ADHD Diagnosis and Hope with Jessica Dunn on What Actually Worked

Four years ago, Jessica Dunn was navigating her daughter's AuDHD diagnosis with too many opinions, not enough answers. Today: 18 months without sensory meltdowns.

What this episode cover:

• Moving from diagnosis shock to usable roadmap
• Why early intervention builds skills before shame sets in
• Family therapy vs "fix the kid" approaches
• The ADHD tax: funding, benefits, and hard budget choices
• Choosing high-impact supports and measuring by function
• Body-based regulation: deep pressure, vestibular input, chiropractic care
• Primitive reflexes, midline work, making OT gains stick
• Building trusted teams and filtering noisy advice
• Redefining progress with small wins that compound
• Carrying hope into new stages like puberty

The toolkit that travels: Visual routines, movement before focus, protein before school, simple words during stress.

For ADHD parents who need evidence, not inspiration.

Whether you choose medication or other supports, whether you're years into this or just starting - this shows what's possible when you find your people and trust yourself.

Please reach out to me, reach out to Jessica. Hopefully this connects you with people who specialize in ADHD support.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage And Reunion
• 1:46 From Diagnosis Shock To Hope
• 3:08 The Nonlinear Roadmap After Diagnosis
• 5:06 Access, Funding, And Financial Strain
• 7:35 Why Early Intervention Matters
• 9:41 Stigma Then Versus Now
• 11:19 Family Therapy Over Individual Fixes
• 13:02 Trial, Error, And Building A Team
• 15:12 Body-Based Supports And Regulation
• 17:28 Hope, Resources, And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Virtual Like a Mother Podcast. It has been a while since I have had a guest. We are here with Jessica Dunn today. We are going to talk about finding help, creating help, getting to a place of hope when you are parenting andor raising people with uh neurodivergence. Hi, I'm Kayla, who's our host of the Chill Like a Mellow podcast, and I am a counselor and coach for moms. So to bring you up to speed, Jessica and I did a three-part series three years ago on parenting and living ADHD andor neurodivergent lives. And we checked in with each other about a year ago. We did another episode then. And so today, we just we're at, we're both at this place where we'd like to reflect on those early days of diagnosis and where things have progressed and where they're now at.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00

Thanks for having me on again. It's actually really awesome that we could like reconnect and reflect on how things have been, remembering the early days of when we heard the diagnosis happen and where we were at as a parent and like not knowing what the hell we're gonna do with that information, feeling so overwhelmed, not knowing what to expect and all the worries that came along with that to like today, where we were just kind of hashing out like, oh my gosh, things are pretty chill and calm right now. And I if you would have told me that this is gonna be the case four years from yes, like yeah, four years ago, I I probably would have laughed in your face. I did not think we would be here today. So I think it has uh a lot to do with a lot of early intervention, a lot of um giving yourself some grace and really using the tools and supports that are available to you um early on and just being a good parent and listening, I guess. I feel like uh there's hope there. And I wish I would have found an episode like this um early into the diagnosis because all I was hearing is doom and gloom. I was um I was really nervous about what um lied ahead. And uh I didn't really hear a lot of these podcasts of like all of the great little wins that we had and how the trajectory has been going incredibly well.

SPEAKER_00: 2:36

Yeah. Okay, for to catch up the listeners, if they have not listened to any of those other episodes, let's both give just like a quick summary of what what maybe we were dealing with then and and maybe how things have like shifted or changed. So for me, um around the same time with Jessica, around four years ago, we were pursuing a ADHD diagnosis for my oldest, myself, and and my partner, and agreed. It's when you know, you're like, okay, this might be the thing that gives me the answers. It's gonna give me the roadmap on how to respond. And then you get to that next marker in the map, and it's like you could go in five different directions. And there is no one right direction for anyone. There's a lot of really great directions. And so when I think about those early days, it was like, okay, we just need to get through the assessment, and then we just need to get through the diagnosis, and then we just need to get through organizing, responding to figuring out the treatment plan. And then we need to do the treatment plan, and that in itself can shift and change. And you've got like outsider opinions and insider opinions, and doctors, and family, and friends, and and OTs and counselors, and you know, there's all of this information flying at you. And nobody's really saying what you need to do because they're all maybe outside of the unsolicited advice. They're all kind of saying, like, this is maybe what you need, this maybe might work, this thing might help. Because none of them can say, like, medicine is gonna change your life, occupational therapy is gonna change your life, diet's gonna change your life, exercise is gonna change your life. Like, none of these people can actually say this is the five steps.

SPEAKER_01: 4:35

Yeah, because it's so individualized. Everybody is so different with this diagnosis. Like, obviously, there's some main similar characteristics and symptoms that um our kiddos really share and are very similar, but then there's some that are very different. So um some modalities of support will shine and will work miracles almost. And then some just like don't work, right? Like they're just just don't your kid doesn't respond to it. And you just have to kind of figure out what works best for your kid. We were very privileged in the sense that I know you have a few followers from all over Canada and United States, but we are I live in Saskatchewan where we have like we have a some support for people. My daughter is also autistic as well. So she has both um ADHD and autism. So we have some funding to help with that, along with my husband, has great benefits, but all that runs out pretty quickly if you're doing stuff on a regular basis, OT, speech, just psych like uh psych uh um uh appointments, and there's just so much tutoring, like all that stuff. So it does, it does financially have a strain on you. But we were very lucky that we did have some funding to help with that. And since she does has that have that autism diagnosis, we were able to apply for the disability tax credit, which was massive for us to help her out. But that our funding also is done after age 12 in Saskatchewan. So we knew that if we wanted to get some help for her, we were gonna have to do it soon and early. And thank goodness we got that diagnosis earlier than we thought she was diagnosed at at five when we got got so we have we've had five years of actual intervention of some sort. I like I know a lot of parents almost struggle to even get to the assessment because they don't want their kid to have that label. But it was all that we needed that label in order for her to get the support she needed. And I am just so grateful that like I trusted my gut and got on it early from five years ago to like the behavior that she was displaying at five to today is just night and day difference. It was the reflection of like where they are from here to then, because we don't even really stop and think about that sometimes. It's just like the little things that we celebrate, like from just her being able to get up in the morning and she gets herself up early in the morning, she is showering on her own, she's getting ready, she's making her breakfast. Like these are things that we thought like were never going to occur without help, without like having a buddy helping her through the whole morning. So these early interventions were so, so important, made such a huge difference.

SPEAKER_00: 7:26

Yeah, yeah. And there's a large body of research for the people who need some like science backing. This this isn't just like two moms talking about this one hearing in a in a silo, you know? It's like there is a large body of research, specifically done by Russell Barclay, around early intervention and how early intervention can actually heed off some of those like lifelong difficulties that a lot of us late diagnosed ADHD people have to curb and change and like recalibrate to an adulthood, like, oh my God, I've been doing this thing for my whole life. And it was because of this thing, right? Because of the way the brain is wired differently. And so there was a a talk recently that I was watching, done by by Russell Barkley, and he said, if you can, no shame if you can't, but if you can get intervention before they are 12, not only for the funding, not only for school, not only for any kind of like character development or like any of those things, if you can get intervention before 12, the research shows that the kids actually feel less shame about it. And it heeds off a lot of those, like the behaviors that we see in adults who haven't had the scaffolding, who haven't had the support because they're not having to recalibrate to this diagnosis, these 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, uh, and like recalibrating then their life in in backwards motion, right? Like, oh my God, this thing could have been so much different. I would have made this different decision, this different career, this different thing, because I would have had this scaffolding. Now that's not true for everyone. There is also a body of people who say, like, if I would have been diagnosed in the 80s or the 90s, I'm pretty sure my life would have taken a different trajectory because I would have been in that different classroom. I would have been in that other thing. Maybe I like it would have been so socially detrimental. So um, like as we're having these conversations, I just wanted to like name that for people because it's it is a good point. The like the the stigma around it is still there now, but it's very different now than 30 years ago.

SPEAKER_01: 9:44

Yeah.

unknown: 9:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 9:45

I feel like the early invention I I have like also read a lot of stuff of Russell Barclays and and just the um the negative commentations of having ADT and not knowing it, like always feeling like you screwed up, you are you're not good enough, you're getting yelled at five to five to twenty times more than the average kid every single day because you're not keeping up or you're not paying it, seems like you're not paying attention or you're behaving um out of um out of aggression for a reason. And like all these things that are not true, it just really impacts their self-esteem and their confidence. And saying, Oh, actually, no, I'm behaving this way because I have my brain is wired differently, um, puts a whole different context on my daughter. And um she's just able more able to figure out coping mechanisms now because of the early interventions. She doesn't feel less then, she just feels different. And we just have to figure out how to adapt life so she can thrive in it now. And if we weren't, if we didn't have these early interventions with the psychiatrists and the OTE, to make them feel like they know what they're becoming more self-aware and figuring out what to do in certain certain situations and just practicing things in a different way has been like so, so beneficial.

SPEAKER_00: 11:11

For those of the people listening who maybe need a bit of that roadmap, even though their roadmap might look differently, Jessica. Can you remember what some of the first things were in terms of intervention that you guys sought out?

SPEAKER_01: 11:27

Yeah, like it was a lot of trial and error. Um, some things were going well and some things weren't. We had Eva in going to like a monthly therapist session every month. And what we quickly found out within like the first five, six months is she didn't really need to be in it on her own per se. She was quite little, but our whole family needed to be in it, especially my other daughter. She like has lived through a lot too with this diagnosis. And I know that she needed somebody to vent to, not just mom and dad. And my husband and I needed to go together just to help figure out a game plan where we were on the same page. Because this is a lot to deal with. This diagnosis is a lot to deal with. Cause like, A, you find out that your kid has um like has neurodivergence and it is hereditary. So one of us has it, or both of us. So that was a lot to accept. Like you just kind of go through the whole, like, I almost call it like you're going through the stages of grief because you have to like you're in denial, you're angry about it, you um have to accept it at some point. Like this is like, and we all have different timelines for that. So I was way ahead. I would think I feel like I was three to four steps ahead of my husband because he just wasn't, he was in a different stage. So for us to finally get on the same page just made our whole household feel a little bit more and that we have like had a strong plan moving forward, that we were on each other's team, kind of thing. Whereas before it was just like we're kind of just putting the onus on these therapists to help our child. It's this is a whole family dynamic. Like you can't just expect Eva to do the work and not the rest of us, right? So I went, I went to therapy to help me like gain more clarity on how to advocate for her, how to help my other daughter, how to just navigate my own feelings about it all. There's a lot to handle, right? Right off the hop. So giving yourself some grace in that roadmap is gonna be is a huge thing because sometimes you think you're doing the right thing, and then you just like, mm, no, there's something more that needs to happen here. And we had gone, we done speak, we had did speech with my daughter as well on a monthly basis. Went to OT, um, which was super helpful. We actually had some tutoring done with my daughter too, because she learns better in a in a smaller environment as opposed to a big giant group setting. So that really boosted her confidence because she then again felt so much more confident in her um her ability to do schoolwork, which was another huge thing. The most recent one that we've done, which we feel is like been the most helpful for us, and I was not going to go for it because I just didn't really know a whole lot about it, is actually she has been going to the chiropractor a lot. She goes almost twice a month. And that has been such a huge help that I wish I would have done earlier. Because it it was like it was the most, it was the modality of of intervention that I have seen improve her almost instantly. And it was it was wild to see. So I would encourage you to kind of look in and look into that the kind of modality of like helping um your kiddo with their vagus nerve and just helping them reset that because it improves their sleep, it improves our digestion, their it improves their mood significantly, and also helps their body align. And it was that was probably I would never have thought of that five years ago. Just being in this community of Instagram moms that are in the same boat as me and have just been trying to find my own resources and support groups, which is the biggest one, I would say. And you're you're one of the biggest helps in mind in my um whole journey too, because we've been going through it together and like what's going on with him, or what's going on with Eva? And we're trying to figure out what's what and are we in the same boat? And I wouldn't have even found a nurse practitioner if it wasn't for you, because I was like at my wit's end trying to find somebody that would look at Eva and um and also help us try to find the right medication for her. So, so it just all those things were a huge thing for my our roadmap. Obviously, it's gonna be different for everybody, depending where you live, on your financial situation. I know I'm very privileged, even just using one or two at a time just to see what would how the how the intervention supports your goals, or if it's not, then move another wit direction. This stuff takes time and it doesn't happen overnight.

SPEAKER_00: 16:07

What I heard you say, Jessica, was like first and foremost, parent support or family support on how to be in an environment where one or more than one person is um neurodivergent and or like just like a dysregulated human, right? And so parent support, professional support in terms of what are the professionals you can pull in, whether that is psychologists, social workers, plate therapists, music therapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists or speech therapists. And then that last one that you said body interventions. I'm like nodding my head as you're saying it, because that's a relatively new one for us too, for my son, uh massage, like deep, not like deep tissue. It's it's not like that, it's like pressure, deep pressure on the body. He actually told me after three years of like off and on kind of talk play child therapy. He came home from one session one time and he was like, Mom, I know everything they're trying to teach me. Like you and dad talk about this stuff all the time. I know it. It's it's it's not that I don't know my window of tolerance, my stress cycles, what I need to do when I'm dysregulated. That's not it. It's like I know all of that stuff. They're not teaching me anything new. It's that when I am dysregulated, I can't access it. And so, and he's like, he has very good language around it. And so then we sat down, and instead of being mad that the therapy that costs a lot of money per hour wasn't actually teach teaching him anything, he already knew the skills. We had to move to a more body-based intervention. And so, actually, how do we get your physical body out of fight or flight or like prepped for the fight? Right. His his body is often primed and ready. It and so a big part of some wiring of ADHD is that they get a lot of dopamine from arguing, from from like raised voices, like and he has said to me, I want you to yell at me, because then as soon as I yell at him, it's over, right? It's like whatever buildup he is expecting, whatever body release he needs from that to be able to yell at me back, he he's looking for it. And so when we do the body-based interventions, the the body is calmer, which means in his case, his mind is calmer.

SPEAKER_01: 18:39

Yeah, I absolutely agree. It's it's mind-blowing how different she feels after her card appointment. Like sometimes she just she's like the first time she went, she went to bed without melatonin the first time in four years. But she was just like, for the first time, I saw her body just relax. And I've never like she's always up and busy, and you know, like you sense that she's always in a sense of fight or fight. And after that session, I like we took video of it. It was like bizarre. I just never like, I'm like, is this some kind of like witchcraft? What is happening? Right. Because like, what is happening? And you know, I think it also came back to is immediately ask your OT or your therap or your physician to check your child's primitive reflexes. Because a lot of kiddos that I have talked to, or a lot of parents that have kids with neurodivergence, say that their kids are they still have them, whether it's the rooting reflex, their AT and R things that are like, if you if you remember back in like um school where you learned about these reflexes, where if you like touch your hand and your fingers are crossed, and same thing with your feet. Like my daughter had every single one of these. And I had asked my physician and my OT that for this, and they said they weren't there. And when we went to the chiropractor, they were. So she recommended some other cool things about crossing your midline and helping get rid of these types of reflexes. And I feel like a lot of things that we were doing in OT and also um at home because of this chiropractor has significantly helped her. And yes, you're right. She knew how to do, she knows how to do all the coping strategies, but in the heat of the moment, she will not access them. And you know, I think this a lot of with adults too. Like everybody kind of gets when you get to that moment of over your threshold, you're not gonna like, do you calm down when your husband says to calm down? No. So like none of this happens. So, but like when she's now that she's coming into this as maybe growing up older, she's starting to sense her body fine, finally, this is happening. Like, I never thought this was going to happen, but now she's finally seeing it in her body and feeling it in her body that she's like, oh, something's coming up in me. I'm gonna go swing, I'm gonna go do some heavy, like heavy work, I'm gonna go roll up in my weighted blanket. So she like I don't have to tell her to do these things. I don't have to be so hyper-vigilant and looking for her triggers because she's starting finally to see in herself. And yeah, it's wild, like to the point now where she has playing sports and not just playing sports, she's like crushing it in team sports, which I never thought would happen. Like, that's very rare for kiddos with autism and ADHD. Um, they're usually really like single sport or activity people, and she's trying new things, although her sensory needs are still there. Like some things really still bother her in terms of clothing and hair stuff. She's significantly better than she used to be. She's just being more self-aware. I just didn't know if this day would come, and it it is. And it's like I just want to tell your listeners that there could be some hope if you just keep at it with the with your early interventions and really just take it in. Take it in. If you are here, please tell your story to other moms. Reach out to this community because I know when I when we first got the diagnosis, I wanted to hear this podcast. I wanted to hear that there is like a silver lining, like you can there's gonna be a turn in the road where things are starting to look up. And that's not saying that you're not gonna have a bad day or two or three, but it's just you're you you as a family will start to adjust, your regulation will get better. I I wanted to hear that there's gonna be like some awesome hope.

SPEAKER_00: 22:49

You know, yeah, and that all for me that all the effort will pay off at some point. Like the not only that like you're gonna feel like you got your money's worth, because that like even if we're struggling financially, that's a big part of it. We we have three dollars for counseling and massage benefits every year. Like that's yeah, that's all we have. And for a period of time when when we moved, so two years ago we lived in Regina, and now we live um in a town outside of Edmonton, and for about six to nine months, we didn't have benefits. And between the three of us, the three out of the four of us diagnosed and seeking active treatment between medication, massage, and therapy, it's about twelve hundred dollars a month. And so, like not only that, I don't want to say that it was a sacrifice because I would never change the way that we allocated those resources, but it is something that kind of stirs up in me in that time frame when I saw people going on vacation or being able to be a little bit open or freer with their finances. And I was like, mathematically, I I don't understand this. And then one day it just clicked when I just happened to go to the pharmacy to pick up all three of our medications on the same day. Right. And it was like that's right, right. This is a weekly fee that we are paying that could equal a vacation of just on those three things, like not let alone like the entire gamut of having ADHD.

SPEAKER_01: 24:32

No ADHD period.

SPEAKER_00: 24:34

ADHD tax, which like we that was the title of our last episode. For anybody who's wondering, is like if you are feeling financially strained because of these things, it's real and it's true and it's valid. And so I don't want to say that we're like on the maybe the other side of the hill. There's probably another hill coming, another developmental phase, another thing that will change, but like puberty, puberty, but like right now, we're at this phase where it's like, oh my god, that was so worth it. Like the money, the time, the research, the assessment, those free 30-minute calls that I would sign up for, those PDFs that I would find that were they would just give me even just one little nugget of like, this is how you could do your morning different. This is how you could do your evening different. Now, not everything can be optimized for anybody who feels like they are in a hyper-vigilant place right now. Not everything can be optimized. However, over time, your resources, your gathering of the people, the professionals or the friends or the family that are on your team, it matters. If it doesn't matter today, it matters eventually.

SPEAKER_01: 25:49

Yeah, down the road for sure. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I 100% agree with everything you just said there. I just when you get that diagnosis and you feel yes, it's like it's almost like, yeah, it's overwhelming, but I also felt like it was I needed it, but I didn't know what to do with that information. And I just sometimes the trial and error is worth it, sometimes it isn't. But you will know, you'll know quickly. And don't beat yourself up if things aren't working as great as you want. Pivot and move, do something different. Maybe it's just a therapist change. Maybe it's you you realize, oh, my child is more body-based. Maybe you realize, oh, this my team, like my my daughter is really gravitating towards this style of learning about her body and her behavior. Maybe it's just sometimes it's about just finding your people and just going through the motions. It goes like this. I will say it it's not a fine little lovely curve on a graph. It is like this. And um, like I was saying before, like I almost I almost didn't want to say to you how things how great things were because I know I'm so used to having the shoe dropping and my shoulders being like this, waiting for the next moment where we were walking on eggshells constantly in our house, waiting for her to explode like a bomb. And it had we haven't had she hasn't had a sensory meltdown in over 18 months. And I can finally be like, okay, this is what it feels like to like not be in survival mode. And I just wanted to say to all the moms and dads out there that it's going to come. It's going to come. You just need to get the supports in your, in your, in your court. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 27:35

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Jessica. Thank you. So good so much for sharing your story of hope and and the way that you accessed resources and the willingness that you had to dedicate time and other resources to supporting what needed to be supported. Just a little like shameless PSA for anybody who is looking for support. I can be that person or I can not be that person. I can be the person who hooks you up with somebody in your area, your jurisdiction, your province. Um, there's so many great people doing things and providing services across Canada or provincially or locally. And those people can be really hard to find or hard to vet. A lot of my clients will share with me that like it's not because of a lack of resources. It's because there's potentially too many, too many choices. What overwhelming do you go on? What fee do you pay? How much is too much? You know, do you do a full psychoed assessment or do you just fill out the screeners with your doctor? Like, what is the way to do this? And so if anybody is at a place of confusion, inner conflict, still trying to find their people, please message me, message Jessica. They hopefully put you into the in front of the people who specialize in this, who know what they're talking about, who aren't just going to say things like, oh, well, you should get more exercise, or oh, you should cut out red dye number three. Those things are really helpful, but in the end, that's not the the that one thing isn't the only contributing factor to like regulating and recalibrating and living life in this way.

SPEAKER_01: 29:18

Yes, absolutely. Yes, definitely reach out to Kayla. She's amazing, she's got so many amazing resources. Just go on her website. I like, I feel like um, she's one of the first places I went to to get information and we immediately clicked. And I'm so happy for that. If it wasn't for Kayla, I would probably still be true, struggling finding somebody that would help my daughter find medication. So thank you, Kayla.

SPEAKER_00: 29:45

Thank you, Jessica. I appreciate that so much. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for having this conversation. I will link all of our other conversations below in case you wanted to check out those other ones on ADHD tax and how minimalism are. Essentialism can really help your home environment. And I hope you all have a great day. Thank you for tuning in to the Chill Like a Mother podcast. Take care.