Meltdowns, mysteries, and multiple diagnoses

Parenting can feel like a detective mission, especially when your kid has more than one diagnosis.

Mom (and yes, a very insightful therapist) Camila de Onis shares her story of tracking her daughter’s meltdowns, sensory triggers, and unexpected behaviors to figure out that her daughter has ADHD and OCD — and is academically gifted to boot. 

From mysterious school episodes to blowups at home, she takes listeners through the twists, dead ends, and “aha” moments of seeking evaluations, understanding diagnoses, and learning how to help a kid whose brain is a truly fascinating puzzle.

• Read: All about evaluations

• Listen: How I’m navigating my child’s two diagnoses

• Read: Sensory processing and anxiety

Jessica: Figuring out your child's challenges can feel like a mystery. Like you yourself need to be a specialist to see what's going on.

Camila: I was on the PTA at the time, and so I would go to a lot of school events and I went down like for the meetings, they have the teachers watch the kids and do some kind of activity. And there was an activity where they pulled up YouTube to demonstrate some kind of drawing thing. And she just completely lost it.

So I was dropping her off, right? She sees the screen. She looks terrified. And was like, "Mom, I don't feel good. Like, you know, I want to go home. I don't want to be here, blah, blah, blah." And she loves to draw. So I was like, "Wait, what's going on?" Like, you're here with your friends. Like, what's the big deal?

Jessica: Hey, this is "Everyone Gets a Juice Box," a show for parents of kids who learn and think differently. I'm Jessica Shaw.

Today I'm going to talk to Camila de Onis, who's both a therapist and a mom living in New York City. The older of her two daughters needed someone to understand, to have eyes on her, to figure something out.

I love talking to Camila because, as I said, she herself is a therapist. And while she doesn't work with young kids, she has studied human behavior, so she was able to trust her instincts when she saw that maybe she had to call some attention to her child's challenges, even when other people said there was no attention needed.

Sometimes one of our kids may be doing mostly fine in school. They might have friends, they might excel academically, maybe even all of the above, but something is still off. Sometimes we're told, "Oh, it's not that bad," or "They just don't meet the criteria."

In Camila's case, she knew to trust her gut and started really paying attention to things, whether phobias or doodling or even things that were incredibly regulating like swimming. Eventually, Camila got her daughter an evaluation and a diagnosis. But it was a journey to get there. Here's her story.

What was the moment where you thought, "Oh, huh, this is something I need to look at, I need to pay attention to"?

Camila: Yeah, so there wasn't a moment. There was a series of moments and behaviors and particularly meltdowns that I think over time — and I think it's really important to include the pandemic in this because with parenting during that time, you know, it's not that we're fully out of it. But like during, you know, the shutdown and all these, I think it was really hard to parse out like, is this, are we all just super anxious because of this time? You know, is it like, what is what?

And so I would say it took years to really have the instinct to say like, "Okay, we need more support here. This is not, this is not typical parenting."

And I think part of that became because we have a second child that is neurotypical. There was a lot of, like I would never want to externally compare them, but inwardly, there was a lot of like, "Oh wow, all these parenting strategies that I've been trying to do and don't work with my older kid really works with my little one." And so I think it was, it was a combination of both having a sibling and also thinking about patterns over time.

So meltdowns that just, you know, were really outsized and lasted a really long time. And as she got older, seemed like inappropriate, you know, and like different than her peers.

And I think internally in terms of the dysregulation as parents, my reaction was so intense and like, frankly, like rageful at times. Like, why, like, why is this so hard? And so I think that it reached a kind of crisis, you know, where I felt at the verge of tears all the time. You know, I could tell like things were so hard for her. But at other times, you know, she's, she's so lovely and, you know, she's so empathic and creative and fun.

And so it just felt like we would have these flips.

Jessica: Big flips. I hear you. Like very big, going from one end of the spectrum to the other end of the spectrum. And it's you get a kind of, at least I did, get a real emotional whiplash.

Camila: Totally. So we reached a kind of crescendo in the spring of last year where we sought out a therapist and we were like, "Look, we don't know if we need parent coaching, if we need therapy like as a couple, if she needs therapy, like we don't, we don't know what's going on."

And basically gave this therapist like a, like a whole history of our kid. We did two or three sessions and then she came back to us and was like, "Look, I think this is not just behavioral. I think that you should get a neuropsych evaluation because there seems to be more going on here, and I think you really need diagnostic clarity as a first step." And so that's when we, as a therapist, I started to talk to other therapists for recommendations. It was like, "How, how do I go about this?"

(05:21) What is a neuropsych evaluation?

Jessica: Hey, I want to break into the conversation quickly to describe what Camila means when she says "neuropsych evaluation." This is shorthand for a neuropsychological evaluation, which looks at a wide range of brain functions and skills. It's different from a school evaluation in that it can diagnose kids, whereas most school-based exams can't. I'll put a link to some more info in the show notes. But now, back to Camila.

When you said that you reached a kind of crisis point, what, how old was she at that, at that point?

Camila: Yeah, so she, we started to seek it out towards the end of her first grade. And so she was, you know, kind of newly seven years old. And if I think back, you know, during the pandemic, she turned two at the start. Which, you know, we were, we were home, obviously. And then she started like a little play school when she was two and a half.

And even at that time, I'd say like six months into whatever you want to call it, play school, daycare, you know, it was Montessori, which as a first-time parent, I was like very precious about and thought, "Oh, this is, this is what I want for my kid." Turns out it was not a good fit for my kid. And they were seeing like a lot of difficulty with transitions, a lot of like kind of spaciness and just being deeply absorbed in whatever she's doing.

And in terms of, in particular, the Montessori thing, it's like, it's a lot of structure, it's a lot of cleaning up and like a lot of executive functioning tasks, you know, and having like little jobs and being good workers. And also creative and all these things, but I think that fundamentally, she just was not as able to move through transitions as expected.

And so they did evaluate her at the time remotely because of COVID. And nothing, she didn't meet any criteria. She's always had a lot of sensory stuff. And so she sucked her fingers, like she, there were things that she clearly really benefited from, you know, in terms of like sensory tools and, you know, weighted blankets.

And so basically what was recommended when we started 3K, she actually was in an ICT class, which is really helpful.

Jessica: Which is an integrated class. Yeah.

Camila: Yep. So they have kids who have IEPs and then gen ed kids. And then she went on to pre-K, was in a gen ed class, was very happy there. Again, not really like so much on our mind. And then she went into kindergarten and was actually in a Nest class. Do you know about Nest?

Jessica: No, I don't.

Camila: It's a classroom that is set up for kids with autism, and then there's also, it's kind of similar to ICT in that it's going to be split. There's gen ed kids and kids with autism diagnoses. And so it's set up in a, it's really great. It's like set up for neurodivergence.

So our school was like piloting the program in Queens, I believe. And so we were one of the, you know, one of the first schools in that area to have a Nest classroom, and now it's continued through the grades. And it's amazing because, you know, the teachers have this specialized training in neurodivergence, and so she really benefited from that.

But towards the end of first grade, we were starting to notice like a lot of phobias were emerging for her. In particular, we went to visit family, and we flew on an airplane. And unfortunately, she saw in between the seats like a horror movie that was playing, which we didn't realize until she kind of looked at me and was like completely white, drained of color, and then started like screaming and wouldn't stop until we landed.

Jessica: Oh, poor thing.

Camila: And it was really upsetting, really, you know, like terrible. But then it seemed to be fine. Like we were on vacation for a week, came back, wasn't really spoken of again. And then we started to notice, this is like connecting dot stuff. Like we started to notice that every time we went to a restaurant where there was a screen, which is many, you know, there's always like the bar and like sports playing or something, she would need to go to the bathroom, saying her stomach hurt and she basically wouldn't leave.

And so we’d have to leave the restaurant. And this happened, I don't know, upwards of five times. And then I started to notice that she, I would get calls from the school nurse like multiple times a week that her stomach was hurting and, you know, so she was hanging out with the nurse.

And so then finally, I told the school nurse, I was like, "Can you do me a favor? Can you find out if there's screens in the class before she comes to see you?" She's like, "Yeah, sure." And it turns out that's what was happening. Every time a screen came up in class, she would go to the nurse's office.

(10:20) Journaling assisting with behavior issues

Camila: Wow. And at home, she was really avoiding like all TV, and even like if we were on our phones, she would start to get really agitated. And what really helped was actually journaling. Like I could tell something was going on, but she wasn't verbalizing it. And so finally I was like, "Hey, if you can't talk about it, like, do you think you can write about it?" And so she wrote to me in her journal, and it turns out that she was terrified of commercials.

Because of the unexpected, right? Because there could be a trailer for the movie that she saw. And so became this fixation, like this movie became this fixation that was popping up like whack-a-mole in all these different settings. And so finally when we made that connection, we were like, "Oh, wow, this was actually like a profoundly traumatic experience for you that is showing up in all these kind of seemingly random ways."

And at the same time, there was also a lot of behavioral stuff going on at home. Just, you know, she'd be totally fine at school, but then she'd get home and she would be a mess and she, you know, she'd be screaming at us, like she'd be like just completely dysregulated in ways that were confusing.

Jessica: I have like 7,000 questions from everything you just said. First of all, how did you put it together that it was that that the trigger was that plane ride? Yeah.

Camila: I’m trying to remember exactly. I think--

Jessica: I'm just so impressed that you were able to sort of like, you know, like a detective, trace that back. Although, as you and I know, it's kind of like it might have been something else. You know, there might have been--

Camila: Yeah. Right. It's um, I could notice that with screens, she was anticipating something really scary was gonna happen. And this also happened. I was on the PTA at the time, and so I go to a lot of school events, and I went down for the meetings, they have the teachers watch the kids and do some kind of activity. And there was an activity where they pulled up YouTube to demonstrate some kind of drawing thing.

And she just completely lost it because I was there. So I was dropping her off, right? She sees the screen, she looks terrified. And was like, I, you know, saying something else like, "Mom, I don't feel good. Like, you know, I want to go home, I don't want to be here, blah, blah, blah." And she loves to draw.

So I was like, "Wait, what's going on?" You know, like this is, you're gonna like learn to draw whatever. Like it just didn't seem, again, as a parent, I was like annoyed, right? Cause I was like, "I'm gonna go to this meeting." Like you're here with your friends, like, what's the big deal?

But then again, with the screen, I was like, "What is going on with the screen?" Like there is something deeply troubling you. And then I, I think because I was just so overwhelmed in that moment with trying to negotiate different things happening, I started sobbing with her.

And, and then went to the teacher and was like, "This is happening a lot for her. You know, like, what are, I'm, you know, we're overwhelmed. Like just kind of really opening up to her that this was, we felt like we were in crisis because we just don't know, we didn't know how to help."

And the teacher, what we set up with the teacher was like, if she says her stomach hurts, it's because she needs space from the screen. And so she was allowed to go into the hallway and read. But it's not gonna be like a sustainable intervention, right? Like it's, it's an avoidance of the thing that scares her.

And as a therapist, I'm like, "Well, we got to expose you to the thing that scares you."

Jessica: Yes.

Camila: Right? In, in like manageable ways. And so that, that was kind of the piece around like, as a parent, she needs me to be like her safe person, with me and her dad. And I can't also be the person who's like nudging her to to do a scary thing.

Jessica: Yes.

Camila: I can to a limit, right? But I'm also, like, I think that's confusing.

Jessica: For her.

Camila: Yeah.

Jessica: You need to be her home base, her emotional home base, and someone needs to be able to sort of push her into a little bit of discomfort. It's very interesting that all this happened in first grade. It was kind of the same for me. I feel like I'm like looking at an emotional mirror in some ways because first grade also, like my daughter, CPSE, IEP, um, and there was something about, and she was also in um, what's it, what was what's the like C-T, what's the--

Camila: ICT?

Jessica: The ICT, she was also in an ICT kindergarten. And in first grade, she had a really old-school teacher. Like had been teaching at the public school for forever and was a wonderful teacher, but did not, just was regimented in a way that didn't work for my child, you know.

And so when she kind of couldn't sit still, it was like, "Okay, the whole class is gonna be here sitting on the floor. You go sit at the tables and put your head or whatever it was." And there's, you know, I felt like there was, I don't know, something almost a little punitive about it. And it was, it's hard because as a parent, it's just like, "Oh, like--"

(15:47) The “gray area” of developmental challenges

Jessica: I mean it's frustrating on many levels. As a parent, it's like, "Oh my gosh, why, why is my kid the one who can't sit on the floor with everyone?" And who's going to help me? I mean, I always, I always felt like, from what I observed, if a kid was very, very, very obviously needed intervention, they got intervention. And if a kid definitely didn't, they definitely didn't.

But there was this huge canyon of kids in the, in like on a bubble, you know, in this gray area that I always feel like people don't necessarily know how to navigate that and what to advise and what to. So as a parent, I always felt a little bit like, it was like, "Well, she could be this, but it could be that."

And then as you said, you know, kids are young, kids develop at different paces. All kids do. And like, you know, and I, and the fact that there's sometimes it's like, "Well, they need to hit this milestone and this," that's not real. That's so as a parent, you're factoring that in as well. Um, so it's tough.

Camila: It's really tough. And I think the punitive piece is important because I think what ends up happening is that kids like this get a lot of negative attention that's not overt or direct necessarily, but it's a lot of like, you know, like put on your shoes, like a lot of repeating of tasks, right? In ways that get more and more irritated.

And then can turn into a blowout. And then I think with a classroom that's set up more traditionally, you know, I feel for the teacher because she's got so many kids that she has to keep on task, right? And in line. And so you have a kid who's like fidgety and doing a lot of side talk and pacing the room. Like it's, it's hard to know how to integrate that.

And so what was happening for her was, we would get feedback like, "You know, she does a lot of side talk, like she's whistling all the time." And, you know, then we would ask her about it. And whistling helped her to focus. She's a massive doodler. She's constantly doodling. And so everything she has has drawings all over it. Which, you know, in a traditional classroom, you can't be writing all over your stuff. It's just, it's just how it is.

But I'm actually laughing because yesterday I got one of her math tests back and the math test itself looks pretty clean, and then you flip it over and there's like a whole marriage scene.

Jessica: And were you like, "As a therapist, I'm totally going to evaluate like what she's drawing, the fact that it's a marriage." And...

Camila: She's very interested in romance right now. But yeah, she's like not into crushes, but into romance.

Jessica: Sure, sure.

(18:41) The common advice that can be misleading

Jessica: I'm curious if you heard this as well because this was something that always confused and frustrated me. When you said that your daughter would keep it together enough at school and then would come home and have these meltdowns and would be, you know, just like volatile and whatever. People said to me a lot, "As long as your kid keeps it together in school, don't worry about anything. If they fall apart at home, that's the best case scenario. You just want--" And I always thought that's so interesting that that's the perception of people, by the way, people in, you know, authoritative positions at her school would say that to me. And I, it always kind of confused me. Did you have that as well?

Camila: We didn't have it so explicitly. It was more when we were seeking the IEP, kind of like, "What's going on? Like, why are you concerned?" you know? This kid does so well academically. Like she's so sweet, she's so empathic. She, you know, she's got friends. Like, what, what's the problem?

And so I think when something is more subtle, and I think there is a gendered piece here too, because a lot of girls with this profile, it goes undetected because they're compensating all the time and they might not be overtly acting out in the same way that maybe some like hyperactive boys are, right? And so I think that even the behaviors that might be similar in terms of like a symptom are not deemed similar because of gendered ideas.

And so, and as a therapist too, I'm always like, "Well, is it across all settings?" Right? Like, is this behavior across all settings? Like, is it more situational? Like, you know, is this like an interpersonal? Like so I'm, I have my therapist brain on when I'm thinking that too, because yes, she seems to do okay in school. But then clearly is like releasing something when she's home because she's been working so hard at school to be okay.

And then by second grade now, which is when we, so we started the neuropsych over the summer, and then it was like wrapping up sort of the beginning of the school year. And this is when some more like very obvious OCD stuff was coming up, where she wasn't so, she was doing okay, again, in terms of classroom and like, you know, doing her her work and all that sort of.

But I think this is the age, and this is what I think about as a therapist too, is that in terms of that negative attention, particularly from us that she was getting at home, um, but then also comparing herself to peers around seven, developmentally, like this age range is like when you start to internalize sort of self-concept, right, and ideas of self.

And so she was starting to say things, I think because of more people-pleasing tendencies, like, you know, "Are you mad at me if I do this?" or, you know, "Do you think I'm bad because of X?" Um, and so that's when I was starting to notice like, "Oh, you're, you're like internalizing a lot of this in ways that are actually concerning me."

Jessica: Yeah.

Camila: Because it's not going to be as obvious. Right? That internalizing of her identity. You know, I'm thinking about even with "Inside Out," like that scene where she's like plucking those parts of herself that used to be so robust, you know, and they're starting to wither away. All those positive, you know, unabashedly confident qualities. Um, and so that was where I was like, "Oh, I'm so glad we're doing this because I want a framework. I want something to understand how to like help her understand herself."

(22:30) Diagnoses providing a framework

Camila: So she has ADHD and OCD, and then she's, it's the term "twice exceptional." She's like highly intelligent in certain categories, particularly verbally.

Jessica: You're like, "Yes, I'm well aware of that from her yelling at me."

Camila: So all of it made sense, right? And I think even this term 2e, "twice exceptional" is, it's interesting, but I feel like it can also be alienating too because I don't want to come off like, "I have a really smart kid and like this is--" I've been struggling with how to talk about diagnosis because it, I think it can, I'm highly aware of like how it might be received.

And at the same time, I'm trying to think about it diagnostically to think about like, "Well what is, what does that combination mean?" And what the psychologist said was, "I tend to think about high intelligence as a kind of neurodivergence onto itself. Like anything you have, anytime you have something out of the norm that's, you know, in a certain end of the spectrum, it's outside of the norm."

And so particularly with the ADHD neurodivergence plus being sort of exceptional in this way, it can create a kind of rigidity in emotional, um, you know, regulation, just being able to be adaptive and flexible in situations, I think are much harder for her. And so if I think about a Venn diagram, it's like you've got the ADHD, the OCD, the like, you know, being really a smart kid and like all these things sort of interplaying. And so it's very hard to parse out, I think like sort of what symptom, let's say, is what.

But I listened to somebody recently talk about how like all kids, all people have peaks and valleys in terms of their emotional landscape. And with a kid with this profile, you just think about the peaks and valleys being way more extreme. And so I think that relates to what we notice in terms of that kind of snapping that happens for her where something that is clearly in when she's in a rigid place, something that sets her off will be so dysregulating.

That I think for other kids, they could, you know, they can kind of like see it a little differently or they can, you know, I notice with my other kid that like when she's really upset, she may have a big tantrum, but then we can process it and be like, "This is why I was mad, or this is why I said no to this." She's just like, "Oh yeah, you know." Like, you know, there's, there's like a kind of um, comedown that feels different.

Jessica: Yes.

Camila: Whereas with my older kid, that comedown might come like two days later where she's like, "Hey, sorry about that thing that happened."

Jessica: Yeah.

Camila: And as a therapist, I'm always like, "Let's process this," right? But it's not, it's too much. It's too much to process.

Jessica: In the moment.

Camila: In the moment, but also even kind of later, because I think that with a kid like her, it's like this thing, processing has to happen. It's like that typical like teen, it's like you have the best conversations when you're driving, you know, or you're walking.

Jessica: Totally.

Camila: It's like it has to happen like on the side. It is usually by me talking about myself, you know, like with OCD, I told her that I really struggled with OCD. And so I gave her examples of like my own ruminative thinking and rituals. And she was like, "Oh," like super interested, you know, because that's who she is. She's very deeply interested in other people and very attuned. And so she was listening and like, "Oh, like you feel that way?"

Like, and so then we started to talk about intrusive thoughts as like a kind of monster. And we named it and drew it and and so there was a lot of like trying to conceptualize this experience that really like it throws her off during the day.

And so when you think about ADHD and inattention – so her ADHD is combined type, which means there's inattention and hyperactivity. And so, you know, how do you know when she's sort of like spacey? Is it because she's actually having these intrusive thoughts or is it because she's just not paying attention or she's absorbed in something else? So again, with that Venn diagram, it's like it's hard to know what's what. And that's part of our ongoing work is to like have that framework and to know how to support her.

Jessica: Yeah. So the evaluator, the psychologist who did the neuropsych gave the two of you the, "Hey, this these are her diagnoses."

Camila: Yeah. And, you know, it was basically like, "Hey, let me tell you about your brain and like what I learned in, you know, hanging out with you." And I noticed, I was, I was nearby when it was happening. It was like on the computer. And I noticed that for her, for my daughter, she was like really filling in all of the, you know, if she, if she said something like, if the psychologist said something like, "It might be hard to sit still in your chair in class." And then my daughter would kind of elaborate on that for her.

And so I started to notice what the benefit of a therapist would be frankly for her, to like talk about her experience in ways that she's not going to tell me about.

Or she might randomly tell me about, but she's interested and excited to tell her about it. And this is where I started to also connect back to the school nurse because I talked to my daughter recently and I was like, "You know, I've noticed, I don't get the calls from the nurse anymore, but then my daughter will just mention how she was in the nurse's office like quite a lot." I was like, "So what, like what's going on?" You know, in the nurse's office, "Are you just hanging out?" And she's like, "Oh, you know, I, I hit my knee or, you know, some random ailment." And I was like, "Oh, that sounds kind of nice to be in the nurse's office." And she's like, "Oh yeah, I get a snack and like, you know, I just talk."

Jessica: Yeah.

Camila: And so that was like, you know, this is in terms of next steps, I think, you know, I was joking with my friend, it's kind of like having a baby and, you know, you leave the hospital and they're like, "Go forth." It's like we have this diagnosis and I'm like, "Okay."

Jessica: Now what?

Camila: Now what do we do now?

Jessica: When you got the diagnosis, when you read and met with the therapist about her diagnosis, what was that like for you?

Camila: It, you know, it was kind of, it wasn't as profound. Like I think it was kind of like, "Oh yeah, that makes sense." you know? Um, I think it was validating. It just felt like, okay, we have a framework now. We have a bit of a roadmap to say this is what is going on for her. It helps me to understand diagnostically what's going on with her, but also in terms of her life, you know, to think about what ADHD means and, you know, how that might interplay with friendships and how that might interplay with eating in particular. So something that, you know, we've noticed is she's really stimulation seeking.

And so she's like constantly taking from the salt jar and the sugar jar and just like, you know, um, but has a hard sitting down for meals. And part of this is sensory, part of it is probably the ADHD. And so it's always kind of investigating like, what is it that's happening for her? Um, but too, and in terms of like the takeaways from the psychologist, one of the things that she brought up in terms of what helps her, and this is something that we realized over time too is swimming, water.

So she's the most regulated she ever is when she's in water. She's like a siren to water. Like she just, it's this deeply elemental like, like it's literally this pull. Like if she sees water, she needs to be in it.

(30:38) Camila’s daughter’s connection to water

Camila: Always.

Jessica: Did you figure that out when she was much younger?

Camila: We knew she liked it. Um, and then we put her in swim classes and couldn't really tell then. But then when we would go to visit family where there's a pool, you know, she would be in the pool literally seven to seven. Just would live in the pool. Um, the ocean too, like any body of water, so happy. So happy and like really like chill, you know?

So things that I would notice is if she has access to water and she's in that zone enough, things that normally would set her off, she'd be like, "Okay, mama." Just so much more capacity to to navigate situations that I think would normally, you know, irritate her or would just make her uncomfortable.

Jessica: And it's the sensory, I mean as you know swimming, I--

Camila: It's the sensory piece.

Jessica: My kids had that too. Like it just the sensory piece of being in water is very regulating to, I mean, probably to everyone's brain, you know.

Camila: Yeah.

Jessica: Maybe especially so to--

Camila: Yeah. So that was a big one. And I asked her about it too. I said, "You know, what, what's up with water? Like, what, what do you like so much about it?" And she said something that was really, this was actually before we went through the neuropsych. And she goes, "I feel calm and safe in water." And I was like, "So what about when you're not in water?" She goes, "It feels like I'm constantly doing cartwheels." Which like, that's everything, right?

Jessica: Yes.

That was Camila de Onis, mom, therapist, complete and total detective.

It's so hard to watch your kid experience things in a way that can be upsetting to them and not know how to best help them. And it's such a tremendous relief when you watch your kid experience things that can be so regulating for them. It's a long and winding road, this parenting thing. And sometimes we detour, sometimes we stop short, sometimes we ask for directions. Now we have a bit of a roadmap. It doesn't mean there won't be bumps ahead or that things won't break down.

Hey, it might mean it's time to just set life on cruise control and enjoy the ride. Just remember, there are other parents on the ride with you. See you there.

Thanks for listening to "Everyone Gets a Juice Box." Our show is hosted by me, Jessica Shaw. It's produced by Cody Nelson and video is produced by Calvin Knie and edited by Jesse Di Martino. Briana Berry is our production director and Neil Drumming is our editorial director. If you have any questions for us or ideas for future episodes, write me an email or send a voice memo to podcast@understood.org.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Jordan Davidson. Understood.org is a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give.