30-Minute Session: Dr. Cathy Moser

For our inaugural 30-Minute Session feature, we sat down with Dr. Cathy Moser from Mind Matters Clinic.

Cathy has a PhD in clinical psychology, and worked within the Louis Riel School Division as a school psychologist for 10 years before going into private practice.

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What would you say are the most common reasons that people – either adults or children – seek an ADHD diagnosis?

Well, for boys it’s usually younger in the game. It could be because they’re distractable, distracting to others, disruptive to the class.

I guess what I’ll tell you is: usually people seek help when their child hits a wall. And for some it might be a very highly structured non accepting teacher that can’t tolerate certain behaviour. And in that case the teacher is telling the parents that this kid is disruptive, and they should seek help.

If a child also has a learning disability such as dyslexia or dysgraphia, then the wall is hit earlier. Because the combination of ADHD and another learning disability makes it difficult for them to learn. They may have challenges learning to read or learning to do math, on top of the distractibility.

Finally, when a child is bright, and doesn’t have other learning disabilities, the wall tends to be when the organizational skills necessary for school, and the ability to do the executive planning are expected but the child can’t do it. So it’s not really expected until junior high school.

And so lots of times, children – especially girls – who want to please their teachers, they get by, and I don’t see them until maybe even high school.

In your experience, has the pandemic brought out an influx of individuals seeking an ADHD diagnosis?

Oh yes, a massive increase in both adults and children.

First of all, it’s parents of children who don’t have the same attentional problems at home. Because they’re [usually] playing video games or they’re outside playing, they don’t see these attentional problems and they don’t see the disruption, because the child isn’t asked to sit down and work for any amount of time. Sometimes children don’t even have to do homework, so the parents don’t see this.

Then all of a sudden they have to teach this child, and then they realize; “Oh. My. God. Whoa. No wonder the teacher was saying they were inattentive.” And then they realize, okay, there is a problem.

And in other instances, it’s the individual themselves. Maybe a young, studious person who is trying to do this online [learning], or do it at home, and there’s no way they can stay focused, and trying to do this by learning independently.

And with adults, at jobs, when you don’t have that structure, if you have ADHD, are not self-motivated, and don’t have other people to kind of pace you, you’re lost.

If you could change one thing about how learning disabilities and ADHD is regarded or handled in our society, what would you change?

I would change the educational system. The educational system is really only suitable for a slight majority of people.

In Norway, they’ve shown that outdoor education – without even seated classwork – is way more effective at giving children educational experiences and knowledge, and increasing their actual academic scores. Because it’s interactive, and it’s interesting, and there’s movement involved. That’s not suitable for everybody, or possible for all of us, but it should be part of our curriculum.

About 40 years ago, the educational system across North America decided that phonics teaching was boring, so what they did was they said well let’s give children these interesting books, and we’ll tell them to study these words so that they can read some words in that book – sight words – and then we’ll get them to guess at the other words, and that’s how they’ll learn to read.

Well, kids who could learn how to read by having a monkey teach them, they’re going to learn to read. But a huge portion, maybe even 40%, they can’t learn to read intuitively, and they need to be taught the rules, they need to be taught those specific phonic relations.

The whole system, it betrayed these students.

And in the United States and some other countries, they’ve realized this, and they’ve brought back phonics-based learning, but not here.

What do you believe is most misunderstood about ADHD?

It’s that if somebody sees that an individual can do it, they believe that they can do it all the time.

However, it’s not the case that they can do it all the time; they can do it under specific circumstances at this moment of time, in this frame of mind, under these biological conditions of sleep, eating and consciousness.

Why do you think learning disabilities and ADHD have such a high rate of co-morbidity with mental health disorders like anxiety or depression?

Children who have learning disabilities are anxious that they’re going to be asked to do something that there is no way they can do. And children who have ADHD are anxious that the teacher is going to call them out on something that they couldn’t do, like inhibit their impulse; blurt out.

And children who continually get feedback that you’re a bad kid, or you’re disruptive, if they don’t have good self-esteem, unconditional love from their parents, then they develop a negative sense of themselves.

And this is the problem with today’s generation, everyone relies on other people’s perception of them, and if you’re a blunt, loud, impulsive person, ‘lazy, crazy, and stupid’ is the label that you get.

If you could communicate one thing to associates of people with ADHD – whether that’s parents, teachers, co-workers, supervisors, etc. – what would it be?

Break the tasks down and make them interesting and novel, and get input from the individual about what will make this task meaningful for them. And they will do a good job.

Your way may not be their way.

What is your single best piece of advice for people with learning disabilities and/or ADHD?

Don’t give up.

Remember that the opinions of others mean nothing. When you discover your inner talents, and when you use them, you will rock. It may not be in a way that other people admire or appreciate, but those people don’t think like you.

And if the world all thought so conventionally, we would have a very flat world.

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