This is a global player original podcast. Why does university feel so hard when you have ADHD? And what is it about leaving home for the first time that makes life so difficult? And how can we help ADHD minds thrive when starting university?
I'm Katie Grakley and I'm Sam Pittis and welcome to Your Wrong About ADHD. OK, you've wanted to talk about this for a very long time. Absolutely. And now is exactly the right time.
September is when students are starting new courses for the very first time. And it's so much more than that. It's not just starting a new area of study. It's packing up the pots and pans and your suitcase and your Ikea bags, full of all of the stuff that you've got lists of that you've been told you need to take.
And starting in a new place on your own with no friends yet and learning how to look after yourself. And if you've got ADHD, that is all executive function, every single bit of it. And it can be really, really hard. Well, it's a period of self-organisation, isn't it?
And for lots of people, it's a bit of a crisis because although, you know, people always like to stereotype ADHD, people is being all over the place, but in many ways, we really like routine. So when you take away that structure and you say, OK, you're going to figure out life for yourself, many of us all about. Absolutely. Nobody doubling.
That's fallen by the wayside. No scaffolding in terms of meals or laundry. And suddenly those things all land on the individual who's 18, 19, and away from home for the very first time. This could be a very, very lonely process.
And, you know, we've talked before about how they reckon ADHD's brains fully develop by the age of 25. It's seven years, six or seven years, too soon for some ADHD's. And they can fall off a cliff when they get there. And I think it's such an important subject for us to discuss from a parenting perspective.
You know, this can be a very worrying time for parents as they watch an individual disappear for the first time. They're also empty nesting, so that's hard to. There's a lot of emotion to process. But what are the warning signs?
What are the red flags to look out for? But more importantly, what kinds of things can we do as parents to support young people who might be rejecting that help and not wanting us to get involved? Funny enough, when I went to university, I didn't want to. I did journalism as a diploma, but I wasn't really experienced enough to get a job, so I worked for free at a radio station, as you do, that's how I got into radio.
And at the time, I sort of made a decision, well, do you know what? I'll go and do a degree as well, because the fees won't as much of them. So I went and sort of thought, well, I'll study at the same time as doing free work and getting work experience. I didn't really want to go to university.
I didn't really like the environment of being so unstructured. I stayed at home, lived at home, and it was the first period of real depression in my life. And I was on antidepressants for the first time for a short period, which worked really well. But finally enough, when I look back, what I did was I put this rigorous process in place.
I remember, I used to spend six hours making notes over a period of days, and it was six hours writing my essay. And then I do another couple of hours of tweaking it and sorting it out. And that was a process that I put in place to manage myself. And it's interesting looking back how I obviously looked at this and when I can't cope with this unstructured environment, I need to put my own structure in place.
And crucially, you were still at home, so presumably your meals and your laundry was all taken care of. Because I know when I first... Clearly, I didn't like the idea of going away. Oh, no, absolutely.
And how interesting that you recognise that about yourself. I was really looking forward to going away. And it was only when I got there that it was apparent how difficult that was for me. And it was all of that other stuff, all of the life stuff, I found that really, really hard.
But, oh my goodness, me, the planning of the academic work had actually been a problem for some time, a level's been a bit of struggle too. But I got there and with nobody going, basically nobody actually providing me with the deadline. Nobody saying, if you don't do this, you're in real trouble, which I'd had at school. So I'd do it at the last minute.
It was, well, I could do it this week, or I could leave it till next week. And every so often, something would crop up that was interest-driven and I would become utterly obsessed with it. I would be in the library day and night investigating fatherhood for a psychology paper. And I had to read every book.
I had to make notes on every study that had ever been done. And it became an obsession. And that was one essay. But then there were others where I either didn't turn it in at all, or I threw something on three or four sides of paper the night before and handed that in.
That was the respect shown to the people who were teaching me. I have two recurring dreams. It's never good to change dreams, but just very briefly. Well, stress-free is always interesting, is it?
Where does the brain go when we are really stressed? In our industry, it's always, always having a news bulletin to do and not be able to find a studio. It's all about working. But the other one I still have is I have so many dreams where I'm back at university and I haven't done my work on time.
Or I haven't researched enough or I've missed the deadline. I still have those stress-dreams now. Me too. The idea of, you know, do you want to do a PhD or a master's?
I think my university days are behind me. Absolutely. I'm the same. I have.
There's one particular paper in my finals. That comes back a lot. And German A-level, again, my German teacher, Hershlich, I have a recurring dream of my German A-level teacher. Saying to me, tomorrow Katie, you will be sitting your German A-level exam.
I hope your German's up to scratch. And I have to apologise and tell all this poor man who's in tears. Because he cares about my German education so much that I no longer speak German because I've forgotten everything. Because I obviously learned it all the nights before.
And there's guilt there and the shame and there's regret. And I have a lot of ADHD. I think we've just discovered another area of therapy that you and I both need. But there are so many questions about how, you know, we as parents, how we help our children when they go to university, how much do you get involved?
You know, what support should you seek out when the scaffolding is removed? And that's why this week we're joined by ADHD advocate and coach Stephanie Camillieri welcoming her back to the podcast. She specializes in helping students navigate university with confidence, clarity and self-compassion. And we'll speak to her in a minute.
Hi, Stephanie. Thank you so much for coming on again. It's lovely to be here. Thanks for asking me.
It's lovely to see you in your fabulous wallpaper band, which I'm very, very jealous. This is a big subject for me. It's one that I've been asking for us to cover. For a while, it was an issue that we experienced in our family and I've got a number of friends as well who have also experienced this.
It is a disconnect. OK, so it's a disconnect. Your child views home for the first time and they're in a new place. But hey, they've also got access to alcohol and drugs.
And sometimes those kids have undiagnosed ADHD. And this is a, this is a, this is a melting pot. Isn't it? What kinds of problems do you see with students who go away for the first time?
Yeah, I mean, quite often we get contacted by students that have either failed, right, their first year of university, because as you've said, they've had undiagnosed ADHD and the thing is, a situation in a variable and we tend to, you know, if it says a choice, to kind of, I could study now. Or I could go out with my friends and go to the pub or go to that party, right? That choice will be, that will make the choice that at the time is obviously going to be more authentically interesting, more stimulating, but also you can't forget the social component and issues and pressure that ADHD has to do with rejection sensitive dysphoria. So that is also very much a play.
It's not just that stimulation and sensory seeking. It's that I need to fit in. Oh, it's that big E peer pressure, isn't it? And where can that lead?
I mean, without kind of, you know, getting into the weeds too much and being too depressing. This can have enormous consequences, can't it? Yeah, we often get contacted by the student or quite often the parents where the student has, has basically failed first year. That is because they, yeah, they didn't know they had the ADHD.
There wasn't that support. And then quite often, it's certainly when there's been, there's the medication and then that accountability. So the coaching, for instance, and the check-ins, making sure they're on track, making those right decisions. But ADHD is probably no, we tend to learn the hard way, I'm afraid.
If we've got a parent listening who suspects that they might have, okay, heading off to uni who's in the situation or a kid who's already there and they're writing it already, what is the first step you can take as a parent to help your child and don't want your advice anymore? They're on their own now and actually you're being really irritating. So how do you manage that relationship? Yeah, that is really difficult.
We often see parents hindering and not helping. And we often see, because remember, ADHD is highly genetic. So often the parents will have ADHD too, but they'll be in a bit of denial or they don't want to deal with it. And so it could be really difficult to reach the parent because if there's unregulated kind of ADHD, it's hard to even see what you're doing and the impact you're having.
A lot of ADHD has struggled with that, including some ADHD parents. So they're kind of wreaking this havoc, increasing the overwhelm on the child and the child rightly is trying to create space to defend themselves because they're going to get emotionally dysregulated. So they're trying to stay foundry. And as a result, though, the parent can't get through.
So what's the answer? What do we do? So from what we've seen, definitely when the parent gets support, we see a massive difference. But I mean, even I can tell you personally, for me as well, like I've got ADHD.
And I really struggled to parent with ADHD. I'm medicated and without coaching because what happens? And particularly because the sensory, you have sensory sensitivities. So children are noisy, right?
And we're not just saying babies, unfortunately, with their phones and oh my gosh, TikTok, where they've got these little pieces of music that just loop and keep going. And I wake up to that every morning and I'm like, please, please, just turn that off. And that's me medicated. So I can only imagine what I'd be like when I wasn't medicated.
But yeah, so it's already so difficult as a parent with ADHD to regulate yourself, right? And as a result, if you come into conflict with that child, if your genders aren't aligned, which often they won't be, right? The conflict is just going to escalate. And unfortunately, even though your intentions were good and you're trying to help, suddenly you made the problem worse.
And it's a very difficult balance, isn't it? Because for any parent with children go to university, to helicopter in or to not is always a difficult balance. But it does seem to me that if you know your child has ADHD, it would make sense that when they're going to university to agree with some sort of support network or perhaps some sort of extra ADHD support, so that they know they've got things to fall back on. Yeah, now, and there are a lot of barriers in the way, as you were saying, it can be that if they're not diagnosed yet, they could be literally fighting the diagnosis.
They don't want to be labeled, again, remember, rejection sensitive dysphoria, right? No, there's nothing wrong with me, because unfortunately ADHD still has that stigma. So there is this. So there's lots of kind of different scenarios that we're dealing with here.
That one is the most difficult, obviously, when the student is not willing to even get assessed. But if they hadn't been, it would seem to me that the starting point probably is to talk to the university and see what they've got on offer for students and keep you when you're a diverse. I mean, that would seem to me, you know, there's probably a gentle conversation to have with a child and say, look, I know you're an adult, but I'm going to try and help you with this, and let's start there. Yeah, well, actually, even reframing, too, because you're an adult, what kinds of responses do you get from universities in this situation?
Are they helpful under these sorts of circumstances? Because I know that there has been a push lately, hasn't there, to involve the universities in this relationship, certainly for vulnerable students, so that there's a contact, there's a person of contact that a university can get in touch with. And that is a new step, isn't it, set up by one of the suicide prevention charities to help young people. Do you find universities are helpful in this situation and provide support?
What happens there? Just like with schools and workplaces, it varies very much, varies. In a surprising way, and like, I don't want to name, and shame, obviously, I personally coached quite a number of university students, particularly through dissertations, the horror stories. It is the most difficult, like, the most grueling thing that they probably have to do in their lives, and the mental health toll, like I've seen it, I've seen it in coaching, I see these students, they are broken.
The process breaks them, honestly. It takes such a toll on them, because unfortunately, like most ADHDers, even though they've had all this time, and actually that doesn't do us any favors, but when they start, we often get the call like three weeks before it's due, right? And then it's on. It's the sprint.
You know, where sprint is not marathon runners. Yeah, of course. But it takes us toll, right? Absolutely, they're running on empty while they're doing this.
And at the end, you know, they definitely crash, and there's burnout, massive burnout, and they have to recover. And some of them, yeah, they're recovering for like the next month or two. But you mentioned coaching student through dissertation. I mean, I have to say the breakthrough for us as a family was finding a coach for our student, for our student son.
That was the moment when we could step back, because we knew there was someone else who was almost like acting. I mean, I hope he's not listening, but who was almost acting like our proxy parent. And she was amazing. She was amazing.
And I only spoke to her once, but I know that he found that relationship incredibly positive and helpful. And she was able to give him guidance and talk him through scenarios and listen to his feelings and enable him to process what was going wrong and learn from it. And obviously he didn't have the reaction to her that he was having to meet and my husband. Understandably, you know, I'd have had the same to mind if they tried getting involved when I was at university.
I did experience exactly what he did. You know, I had the same kind of inability to complete tasks and wondering why I was floundering. And so the coaching was a massive breakthrough. And that I wonder if that's one of the biggest things that you can do.
Absolutely. No, the coaching is like the difference between they're not just passing, right, and getting through university. But getting some pretty impressive grades, at least with the students that I coach, and we've got an academic success program, six steps to academic success for university students. And actually what we found, because we've been trying to kind of get parents in and train parents for years.
Like we created an online parent education course. So parents can understand their childhood ADHD and learn communication methods to keep them on side to be their champion, to be the body double executive function filler that they need. We were very surprised and very, I was very dismayed at the, you know, at the uptake, which was, you know, parents did not want to learn. Understandably, actually parents already struggling.
Particularly they're not diagnosed. They're already overwhelmed. They need help themselves, right? So you know, they have no capacity or they feel that they have no capacity to sign up to a course.
And they just want someone, like you said, like, you know, a coach, can you please help me? I'm drowning. Don't know. Don't get me to do a course.
Like, can you just, you know, can you be the body double that my student needs? Can you keep eyes on them? Can you keep, you know, track and make sure they're doing what they need to, which is completely understandable, given how much, particularly if there's multiple children and parents by ADHD and they're not medicated diagnosed, I'm actually really, really happy that they're leaning into that support and understanding their limitations and not taking on the course as well. However, what we've done with our university success program, step one, look through the A.C.
Lens, parents must attend. That's a really good idea. So actually getting the parents involved and teaching them essentially how to help coach it away. Yeah, and I love these.
These are the most transformational, I would say, in terms of all the six steps, they look through the A.C. Lens is transformational and actually sets up the whole kind of program to succeed because we have the parents in there, the students in there, and as coaches, you know, we're facilitating a safe space when mediating, making sure the things don't get heated because you can imagine, you know, and we're having to kind of be like the recesses. If parents are something, you know, like, so, you know, the students about to like, you know, their RSD, their kind of oppositional defiance kind of flaring and I've had to kind of say, so, you know, George. Yeah.
So what your parent is actually saying or trying to say or to do it, you know, and kind of smooth it over. Oh, yeah. So form of family therapy, really, isn't it? In a way, mediation.
Kind of. Well, find it. Yeah. And finding new ways to communicate.
It was ever thus, wasn't it? That generations find it hard to talk to each other because we are different. And yes, I have ADHD and yes, my son has ADHD, but we have grown up in a different generation. We have different books and feelings about different things.
But it is that sometimes that communication does break down. Also listening to you both talk, I mean, you talk about your experience, Katie, and hearing your sense, definitely. There is a big burden on families and on those students, which you're trying to mitigate. But just going back to something you said earlier, it does sound like the universities need to be doing more.
So what more could they be doing to support students? I'm glad you asked that. You're right. And I'm going to use actually a new partnership we're entering into with Rexxham.
Have you had a Rexxham university? Yeah. So Rexxham approached us. They found one of our YouTube videos on university.
You know, how to help people, hints on. And we've got our YouTube videos all about university, the challenges that students face. Rexxham University, the pioneers in the space. They were looking for, you know, where's the ADHD kind of expert in the space?
And we've been doing academic, HCI academic kind of coaching and training for years now. They've basically got the biggest cohort of disabled students in the UK. So they've asked us to create a course for students, starting university. And like you said, students that are already in university with ADHD about how to thrive at university with ADHD.
So this course will be, it's an online course. It's going to be very digestible for students to understand. And even more importantly, there's going to be a function in there where they can reach out and ask questions to coaches. And even more than that, it's going to integrate with Rexxham's existing disability support.
And that's key. Amazing. So how much do you see that happening in other universities? This is like a groundbreaking first in the UK, I'm afraid.
I know that Kings have done lots of research around ADHD. But in terms of actual targeted specialist ADHD support for students, this is the fastest kind in the UK. And I was, yeah, I mean, I so much respect for Rexxham. Yeah, we've got a lot further to go, haven't we, in terms of, I mean, we know this, we know this from the task force recommendations.
People have to be kind of shaken. They have to be woken up and told what is needed. But you know, it seems to me that it's going to be in the university's interests. They want to hang on to students and not allow them to fail.
Because they can lose that income for the next couple of years if they lose a student at the end of the first year. Oh, they, so come on. This makes financial sense to them to sit up and take this seriously and see how they can support their students and help them recognise what challenges they're experiencing and what they can do about it. Because in the end, they're going to hang on to them and take their cash off them.
And we all know it's quite a lot of money to go to university these days. It is not cheap. So it's such an important area for us to be recognising and developing in the tertiary sector. Stephanie, can I ask, as a parent who has gone through this and knowing a number of parents who have gone through something like this, and actually, this is a wider question beyond ADHD.
If you are a parent who is worried about your child at university, what are the signs that you should look out for? What are the red flags that they might be raising that should make you think, I need to take this seriously? We don't want to wait until they fail. We don't want to be seeing red flags.
We don't need to be. We can anticipate if a student's got ADHD and they're about, and like particularly if you've been doing all the watching, you've been making, you know, if you've been there for their mother at school, you've been there rock. And that is still something they're going to, they need some kind of support, someone to keep, you know, making sure that these things are being done or keep them on track and reminding them that's going to continue. They're going to need that rock more than ever once they leave.
And so instead of waiting for red flags, it's okay. So this is what's happening. We're going to lose all this support. We need to make sure we've got the support in place, you know, before he even gets there.
That's what we should be doing. So parents need to be right now, thinking ahead, anticipating that yes, this will be challenging. These things are going to get in the way. You know, again, as I need to get educated about what the problems will be.
Happy to provide them with that information. We've got a lot of that information in the YouTube videos as well. However, it's exactly what we just said there in terms of currently. One of the issues that they know the child has now, what are they doing currently to try and mitigate against those issues and accepting those issues will continue and actually is going to get even worse because there's going to be that support that they're currently providing, keeping them out of their own way.
It's going to go. So we better find a good substitute. And the second part that I wanted to talk about when you said helicopter parenting, words create worlds. The language we use when it comes to neurodiverse, particularly the language we use with the neurodiverse massively impacts your outcomes that you're trying to achieve with your children.
So and I do this with all the clients like I hate in terms of okay, we're having conversation. What do you want to achieve? And what could these objections be? What's in it for the person?
So think about, you know, so when you go to talk to the person, frame it in a way that addresses objections so that you don't trigger the RSD, right? This is what you said earlier about saying because you're an adult. It's actually getting them on side and says that here's a plan that we're putting together, not because I'm patronising you or because I think you need looking after actually because we're both adults in this situation and you've got ADHD and we need to find a strategy. I think as much as anything, it's about making sure that they know they're not alone, isn't it?
Because they are on their own for the first time. And as you say, socially, they're having to make friends, having to cook for themselves, and to organise their time and finding a way of making sure, be that through a coach or through, I don't know, talking to a friend that they've made or making sure that they know that they are not alone. And that is so key because it's such an overwhelming thing for them to have to handle, isn't it? All of this, all at once.
You know? No, it is. And so you're right, that's absolutely right. And the other thing is, again, talking about the words that we use, right, and reframing.
So unfortunately, the whole message in education, so what they've been taught, talked about this at the conference last week on mental health and education. And the message in education is independence. That is the ultimate goal, independence, right? Yeah, you can't blame our kids, right?
But like, okay, so that's what it means to be successful. I've got to do this on my own. It's got to be on my own. Exactly.
So what you've just said there, and you're absolutely right, we're not good alone. Our safety is we will get in our own way. We can do things for others. We can't do for ourselves.
Body double is our number one strategy, right? Yeah, yeah. Independence is not the message that we should be receiving. It is not the mindset that's going to help us reach our goals.
Like, I can tell you, because I coach people from students all the way up to CEOs of financial institutions and millionaire H1 managers, and the ones that are the most successful, are the ones that have been able to lean into independence and unapologetically delegate in terms of that thing, that thing, that thing. Yeah, no, it doesn't interest me. You know, I'm not going to spend my time doing that thing. That person, that person, that person, they can do all those things.
I'll just do what I like and cause, you know, what naturally usually is what's best, right, in terms of their value at. And that's why they're so successful. That's so interesting. And so that is, is that the goal then with your student is to somehow find a way to get them to ask for help with the bits that they don't want to do.
That's the thing, isn't it? Yeah, to see it, that's being a leader. And this is what I do in coaching, and this is how, like with the young people, I say to them, I will use an example of a very successful business person. I said, yeah, so how do you think they choose out or by themselves?
They're like, no. Well, you know, and that gets them thinking, you know, like leaders, right? No, there's a lot. Leaders delegate.
Leaders don't do everything themselves. Do not expect to do everything themselves, right? The smart thing is to get support, get people in, right? The most successful people, right?
And definitely the ADHD is, they're in those positions. They're the ones that are very quickly and unapologetically, you know, like, oh, yeah, absolutely. It's very, very important for me to say at this juncture that my wonderful son who's now about to go into here for of his course of study is flying now, you know, having established all of that scaffolding at the beginning when it was very wobbly and it was wobbly for all of us because we were all learning just like you were talking about. He is absolutely academically on course, knows exactly what he wants, knows how to, knows how to organize his week, knows what to ask for and choosing subjects that he absolutely adores and that changes everything because it's interest driven.
So he's doing something that he absolutely loves and that is amazing for him because it means that he has confidence in his ability to do it. That's key in order for him to reach his potential. So that is great news and that's what we want for all ADHD is at university. One thing that I do see which really needs to change, again, if agencies don't get the support in the university, which we know they're not getting, right, outside of coaching and you know, certain universities that have informed support, again, the dissertations, a lot of the time they're going to need extensions, right?
And so a lot of my, a lot of ADHD students as well that come to me are those that are up against the universities arguing, you know, why they should be given more time to complete their dissertation and sometimes arguments as to why they should be kicked out of university. And the amount, and I see this in the workplace, same thing. So here they are with the deadline, they're trying to do the dissertation, but in order to get the extension, the amount of time and effort they need to put into their argument and all the people they need to talk to and all the things they need to, you know, evidence, that takes them away from doing the thing that actually they're asking the extension for. It kills me and their mental health.
It's not just the focus that's been taken away in the time. They're not good with their mental health. So now they're really not able to do the thing, even with the extension. This is the problem.
We're talking to you. I mean, it absolutely sounds like universities need to do more and they need to be more like rex and by the sound of it. And a great message about asking for support, I think, as well as students, I think that's probably one we can learn. We'll learn to ask for some help, I think.
It's definitely so great to talk to you again. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Well, that was a great conversation. I have to say in terms of giving people at me, mum's dad's pointers for how to see the wood for the trees, because it can seem very overwhelming and actually really worrying at times. But to know that you should have to think about how you intervene before they go away, maybe set some scaffolding in place. And if it looks like there are issues, maybe thinking about finding a coach if they're open to it and contemplating coaching for yourself if it looks like your own kind of communication is not working out.
Yeah, I mean, looking at how you communicate is always important. And I think, you know, we can be honest and I'm sure there are lots of universities doing really good work, but with another one of those conversations where you go, we're still playing catch up. We're still trying to say to people, ADHD is something that needs to be taken seriously and people need help. Well done, rex, Sam.
Absolutely. It's amazing that they are engaging with this in such a huge way. I mean, that's going to, that is obviously going to affect rex and students, but that's going to have an effect on universities around the country, isn't it? Ultimately, because they are going to be made to feel very small, but they are not taking it seriously.
And it's an absolute scandal, Sam. It's a scandal that these places have been taking our kids money, putting them in tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt, but up until now, it would seem no interest in their mental health or their emotional wellbeing. And these are young people. These are kids.
They would argue that they are adults because they're 18 and they've left home. But you know, when it comes to a young person with ADHD, it does take them that little bit longer to figure stuff out. They need more support and that breakdown in communication between parent and child leaves an enormous gap and universities need to take more responsibility for making sure that they're filling it. Absolutely.
I'm sure there are universities who argue that they're working really hard on this. Look, more needs to be done than we know that. If you found this helpful, please do rate, review and share the podcast. It makes a huge difference.
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