% to 40% of students with dyslexia also have ADHD.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: So ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is a chronic condition that affects millions of children and often continues into adulthood. ADHD includes a combination of persistent problems such as difficulty sustaining attention, hyperactivity, and impulsive behavior. So while treatment won't cure ADHD, it can help a great deal with symptoms.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: There are different treatment options. Typically, some involve medications, and others are behavioral interventions.
Early diagnosis and treatment can make a big difference in the outcome.
So the primary features of ADHD include inattentive and hyperactive impulsive behavior.
Usually symptoms start before age twelve, and in some children they are noticeable as early as three years of age.
ADHD symptoms can be mild, moderate, or severe, and they continue into adulthood.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: So there are three subtypes of ADHD.
So those can be predominantly inattentive. So that means the majority of symptoms fall under inattention. Those are kind of your out to space, out to lunch Kai kids looking out the window, your daydreamer.
They could be predominantly hyperactive impulse.
The majority of those symptoms are kind of that, hyperactive and impulsive. I think when most people think of ADHD, that's probably the type that sticks out to people like those kids who wiggle all the time. They're out of their seats, they're needing to be in constant motion, that kind of outward hyperactivity. That's what I think most people recognize as ADHD.
And then the third type is the combined type. So this is a mix between the inattentive symptoms and the hyperactivity, impulsive symptoms.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: And this used to be called. They used to have different names. Now these all are lumped under ADHD, so you don't have to have all the combined, and you could have one part of it and not the other parts, and it would still be called ADHD?
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: In the previous diagnosis, they had something.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Called ADD, which is just attention deficit.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: Disorder, and they don't call it that anymore. It's just all under the ADHD umbrella now.
So inattention. A child who shows a pattern of inattention may often fail to pay close attention or details, to make careless mistakes in school work, or not be able to follow all the directions in the school task.
They have trouble staying focused in tasks or play.
They appear not to listen, even when spoken to directly, and they have difficulty following through on the instructions and fail to finish schoolwork or chores.
They have difficulty organizing tasks and activities.
They avoid or dislike tasks that require focused mental effort.
In one of the examples is homework.
They lose items needed for tasks or activities, for example, toys, school assignments, pencils, etcetera. They become easily distracted. They forget to do daily activities, such as forgetting to do their chores or maybe brush their teeth.
They forget everything, even with reminders and having it set by the door. So I have an example here of my daughter forgetting her clarinet, but this morning actually was actually a better example.
We got in the car. We're in the car line at school, and she goes, mom, I forgot my backpack.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Oh, sweet girl.
We have had that happen in our house as well.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: I'm like, but you're going to school. Your backpack was by the door, and she just left it there. Pretty much every Wednesday is clarinet day for her. She has banned. And almost every Wednesday we're running the clarinet to school at some point because it just doesn't go with her.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: So it's not that she doesn't have the reminders because we have a reminder that goes off right before she leaves school to take the clarinet, but it also doesn't always happen. So that would be a great example of the inattentive type.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: The inattentive type.
I want to add here, too, that many times, and there's a lot of reasons for this, but this is one of the reasons why ADHD was missed in girls so much is often. Not always, but often.
When our ADHD shows up in girls, it is this type, and there's a lot of reasons for that. And a lot of it is they're good at masking symptoms.
You know, there's a big difference between a hyperactive girl and a hyperactive boy in terms of how we respond to them. So that.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: And also there's more of a social awareness sometimes with these girls. And so they know that something's going on, but they don't know what. And so they do try to hide some of these things from others because they want to be like their peers.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Yep.
So hyperactivity, impulsivity. I think for most people without a background in teaching and in the classroom and things, I think for most people, if they just hear ADHD, like, if we took a poll, I think most people would be most familiar with this hyperactivity impulsivity piece. So a child who shows a pattern of hyperactivity and impulsivity, those kids often fidget or tap their hands or feet. They squint warm in their seats.
Yeah. Like our guys that we see here at the office. Right. Have you ever seen a student fall out of a chair, Nicole?
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Yes, almost every day.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: Yes, every day. You know, it's those kind of things. Having difficulty staying seated in the classroom or in other situations where sitting down is expected. Those are the kids when they're little, they're getting up off the carpet during story time, right. And their teachers are like, what do you doing back here?
[00:09:22] Speaker B: You know, my son, when we were eating dinner, and it would take him hours because he couldn't stay in the seat more than two minutes at a time when he was really little, and he'd get up, take a bite, and then he wouldn't stay there.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: Yes. That constant motion. And not even always, like, physical motions. My son is a verbalizer, and he will make, like, a noise, right? So it's like, that's his motion. He's vibrating his vocal folds. That's moving around.
He run around climb when it is not appropriate to do so. Same, same having trouble playing or doing activities quietly.
Big struggles with that in my house. Talk too much and over share.
We see a lot of that in the office, too.
Blurred out answers. So interrupting the questioner like those. Are those kids? A lot of times with ADHD, it's actually processing information, some information faster. So they anticipate that question. They know what it's going to be and they just can't help themselves. Like, they cannot not blurt it out, interrupt and intrude on others conversations. We've been trying our best at the dinner table in the evening to have each kid kind of share a little bit about their day.
And it is, you know, you interrupted me and it. Oh. Oh my. Yes, that's a thing.
So while the exact cause of ADHD, it's not clear, research efforts continue. Factors that may be involved in the development of ADHD include genetics, the environment, or just problems with the central nervous system at key moments in development.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Excuse me. So there are some risk factors for ADHD. So these can include blood relatives such as a parent or sibling with ADHD, or another mental health disorder, exposure to environmental toxins such as lead, some mainly in paint and pipes in older buildings.
They think maybe maternal drug use, alcohol use, or smoking during pregnancy. That one.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: It's hard to find a real hard link there. Yeah, hard to find a real hard link for a lot of these. These are all what we call correlational, not causational.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: Correct.
Premature birth is another one. ADHD can make life difficult for children.
They often struggle in the classroom, which can lead to academic failure or judgment by other children and adults.
They tend to have more accidents and injuries of all kinds compared to other children who do not have ADHD.
They tend to have poorer self esteem, and they more likely are going to have trouble interacting with and being accepted by peers and adults.
Unfortunately, it also shows that there's an increased risk of alcohol and drug abuse and other delinquent behaviors. Obviously, with that impulsivity, they're going to try things more often. They're going to come out and be the first one to do something.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: Yeah, and a lot of that, too. Is this where we often see that increased risk of alcohol and drug abuse is students who do not or kids that actually are not diagnosed until later?
That's when they're at most risk for that kind of thing. Some of it is self medication. Some of it is, like you said, that impulsivity piece and not understanding the social dynamics of a situation.
A lot of our guys with ADHD, they really struggle with that piece, too. And so there's a lot of factors that can complicate that.
The poor self esteem part, too. A lot of that is that repeated experience of failure or not fitting in or not getting it right.
That can lead to that poor self esteem over time.
And that, too, we see a lot different outcomes for kids that are diagnosed earlier and treated earlier.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: And then these difficulties are amplified when you also have a diagnosis with dyslexia.
Yeah.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: The biggest symptom overlap we see between students with dyslexia and ADHD is in the area of executive functioning.
Executive functioning is often described as the CEO of the brain. This takes place in the prefrontal cortex, which is one of the last areas of the brain to fully develop.
Their saying, really? It used to kind of be like, okay, an adult male's prefrontal cortex is about developed by 25. They're saying more like 30.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Yeah, they keep pushing that.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Yeah, they sure do.
They sure do.
So, I mean, the real truth is, we don't know for sure. We just know it is one of the last places in the brain to develop, and this is our area. Right. That is organization, following directions, time management, flexibility, emotional regulation, self monitoring, processing speed, working memory, and initiation or starting a task. This can often be a student's biggest barrier. I often see students, right, they're your kids that just stare at a homework page, and it's blank, and they just stare, and they can't. They just cannot move themselves to get started. This is also the kind of thing that leads to.
My real hope is that we're getting away from this term. Right. This, like, lazy kid. I have not heard that anywhere mainstream in quite a long time, thank goodness. But that is the kind of thing that used to be really. Well, those are your lazy kids. They just don't want to. They're just not going to do it. And they really. It isn't that. It's that their brain is giving them all these reasons to not do it. And some of those, by the way, are fair resets.
Right? Some of them, they're not even giving the correct tools to be able to do some of this stuff. So, yeah, I'm not getting started on that.
That can be a really hard one. And me, too. I see myself in that big time.
Like, just today, I was really cozy, drinking my coffee, snuggling my dog, and I was like, I don't want to go to work. I just don't want to go. I'm fine if I'm here, but I don't want to go. That's that part.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: So let's go through some, maybe examples of each of those.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: So, like the organization. What would be a great example of that?
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. So the organization piece. Right. I think when we think organization, we may think physical items, but that can also mean, I think of it in terms of writing. Okay. So if I'm framing that in an academic task, those are those kids that cannot put a paragraph together because they're all over the place. Trouble sequencing things also.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: That's a good example. Yeah.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: Following directions. I would say we see either not following them in the correct order. So, like, if they're giving a task for school and they have to do step a, b, and c, maybe they're skipping step b and they can't figure out why it didn't work, or they're mixing them up because they read them and then they didn't follow the correct order. So maybe they're doing CBA and then obviously, like in a science experiment that is not going to work.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Yes. Or, you know, the kids usually can keep in mind, like, the first direction and the last direction, but the middle gets totally lost.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: Time management, there's a lot of examples for this.
Be able to complete the task in, like, a timely manner. Like brushing your teeth should probably, probably take five to ten minutes. But if they're still in the bathroom for 30 minutes, maybe you should check.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And just not understanding truly what time is. Time is so abstract and, you know, something like taking a shower, if you ask a kid, how long does it take you to take a shower? They might say like ten minutes. They're not understanding that the task of taking a shower is way bigger than the physical time. You're just scrubbing yourself in the shower. It's how long does it take you to turn on the water for it to get hot enough for you, for you to step in? They're not understanding how to break it up into the sequence of steps. And so then it's like, oh, well, it's 45 minutes later. I thought that was only going to make me, you know, ten minutes. There's a big difference.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Flexibility.
That's a good one, too, of like, if you're on a schedule, let's say, at school, and something changes, there's a fire alarm, or you need to switch classes because somebody broke the mercury thermometer. That kind of ages me there.
Then having to move to that other room would just totally throw the student off and they cannot get back on track for the rest of the day.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Yeah, that one is a hard one, and that is a skill that can be worked on. And I think everybody has a certain kind of preset point to how flexible you are. And that's one that I think we could all stand a little work on. Being flexible.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: I agree.
Emotional regulation.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: The big emotions.
Yes, the big emotions. These poor guys that just, you know, it's so difficult. We talk a lot in our house about, okay, you can feel any feeling that you feel, right. We can't really control the feelings that we're feeling, but it's now what are we going to do about it? So being able to feel, let's say, angry, but still be able to go about your day and do what is expected of you. So, so difficult with our ADHD guys.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: Which kind of lends into the self monitoring piece of how are you feeling? And being able to describe what you're feeling and being able to be able to use strategies to help you get through whatever is going on.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: You know, if you're doing something, it's that ability to be like, am I on track? Am I not on track? How would I even know that?
That's that self monitoring piece.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Right?
Processing speed.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: Yeah, this one is interesting.
Some people with ADHD have a very, very fast processing speed. And those are often those kids that are going to interrupt. They're going to, you know, see things, do things right away. Go, go, go.
This can also be really situational. Right.
A lot of our students with ADHD and dyslexia. Right. This executive functioning piece.
Dyslexia does involve executive functioning. So all of this. Yes, we're talking about ADHD today, but even if your child does not have ADHD, but they do have dyslexia, this is important things to be aware of.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: Yeah. The research has shown, new research has shown that it's a very, it's very impactful for our students with dyslexia, too.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: Yes.
But yes, sometimes they have that very, very fast processing speed, and sometimes their processing speed is quite a bit slower. So those are the kind of students that you might ask them a question, and then if they're not answering you right away, that also, I sadly do see often it's like, well, they're just not answering me. Like, give them a minute. I think of this scene in Zootopia where they go to the DMV. You know what I'm talking about?
They're talking to the sloths.
The sloths all work in the DMV in Zootopia. If you haven't seen it, then I'm not sure that you're parenting right now. No, I'm just kidding.
I'm just kidding. But they go to the DMV, and it's all sloths working at the DMV. So they're telling a joke, and then the sloth is processing, right. Sometimes give it a minute and they.
Maybe they are processing. It's just.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: They're just going to catch up a little bit later, right.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: It's me without caffeine in the morning.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: Working memory.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: Oh, yes.
This one is a hard one.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: It is.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: This one is a hard one because there's not a lot of strategy.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: This one is a hard right to be working memory, first of all, is being able to hold things in your brain in a very short amount of time and then being able to work with that information right away. So it's kind of like in real time, somebody's explaining something to you or you're reading something, and then boom, you have to turn around and use it right away.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: And sometimes the following directions piece is linked to this one, right. Because if their working memory is maybe processing it a little slower, they might not be able to follow the directions yet because they're still in that piece of trying to file it and figure out where to go.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: And then initiation, which is like starting a task, I think we kind of explained that. But there's also staying on task, which I think is also an important one to talk about for ADHD, too, because, know, being able to sustain your attention or be able to do a task for the amount of time that it needs to be done to get it completed is also a struggle with some.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: Of our learners, you know, and with ADHD, too, I think what we didn't say here, which is pretty important to cover if it's an undesirable task that is so much more difficult for a student with ADHD than it is for a neurotypical kid, often a student with ADHD doing a desirable task. Those are those kids that, man, they could sit there. My son could play with cars from the second he wakes up to this, to the minute he goes to bed, and that is what he could do for an entire day. Really good.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: So sometimes it can be a superpower.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: Yes, yes. But it's like turning those undesirable tasks into something more desirable.
That is.
That can be tricky.
But it's also one of those. Yeah, those undesirable tasks for a kid with ADHD.
I'm not sure that I appreciated that part of it as a young teacher, and it was definitely or mom or wife.
And that has been one that I have had to shift my thinking a lot around.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: So today we provided a lot of background information on ADHD. In part two of our next podcast, we are going to dive into how we're going to help those students.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: So we'd like to end our episodes by talking about what's going on in our lives outside of dyslexia, so outside the office, so to speak.
This topic, ADHD, it has a real presence in my household.
My husband has ADHD. My son is in the process of getting a diagnosis. We know what it is for sure. We're just getting that on paper at this point. We struggle to get organized, stay organized, regulate our emotions, I will say, and I really have to kind of shout out, um, my son lately this school year, he has been, like, on fire. Get himself ready for school. He has been ready for school every single day earlier than expected. We got this little organization been for him, and he has just owned it and been so successful. And he's feeling really good about himself, which is kind of night and day from where we were at this time last year. I think there are a lot of factors that's playing into that right now, but I think putting those supports in place for him has changed the game big time. So right now, as it stands, late September, we are doing great. So we'll check back in in January.
Things change.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: For our household. This also impacts us on a daily basis. All three of our children have a diagnosis of ADHD.
This makes our house very active. We struggle with organization daily, and we have to keep helping our children with their homework every day to keep them on track.
So there's a lot of supports that we also have in place in our house that really help us get through a day, a week, a month, or even your year.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: Right?
That's dating myself.
All right, well, thank you for joining us on Dyslexia and Coffee DAC podcast. Please follow us on social media and reach out if you have any questions or would like us to discuss a topic. If you like our show, be sure to follow and give us a rating. That is what really helps us reach more people and being able to help more people is why we do this. So thank you so much for listening.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: Thank you.
