Let's talk about ADHD and what is happening with it right now.

When we think of ADHD, most people think of that little boy in school who's acting out and making trouble and is a menace.

That kid has ADHD, and that's what it looks like.

And what we're understanding is that ADHD is not...

And once again, I'm going to credit Russell Barkley, who's an amazing PhD psychologist, has helped me evolve my understanding of ADHD.

ADHD is not... a disorder.

It's an operating system.

Interesting.

Sure.

Um, as a parent of seven, having had m- several super colicky kids and a few lower-maintenance kids, and then reading about how this is handled in other parts of the world, what I've come to talk to people about is if everything looks normal, meaning your child is growing, your child is thriving, your child fits that profile of, hey, your mornings are better and your evenings, afternoons are worse, and I don't have any other suspicion, I tell people wear your child more because there's a regulation to that.

They, they co-regulate with the contact, the position, the motion.

Yeah.

And I've talked to parents who have colicky kids, and it doesn't feel the same.

But I think the, for parents who are listening, anyone in the audience, if you're gonna be a new parent, typical colicky purple period symptoms have a clear cyclic nature to them, and your days are not all the same, and you are almost always in the morning feels way better than normal, and it gets be- worse in the afternoon or evening-

And that's part of what led you to social media? Was it around the same time? This

was the process where I'm figuring out how, and that was dragging me down emotionally.

And for about five years, I was in chronic pain.

It was making me sick.

and I was emotionally spiraling, but just having to get up and drag myself to work every day because I'm the provider and I have to keep showing up.

And I had no other thought like, what else can I do? I didn't have the bandwidth because of where I was physically and emotionally to even think outside of that.

And running a practice was getting harder.

After 30 years of treating children, how concerned are you about what unrestricted smartphones and social media are doing to this generation?

Okay.

So I think that with babies, parents with, and I'm going to preface this and sort of lay this on the foundation and that you parented even before there was constant social media and information overload.

And imagine taking that type of parental anxiety, which by the way, is all of us are worried we're getting it wrong right from the time we bring them home.

And But the pressure is just ramped up by, you know, 100x when you're getting constant, you know, trolling on social media.

You're worried about everyone else's opinions.

There's an endless amount of opinions to take on social media.

And then that takes the anxiety from here to here for everyone, right? So...

As a father of seven, tell me what you see as a kind of general rule about how much is shepherding and how much is, what did you say, engineering?

To get us started, can you tell us just like a little bit about your journey and what inspired you to work with teens, children, and families?

So I've been a pediatrician for, I mean, I've been almost 30 years.

I started my career actually in pediatric emergency and hospital medicine.

And then I opened up my own practice, a private practice about 14 years ago.

I think what really changed for me was right around the pandemic, what was going on in the office and the practice, like many pediatric practices, I know I'm not alone in this, we were becoming literally overwhelmed.

with um families wanting mental health services for their teenagers it really was this explosion it was to the point it was like crippling the office meaning that we have enough we didn't have enough space to see the other you know well checks and coughs and sore throats because of the demand for this and it really made me understand that the system for mental health was profoundly broken access is poor there's not enough uh community-based resources for families who who are struggling and oftentimes don't even seek help until there's a crisis.

And so that's what really inspired, inspired me, inspired us to, to take the step to change that or to provide something different, provide something that's physician led, community-based, really focused on adolescent mental health.

It

Mm-hmm

... and leading with, um, the nuance that, you know, I, I know as a parent, I've done it, and I know that so many parents struggle with this, these middle-of-the-night decisions about, um, if, if you're nursing and, and wh- and where your baby's sleeping.

So I, I would love to know what you guys are doing so we can just talk about the best ways to approach it.

And if, leading with that instead of, you know, "How dare you not follow guidelines and da, da, da." And once again, I, I think that comes from experience.

I think that you have to be a parent on some level to be able to put, be in that place with them.

You know, uh, uh, people ask me, "Do you have to be a parent to be a good pediatrician?" No, you don't.

Um, the next one was a breastfeeding parent, which you talked about, like, um, having a breastfeeding parent, but why can that reduce the risk of SIDS? Why that, why may that be something that someone may do in approach bed sharing?

So we do know that breastfeeding moms are, are deeply tuned into cues from their kids co- un- unconsciously.