How Do I Help My Son with ADHD Regulate His Emotions?

I wanna start with, uh, a question about, um, A DHD. It says, my son has has a DHD and has always been my Jekyll and hide. How do I help him with his emotional regulation when things don't go his way? His meltdowns often occur when he feels bored. Hmm. So, okay, so there's two or three components there. The one is the A DHD, the other is Dr. Jeko, Mr. Hyde type of a concept. And, and, and, and then emotional regulation, which we can put all of that together. And one of the core goals for, for this parent would be helping the child with emotional regulation. And I'm gonna go back to something that we talk about on parent guidance. It's a course on, on just understanding A DHD and the tendencies of it. But, but A DHD in of itself, Michelle, uh, the mind is racing. It, it can't, it doesn't really slow down. And it's looking for what we might say, uh, hyper arousal, the fastest, the most intense, by the way, did you see the squirrel? And, and so it's easily distracted. Now, the research on this is, is, is growing evidence, a body of evidence that children with A DHD do much better if they're able to use left, right hemisphere activities, especially, uh, throughout the day. So it's not just a one time, uh, they're gonna benefit from anything that's moving their hands. Uh, they are gonna do better in, in courses where they can use their hands, like woodwork plays, where they're moving, uh, exercising. One of the better things that we know is left right hemisphere activities, like maybe parents might like, like this as much, but skateboarding, anything that requires a movement of right, left tennis, um, that hand-eye coordination can be very beneficial. So the exercises that, that a child with A DHD engage in, uh, for example, the research shows that while running is good, it may not be as good as something like karate that requires left right hemisphere movement. So it's understanding that anything that activates the brain and in encouraging a left meaning left right hemisphere movement may be some of the most beneficial things for children. And, and the book I'm referring to, there is a book, uh, John Rady, R-A-T-E-Y, called Spark. He talks about the benefits of exercise, has a whole chapter in that book on the benefits of exercise, how it helps our minds. And that's actually true for all of us. If you notice people as they get older, gravitate more towards fixing up things, moving with their hands, something that's with their hands. So I, I would probably, my first, uh, part of the answer would be that the second part, emotional regulation, I'm going to guess that when your child is in a, I'm gonna call it A-A-D-H-D groove, now that's a term you probably won't hear anywhere. It's just they're in a a DH ADHD mindset. They're fixated. It, it, it's their mind's focused. If you interrupt them in that, that's probably where you're gonna get more of their anger. And, and so being a sensitive or aware of this, is this a good time, uh, maybe a good starting point, but helping your child recognize that there are times where we have to prepare to shut down that A DHD focused mind. Because A DHD may be a lot of different array of things that they're doing, but when they're hyper-focused, that's when we don't interrupt them very. If we do, we're not gonna get a good outcome because they're gonna be upset or irritated. So just generally speaking, hey, we're gonna need to shut down in five minutes or 10 minutes. Five minutes. Okay, now it's time to shut down. You've given them a preemptive awareness that there's gonna be a timeframe, and now it's time for us to go. I've, we've been talking about it. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, so I would suggest that you're gonna wanna preempt, uh, uh, anything that's sudden there, if, especially if they're fixed on something that they're doing, it will be much more effective because it's not disrupting them as much. Now, that's one concept. The other part you brought up is emotional regulation. Some of my favorite tools, and this is gonna cover probably many of the questions tonight. Emotional regulation may be the most important skill we can all learn. This isn't just for children or adolescents, this is something that we all can learn from emotional regulation. The ability to, so to speak, turn up our own emotional thermostat is a skill that takes time and it's learned. And I'll share a little bit more about that a little bit later on. But for now, that, that learning how to shut it down, uh, a really simple exercise, what I would refer to as the basic exercise, if you'll go, uh, online, type in the basic exercise, it's a great strategy to help, uh, access our emotional breaks of the brain. And I'll leave it there with that answer, Michelle.