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The Diary of a CEO

Most Replayed Moment: Is Modern Parenting Causing ADHD? Your Decisions Shape Your Child’s Mind!

25 min episode · 2 min read

Episode

25 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Health & Wellness, Psychology & Behavior

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Amygdala Protection: Keep babies close to mothers for the first one to three years to prevent premature activation of the stress-regulating amygdala, which grows large then burns out when exposed to early stressors like daycare, sleep training, or prolonged separation.
  • Stress Response Mechanism: ADHD represents fight-or-flight activation where the amygdala grows precociously large while the hippocampus remains small, creating an on-switch with no off-switch rather than a genetic disorder requiring medication as first-line treatment.
  • Parent Guidance First: Before medicating children with ADHD diagnoses, parents should attend therapy for parent guidance to identify psychosocial stressors like divorce, parental conflict, sibling rivalry, moving, illness, or addiction that trigger the stress response in children.
  • Empathy Before Discipline: When setting boundaries with children, first acknowledge their feelings by mirroring emotions and verbalizing understanding, then state the limit using broken record technique, repeating empathy plus structure rather than immediately saying no without recognition.

What It Covers

Dr. Erica Komisar explains how ADHD diagnoses increased 20-fold in UK boys and 50-fold in young men, arguing the condition stems from early childhood stress responses rather than genetic disorders requiring medication.

Key Questions Answered

  • Amygdala Protection: Keep babies close to mothers for the first one to three years to prevent premature activation of the stress-regulating amygdala, which grows large then burns out when exposed to early stressors like daycare, sleep training, or prolonged separation.
  • Stress Response Mechanism: ADHD represents fight-or-flight activation where the amygdala grows precociously large while the hippocampus remains small, creating an on-switch with no off-switch rather than a genetic disorder requiring medication as first-line treatment.
  • Parent Guidance First: Before medicating children with ADHD diagnoses, parents should attend therapy for parent guidance to identify psychosocial stressors like divorce, parental conflict, sibling rivalry, moving, illness, or addiction that trigger the stress response in children.
  • Empathy Before Discipline: When setting boundaries with children, first acknowledge their feelings by mirroring emotions and verbalizing understanding, then state the limit using broken record technique, repeating empathy plus structure rather than immediately saying no without recognition.

Notable Moment

Children with four or more adverse childhood experiences show nearly 400 percent higher rates of ADHD compared to children with none, with parental mental illness increasing risk by 55 percent and neighborhood violence by 50 percent.

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Episode Transcript

ADHD. Yep. Okay. A bit. I don't feel like I don't even have to ask a question here. But just to set the stage, the reason why I'm so compelled by this is just this I have to say it, the shocking rise in Yeah. Diagnosis and prescriptions over the last ten years. Between twin 02/2018, ADHD diagnosis is in The UK rose approximately 20 fold. Yes. Among boys aged 10 to 16, diagnosis increased from one percent roughly to, about three point five percent in 2018. And in men aged 18 to 29, there was a nearly 50 fold increase in ADHD prescriptions during the same period. And the same applies to The United States where an estimated fifteen point five million adults in The US have been diagnosed with ADHD. Approximately one in nine US children have been diagnosed with ADHD at some point with ten point five percent having a current diagnosis. I don't know where ADHD was, but the conversation around it, the prescriptions, the diagnosis seemed to have really surged into culture in a really, really big way. What's going on? So ADHD was one of the factors that drove me to right right being there, because I was seeing this huge uptick in ADHD diagnosis and children being medicated so so early. Do you know what the fight or flight reaction is? That's when the sympathetic nervous system starts to kick into action? And Yes. So, well, it's basically our evolutionary response to, a predatorial threat. So if a saboteur tiger was chasing you, you either stood and fought fight or you ran for your life flight. So when our children are under stress, they go into fight or flight. So one of the first signs that a child is under stress that they cannot manage is when they become aggressive in school. They hit, they bite, they throw chairs, they have trouble, you know, socially in daycare or preschool or even in school. Or they become distracted, which is the flight part of fight or flight. So what's happening is their nervous systems, the stress regulating part of their brain is getting turned on. So we say that the stress regulating part of their brain has to do with a little almond shaped part of the brain called the amygdala. It's a very primitive part of the brain, very old part of the brain, and it regulates stress throughout our lives. It helps us to manage it. What we know is that part of the brain is supposed to remain offline for the first year to three years, which is why mothers wear babies on their bodies. It's why babies stay close to their mothers in the first three years, to keep the amygdala quiet and only incrementally, incrementally expose children to stress and frustration that they can manage. So imagine taking small bites of it so you can digest it. Right? And your mother's there to help you digest the stress. What …

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