Level Up Your ADHD Parenting Strategies w/ Joshua Rastetter

Mike: 00:00:00

You've landed at Spark Launch, the Guide star for embracing what it means to be neurodiverse. I'm Mike Cornell, joined by CEO of Spar kLaunch, Chaya Mallavaram.

Here we navigate mental health triumphs and tribulations from all across the spectrum, charting a course of the shared experiences that unite us and discovering how to embody the unique strengths within neurodivergent and neurotypical alike, igniting your spark and launching it into a better Tom. Hello there. I'm Mike.

Chaya: 00:00:33

I'm Chaya.

Mike: 00:00:34

And we want to welcome back to the show Joshua Rastetter, who brings a unique blend of technical expertise and personal insight to champion the neurodivergent community.

After discovering his own ADHD during his daughter's diagnosis, Joshua's dedication to creating inclusive and accessible solutions for neurodivergent individuals deepened at Spark launch. He drives innovation to empower diverse thinkers rooted in his commitment to accessibility and lifelong advocacy for workers rights. Welcome back.

Joshua: 00:01:05

Glad to be back.

Chaya: 00:01:06

Josh, we have talked so much about parenting and the challenges and our own shortcomings. My own shortcoming as a mom. What do you want to share about your journey as a parent?

Joshua: 00:01:19

Oh, man, there's. There's so much and, like, I don't want to come across as, like, I've got it figured out, but I.

I do feel at the same time like I'm at a spot with my.

At least on the relationship side with my kids that, you know, I'm involved in a lot of communities and a lot of parenting, mutual support groups and Facebook groups and all of that. And just from what I'm seeing a lot in those conversations, you know, I feel fortunate to be where I am at, at least on the relationship side with.

With my kids. And it's been a journey to get there.

So hopefully I can kind of share what that journey looked like and maybe have some insights that would be helpful for other parents.

But as kind of touched on in my intro, there was a really rough patch a few years ago with my oldest daughter during the pandemic when we were doing distance learning. And that was just not an environment that was conducive for her. Just did not work with her brain. And, you know, as.

As a parent, I felt obligated to get her through it, right, to push her. And that really came to a lot of conflict, you know, where I was having to be pretty harsh with her. And, you know, there was.

There was shouting and, you know, just a lot of things that weren't good. Definitely, in retrospect, not Not a healthy dynamic.

And part of that was my own struggles with focus, you know, so I was projecting a little bit because as hard as it was for her to focus on the assignments that she had in this virtual environment, it was just as hard, if not harder for me to focus enough to help her focus. So, you know, some, some of that was projecting, right? I was like, why can't you just get through this?

Because I also wanted to be done with it, you know, I was also hitting my saturation point. And so that frustration was manifesting in a lot of conflict and yelling and demands and all of that.

So in the process of getting her diagnosis, I also ended up getting my own diagnosis, which led to some soul searching and self discovery, a lot of research, because that's how I deal with things when I'm uncertain. And what kind of came out of that is a much healthier dynamic. Today we're.

There's almost no arguing or, you know, in any of that in our household with the kids these days, you know, sometimes we have to buckle down and be parents and you know, and give firm guidance and all of that. That's inevitable. But there's that rift that I was feeling in our relationship before just is gone. It's evaporated, it's not around.

And a lot of that comes from a combination of a lot of things that I've read. A lot of parenting techniques and just sitting down and really understanding my kids and what works for them.

Chaya: 00:04:24

You mentioned relationship.

And I think we've come here to conquer relationships, the challenging ones, because that requires empathy from both ends and that's why it's a two way traffic. Right. But with children, of course, we have to realize that they're not there yet with empathy towards parents.

So we have to stretch a little bit more to understand them. And yeah, you mentioned about it being very challenging in the pandemic and what can you describe how it looked?

What did you, what were you doing and what was the reaction and the consequences of those interactions and how it made you feel as a parent?

Joshua: 00:05:18

Yeah, yeah, I can give a little bit of play by play there.

So to frame it all a little bit, the workload that they were putting on this really rushed, kind of put together virtual learning experience was insane.

Like it was five to six hours of just busy work and reading and writing and like they were having a seven year old write two or three pages by hand every day, which is in retrospect absurd. My other daughter is seven right now and you know, in first grade and like having an apples to apples comparison there. Yeah.

Virtual learning experience was very rushed.

I'm not blaming anybody for it, but it's very rushed because it had to be put together in a matter of weeks and there wasn't a whole lot of, let's say, instructional design going on. It was kind of just throw a bunch of stuff at the wall so that we can hit these metrics kind of thing. So there's that.

There was that complication of, man, this is a lot. And after about two hours, my daughter Layla, her attention saturation was gone. Like, it was.

She had done everything that she could do and like, additional. Every additional task after that point was a battle both inside her head, outside of her head, and everywhere.

Like, if I wanted to get done, I had to sit there with her, next to her and prod her to go to the next one. Right? Prod. Okay, now what? Okay, now what? Okay, now what? Okay, now what? Okay, now what?

You know, so it was just that constantly, because we had such a vast amount that we had to get through and so small a reservoir of actual motivation, you know, to get it done. So I was having to dump a whole lot of external motivation into the equation just to make any kind of progress.

And so there was a lot of, okay, if I don't get up and go do my own work, I'm going to get fired. So I'm going to put you on this task. And then when I have a chance to come back and check on you, I expect some progress.

I would go away, do my own work, come back, and she would have just stared at the screen for an hour and a half, which of course was frustrating for me because no progress happened.

I had an expectation of progress and it was frustrating for her because she didn't want me to be mad at her, but she just had no gas in the tank, so there, you know, it just. Nothing was happening. Whether she wanted it to be that way or not, nothing was happening. So.

So that that frustration built up and ended up with me going, what's wrong with you? And, you know, like just having these, these very exasperated shouting matches and, you know, that triggered her.

So she would of course, meet hard with hard so that, you know, I don't want to speak generally for all neurodiversion children, but definitely in my case, it's. It's like a, like a non Newtonian fluid, you know, so if you come soft and gentle, then, you know, they're easy to mold and move and get to do.

If you come at them hard, they will come Back at you, you know, so it's like a rock. So I was coming with that, with that hard energy and she was meeting it, you know, she was, she was matching that energy.

So that's kind of what that looked like on a day to day basis. Just a lot of why can't we make any progress? You know? And just my own frustration building up and then that coming out.

Chaya: 00:09:07

Yeah, I've gone through that exact same thing and that frustration as a parent, because we know that they can do it, they are smart, they are good, they are great sometimes. And why can they get to that finish line? Because it's really good for them. Can they really understand it?

So that frustration is real and it's annoying and it leads to anger and yelling and all of that.

And with you, I was wondering, must have been so challenging as an ADHD person to sit there and watch her go after every line, after every page and go to the next thing. It must have been very frustrating. And this is where a lot of falling into the box happens, right?

We're pushing them to get into the box when they were never meant to be in the box. And ourselves as well.

We were not meant to parent like that, but we were told that's the right way of doing it, or we've seen so much happening and we believe that's the way to do it. And that doesn't work with ADHD children at all, as we now know. But we can actually get things done if we do it right way.

Joshua: 00:10:35

And the real motivator for me to do something different was I heard my parents words coming out of my mouth and I felt like such a fraud.

I felt like a hypocrite because I was parroting the things that had been told to me when I was that age or when I was a child with the same struggles. Like I could, I could put myself in her shoes because I had been in her shoes, you know, Right.

I had, I struggled in school to stay focused and turn in my stuff.

So for me to yell at her for something that I was guilty, just as guilty of and am just as guilty of, I just felt like such a hypocrite and such a fraud, you know, that like I was like, I can't do this. Like, you know, there's something going on here because like, this just feels so forced and so fake and like, why, why is this such a struggle?

And why am I telling her something that I couldn't even do myself, you know? And that's what kind of motivated the search for something Alternate, right?

Chaya: 00:11:46

Yeah.

Joshua: 00:11:46

Was just that internal feeling of. I can't say this with conviction because I don't even believe it.

Chaya: 00:11:52

You know, I did the same thing what was done to me in school. I did that to my son and it backfired big time and led to bad relationship for a while, especially when he was a teenager and during the pandemic.

I think pandemic was eye opening in many aspects for me.

It made me look into my own journey and how I overcame challenges and how I overcame challenges was not trying to focus on things that I was not into. And then why am I doing the same to my son when it didn't work for me? And, and all that was amazing.

That soul searching journey was great and led to so many discoveries and insights that we are now. I'm so excited that we bringing to children of the world.

So, so tell, so share how you overcame the challenges and what the shift was and what do you see now?

Mike: 00:13:01

Work.

Joshua: 00:13:01

Yeah, so, so that, that feeling of being a fraud, that feeling of being a hypocrite kind of led me to go search for other ways like okay, this, this is a challenge.

And you know, in my career like I professionally solved problems that, that, that has been, you know, my, my, my career route since, you know, very early on in my, my early adulthood was like I felt good when I was solving problems so I could step outside of the problem, analyze the big picture and like find a route forward. So I was like, why am I not applying that here? Right? Like this is a problem.

I need to do the same thing that I do in my professional life and I need to step outside of it, detach myself from it emotionally and just look at the problem. So I did a lot of research and there's a few books that I read that were extremely influential.

I wouldn't say that any of them in a vacuum are perfect, but kind of looking at it systematically as a whole and you put all that stuff together seems to be very effective. And the main two are the Explosive Child. The author escapes me right now, but the name of the book is the Explosive Child.

It's written by a child psychologist. Very good. And then the other was the Five Love Languages of Children by Dr. Gary Chapman, I believe so the Explosive Child.

There's this kind of ABC format of plan A, plan B and plan C of how you deal with conflict. And it mostly just deals with conflict, you know, that, that, that parenting guidance is, is really just dealing with conflict.

You know, in plan A it's, I'm going to Basically, it's, I'm going to impose my will. That's kind of that classical parenting of the authoritation. The authoritative. You're going to do what I say because I said it. That's plan A.

Plan B is I'm. I'm just not going to do anything. I'm not going to interfere, and I'm just let my expectation go.

And then plan C is I'm going to negotiate and come at it from a cooperative angle. So I'm going to ask them to put a concern on the table, and I'm going to put my concern on the table. We're going to negotiate until we find a.

And being a kind of lifelong gamer, I kind of approach that in a more holistic way or like the way that I frame that in my mind is, am I playing this game on Versus mode, where it's player versus player and I have my goals, they have their goals, and only one of us can get, you know, can win, or am I playing on co op, where we are working together to achieve a common. And so that's kind of the phrasing that we use in the house and, you know, with the girls and everything, because we're all gamers, we understand it.

So, hey, are we playing on co op right now? Are we playing on Versus? And both players get to choose. Like, in order for you to play on co op, both of you have to be playing on co op, right?

So it only takes one of you to play on Versus. And if either player chooses to be on versus, you're on versus. If. If both of you choose. Okay, yeah, we're.

Let's play on co op today and come to it with that spirit, then there's. There's less conflict, right? Because now it's not. It's not my will versus your will. It's okay. There's.

There's a challenge that we need to face together, and it's going to be a lot easier if we do that together.

Chaya: 00:16:32

ADHD children, what I've seen, and even with myself, is that once they know that goal, right, with co op mode, you're going after a target, and both of you are aware of that target, and both of you agree on that target, and then you're playing. But with a lot of times with the way things work in school, they don't get the big picture. That's the frontal lobe of connection.

But information is not presented that way that they become an equal player. And you see when they become an equal player, they want to do it because they See the value of going after that target that they agree on.

And we know with ADHD folks, including us, nobody can make us do something that we don't want to, right?

Joshua: 00:17:23

And that is another really big part of it is, you know, that I learned is extrinsic motivation. So push can only get you so far. You know, if push works. So extrinsic motivation works as long as they're in your line of sight.

As soon as they're not in your line of sight anymore, that's not going to motivate them anymore. It needs to be intrinsic. So in order to achieve intrinsic motivation, they have to understand, right? They have to understand what's at stake.

They have to understand the goals. They have to understand why it's important. They're for ADHD specifically.

There needs to be a sense of urgency, you know, so if the consequences of not doing something are far off and abstract, there's no. There's not. Urgency is gone. There's no motivation. There's.

So you have to find ways to make that, make it more urgent or, you know, really kind of impress that, that importance and, you know, use the parts of the brain that work off emergency. And what that usually involves is talking backwards, right? So, okay, well, let's. Let's talk about a goal. Okay? We want you to pass your classes.

That's a goal, right? And they're like, well, why. Why is passing my classes matter?

Okay, well, because if you don't pass your classes, then you won't get to go to orchestra concerts. You won't be able to participate in extracurricular activities.

If you don't pass your classes enough, then you won't be able to progress with your friends, you know, so, you know, talking about things from a perspective that, that they do care about, right?

So you got link cause and effect to things that they, that motivate them, that they care about, and then link that cause and effect back to why this assignment right now is important to that thing.

You know, bring that causal link back to the point where, oh, yeah, this, this assignment is important and urgent because if I don't turn it in, I'm going to get a zero, and then that's going to prevent me from going on my orchestra concert.

Mike: 00:19:30

And that's a true need for showing cause and effect for anybody, but particularly for neurodivergence, because we need that quantum connection between activities. We need to take the engine apart to see exactly, like, how it's running and why it's running.

And so much of education and going Back to what the pandemic showed, which is most education systems are built on kind of more of just, well, you have to do it because you have to do it fallacy, which is not particularly helpful in any modality. But why we tend to lose concentration in those moments is, well, I don't know why I'm even doing this.

And I have a hard enough time keeping interest in activities I want to do, not for lack of trying. So when you put something in front of me that I don't see any tangible connection to, I don't understand what greater good it is.

And even if you explain it to me when I was a kid that like, well, it's part of, you know, you get education for how things work in the world and you know, just like basic what education is, I would actually have understood that better than how it was often presented to me, which is, honestly, a lot of times school felt more like giving me, giving me a place to go during the day so I couldn't bother anybody is, is what most education institutions feel like.

Joshua: 00:20:52

There's some truth to that, that it's the publicly funded daycare in some cases. Right. But linking it to things that matter to them in the short term, you could talk long term abstracts too.

Hey, you need to learn to learn because if you don't, you're going to struggle in adulthood, right? So you need to learn to socialize because if you don't, you're going to struggle making and maintaining relationships.

Those are all good reasons for school, but at the same time, they're not urgent, they're not immediate. You know, so they're a little abstract in how the cause and effect between one and the other is a little abstract.

So linking it to things that are a little bit more immediate and urgent and something that she cares about, right. Gives a little bit more of that urgent motivation. And then what you want to get to eventually is that intrinsic.

I want to learn because learning is important to me. Motivation. But, you know, baby steps. I didn't get there overnight. I don't expect her to get there overnight either.

Chaya: 00:21:59

I think as long as they're doing things in a fun way, it's fine. We don't have to get the whole picture. But unfortunately the schools today, the way it works, it doesn't satisfy an ADHD mind.

If I went back to school, it would still be torture, right? It would be so painful. And that's one of the reasons that I didn't go back to school for anything. But I did learn. So it didn't stop me from learning.

I just knew that my brain worked differently and I learned things much faster.

When I took ownership of how I learned, even with coding, even with now, the business, all of that, it didn't stop me from learning because there is that internal need to be somewhere, somewhere in the future, who knows where. But. But when you give yourself freedom and ownership at the same time, it's amazing what can happen.

And my heart goes out to the neurodivergent children trying to fit into the school system, which was not built for them, and the traumas that come out of it are damaging. It is passed on to the adulthood, and then we can pass it on to the next generation. Right.

The generational trauma of that is real and not just to our children, but with whoever we interact. That that's still there.

And it's a lot of our journey is to unlearn what we've learned because of the fitting into the box of the system and finding who our authentic selves are, because our authentic selves are beautiful and amazing and lovable and all of that. So, yeah, it's quite a journey.

Joshua: 00:24:07

I know I've never been very good at fitting in the box, and I will say that my mental health improved drastically when I stopped trying, when I stopped judging myself by the box that I didn't fit in. My mental health has done nothing but improve from that. I won't say that it's perfect.

There's still struggle and everything, but not judging myself by how I didn't fit into a box that wasn't designed for me to fit into is a big paradigm shift and kind of made a big difference. The other kind of aspect of. I hesitate to call it a system because that's a little bit too prescriptive, I guess, but is.

You know, I mentioned Gary Chapman's Five Languages of Children, and I found that that was also very important. I know that as parents, we.

I mean, if you ask a parent if they love their kids, unless they're an absolute monster, the answer is going to be yes, of course. But there's a big difference between knowing that you're loved and, I think a lot of times we fall down as parents in communicating that we love our kids in their love language, because if we don't examine that, what we default to is showing it in the way that we would like it communicated to us in our love language, and we kind of. We end up missing the boat a little bit in making our children feel loved rather than just knowing that they're loved.

And I won't go too deep into it because, you know, there's, there's some woo woo stuff in there too. But you know, the love languages essentially are, you know, acts of service.

So doing things for them out of love, words of affirmation, so, you know, compliments, building them up, being positive with the way that you speak with them, engage with them, quality time, which is super critical I think, to a lot of kids and gifts is another one. And I think that was 4 to 5.

But again, not going into the details there, but the, you know, figuring out by your interactions and really looking for, you know, when my kids say that they love me, when they're, when they're showing that love, how do they do that? And then understanding, you know, okay, well, okay, every time that they're showing appreciation or love, they do it through a gift. Okay.

So they're going to feel loved when they, you know, more when they receive a gift, you know, an unprompted, you know, unconditional gift, or they're, they're going to feel loved.

You know, if they're very motivated by words of affirmation, then positive enough lifting is going to make them feel loved and harsh words are going to have a very negative adverse effect.

So, you know, if, if your love language is words of affirmation, then you're going to take criticism very harshly, you know, so it's good to know what, because there's a shadow to everything.

There's, there's a, it's good to know what the love language is so that you don't accidentally damage that by being too, by showing authority or, you know, by basically by doing the shadow of whatever their language is.

Mike: 00:27:26

That's just a great lesson, I think, beyond parental relationships, just any relationship or any also modality of life, just passions you like. You know, I think we can all be, we can, we've all been asked and we all can't ask ourselves, well, do you love this person? Do you love this thing?

But stopping and ask, actually asking, how do you love this person? How do you love this thing?

Because definitely we've all known we've been loved by others around us, but probably have very rarely could describe how if we were, you know, like really, really sat down, like, okay, how do your parents love you?

Joshua: 00:28:04

Exactly.

Mike: 00:28:04

How does the significant other love you?

Joshua: 00:28:07

Yeah. How do you know, how do you know that your, your, your dad loves you? How do you know that your mom loves you?

And, and honestly, if you just sit down your kid and ask them that, they will tell you outright what they're love language because it will be in the answer. You know, they love me because they're there for me. They love me because they, because they play games with me every week.

You know, like they'll, they'll tell you what it is. Maybe not in, in the, in the words, in the prescribed words, but they'll tell.

Mike: 00:28:34

You just have to listen.

Joshua: 00:28:35

Yeah.

Mike: 00:28:36

And we don't listen. We don't listen enough. And that's what we need to start doing.

Joshua: 00:28:40

Not unless you do it on purpose.

Mike: 00:28:42

Thank you so much for coming back on Josh and talking about this. This has been.

As someone who probably also shouldn't procreate, this has been kind of a fascinating thing, like sit back and, and listen to these perspectives I don't usually get to see or get to hear. So thank you for that. And would you like to direct anybody to how to follow you anywhere?

Joshua: 00:29:03

Yeah. So you can. Right now, the best way to follow me or keep in touch is through LinkedIn.

So if you want to reach out or find me, then that's probably the best place to find me right now.

Mike: 00:29:14

Great. And of course, those will be in the show notes.

Spark launch can of course be found at sparklaunchpodcast.com you can also do sparklaunchpodcast.com/listen to see a handy dandy list of all the different subscription links you can find us at. And of course, sparklaunch.org. For Josh, Chaya for myself. We'll see you next time.