507- The Social Reboot: Helping Tween and Teen Boys with ADHD Make Friends

Speaker A
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Annie Rogers
Welcome to the Attention Deficit. Disorder Expert podcast series by Attitude magazine.

Hi everyone. My name is Annie Rogers and on behalf of the Attitude team I am pleased to welcome you to today's ADHD experts presentation titled the social reboot helping tween and teen boys with ADHD make friends. Leading today's presentation is Ryan Wexelblatt. Ryan is a licensed clinical social worker specializing in ADHD and the father to a son with ADHD. Previously, he worked as a school social worker.

Ryan is the founder of Tripp Camp, a summer camp program based in Ohio and New Jersey. He creates content on YouTube and social media and provides online parent training through his membership site, which is ADHD dude.com. if your child has run into trouble this year for sending inappropriate or insensitive snaps, for using cringy or distasteful humor at school, or for failing to, quote unquote, read the room, unacceptable behavior, then you are in the right place. Many kids with ADHD have weak social executive function skills. The tools we use to understand each other's thoughts and feelings and to interact appropriately.

This is common, and it's also very hard as a parent to watch and to coach. That is why we're here. In today's webinar, we'll explore how weak social executive function skills, social anxiety, and social isolation impact boys with ADHD. We'll understand why so many boys retreat into a virtual world of games, and we'll see the rates of loneliness and depression among boys are higher now than ever before. Ryan will share evidence based strategies, strategies to help your child or teen connect with their peers and develop real life friendships.

And finally, the sponsor of today's webinar is brain balance. When your teen or young adult is struggling and you know they're capable of so much more, it can be overwhelming, especially when it feels like no one else sees their potential. But brain balance parents know better. They know better academic and mental health outcomes, and they know happier children. They also know they're surrounded by a community of supportive parents and brain balanced staff ready to work together hand in hand to make a positive impact on their child's life.

There is hope and a better way forward. Scan the QR code on screen or visit brainbalancecenters.com attitudemag to contact Brain Balance's support team and get started. Attitude thanks our sponsors for supporting our webinars. Sponsorship has no influence on speaker selection or webinar content. Okay, without any further ado, Ryan, thank you so much for joining us today and for leading this discussion.

We're so excited to learn how we can help our boys and thank you. So much for having me and having me back to the attitude community. I'm really happy to be here, so I have a lot of slides to get through, so I am just going to jump in. So to start off with what I hope you'll take from today. So number one, understand the difference between social executive function challenges, which I'm going to explain in a minute, social anxiety and social isolation.

Speaker A
Learn how each presents in boys and young men with ADHD and learn some actionable strategies to help boys and young men struggling to overcome these challenges that are very common in boys and young men with ADHD. But they're just not spoken about a whole lot. So before we move on, I want to address a question I get all the time when I address this topic, which is what about girls? So as a male clinician in a predominantly female field, parents have sought me out and sought my services because so few men teach boys and young men how to build and sustain friendships. I'm a former school social worker and I worked at special education schools that were primarily boys who presented with behavior and social challenges, vast majority diagnosed with ADHD, or what I refer to as higher verbal autism.

The next part is I didn't grow up female, so my understanding of how girls and young women communicate with each other and form friendships is limited due to my personal and professional experience. All that being said, much of this presentation's information could apply to some girls and young women. So let's talk about first what's going on with boys and young men. These graphics may be a little hard to see, so let me just explain what they are. So the one on the left here shows that from approximately 2008 through 2019, social isolation has really skyrocketed, particularly in the last several years.

While household family social engagement has gone down, non household family social engagement has gone down. So boys are spending less time with their families and less time with peers. Just social engagements with friends have really plummeted as well as companionship. So boys report they have a lot less friends now than they did, you know, back in 2008. The other part here is a percentage of males with major depression.

So that has gone up considerably from 2004 to 20, you know, 24. It's also going up, gone up with girls and women as well. But a lot of people don't realize that it's also gone up with boys, which is why I wanted to include these. So if we talk about why has this happened, why has social isolation gone up? Why are boys and young men spending less time with family, less time with peers?

Why are they reporting having less friends? And I think it's very easy to say, well, because they're constantly on video games. Well, that might be part of it, but that's not really the whole picture. But that is a big picture. Just in general, kids are going out a lot less more, they're home a lot more, and they're on their devices a lot.

For boys, more. So it's, you know, video games, whereas for girls, it's more. So social media. So some other variables to consider. Approximately 25% to 30% of kids with ADHD meet the criteria for an anxiety disorder.

So social anxiety fits right in there with an anxiety disorder. I'm sure this is no surprise to anybody. Kids with ADHD are at a higher risk of developing gaming addiction or problematic gaming habits, which is why I just completed a program a few months ago on problematic gaming. Boys with ADHD often experience significant challenges in their peer relationships, which can lead to increased social isolation. So this is all research data citing this information.

So let's talk about what are social executive function skills and how are they different than social skills. So I define social executive function skills as this executive function skills used when sharing space and communicating, whereas social skills are the set of skills we expect people to use based on the context of the situation and their age. So think about this. All social interactions are context dependent. They change based on who we're with, the environment and so on.

And also social expectations increase with age. We expect a 13 year old to be more socially knowledgeable than a four year old, and we expect a 23 year old to have a different set of social skills than a 13 year old. So one of the things is that for most individuals, these social skills, as we call it, they just kind of are learned intuitively from the environment. For individuals with ADHD while they do learn these skills intuitively, they are often lagging behind several years because as we know, ADHD is really an executive function developmental delay, and these skills tend to be used inconsistently. So one of the things I always want people to understand is that social executive function skills is a really poorly understood topic that often doesn't go beyond just saying he doesn't read social cues.

And that's not really an accurate term. I think when people refer to saying not reading social cues, they mean facial expressions, body language. And I don't find that's the case with individuals with ADHD. They can read facial expressions, they can read body language, they might lack situational awareness, they might lack perspective taking. These are the social executive function skills we'll talk about.

So let's give an example of John, age 13, who presents with ADHD and social executive function challenges. So for John, friendships seem to drift away the second half of fifth grade. So approximately age eleven, I find that to be extremely common. Fifth grade is often when friendships start to fade away. John has a propensity to gravitate towards younger children or adults.

And let me explain real quick the reason why for that. The reason why kids with ADHD tend to gravitate towards younger kids is not because of just social immaturity. It's because younger kids have less social expectations and younger kids often look at them as role models. So that makes kids with ADHd feel good. And because they have lower social expectations, they don't necessarily realize when that kid with ADHD is talking at them about their interests and so on.

And the reason why they gravitate towards adults is because adults are going to be patient and compassionate. So if you're talking at an adult about Minecraft, they're going to sit there and listen to you. They're not going to say, I'm not interested in this or walk away. So really, for kids with ADHD, when they have social executive function challenges, what they struggle with is similar age, peer relationships. And here's the thing, our peers are the judge of our social skills.

The judge of our social skills is not parents. It's not adults. It's your same age peers. John only joins conversations about his narrow interests, so certain video games. Otherwise he's pretty disengaged from peer conversations.

He has said no to any new activities or social experiences his parents have suggested, such as youth group summer camp. This is a really common thing. Many kids with ADHD will say no to anything new or unfamiliar, and that's not a problem in itself. What is a problem is when parents accommodate that inflexibility and let them just not do things. For John, an autism diagnosis was suggested at twelve due to his social executive function challenges, yet he has no developmental history of autism.

I wanted to include this because I cannot tell you the amount of kids I've seen, particularly in the past two to three years, who have been misdiagnosed with autism because their social executive function challenges. And that's to my point of how poorly understood this topic is that a lot of clinicians out there are diagnosing kids with autism just because they're struggling socially, because they are not familiar that many kids with ADHD present with these social executive function challenges. So what do social executive function challenges look like in boys and young men with ADHD? Well, number one, they may struggle with perspective taking. Pretty much anybody who struggles with social executive functioning struggles with perspective taking, which is understanding others thoughts and feelings and understanding how you're coming across to others cognitive flexibility.

This is an executive function skill that I think doesn't get talked about enough. So being adaptable, working effectively in groups, taking others ideas into consideration. One of the things we see for elementary school age kids with social executive function challenges and with perspective taking difficulty is that they have a propensity to be bossy or controlling in place situations. And then when other kids react negatively, when their peers react negatively to their being bossy or controlling, or they say, I don't want to play with you, well, then the child with ADHD often reports that they're being bullied. Well, the reason why they perceive they're being bullied is because they're not understanding how their words and behaviors are affecting their peers.

So situational awareness, what people often refer to as reading a room, I call it reading the field. Situational awareness involves us taking different pieces of information from the environment, putting them together as a whole and making meaning of them. So you'll see that many kids with ADHD who present with social executive function challenges can do fine in structured social situations, but where they tend to struggle is unstructured or even semi structured social situations. And where does this start to really show? During recess?

At school. This is why I have a video on my YouTube channel where I talk about why recess is often the hardest school subject for many elementary schoolers with ADHD. So this slide you see here, this picture, this is one of the slides that I use in my school year programs. And we use at trip camp where we teach about reading the field, because at trip camp we're going out into the community on different trips every day. So we want to talk about what's expected in these situations, what do we have to be aware of and what should our behavior look like?

Some other ones include putting in the work, so putting in the required effort to cultivate and sustain friendships. Most boys with ADHD I meet are socially motivated. They like being with other kids. However, when they're not with other kids, it's kind of out of sight, out of mind. They're not thinking about them because as we know, the ADHD brain tends to live in the moment.

So what happens is when kids get to middle school and other kids are texting each other, making plans, but they're not doing any of that because it's out of sight, out of mind. They're not showing other kids that they want to be friends or to build that friendship. Initiating. So starting and ending conversations because of the inconsistent use of internal dialogue, what I call brain voice with kids. A lot of kids with ADHD have difficulty knowing how to start conversations.

Many don't end conversations. They'll just walk out of the room or whatever without saying goodbye, which is not a huge deal. But as you get older, again social expectations increase, it becomes socially inappropriate humor. This is a big one, particularly for kids with a combined type ADHD. So using humor appropriately and in the right context, so knowing your audience.

And again, this is just one of the slides we use in our programs to address the putting in the work piece. So it says why guys your age might feel weird about asking other kids to hang out at school. So one of the things that we really talk about is the idea of rejection and that everybody experiences social rejection in their life at one point or another. And the more we experience it, the more we get used to it. And also we have to learn that it's not necessarily about us, it's not a poor reflection of us if somebody doesn't want to reciprocate a social invitation and so on.

So let's move on to talk about social anxiety. So we have Malcolm here who has an inattentive profile of ADHD and social anxiety. Malcolm's mother arranged playdates through elementary school. By the way, I always tell parents that if your child is in 3rd, 4th, 5th grade, you need to stop arranging playdates for them because it doesn't mean anything. If you're reaching out to the other child's parent, it means something to the other child.

If your child reaches out to them. Not to mention it helps build self advocacy skills. So when Malcolm got to middle school, mother stopped arranging play dates, which was age appropriate, and the invitations kind of faded away. He socializes through gaming, but knows little about the individuals he games with. He has not had any outside of school get together since elementary school, and he's now in 10th grade, and he rejects all attempts for parents to get him involved in extracurricular activities.

So social anxiety, at its core, is fear of others judgment. Social anxiety is often missed in boys in general. And many boys and young men, they don't have the language to speak about social anxiety. So what happens is they often think that they are the only person in the world with social anxiety. And whenever I've worked with a boy or young man with social anxiety and we talk about this, I always find the same thing.

They think they are the only one in the world who has this. And that's what really motivated me to start doing groups where I get a bunch of kids together who have social anxiety and ADHD and we work on it together because I think having that collective experience, knowing that there's other guys just like you, that is really helpful to them. Professionals often mistake social anxiety for social executive function challenges or difficulty with social skills. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a therapist Facebook group and I've seen a professional say, oh, I have this kid with social anxiety. They need a social skills group.

No, they don't, because they don't have social executive function challenges. They have social anxiety. We're going to get to the social skills group topic in a little bit. Social anxiety is based in irrational thoughts, such as catastrophic thinking, social perfectionism. Discounting the positive mind reading, these terms come from cognitive behavior therapy.

And what they are are they're basically thoughts that are not based in evidence. So social anxiety can absolutely start young. But what I often see is that it develops later in boys with ADHD. So typically what I see is some boys with combined type ADHD, they may have been socially ostracized in elementary and middle school because of their hyperactivity, their impulsivity. However, by 8th grade, they develop better self regulation.

They start to quiet down, typically by 8th grade, 9th grade, so approximately ages 1415. And what happens is, when they quiet down, they still think that other kids perceive them as that annoying, immature younger kid because they were often shamed for their behavior. So as a result, they develop some social anxiety because they don't necessarily see how they've matured, and they don't necessarily think that other kids are going to see their maturity, which they will. Those with an inattentive ADHD profile, they tend to have more typical social anxiety.

Speaker B
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Card has no cash access and expires in six months. So some behaviors seen in both social executive function challenges and social anxiety kids say things like, kids don't hang out anymore or those kids aren't like me, they're weird. One of the things I put in on our camp parent handbook as well as when I do my school year programs, I let the parents know that if your son comes home and says, those kids aren't like me, they're weird. It's because he was uncomfortable being in a new social situation. Okay.

Speaker A
Often they don't reach out to other kids. Again, for kids with social executive function challenges, it's out of sight, out of mind, or it's difficulty initiating. For kids with social anxiety, it's that fear that they're going to be judged or rejected. Hiding behind phone in social situations, I mean, let's face it, not just kids do that. That's a lot of adults do that.

He might say, I'm fine. When you ask about being social with other kids, might seem kind of irritated, and this is a big one. I have friends. They're on Xbox right here on the right. What you see is the social anxiety curve.

And this is something we use to teach kids that all feelings are temporary and all feelings come and go. So yes, going into a new social situation, you might become more anxious, particularly when you first get there. But the more you become comfortable, your social anxiety is going to go down. So, Jason, age 23, we're going to talk about social isolation. Jason in a ten of ADHD profile, very few expectations were placed on Jason throughout his life, and he was always treated as much younger than his chronological age.

The reason I bring this up is because this is a very common dynamic in families of kids with ADHD parents. With the best of intentions, they often treat their child as if they are extremely fragile and less capable than they are. That's one of the things that I really tried to emphasize and teach parents is that your child is not fragile. They are antifragile and you need to treat them as if they're capable. So when Jason graduated college, he moved home and began working for his uncle, who unfortunately needed to let him go due to his lack of motivation and negative attitude towards work.

So then Jason's father hired him to work at his company. All of his free time is spent gaming. He has no social relationships outside of gaming. He lives in his parents home and does not contribute to helping around the home. Jason is often what we would call a failure to launch case.

I don't like that term because I don't think anybody is a failure and there's always room for improvement. But basically, Jason has become socially isolated and doesn't really have any kind of quality of life. He goes to work. I don't think much of it is expected of him at work. And then he comes home and he's basically in the basement gaming and might come out for meals once in a while.

One thing I just. Sorry, I want to mention about Jason. This has become extremely common, and you don't hear about this. And the reason you don't hear about this is because many parents feel ashamed when their sons are in this situation. So they don't feel comfortable talking about it.

But this is really common, and we have to help make it more comfortable for parents to talk about this because this kind of situation is not their fault. Okay. And there's nothing to be ashamed of. So how does social isolation present in young men with ADHD? Social isolation is basically hiding from others due to feelings of inferiority and shame.

And social isolation is a condition of difficulty regulating shame. Often what we see is hair in front of face, trying to cover up their eyes, regularly wearing a hoodie up. It's this whole idea of trying to disappear. They typically withdraw not just from social situations, but from family, spend most of their time in their room, gaming on discord, Reddit, often a lot of porn use as well. And basically their life becomes on a screen.

So let's move on to talking about what does and does not help build social executive function skills. So, number one, the research data shows that office based social skills groups offer no benefit to kids with ADHD. Now, I'm sure somebody is hearing this and is thinking, well, then why did the neuropsychologist recommend a social skills group? Or my child's school counselor recommended a social skills group, you know, or the pediatrician? Well, the reason why is because people are not familiar with this research data.

That's the bottom line. And, you know, part of the reason why there's so many social skills groups out there because they're profitable. Okay? And one of the things I always want people to understand, aside from the fact that office based social skills groups offer no benefit to kids, there are no requirements to run a social skills group. My joke is, the requirement to run a social skills group is that you have a pulse.

Okay? So, you know, there's. There's really no kind of, you know, credibility in doing this because most people don't have training in this, even in this, you know, social learning field, as we call it, which is understandable because it's a relatively new field. It's only been around about, you know, between 2025 years, 30 years or so. And again, it's just not something that gets a lot of attention.

So kids with ADHD need to be taught in the moment, which is why parents and educators can be the most helpful in helping to build social executive function skills. And please keep in mind that parent training, not individual talk therapy, not play therapy, is the American Academy of Pediatrics evidence based treatment for children with ADHD. Nothing wrong with therapy, but it's just not what is recommended for kids with ADHD, because they have to be taught in the moment. So whether that's addressing behaviors in the moment through parent behavioral training, you know, which is something I offer through my membership site, or whether it's addressing the social executive function piece, things have to be done in the moment. And that is why the parents and educators really have the most important role here.

Please visit the social skills playlist at the ADHD dude YouTube channel, as well as listen to my podcast, the ADHD guys podcast, to learn practical strategies to help your child improve their social executive function skills. Actually, the last episode we released of the podcast last week was about social perspective taking. So moving on to talking about perspective taking, here's a strategy to help build that. We want to help kids understand the perspective of similar age peers based on the context of the situation. Remember, it is their similar age peers who are the judge of their social skills.

So it doesn't matter if you think that something necessarily is socially inappropriate. What matters is what is their peers perception going to be. Okay, let me give you an example of what that language sounds like. It was good that you texted Shawn to ask if he wanted to come to the pool, even though he couldn't. It showed him that you were thinking about him and wanted to spend time with him, which likely made him feel good.

Another example, when we dropped Jose off, you weren't talking to him, but you were on your phone. He tried to talk to you about a game, but you weren't responding. Jose didn't feel good about that because he was trying to talk to you and you weren't responding as he was expecting. So what you see here, the clutch neutral, cringy figure outer. This is part of my socially smarter course where I teach parents how to help build social executive function skills.

And what this is is really a tool to help kids understand their words or behaviors, the other's perceptions of their words or behaviors based on the context of the situation. How did the other kids respond because of their thoughts, how they felt about how the other kids responded? And then should they do anything differently next time? This is something I adapted from what's called social behavior mapping that comes out of the social thinking methodology created by Michelle Garcia Winter. I just wanted to make my own version that I thought was really more focused on kids with ADHD and what I typically see with them helping to build situational awareness.

So reading the field. So what we want to do is we want to front load before going into unstructured social situations using visual language to help them understand what the situation will look like and feel like and how they should direct their behavior based on this. So front loading is also called pre teaching. Okay. And the reason why we use visual language is because kids with ADHD struggle with what's called nonverbal working memory, or what I refer to as future thinking skills.

So their ability to visualize something in the future can be challenging. So here's an example of what that language would sound like. Excuse me. When you get to the end of the year pool party, kids will likely already be in the pool. You can join them for their playing a game like volleyball.

If you don't want to get in right away, you can look around and see if there's anyone at the picnic tables you like talking to and go sit with them. You will not have your phone during the party. You know, one of the things I will tell you, at my summer camp and at my school year programs, kids are not allowed to bring their phones, okay? And the reason why is because again, it becomes an avoidance mechanism. If they're anxious, what are they going to do?

They're going to go into their bathroom and say their parent, pick me up. These kids are weird or I don't like them. Right? So anything they can do to avoid getting out of a uncomfortable situation, and that's not going to be helpful because again, the way you learn how to tolerate initial social anxiety, or just social anxiety in general, is realizing that it goes up and then it will come down because all feelings are temporary. So again, with situational awareness, it's helping them using visual language to understand what the situation will look like and what is expected of them in that situation.

So this is a picture from my middle school guys group. So what we do is we do a lesson in some of the things we're talking about here. And then we go out and we go for ice cream or pizza or make cookies. So the idea is there's an immediate practical application to what we're learning. And this is, you know, the guys going out for ice cream after we did, you know, the learning piece here.

These are some pictures from morning learning time at trip camp. So what we do at camp is kind of the same thing. We do a lesson in the morning and some of the things we're talking about, we also address some executive function pieces as well. More practical, excuse me, more practical. Executive functioning, not academic.

So we do that and then we're out on trips in the community all day. And we have two locations of trip camp in Margate, New Jersey, in Columbus, Ohio. So this is a graphic used, you know, in both camp and the school year programs. So this is how, it's a graphic of how guys form friendships. So if you see at the bottom, you know, stranger or gaming acquaintance, that's the biggest group, right.

And the reason why I say gaming acquaintance is because we don't want think, we don't want kids thinking that kids who they game with are necessarily their friends, right. And I can't tell you how many times I've heard about boys with ADHD who think that somebody they game with is their friend and they wind up buying them, you know, v bucks or whatever it is, you know, you know, skins for games. And, you know, often they'll buy the other kid a game because they want to play with them. So we have to help them understand that somebody who you met online, you know, is not a friend. Can a friendship develop from online?

Absolutely. My friend has a, you know, I'm sorry. My son has a friend who he started gaming with who when he was, you know, twelve or 13, and he's 26 now, and he goes over their house, you know, for Christmas dinner. So that absolutely can happen. But we don't want kids thinking that somebody you just met from gaming isn't automatically your friend.

So if you see the squiggly line here where the arrow is, the reason that's there is because I teach kids that going from school or activity friends, so, you know, somebody who you play sports with or know from Boy Scouts or youth group to going to outside of school friend. That's where a lot of guys with ADHD get stuck because of that whole thing about doing the work of showing other kids that you want to be friends and taking it to the next level. By going from school friends to outside of school friends, that's what we really focus on because that is where I see most kids with ADHD get stuck. One of the things we do on the first day with the programs is we teach about initial social anxiety in new social situations because it is normal for all of us to feel uncomfortable in new social situations. So again, we show that anxiety curve.

So, you know, going up to getting to camp, I'm, you know, starting to get more nervous because I don't know what to expect when you get there. I'm feeling really uncomfortable because I'm with a group of guys I don't know. And then the more the day goes on and you get to know them, I'm feeling more comfortable because I'm getting to know these guys. So one of the things, you know, I always bring up, you know, first, very first thing is how many, how many of you didn't want to come here today? Okay?

Or how many of you were nervous coming here today? And the reason why we do that is we want the kids to see that other guys are feeling the same way as you. And again, you're not the only one who feels uncomfortable at the end of the day. We ask them who feels better now than they did at the beginning of the day? And always all the hands go up.

So family accommodation around social anxiety. Family accommodation is when parents or family members change their behavior to alleviate or avoid child's temporary distress. Very common in families of kids with ADHD in the context of social anxiety. Excuse me, I'm going to use an example here. Let's say the child is scared to order for themselves at the restaurant and they want their parent to do it.

So when they're faced with ordering, social anxiety is triggered. Family accommodate social anxiety to avoid temporary discomfort. So in this case, parents order for the teenager. Then the social anxiety temporarily decreases and the child feels brief relief because they didn't have to order themselves. However, their irrational thoughts about ordering are maintained.

They don't realize that they can overcome it and then their social anxiety is maintained and it often worsens with age. So one of the things parents have to learn is how to not accommodate social anxiety, just as they have to learn to not accommodate inflexibility or poor treatment of family members. And these are all things I teach in my parent behavior training program. Not the social anxiety piece so much, but more the other pieces. So, some strategies to help with social anxiety.

Number one, normalize the experience of temporary discomfort in social situations, like I just explained earlier. And keep in mind, the way people overcome anxiety is by recognizing they can persevere through it, and that anxiety is temporary and we have to challenge irrational thoughts. Here's what that would sound like. What evidence do you have that Jayden will think it's weird if you invite him over? Maybe he'll be happy you asked him because he was nervous to ask you.

That's the kind of thing we have to do when we challenge their irrational thoughts.

Small steps leading to bigger ones in overcoming social anxiety. The actual term for this is exposures. For instance, the first step might be ordering in a restaurant. Second step might be calling someone to ask about homework. Third might be asking if they want to get together.

The exposure part of cognitive behavior therapy can be helpful. Although I do want to point out, and this was actually brought up in an attitude presentation last year, that cognitive behavior therapy has not demonstrated efficacy for kids with ADHD. It has demonstrated efficacy for older teens and adults with ADHD. I address social anxiety in a group format to normalize the experience, and I actually pull from a workbook. I'm just going to tell the clinicians.

It's called the Social Anxiety workbook for Teens, and the woman's name who wrote it is Jen Shannon. It's a great resource to use if you want to help kids work on social anxiety. Last thing, space supportive parenting of anxious childhood emotions is an evidence based treatment out of Yale University for anxiety that helps parents learn to not accommodate anxiety, not just social anxiety, but all kinds of anxiety. And you can watch an interview with the creator of Space, Doctor Ellie Leibowitz, at my YouTube channel. So, speaking of a YouTube channel, I have two YouTube channels, the ADHD dude.

One where I talk about everything from behavior, executive functioning, social skills, and so on. And that is not gender specific. It's applicable to boys and girls. And then my new social media channel is called around the campfire, and that is about supporting boys and young men who struggle with social skills, social anxiety, and social isolation. So two free resources there for you.

Another free resource, the ADHD guys podcast, which I do with my colleague Mike from Grownow ADHD. And that is available on all podcast platforms as well as on YouTube. And again, our last episode was about social perspective taking. So please feel free to subscribe to that, we're getting really great feedback, which feels really good. So reducing social isolation, this is more complicated.

Reducing social isolation requires, number one, reducing shame and feelings of inferiority by restoring contact in small increments and developing a sense of belongingness with family and peers. We need to have connecting conversations instead of problem solving conversations. So we have to make contact attractive to the boy and young man. And they need to feel like we're not always talking about deep, heavy things. We need to help build their self esteem by helping to recognize their positive attributes and skills based on their interests.

And for a lot of boys and young men who are socially isolated, the only thing they feel good about is their ability to be a gamer. And we have to embrace that. We have to not minimize their gamer identity. We have to embrace it because that is the one thing that they feel good about. Understand that social isolation.

Reducing social isolation is a slow, gradual process that must happen in small increments. You want to avoid playing armchair therapist, which means when parents try to play therapist, they ask lots of why, questions or feelings? Questions which tend to not go well with boys with ADHD in general. Okay. And again, we want to respect his gamer identity as a source of competence for him.

This is from the guys group program. We went bowling one week, and that was great. And bowling is the kind of thing where there's a lot of downtime, so kids are sitting next to each other. It makes it easier to talk. So when we do activities, that's what we want to do, is we want to make it easier for the guys to talk to each other.

So some takeaways. In general, parents are often unaware that their son with ADHD is lonely or has social anxiety. As a result, many do not become cognizant that this is an issue until their sons are about 14 or 15. And by 14 or 15, this is often a source of shame for many boys, and they might become defensive when the topic of friendship is brought up because it is a source of shame. I want you to keep in mind, other boys are not going to befriend your son because of his intelligence or how skilled he is at video games.

They will want to befriend him if they have shared interest or a shared sense of humor, or they can bond over shared experiences. And if your son shows interest in them, that is such an important part that he has to show interest in others. And please keep in mind, the ability to form social relationships is a better predictor of future success than intelligence or academic performance. Some takeaways about social executive function skills. If your son has lagging and inconsistent use of perspective taking skills, he's likely going to disagree with you.

When you try to explain others thoughts about his words or behaviors, it's important you don't get pulled into the argument vortex. The argument vortex is something that kids with ADHD are really skilled at. It's when they pull their parents into an argument and they direct the argument, and by the end of the argument, it's not even the same topic. It started as keep in mind that in general, results improving social executive function skills are going to come slowly, and ADHD is a condition of inconsistent performance. So it might seem like three steps forward, one step back, completely normal.

And perspective taking is the foundation of social executive function skills and what you should start with. So if you're concerned that your son is struggling socially, I encourage you not to wait to see if this will improve with age. And here's why. In June, I get the most parents reaching out to me and often, you know, it's typically mothers of often 14 to 15 year old boys, but the age range varies and I often hear things like this. His father said not to worry about his lack of friends.

He'll come into his own. In high school that didn't happen. Or I thought this was the year things would get better and they didn't, or I thought this was the year he would mature and develop friendships. So some resources for you, the social skills playlist at the ADHD Dude YouTube channel and my socially smarter course, which is part of the ADHD dude membership site. Some takeaways about social anxiety.

To overcome social anxiety, you need to be able to realize that anxiety is temporary and you can persevere through it. You cannot learn this if you are allowed to avoid social anxiety, and that is why it's so important we do not accommodate social anxiety. And keep in mind, social anxiety is based on irrational thoughts. We have to challenge irrational thoughts by fact checking for evidence and helping the kid to see that your irrational thoughts don't have any evidence to back them up. Take away some social isolation.

Boys and young men who are socially isolated, they want to be invisible to avoid their shame and feeling inferior. The way we reduce social isolation is by making contact attractive and tolerable, and that often has to start off in very small increments. We have to help the boy or young man understand his positive attributes and respect his gamer or content creator identity because that's often the only thing that he's holding onto that he feels good about and again, becoming socially isolated and more connected is a very slow process. So you can find Adhduden around the campfire content on YouTube, that's my main platform and all the other social media. And if you scan this QR code, it'll take you to all the websites and my social media and everything.

Some final thoughts here. I'm going to first read one from Professor Scott Galloway of the Professor G podcast. My message to young people is that nothing wonderful, I mean, really wonderful, will ever happen to you on a screen. It's just not going to happen. And the next 110 years from now, your son will not remember the 239th fortnight match he played.

He will remember the shared memories he made through in person experiences with peers. So that's it. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it, and I look forward to answering some questions. Thank you so much, Ryan.

Annie Rogers
That was an incredible presentation. And before we get started on these great questions, I want to quickly thank brain balance once more for sponsoring today's webinar. And I wanted to share some of the results from the survey questions we asked at the outset. We asked our audience here today if their child has gotten in trouble this past year, this past school year for any of the following. And really, the reason that we asked this was that it can feel very lonely when your child is struggling socially.

And so we really wanted parents to know that you are not alone. And so what we saw here is that about a quarter of the boys have gotten in trouble for not behaving according to sort of group norms. So that perspective taking that Ryan talked about today, that was the number one answer. And, you know, almost a fifth of them for impulsive speech that hurt others and then failing to consider others feelings was up there. Inappropriate humor was number four.

And you can see the other. Those were really the big ones. And we also asked about incentives that parents have found for getting their kids off of devices. A lot of people said they are hoping for some ideas here today, and others did say that things like, if they've been able to find a sport that their kid, you know, things like jiu jitsu, it doesn't have to be a team sport. In other words, swimming, something that they can get into that that has been the most successful.

And some of them even, like robotics teams and Pokemon trading card clubs. So it doesn't have to be a sport necessarily, but can take a lot of trial and error. There's no, there's no easy answer on that one. So to get into the q and A, I wanted to start out because we have a lot of people here wondering if you think it would be appropriate for them to re watch this webinar with their teenage boy. So here's what I say.

Speaker A
I typically don't recommend that. And the reason why is, you know, that some of this might resonate, but when I teach kids and I speak to kids, I'm speaking very differently than I'm speaking here. So, like the slides you saw, you know, throughout the presentation, I use a lot of humor with kids, and this webinar was not really designed for kids. You can try it, but I wouldn't suggest it because I'm not speaking directly to them in this, and I'm not, you know, being the same way I would when I, you know, teach kids. So.

Yeah. And, you know, on that same vein, a lot of parents have reported that when they try to bring up things like working on your perspective taking skills and that they're seeing challenges, that the first reaction is defensiveness and that their son really gets angry and or shuts down. Do you have any pointers for parents on how to start this conversation in a way that is helpful and won't make them feel bad about themselves? Yeah. So number one thing I want to explain to people is boys do not do well having conversations when you ask them to sit down and talk.

Okay. And make eye contact. The most effective way to. For most boys to communicate, particularly about things that they feel vulnerable about, is by not having to make eye contact and when there's movement involved. So go for a walk with the dog, play a game.

Just do something where they're not required to sit across from you and look at you. And by the way, this is the same reason why I have a saying that therapy was not designed for boys, and it particularly was not designed for boys with ADHD. We don't want to require them to make eye contact when we have these conversations where they're going to feel vulnerable. Okay. The next thing to keep in mind is if your son struggles with perspective taking, he likely doesn't understand how he's coming across to others or he might have a little sense of it.

So when you bring this up to him, it's going to be triggering because he knows that it's something that is not easy for him or can trigger those feelings of shame. Now, I want to be clear. You are not causing him shame by bringing it up. This is something he feels already. So my suggestions are you can speak about it in more general terms.

So talk about other kids who, you know, and, you know, he knows who might be struggling socially. That's one thing. We can just talk about this, you know, in general terms, you can share some of your experiences when you were younger, although a lot of kids, you know, think that parents grew up in, you know, prehistoric times, but keep the conversation more general at first so they don't feel like the focus is on them. And again, having a conversation while walking, you know, or doing some kind of activity, throwing a ball, is always going to work better. And, you know, and we can also acknowledge that, you know, I understand why, why you're getting upset about this.

You know, this is really hard. And what I want you to understand is that, you know, this whole friendship thing and this whole social thing, there's millions and millions of people out there, you know, particularly guys with ADHD, and their brain just makes this a little harder for them. So we want to normalize it as well. That is such great advice. I love the walking the dog or throwing a Frisbee advice.

Annie Rogers
And let's see, a lot of questions also today about phones. And you had mentioned, you know, starting, I believe it was, what, 3rd, 4th grade, encouraging your child to make the invitations for social events. Now, I have teenagers, so I know that, like, they all communicate on Snapchat, right? And that to me, is just opening like a portal to hell. Like, how do you balance, how do you balance encouraging your child to make those invitations be a part of the social conversations when they're happening in what is sometimes a very dangerous environment?

That cell phone question. Yeah. Well, first thing I want to mention is I strongly recommend Jonathan Haidt's new book to everybody, the anxious generation, where he really talks about how phones and social media, what we're seeing in terms of how it's affected kids. And I fully support his idea that kids should not have social media until they're 16. So that's the first thing I want to mention.

Speaker A
Next thing is I also support the idea of not giving kids phones until they're 14. And also we can do it gradually. We can start off with not a flip phone, but today's version of a flip phone that has no social media on it. Then we can evolve to putting some games on it and then when they get older, to social media. I have something downloadable in my membership site where I show a phone contract where parents learn how to put parameters around social media usage.

And I think that's really important. And I think if you're not comfortable with something like Snapchat, I fully support not having things like Snapchat on the phone because with Snapchat, messages can disappear. Now, all this being said, if we're going back to how to make plans, well, they don't need to have phones to do that. They can use your phone and they can, you know, text, you know, another kid's parent if the other kid doesn't have a phone and say, hi, you know, I wanted to talk to, you know, Austin to see if he can come over. Okay.

Or if they have a phone, you can help them with what to say. All right. So they don't have to do this alone. You can certainly coach them with, you know, what to say. And I just want, you know, everyone to keep something in mind that often, sometimes parents, they forget that the way kids communicate with each other is not the way adults communicate with each other.

And the reason I bring that up is because one of the things, when I started learning all about social skills, and what I saw was in a lot of these social skills groups, I saw these very well meaning clinicians and speech language pathologists. And what they were doing was they were teaching a group of boys, essentially, how to communicate like middle aged women. And it sounded very unrelatable to, you know, to other kids. So we just want to keep in mind that we have to respect that the way kids communicate is not necessarily how we communicate. Okay.

And again, you know, we need to encourage this. And if they say no, well, then what that means is then we have to get them involved in activities, and we can give them a choice with activities, but not doing any activity is not a choice, you know? So really to help with this, what I'm bigger picture is parents have to step into their parental authority, and they have to be okay with the fact that their child might be temporarily upset with them because they're gently pushing them out of their comfort zone for a really good reason.

Annie Rogers
Okay. And the timing is sort of perfect, right? Because we have a lot of parents here who are like, summer is here or on our doorstep, and they want to ensure that their child is not on a screen constantly. Are there any, aside from a great, you know, trip, camp or similar recommendations that you have for getting kids a little bit of this real world practice over the summer? Yeah.

Speaker A
So number one thing, what, you know, again, I'm going to use the term, you have to step into your parental authority here, which I know can be very frightening for a lot of parents of kids with ADHD, particularly if their kids are prone to, you know, blow ups or meltdowns or emotional dysregulation. When they put limits or expectations on them. I have a course that's called creating daily expectations, which teaches parents how to set daily expectations for their kids to earn the expensive things that parents provide for them, like phones and video games and even Internet. So that's the first thing, is you need to have daily expectations in place for them earning these things. And, of course, the time has to be limited.

Okay? Now, the next thing is, in terms of summer, there are lots of things that kids can do that do not have a high price tag, okay? So whether that's, you know, a camp at the local community center where you live, you know, whether your township runs whatever, you know, there's youth groups through churches, synagogues, and so on, I will tell you, I have a saying. I have seen scouts and youth groups do more for kids than any social skills group out there, okay? So, you know, for many kids, you know, a lot of kids, that they have a community pool that becomes the hangout for, you know, teenagers or middle schoolers over the summer.

So there's things we can do to get them out and around other kids, but we have to put limits and expectations around screen usage. Okay? And again, your child may be temporarily upset with you, and that's okay because you're doing what they need. And please remember that research citation I showed at the beginning here. Kids with ADHD are much prone to problematic gaming than kids without ADHD.

Annie Rogers
Right. And you said that, you know, taking away gaming 100% is really probably not the answer, especially if your child feels a sense of accomplishment and excellence in that world. So I just wanted to make that point because a lot of people are asking that, but also wondering if you have. You've showed us the data, it makes sense to us listening that in person, socialization is vital and important. But, like, our boys are not hearing it.

How can we? Is it a matter of trying to convince them or we just. Again, we just reach into that parental authority and we just basically force them? Yeah. So when.

Speaker A
When parents try to convince kids of things, I have a term for that. I call it the reasoning vortex. And, you know, when it was. So instead of the argument vortex, they get into this reasoning vortex where they keep trying to convince them of things. And here's the deal.

You cannot reason with inflexibility, okay? So, yes, again, it involves stepping into your parental authority, having daily expectations in place, and saying, this is what's happening. You can respect how they feel, you can listen how they feel, and you don't need to over validate their feelings. You don't need to over explain things, and you don't need to over empathize with them. Okay?

They will be fine. Remember, kids are not fragile. They are anti fragile. But I wanted to address real quick the thing about getting rid of screens completely. I don't agree with that.

And I think that there's often times when kids need a screen reset. So let me give you an example. My son, when he was, you know, younger and in high school, he would get really dysregulated around, you know, the games he was playing. He would become more argumentative, more moody, and more self centered. So I did a, you know, the kind of a reset where he didn't have, you know, his Xbox for several weeks.

So I think depending on the child's age, that would vary. But for, you know, a high school kid, I would say if things are really out of control, they might need a month without it. For younger kids, you know, what I learned in my problematic gaming program is typically two weeks is sufficient for younger kids. So, yeah. Okay.

Annie Rogers
And does that also apply for older kids in their phones? So we're hearing from a couple people who are saying, you know, their child, in. In an attempt to impress peers, engaged in some inappropriate interactions on either through texts or through social media. Whether that's distasteful jokes or distasteful images. Is taking away the phone reasonable consequence?

Speaker A
Well, I think the first question should be asked is, does your child have access to apps like Snapchat that they are not mature enough to handle? Do they need to completely have their phone taken away? Not necessarily. We might need to get them, like the bark phone. Okay.

Or one that does not have access to social media. You have to check with your phone carrier if you can limit social media being added onto their phone. There's also all kinds of parent control things where you can see their text. One of the things I always tell parents is, we don't want to spy on kids, but we want to tell them, given your history, that there's been some inappropriate things with your phone. I have access to your text, or if they have social media.

The condition of you having social media is that I get to follow you. I will not comment. Okay. But I get to see anything that you're posting. And my one exception to that is Snapchat, by the way.

I don't think kids should have Snapchat, so we can put parameters around that. And again, if they're not mature enough to have this, taking the phone away is not necessarily going to solve that. What we have to do is they have to show us through their choices they're making that they can handle having it. So maybe we have to backtrack and go to a simpler phone that doesn't have social media, or we need to have access to their photos or their text. So, yeah, okay, that's helpful.

Annie Rogers
And this is a bit of a pivot, but a lot of people saying that maybe with their middle schoolers, they're noticing bossy and controlling behavior, like you mentioned, kind of a fairness police mindset, and we didn't touch on that too much today, but it really does seem to be getting in the way of connection for a lot of boys. Yeah. So let me explain. A lot of kids with ADHD because they tend to be rather rigid in their thought process, and they also tend to have a strong sense of social justice. So it's not only I'm right and you're wrong, but I think this is fair and that's unfair.

Speaker A
Right. But again, this is based on their perception. So what we have to do is, and again, using some of the tools I showed here, like the clutch neutral cringey figure out or the clutch to cringe o meter, we can show them how their words or behaviors are being interpreted by their peers. We have to help them understand there are social ramifications for that kind of behavior. And again, it's not what we think about it.

We need to help them understand their peers perception of this. Okay. So that's really important is, you know, keep in mind that for, you know, kids who are socially motivated, they need to understand them when they're social ramifications of their behavior, and specifically with similar age peers.

Annie Rogers
Okay, that is very helpful as well. And sadly, I'm noticing that we are just at the end of our time, but a lot of people wanted to know if they could find videos more geared for their kids on your social media accounts. Yeah. So let me explain. I have videos where you can see us teaching the kids at camp or, you know, in my school year programs.

Speaker A
And I have, you know, some playlists for kids with short videos. However, I don't make videos for kids, and I want to, but I have videos for elementary schoolers, animated videos called the brochachos. But I do not make videos from middle schoolers or high schoolers. And here's why. Hey, because kids are not going to learn this through passively watching a video.

They're going to learn this experientially in the moment. So to my whole point about why parents and educators have the most important role here and why. Also, I do what I do with, you know, my school year programs, which are going to start in Phoenix in the fall and as well with camp, is that we have to teach things in the moment. So yes, there are videos, but I don't think it's the most effective way for kids to learn this or for them to generalize what we're teaching. Okay, thank you for underscoring that.

Annie Rogers
Wonderful. And also thank you so much for today's presentation. Just learned so much and got so many really valuable tools to take back and try with our boys. So thank you again, Ryan, for this contribution to the attitude community. And I also want to thank everyone who joined today, listened and asked such great questions.

If you would like to access the event resources, rewatch this video. Share it. You can search for podcast number 507 on attitudemag.com and the recording and slides will be available just a few hours after our live webinar. If you're listening in replay mode, you can just click on the event description to get those assets. And you should know that our full library of attitude webinars, including past webinars with Ryan, are all available as the ADHD Experts podcast that is available on all streaming platforms.

Make sure you don't miss any future attitude webinars articles or research updates by signing up for our free newsletters@attitudemag.com. newsletters Brian, thank you again. We hope that everybody has a really great week and a good summer ahead. Thank you, Addy and thank you everyone for your time today. I really appreciate it.

For more attitude podcasts and information on. Living well with attention deficit, visit attitudemag.com. that's a d dash.

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507- The Social Reboot: Helping Tween and Teen Boys with ADHD Make Friends

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

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Episode Chapters

1. Introduction

2. Understanding Social Challenges

3. Strategies for Parents

4. Impact of Technology

5. Conclusion and Resources

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

People

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Transcript