Don’t Tell Girls With ADHD/AuDHD They Have SuperPowers. Here Is Why And What To Say Instead.
Setting Expectations of Superpowers Saps Hope in Girls with ADHD.
One of the hardest parts of parenting any child is knowing what to say when she is feeling low and judging herself harshly. And, parents of girls with ADHD/AuDHD are likely to face this challenge more often because girls with ADHD receive more criticism and social rejection than others, causing them to judge themselves negatively.
A common parenting strategy when girls are spiraling in negative self talk is to help her change the story she tells herself about herself. And, this can be effective when used with the right reframe But, many well-intentioned parents accidentally overshoot by offering a superhero framework to redirect her self narrative. But, this superlative language, unfortunately, usually does more harm than good for neurodivergent girls. Here is why and what to do instead.
WHY THE SUPERPOWER STRATEGY BACKFIRES
1. Unrealistic Expectations Make Them Wither
Many neurodivergent girls struggle with demands imposed on them. Demands not only threaten their need to control their surroundings to feel safe, but girls often feel unable to meet the demands. So, they wind up feeling neurologically and psychologically overwhelmed.
Although we might not think of it as a demand, telling a girl that she has superpowers is establishing the expectation that she should rise to the level of a superhero to please her parents. If she is unable to succeed in those designated superpower areas because other challenges undermine her overall ability, she will fear that she is failing her parents. Superpower language accidentally sets the bar of approval impossibly high for any mere human to meet. And, rather than empowering our neurodivergent girls, we wind up triggering anxiety that makes them wither.
2. Superpowers Lead To Superfailures For Rigid, High Contrast Thinkers
Most ADHD/AUDHD girls struggle with flexible thinking, and instead, revert to more rigid, high contrast thoughts, like the extremes of black and white. So, when parents tell a neurodivergent girl that she has superpowers, and set up a superlative positive label, it paves the way for her brain also to think in the opposite superlative negative label about herself. Then, the next time she feels she did not achieve what she thinks you expect of her in this superpower realm or she feels rejected by peers, she will label herself as a super failure or super loser.
And, that thinking can quickly spiral in her mind from the contrast of super human to sub human, and therefore, not worthy to be human. That is a much more serious and maligned self assessment to heal once the contrast has been established. No matter how bright or talented she is, characterizing a neurodivergent girl in extremes, even positive ones, will only invite her brain to establish and see herself in the opposite as well.
3. Motivational Challenge Degrades into Apathy and Self Defeat
Girls with ADHD/AUDHD often struggle with low motivation levels to engage in tasks not immediately captivating to them. In addition, they struggle with transitioning from one task to another. This is not because they are lazy, but because they have insufficient levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine that ignites human brains to move toward a goal or to do something for pleasure or to avoid pain.
It is hard enough for neurodivergent girls to push themselves to meet a goal if the goal is possibly achievable, like doing tonight’s homework. When we add an extraordinary gap between neurodivergent girls and the goal, many girls will become apathetic and not care about it anymore or give up entirely believing it is unachievable for them.
Their goals must be possible, given their strengths and challenges, to be achievable. And, expectations of wielding superpowers is impossible to achieve for anyone. A bar set unreasonably high often undermines neurodivergent girls’ already weakened motivation, turning it into apathy and self defeat.
4. Comparison To Others Undermines Acceptance of Self
When we tell a neurodivergent girl she has superpowers, it invites her to compare herself to others in unhealthy and unhelpful ways. She naturally will seek to verify in the real world what we have told her. And when she falls short, and she will fall short because no one has super human powers, her self esteem will be depleted rather than strengthened.
Take the example of creativity. If we tell a girl she has the superpower of creativity, she may at first seem empowered and enthusiastic. Then, once she is enrolled in an art class and sees she does not uniquely have this superpower, and, in fact, other children may have more natural drawing talent or more ability to focus she will no longer believe she is especially creative. Worse, she won’t trust your judgment anymore. Superlative language like superpowers invites her to compare herself to other children rather than teaching her to value herself apart from comparisons.
5. Perfectionism leads to Anxiety
Many neurodivergent girls have perfectionist tendencies. Autistic traits often mean they want to follow the rules and feel safer when things are in clear order. ADHD traits mean they notice what is out of the ordinary and can focus on that, unable to extract their attention away from trying to fix the problem. Either way, telling a girl with perfectionist tendencies that she has superpowers opens them to lean into their perfectionism and pushes them toward anxiety and an unhealthy pursuit of perfection.
What To Do When She Is Spiraling In Negative Self Talk
1. Normalize Brain Diversity
When a neurodivergent girl is beginning to spiral into negative self talk, rather than tell her she has superpowers, first listen and validate her pain so she feels heard. Then gently challenge her self narrative, that is the story she tells herself about herself. This narrative is how she sees herself in relation to the world. So, normalize all brains to help her normalize her own. Here is how.
Your neurodivergent girls likely believes there are two kinds of brains: typical and neurotypical, also characterized by society as whole and deficient or good and bad. She believes this because until recently that was as much as science and society had understood about brains. And for a brain that easily thinks in high contrast extremes, like black and white, the polar opposites of good and bad brains make sense to her.
In the past twenty years, however, we have learned that our static understanding of the brain was flat out wrong. In fact, we have now learned that no two brains are alike. And, even an individual brain keeps changing throughout life because of a wonderful adaptivity called neuroplasticity that creates new neural pathways as we have new experiences and new task requirements throughout life.
It means there is not one kind of brain that can be considered whole and good. It also means divergent brains cannot be considered deficient and bad. Rather, every brain is a combination of strengths and weaknesses ever morphing to face each particular challenge at hand. But this is hard to convey to brains that lean toward high contrast thinking.
So, to normalize brain diversity, begin telling her of our new understanding of brains and begin noting the wide diversity of brains, each with different combinations of strengths and challenges. To get around inflexible, high contrast thinking, lean into the science. Neurodivergent girls want to know the rationale and they will want proof to overturn what science has been telling the world for decades. So give it to her.
Repeat like a mantra that no brain can be considered superior in all tasks and each is ever changing. Remind her often that there is no whole, good brain. There are only those brains better at certain tasks and those better at other tasks. Because the more she understands that all brains have strengths and challenges and are changeable, the more she will understand that her brain is just that as well.
2. Make Strengths and Challenges Relative
When talking about strengths and challenges, focus on them in relative terms rather than comparative terms. That means help her to see what areas of her brain operate easily and readily for her and what areas require more work and feel harder relative to her own strengths. For example, she might find that seeing patterns comes easily to her, while remembering instructions requires more work. Pattern recognition, then, would be one of her relative strengths and working memory would be a relative challenge.
We want her to understand that what comes easily to her may require more work for others and what comes easily to others may require more work for her. And that is normal. But, the objective is not for her to compare herself to everyone else. Rather, it is to learn to see what her natural areas of strength and challenges are within herself so she can own those. And remind her that she does not have to be the world’s best or even the class best for it to be a strength of hers. It just has to be one of the areas that a comes more easily to her relative to the areas that require more work.
3. Be Specific About Strengths and Challenges
A girl with ADHD/AUDHD tends to process specific information more readily than generalized information. Her brain hunts and neutralizes information that is inaccurate or inconsistent with information she already holds as fact. So, help her be as specific as possible when talking about her strengths and challenges to avoid confusion and prevent her from denying that an area could be a strength.
For example, rather than asking her if she sees creativity as a strength, meaning it comes easily to her brain, ask if she finds it easy to come up with plots for a story or to draw dogs. Creativity is a very broad term and she will find some creative areas that do not come easily. When that happens, her brain will move fast to refute the idea that creativity is a strength for her. So, be specific so that she can more readily own that strength without quashing it as inaccurate.
4. Encourage Her To Author Her Own Self Narrative
As her understanding of brains changes, her self narrative will move from one of being trapped by her brain, to one of personal agency and possibility given her unique combination of brain strengths and challenges. Invite her to rewrite her own story given this way of thinking about brains.
Ask where such a heroine could go and what could she do with those strengths. How could she offset the challenges she will face on her way? And remind her that every single person she knows has their own set of brain strengths and challenges and has to write her own story given that combination. Invite her to imagine herself as the heroine and to set expectations for herself rather than imposing them on her. And remind her as she learns more, she will continue to add new chapters in her story. And like in any good story, the heroine will always have obstacles to overcome. And the harder the obstacles are, the greater the heroine becomes. Maybe she wants to see herself as as a superhero, but let her decide that rather than imposing it and help her to normalize strengths and challenges.
Conclusion
Girls with ADHD/AUDHD receive more criticism each day than their neurotypical peers. And many parents are desperate to help ease the accumulated pain. The inclination to reframe her negative self narrative to a more positive one is an effective strategy. But rather than telling her she has superpowers and accidentally creating impossible expectations, guide her to rewrite her own story in a way that does justice to her unique constellation of strengths and weakness.
By helping her see the diversity of brains, her relative strengths and challenges in specific ways, and encouraging her to write her own story you can reframe her self narrative in a way that empowers her to thrive. And then you can celebrate your own strengths in parenting her through it well! Because at the end of the day, we are all just mere humans parenting through harder assignments as well as we can. It helps if we don’t set the bar unreasonably high for ourselves as well.
