Help Your ADHD Teenager Find His Passion

Parenting ADHD children: How to help your teenager find his unique talents and skills.

by Patricia Berry

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Teens hear it constantly — find your passion. It’s as if one or two talents or skills are the magic pills for success, in school and in life. High-school guidance counselors suggest that a worthwhile hobby is just the ticket for getting into a good college.

The truth is, it can be. A special interest is fulfilling, it may impress admissions officers, and it could lead to success in college and beyond. But for teens with ADHD, finding that one special thing can be a challenge. Where do they begin? How can they pick just one activity when they enjoy so many?

“The busy ADD mind has a great capacity for dabbling in a variety of activities, and not going deep in any one area,” says Theresa L. Maitland, Ph.D., coordinator of the Academic Success Program for Students with LD and ADHD at the University of North Carolina. ADD kids have trouble selecting one or two standout pursuits. The quiet reflection needed to shorten the list of possibilities — what Maitland calls “being still with oneself” — does not come easy for them.

Filling a teen’s days with tutors and life coaches certainly doesn’t help. “We focus too much on our teens’ weaknesses, and not enough on uncovering talent or passion,” says Maitland. “We are all naturally good at something.”

Giving teens time and space to think about what makes them feel good about themselves is one way parents can nurture the process. Another is helping them discover clues about what their passions may be. Your teen has to do the hard work of finding and cultivating her talents, but your support — and the good sense to back off at times — will keep your teen on task.

Rate His Interests

“Each person has unique talents and gifts — it’s just a matter of teasing them out,” says Maitland, who specializes in helping high school and college students stay on track with their academic and extracurricular pursuits. She often refers students to Richard Chang’s book, The Passion Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide to Discovering, Developing, and Living Your Passion (Jossey-Bass), to help them mine their talents.

Tips for Teens

Chang suggests asking your teen to make a list of “passion candidates.” Have him think about the things he likes to do. Hobbies or objects he’s chosen for his room may spark ideas. Is there a guitar leaning in the corner, reminding him of a love for music, for instance? Or a museum poster that reflects a liking for painting or art? If so, encourage him to imagine participating in these pursuits. What do his heart and body tell him when he thinks about each activity? When is he alive, exhilarated, enthusiastic, energetic? When is he bored?

Have your teen rate each interest—say, from 1 to 10—and then rank those on his list. Some interests or passions likely will reflect current pursuits. Others may suggest careers—a useful list for the student contemplating college or vocational school. Maitland suggests that a teen talk to people other than Mom and Dad, who know her too well. Getting the reaction of a grandparent, a family friend, or a beloved teacher to your teen’s passion list will inform the exercise. For example, an aunt may recall the puppets your daughter made for her cousins one year, and the hours she put in assembling each one. Such memories may deepen your teenager’s thinking about a particular pursuit.

Key into His Personality

The things teens get in trouble for can be clues to their passion. The teen who talks too much in class, or who bosses his teacher and classmates around, may be a born organizer, well suited to starting a high school club or leading a management team. The teen who neglects her schoolwork to play outdoors may prefer nature to being at a desk. Such feelings are not talents, but they could be the foundation of a passion.

“Look at the things kids gravitate to and ask, ‘Could those be the seeds of life passions?’” says Maitland. If you saved your teen’s elementary-school report cards, dig them up for clues. Comments from teachers can point out patterns. For instance, a student’s doodling throughout the day back in second grade may be the beginnings of his cartooning for the school paper. Perhaps he’d enjoy drawing classes, to hone his skill.

Think Beyond Oneself

Knowing what you love isn’t the full answer. An athlete, for instance, may love track, and discover it’s not the running he enjoys, but being part of a team and having the structure of practices. “Passion frequently lies in being a part of something bigger than oneself,” says Maitland.

Maitland counsels a college student who “discovered that she felt most alive when she was traveling to foreign countries and meeting people of different backgrounds.” She has decided to take her love for other cultures into the business world, to help company managers cultivate diversity among personnel.

Search for Talent

Passion and talent don’t always go hand in hand, but they evolve together. Nineteen-year-old Morgan Miller, who has ADD, grew up without a specific talent, not unlike many kids with her condition. “I was mediocre at most things,” says the Montclair, New Jersey, native. “I wasn’t a really good dancer. I wasn’t the best softball player.

“I needed to find something I could feel confident about,” she says. Eventually, it came to her: “I realized I love working with kids,” Miller says. “And it was something I knew I was good at. It was my passion. You work at your passion, and it becomes your talent.” Now the Goucher College sophomore is intent on pursuing a career in children’s television. So momentous was this self-discovery that Miller chose passion as the topic of her college application essay.

Keep an Eye on the Prize

When passions begin shaping students’ goals, other pursuits will start to seem like burdens. Maitland works with a student who wants to work for Doctors Without Borders. While he enjoys the science classes that he needs to get into medical school, he hates history, which seems irrelevant to his goal.

Maitland encourages the student to keep his internal dialogue—what she calls “self-talk”—focused on the positive. “He uses self-talk to stay on track with the required courses he doesn’t care for,” she says. This ongoing conversation helps the student get past the frustration of history class —what he sees as a waste of his time—and use it as a stepping stone to accomplishing his goal. He plasters images from Doctors Without Borders brochures on his history notebook, as a reminder of his objective.

Maitland says her teen clients teach her a lot about living their life. “Some people with ADD are incredible at doing only what they love. They could be my tutors,” she says. She understands why students don’t want to take required courses that have nothing to do with their major or their life goals.

“They tell me, ‘I don’t have much time on earth. I only want to do what I’m passionate about.’” Who can blame them?

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This article comes from the Spring 2008 issue of ADDitude.

Listening to clients...no, really listening! Studies show a 65% improvement in outcome

from Scott Miller, PhD (www.talkingcure.com)

Evidence-based practice is, as you know, "all the rage." Like bell-bottoms and skinny ties, listening to clients in therapy is out of fashion. Treatment manuals and fidelity measures are "in." Most of the push for field-wide adoption of specific treatments for specific disorders comes from the top. Government funders, policy think tanks and professional organizations are promoting evidence-based practice as the cure-all for what ails the field--namely, a continuing lack of respect and lingering perception of mental health as the "soft" of science. Here we consider a different idea for addressing the call for accountability in mental health: "practice-based evidence"--that is, using data generated during treatment to inform the process and outcome of treatment. A number of researchers have, over the last decade, been using the client's rating of the therapeutic alliance and progress in treatment as a way of improving retention and outcome in treatment. Interestingly, such research shows that providing therapists with real-time feedback regarding the client's experience of the therapeutic alliance and outcome cuts attrition rates in half and improves outcome by as much as 65%. By the way, such results were achieved without training therapists in any new treatment procedures or limiting the sample diagnostically. As you know, most randomized clinical trials exclude subjects that do not meet narrow inclusion criteria thereby making the applicability of any study findings to real-world clinical settings exceptionally questionable. Bottom line: therapists were encouraged to listen--especially when what they were doing wasn't working or did not fit for the individual client--and the hoped for improvements in retention and outcome followed.

Teen drivers with ADD a problem on the road

By Judy Fortin
CNN Medical Correspondent

It was hard to miss the bright yellow Student Driver bumper sticker on the back of the car driven by Tosha Mulligan. Tosha Mullgian, 19, has attention deficit disorder. She says her mind wanders when she drives. Getting a driver's license is a rite of passage for many teenagers, but the process was a bit more challenging for 19-year-old Mulligan of Acworth, Georgia. When she gets behind the wheel, she said, "Sometimes my mind wanders off." She's not alone. Researchers reported driving can be a serious problem for teens with ADD and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Motor vehicle accidents already are the leading cause of death among teenagers in the U.S., according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Experts such as Russell Barkley say ADD and ADHD compound the problem.

Barkley, a psychiatry professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, is a widely recognized expert on ADD and driving. He has investigated the topic for 15 years and conducted a half-dozen studies, some of which have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Teen drivers with ADD or ADHD "are impulsive, highly distractible and clumsy, can't pay attention to the roadway and they get bored easily," he said.

Mulligan's driving instructor, Jerry Thielemann of Freedom and Mobility Driver Training and Evaluation in Marietta, Georgia, experienced that firsthand. He works with teenagers with ADD three to four times a week. "A person with ADD pays attention to someone walking down the street rather than a car coming toward them," Mulligan said. "They don't know what to focus on." Barkley sees speeding as a key problem. "In general, people with ADHD speed four times more often than those without ADHD," he said. His research shows that those with ADD or ADHD are two to three times more likely to have an auto accident, three times more likely in the first five to eight years of driving to have their licenses revoked and five times more likely to get a parking ticket. In all three instances, Barkley pointed to the impatient and impulsive nature that is common among people with ADD or ADHD.

Chris Zeigler Dendy, author of "Teenagers with ADD and ADHD," raised a son and a stepson with the condition. "We were worried sick about our kids when they started driving because both had ADHD," Dendy recalled. "They both started getting speeding tickets and having car wrecks. One of them even had his license suspended." That was nearly 20 years ago. Today, Dendy said, she understands what was behind their troubles. "I think the good news is that parents today are so much better informed than we were, plus laws have tightened up so you get one ticket or step out of line and your license is gone," she said. Dendy credited proper medication with helping get her sons back on track. "Research tells us that with medication they are more likely to pay attention to road signs and less likely to have road rage," Dendy explained. She worried about parents who may not be as vigilant when it comes to monitoring their teen's driving behavior, especially during high-risk times. "One is after school from 3 to 6 and the other is on weekend evenings," she said. She mentioned those are often the hours when medication starts to wear off or when teens may be more likely to skip a dosage.

Barkley acknowledged the parents who decline to medicate their children who have ADD or ADHD, but he believes "Medication is more effective than any other treatment." Barkley also cautioned that people with ADD are more sensitive to the effects of alcohol and are unable to drive safely after drinking. He told teens to put away their cell phones, MP3 players and other items that might distract them while driving. Barkley suggested parents closely monitor their teenagers and provide sign-in and sign-out sheets in the garage to track their whereabouts.

Dendy eventually drew up a contract with her children, spelling out specific rules and expectations for driving the family car. Dendy and Barkley both recommended that teenagers with ADD or ADHD stay in a learner's permit program longer, at least a year, and put off getting their license until they have more experience behind the wheel. That's what Tosha Mulligan did. She finished her last driving lesson the day before she left for her freshman year in college. She passed her driver's test on the first try and got her license. She said waiting to get her license made a big difference. She said "It kept me focused." She reported no wrecks, no tickets and no problems so far.