How to Naturally Reduce ADHD Symptoms in your Child
My guest today is a Board Certified Holistic Health and Nutrition Practitioner. Dana’s goal is to assist families with children with ADHD through nutrition and functional lab testing, discover HIDDEN stresses and dysfunctions, and implement a holistic and all-natural family approach to health and wellness.
In the show today, Dana and I talk about the connection between our gut and brain and why nutrition may be the missing link in your child’s ADHD diagnosis.
Let’s dive in!
Scroll down to read the fully transcribed episode.
What You Will Learn:
- What is the gut-brain connection?
- Why your (and your teen’s) diet is the foundation of everything.
- The link between antibiotics and ADHD.
- What your gut has to do with your sleep.
- Can diet reduce ADHD symptoms?
- The top three foods recommended to families to remove from the diet.
- What kinds of foods to add to the diet to prevent inflammation?
- What gluten does to the gut – for everyone, not just those with an allergy.
- The four base tests to get will give you a good overview of what’s going on in your child’s bio-individual body.
Where To Find Dana:
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And here is the episode typed out!
Welcome to the Moms of Tweens and Teens Podcast. If some days you doubt yourself and don’t know what you’re doing. If you’ve ugly cried alone in your bedroom because you felt like you were failing. Well, I just want to let you know you are not alone, and you have come to the right place.
Raising tweens and teens in today’s world is not easy. And I’m on a mission to equip you to love well and to raise emotionally healthy, happy tweens and teens that thrive.
I believe that moms are heroes, and we have the power to transform our families and impact future generations. If you are looking for answers, encouragement, and becoming more of the mom and woman you want to be, welcome. I am Sheryl Gould. And I am so glad that you’re here.
SHERYL: Welcome, Dana, to the Moms of Tweens and Teens podcast. It’s so great to have you here.
DANA: Thank you so much, Sheryl; I’m excited to be here.
SHERYL: I am so excited to have you here too. We have had numerous amazing people come on and talk about ADHD and helping their kids navigate ADHD and how to support them. Through that whole process, we’ve even had people come on and talk about if mom has ADHD, but I have never had anybody come on here and talk about a holistic approach to ADHD. And it’s so important, and we’re going to talk about food and what you can do health-wise to support your kids. But first, I want you to tell us about your story and how you started this journey.
DANA: Yeah, not many people are talking about holistic approaches to ADHD, which is why I probably ended up where I am because my son was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of four. And so I get the struggle that comes with that. I remember feeling just so overwhelmed and angry. And this wasn’t the life I expected to live when I had children.
I always sort of, in my gut, knew that there was something that was a little bit different with him. He had boundless amounts of energy. He would bounce off the walls, and he would have meltdowns that were not age-appropriate and would last for hours on end. At first, the teachers and the doctor were like, “oh, he’s just a boy. That’s just what you get.”
I’m like, “okay.” But, down in my gut, I just knew something was not quite right. And it sort of all caught up to us around the age of four and a half. And that’s when his teacher started to notice he was a little bit more hyperactive than other kids. He had a little bit more tantrums than the other kids and was a little bit less focused than the other kids.
And he was diagnosed with ADHD, and we were immediately given a prescription medication. I’m not against medication at all. And at first, I remember feeling relieved with the diagnosis; I wasn’t a bad mom. It wasn’t my parenting that was doing this because that’s all the thoughts that go through your head. I was actually excited to fill the prescription medication. And so I did, I gave it to him and things at first were actually quite good. And they were calm. And he was getting on well with his brother, and he was sitting down at the dinner table.
It was good until it wasn’t, then he started to have these side effects, he was unable to sleep, lost weight, started to get anxiety, all of this sort of stuff. And so the dosage increased, and then the side effects became even worse. And then he had some new side effects. So the doctor prescribed another prescription to counter the side effects of the first.
And this continued until he was on three very strong medications at the age of five. And when the doctor suggested a fourth medicine to counteract some new side effects that had popped up, that’s when I said, “this doesn’t seem right.” I just couldn’t do this anymore. And that’s when my career path completely changed. I went back to school, I did my holistic health degree, and multiple specific certifications in this particular area.
I really learned that ADHD symptoms could be reduced naturally. Medicine isn’t the only way. I learned how food could affect so many aspects of our lives. And today, my son is in middle school, and he’s 13. He’s thriving, and he hasn’t been on meds for years. And he’s doing amazing. I never get calls from school when I used to get them all the time.
But most importantly, I think, for me, he’s happy. We now have that balance and that peace in our house. And once I learned about the importance of food and behavior and gut health and the gut-brain connection, once I saw with my own eyes how these natural strategies could reduce the symptoms for my son and help my family, I really couldn’t keep this information to myself, and I just didn’t want anyone else to have to go through the struggles that I went through my family went through.
I’ve been lucky enough, over the years now, to have worked with close to 1000 other families to help them get to the same place, but just so much quicker without much as much stress and without as much pain. So yeah, that’s my story and my son’s story,
SHERYL: You have a personal journey, and it just equips you that much more to be able to help other parents that are feeling that way and feeling powerless. And oh my gosh, exhausted all the feelings that you were describing, angry, blaming themselves. All those things that we can do.
I have two ADHD kids that no longer take medicine either and are older. But I relate a lot to what you’re saying and that you go to a doctor, and medication, as you said, can really help. It helped my kids, but it’s not really getting to the root underneath. I think it’s easy to do that.
In today’s world, we want an answer so quickly. We want to fix it, and like you said that it kept getting worse, and it was working. And yet there’s a Band-Aid.
And so tell us about like the gut-brain connection. What is that?
DANA: So I’ll first just talk about the gut. I think, aside from diet, the guts are the center of everything. I want to start off with a few statistics. So, it’s estimated that 54% of American children were diagnosed with a chronic illness in 2018. That’s one in two. So if you’ve got two children, one of them most likely will be diagnosed with a chronic illness. And that figure was only 15% a couple of years before that. And so look at the increase.
It’s anxiety, asthma, type one, type two diabetes, epilepsy, cystic fibrosis, heart problems, and allergic conditions. One in five has allergies, one in six has developmental delays, and one in 45 has autism. And so we think to ourselves, Why did this rise occur so rapidly? And the answer is simple. And it all begins in the gut. And that’s because 80% of the body’s entire immune system is within the gut wall, along with billions of nerve cells and an extensive amount of beneficial gut bacteria.
So all about children’s health, and ours, obviously, is quite literally connected to everything that occurs in the gut. I have got countless families that come to me for guidance with their kids and ADHD symptoms, and I always do a healthy intake. “How’s your health history?” They usually say, “Oh, they’re really healthy. They’re my healthiest child.”
When I press a little bit further, I ask if the child has suffered from any diarrhea or constipation, and they often tell me they have. And they’re surprised to learn that constipation is not normal. It’s not healthy. It may be very, very common, but it’s a byproduct of an unhealthy gut. You may then ask if the child has been on lots of antibiotics when they were younger, and a massive percentage of children have.
I actually wish I kept a tally because it would be really interesting to look at the percentage of children with ADHD versus the percentage of that how many have had multiple rounds of antibiotics.
But what happens with antibiotics? They work by killing bacteria and or preventing them from growing. But unfortunately, most antibiotics can’t distinguish between good and bad bacteria. And that means they wreak havoc on the guts, and healthy bacteria. And actually, people suffer lasting changes to their gut flora as a result of taking antibiotics.
So a large percentage of these children have been on multiple rounds of antibiotics. And that’s, in turn, compromising the gut. And when the gut is compromised, it’s not a huge surprise to see that disorders and illnesses are on the rise.
I want to just tie gut health to brain health because that’s your original question. And so what the gut-brain connection means is that, in essence, our brains are deeply connected to our guts. And if our guts aren’t functioning well, our brains won’t function well either.
Now, the brain has many areas involved in gut function. One of the main areas is the frontal lobe, and it’s the area of the brain that talks to the gut via two-way chemical messengers and nerve branches. And the frontal lobe is involved in things like attention and focus, executive function and planning and organizing, and problem-solving. Do any of those areas sound like ones affected by ADHD? You’re nodding your head.
SHERYL: Oh yeah, because they do.
DANA: Children with ADHD often struggle with all of those tasks. And because the frontal lobe is in the brain, many people are under the impression it’s the brain that needs care when in reality, it’s also the gut that’s causing problems. I think the biggest thing for me, especially with younger children, is that 95% of the body’s serotonin and 50% of the body’s dopamine are produced in the gut. And these neurotransmitters, or hormones, are the ones that manage our emotions. They balance our mood, they help our cognitive function, and emotional dysregulation is a common symptom of ADHD.
And many parents don’t realize that this emotional dysregulation actually starts in the gut, where serotonin and dopamine are made. And so the problem isn’t the fact of the emotions themselves, but the fact that the correct amount of these vital neurotransmitters is not being made in the first place. So by working to improve gut health, parents of children with ADHD find that emotional dysregulation problems solve themselves. It’s actually one of the first things that change when we help the gut.
Have you ever had, like, butterflies in your stomach when you’ve been nervous about something? That’s a perfect example of the gut-brain connection at work.
Our bodies perceive whether we’re nervous or in a stressful situation. And then our brains trigger raw emotions in the gut, resulting in that feeling of butterflies or feeling nauseous. And so that’s the brain talking to the gut.
But the reverse is also true. So our guts are hooked to our brains as well, when the digestive system, and specifically the intestinal tract, has a higher level of bad gut bacteria than good. It’s called gut dysbiosis. And gut dysbiosis creates inflammation that travels through the vagus nerve to the brain. And once it reaches the brain, it creates all of those symptoms that I mentioned brain fog, inattention, ability to focus, poor memory, and a whole host of other symptoms. So it’s kind of like this highway. They’re constantly sending messages back and forth.
SHERYL: Wow. I know that so many of our listeners are like, “Oh, my gosh, brain fog.” Even for themselves.
DANA: Oh, totally. I know.
SHERYL: I am a big believer in this with the food, the gut connection, but I’m not always really good at doing it, and I do notice it’s such a difference. With that connection, they’ve done so many studies. There might be some people listening that are skeptical, like, “I don’t really know.” But there is much research now done on it, and this is mainstream now.
DANA: It’s becoming more mainstream. I’ve run into many non-believers in my time. I tell you, my husband, used to be one of them. I always throw him under the bus. But, it was the science that first made me rethink the direction that we were traveling with my son. And also for him, he’s a man of science. And the fact that my son had significant side effects on medication, it was the science that convinced me natural methods were worth a shot.
And there are also a lot of studies that are out there in relation to food and ADHD because that’s really where the biggest non-believers come to like, “well, how can your diet, reduce ADHD symptoms?” I can tell you if you could take out some of the most inflammatory foods, sometimes within two weeks, you’ve got a different child.
There was a study conducted on females in 2011 concluded that 64% of children diagnosed with ADHD were actually experiencing a hypersensitivity to food. 64% of the study. I wonder what might happen if these children changed their diet and remove foods that they were sensitive to. Maybe the symptoms will become more manageable.
There was another study which I found really, really interesting. 56% of ADHD kids tested positive for food allergies, compared to less than six to 8% of the general kids in the general population. So 8% in the general population, compared to 56% of kids with ADHD. So that tells me there is a clear correlation between ADHD and food allergies, and I could keep going on and on.
SHERYL: That’s just as bad as that is fascinating. I didn’t know that serotonin and dopamine are produced in the stomach.
DANA: Yeah, also, a lot of kids with ADHD have trouble sleeping. So melatonin serotonin is a precursor to melatonin, and you need melatonin, the hormone to help you sleep. So if you’ve got low serotonin in your gut, you’re not going to be making the melatonin, and then you’re going to be having sleep troubles.
So if you’ve got sleep troubles listeners out there, you may want to look at how’s your gut health. Or how’s your children’s gut health because there could be something in there that’s actually contributing, not to being able to make enough serotonin to make enough melatonin?
SHERYL: Wow. Okay, so what do we do?
DANA: Don’t ever blame yourself if you’re eating crap foods. We know what we know. We do what we have to do to get through being a parent – it’s tough, and we’re all busy. And so never blame yourself. Don’t think, “oh, my gosh, this is all my fault.” It’s not your fault at all.
I’ll also tell you that Rome wasn’t built in a day because you do not need to do all of this at once. Don’t think, “Oh, I’ve got to change our diet. I’ve got to fix it, I’ve got to do it tomorrow.”
No, you don’t. It’s not a race. It’s a marathon. It’s okay to take things slowly. It’s okay. It’s okay to take one step at a time. So I’m going to preface this with that first. Just keep that in the back of your mind when I say that, but
SHERYL: I really love that because we do panic, like, “oh my gosh, my kids, eat goldfish all the time.” Then you start thinking you have to radically change everything.
DANA: You got to start somewhere and do it slowly. I did everything on day one. And I do not recommend that at all. I had multiple panic attacks. I was on the floor, many times crying. I can tell you that’s not what I teach the families that I work with.
I think people want to start with a diet – it’s the foundation of everything. It’s like when you’re building a house. If you don’t have that solid foundation, the house will not be very strong, it’s going to fall down, and the body will be the same. The diet is the foundation of the body.
And if we’re still pounding the body with all of these inflammatory foods, we’re not going to be able to help the body and the mind thrive. And so, the top three foods that I recommend families remove from the diet, and I don’t want to give you a shock, but it’s gluten, dairy, and soy. And that’s because these three foods are the top three culprits that are driving inflammation in the body, they’re highly inflammatory, and they can lead to a leaky gut.
I’ve just talked about how important that gut is to that gut-brain connection. And so the gluten, in particular, leads to a leaky gut. It leads to increased intestinal permeability in everyone, even those that don’t have a gluten allergy or known gluten intolerance. It does it for everyone. For some, it is temporary. For others, it has lasting effects on the body. I’ll talk about why it’s more for others than then some in a second.
Basically, intestinal permeability refers to the breakdown of the intestinal walls. And when it’s not functioning well, the walls of the intestine form a barrier, allowing water and nutrients to pass through, but blocking other things from entering the bloodstream. So when a person has this increased intestinal permeability, it leads to a leaky gut, which may basically mean the tight junctions in the gut that are supposed to control what passes through the lining of the test stones aren’t doing their job effectively.
And so it allows all these toxins and harmful substances into the bloodstream that aren’t supposed to be there that create this inflammation. So gluten creates intestinal permeability, and intestinal permeability creates a leaky gut. A leaky gut triggers an inflammatory response, and then that all go up into the brain, aka we have all of these symptoms.
So gluten is the number one food to remove from the diet, but as I said, you don’t need to do it all tomorrow. But also other things like artificial flavors and artificial colors. That’s huge with kids with ADHD. There are lots of studies out there to say that it can affect or create hyperactivity in children.
Interestingly, many other countries have different ingredients for the same product that is sold in the US, like ketchup, for example. Here it has high fructose corn syrup and artificial colors in it in the US. But France and the UK have no artificial flavors or colors and don’t have high fructose corn syrup. But it’s made by the same supplier.
There are a lot of products out there that have different recipes for different countries because those countries have taken measures to remove high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, and artificial colors from the food supply, whereas America hasn’t.
SHERYL: Interesting. Oh, gosh, we could totally have a whole video on that.
DANA: Yeah, so that’s where I’d say people would start – really just trying to reduce inflammation in the body through diet. But it’s not just about what to take out. It’s really about what to put back in. As far as what to eat, my best tip is to sort of focus on whole, nutritious fresh fruits and veggies. Grass-fed animal proteins, such as meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs, and plenty of healthy fats, like avocado oil, coconut oil, and olive oil.
Get away from those other highly inflammatory oils, like vegetable oil and sunflower oil, and really focus on the good quality ones. By drinking plenty of spring water, you’re not only avoiding harmful chemicals that are in some water but also, water helps detox the body and remove toxins that are already there. And so all of that really provides the body with the nutrients it needs so that it can function at its best. And the rule of thumb that I’ve got is when buying a package, if there’s anything on the ingredients that you can’t pronounce, put it back on the shelf. And try to focus on packaged foods that have less than five or six ingredients on them.
SHERYL: Yeah, that’s a good rule of thumb. So, when you started doing this with your son, what was that whole process like for you?
DANA: Look, I honestly muddled my way through it because I had no one to help me. I changed his diet. I removed gluten, dairy, and soy, and artificial flavors, artificial colors. I did some functional lab testing, which is really diving deep into each person’s individual body to see what’s going on.
Is there actually something deeper going on in the gut that’s contributing to this? Are there problems with detoxification pathways, or are there other food sensitivities, so I did a food sensitivity? And he was highly sensitive to raspberries. Who would have thought – raspberries were healthy, but they were significantly contributing to inflammation in his body.
So on day one, I removed all of those things plus about 40 food sensitivities. And that’s why I had multiple panic attacks. Because that was not the right way to do it, now, but I will say literally, within two weeks, my child was a different kid. It was bizarre. His body just calmed down, and his meltdowns became less severe, less frequent, and less intense, and until such time, he stopped having meltdowns altogether.
And for me, the meltdowns were probably the hardest because it just puts your family in this stop zone. You can’t do anything, you can’t go out, and you can’t continue with your day because you’re dealing with this meltdown. And so when that stopped, it was like, this peace just returned to our house.
So for us, that was the biggest thing, but then we looked at what was in his underlying body contributing to the breakdown or the increase in inflammation. So we bought some key supplements based on what was going on in those lab tests. And within four months, I was able to start slowly reducing the medication one by one. Obviously, I’ll tell people out there don’t do that on your own you should always do it in consultation with your doctor.
And until such time, he was off meds, and he was thriving. Don’t get me wrong, having kids that are teenagers is a whole new ballgame. But now it’s totally age-appropriate, no matter if they’ve got ADHD or anything else. But IT’S HARD WORK. I’ll be honest.
SHERYL: Yeah. I imagine you start eating like that, and things change.
DANA: I used to suffer from anxiety myself. I used to be on an SSRI to help with my anxiety, and I was able to get off that and felt amazing. We hardly get sick. We don’t eat gluten and dairy, or soy in our house. Every now and again, I will go out with my husband, and when the kids aren’t around, I’ll have something with gluten in it, and I always pay for it later.
So I know how much it can affect my body. And so, I always say to myself. I’m never going to do that again. But we all make silly mistakes. And I don’t do it very often. But yeah, it’s amazing. And it’s the same with the families that go through my program.
They make the changes with their whole family. And then, the stories of the parent’s improvements are insane. I had this one lady who had terrible inflammation in her hip joint. There were days she couldn’t get out of bed or walk up her second story to her bedroom. She was waiting for a specialist appointment.
And the doctor rang about ten weeks into our program and said, “I’ve got an appointment for you, to come and find the source of the inflammation to get you some medication.” And she said, “I don’t need to come anymore. It’s completely disappeared.” And that was all because of everything that she was doing for our kids.
SHERYL: Wow. That’s amazing.
DANA: It’s not just ADHD. Everything that I’m teaching you is not ADHD. It’s health. It’s everything. It’s every disorder.
SHERYL: Yeah, so, you wrote a book and, and I’m going to order it because I just think it’s so helpful for me. And my mom’s a big believer in all of this, too. I am too, and even when they want an antibiotic. And unless I really need it, I don’t want to go on that. And then you think she’ll usually take probiotics after she goes on?
DANA: I was going to say that the best probiotic to take is something called “saccharomyces boulardii.” And it’s a specific strain that is perfect for if you have to go on antibiotics. I always suggest to people that if they have to go on antibiotics take that as well. Obviously, don’t do it around the same time as the antibiotics. And always do it for about two weeks after finishing the antibiotics. If it was to just keep restoring that gut flora, because you’re breaking it down when you go on the antibiotics, and you really want to restore, restore that gut afterward.
SHERYL: Now, if you have a sinus infection, they put you on an antibiotic, and it goes away. But then, all of a sudden, it comes back. And that’s just like you were saying that the good bacteria kills the good stuff and the bad stuff. And then the bad stuff comes back with a vengeance.
DANA: Yes, it does. And it’s like it is this vicious cycle. Like, if you’ve got allergies, if you’ve got asthma, if you’ve got XR, that is usually a result of the breakdown of the gut. And so, you can restore your gut, and you’ll find that the symptoms of all this stuff will go away.
And so sometimes, I would be like, “you have to take antibiotics.” Strep is one of those things, strep has several complications that can end in something called Panda’s, which is another neuro-behavioral issue, and it can change a kid’s personality. So strep is one of those things that I definitely don’t mess around with. Ear infections, you can wait it out, even sinus infections. There are lots of natural things you can do to try and to try and rectify that first if you can.
SHERYL: Yeah, I mean, we’re not saying don’t take medications here. It’s like getting to what’s really going on and being able to use your diet to help your own health.
DANA: Do the positives outweigh the negatives? That’s how I live my life. Do the positives outweigh the negatives? Yes, they do in this instance, or no, they don’t. And that is how I make my decisions. And so, it’s the same thing here. Do the positives outweigh the negatives when it comes to strep? No, they don’t. And so I will give the antibiotics.
SHERYL: So you were saying there are some tests that you can have.
DANA: I always say that diets are the foundation of everything. You can’t supplement your way out of your diet. And so, even the same with these tests, you’re not going to change the diet; there’s no point in spending the money on these tests because you really need to make sure that inflammation is low. And a big part of that comes from what you eat.
Now, the first test that I suggest for families is a stool test. So it gives us a really good picture of the state of the gut. Because we want the gut to be functioning well, we want that gut-brain connection to be functioning well.
And so we look at everything going on there, parasites, bacteria, worms, yeast overgrowth, intestinal health markers, so we can really make sure that we can support that gut-brain connection. We also look at food sensitivity testing because food can create these inflammatory reactions in the body that can create symptoms that can further break down the gut lining.
Another test that we look at is something called an organic acid test. It looks at your detoxification pathways. It looks for specific nutrients like B vitamins, which are really important for our compromised kid’s diet modification.
Such things as salicylates and oxalates, which are chemical compounds found in some of the healthiest foods and neurotransmitters, look at your serotonin and your dopamine. And then the last test is something called a crypto payroll test. And payrolls are a normal chemical byproduct in the body, and they attach to vitamins B, six, and zinc. And they draw these elements out of the body when they’re excreted through the urine.
So if someone has these elevated urine levels, it can result in a dramatic deficiency of zinc and B6. And it’s frequently identified in behavioral disorders, ADHD, depression, and violent behavior. And symptoms include physical or poor tolerance to physical or emotional stress, anger control, mood swings, or short-term memory sensitivity to light and sound tactile sensitivities. And a lot of those symptoms correlate with ADHD symptoms as well.
So that test is so important. Now, there are many other ones that I do out there, but they’re my four base tests that really give you a good overview of what’s going on in that bio-individual body. Every child is unique. And so we really want to make sure that we’re looking at what’s going on in that body and tailor an approach to that person.
SHERYL: Wow. And where do you get these tests done?
DANA: Yeah, you’ve got to find a practitioner that will do them. Unfortunately, most traditional medicine doctors will not do them. They’re not covered by insurance. We’ve got this disease management industry, as opposed to a health management industry. And unfortunately, most of the medical industry is driven by pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies. And so they don’t want healthy people. And so they’re not covered, unfortunately.
So you’ve got to find a natural health practitioner like myself and a naturopathic doctor; you want to find someone that’s specific to what issues you’re dealing with there. There are specialists out there. And that’s really, really important.
Because if you’re going to someone who just deals with general health, they’re really not going to know specific to ADHD health, or if you do dealing with someone who is just focused on gut health and not mood disorders, then they’re only going to be able to help the gut and not the mood side of things. So you want to find someone that can help you. I work with families all across the US. And it doesn’t matter; you don’t need to be in Michigan. There are a lot of practitioners out there that are like that.
SHERYL: Okay, so you could meet with me, for example, and we would meet over zoom, and you would tell me what would tell me where to get the test time?
DANA: Yeah, we send them to your house, you take the samples at home, and you send them back to the lab, so you don’t need to go anywhere.
SHERYL: That is amazing. Yeah, that is so great. Isn’t it wonderful that we can meet here and do this?
DANA: Yeah, it’s revolutionary. I’ve got a couple of clients in Germany, I’ve got a client in the UK, and I’ve got two in Australia right now. And then my rest are in the US. It’s easier in the US. We’ve got really good access to testing and supplements here compared to some of the other countries. But it’s possible to help people across the world,
SHERYL: I love it. So tell everybody about your book and where they can find it and where they can find you. This has just been so helpful. And I really think it’s important to think about what is causing these symptoms and how we can help our kids and ourselves.
DANA: My book launched maybe about three months ago now. It’s called “Thriving With ADHD.” It’s a guide to naturally reducing ADHD symptoms in your child. Years ago, I wanted a book on ADHD that would clearly spell out exactly what I needed to do to support my son with ADHD naturally, but I could never find it.
I spent hours and hours and hours and years and years and years trying to try to work it all out. And I struck out when I kept looking over and over again. There was no book out there that gave me the information I needed. And there was this novelist Tony Morrison. She once said that if you find a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. So that’s what I did.
I wrote a book, and I still can only believe it. It’s an international bestseller in multiple categories, including children’s health, which was a really important one for me. And I think that that was a really great one.
It’s my life’s work. It’s the guide that I needed when I started this journey with my son, but I couldn’t find, and I feel that it’s different from every other book out there because I’m not only a practitioner, but I’m also a mom who gets every single emotion that parents are going through when you’ve got kids with challenges, and I share my story.
I’m very open and honest, and vulnerable. But really practical in what I share. It’s not complicated. It’s step by step by step. So they can find that on Amazon or on my website, https://adhdthriveinstitute.com/. I’m on Instagram @ ADHD Thrive Institute, Facebook, ADHD Thrive Institute, and a lot of other social platforms as well.
SHERYL: Love that. So, so helpful. Thank you so much for coming on, and I will share that with our listeners.
