(upbeat music) >>Welcome to "A World of Difference: Embracing Neurodiversity."

I'm Darryl Owens.

When most people hear ADHD, they picture a child in perpetual motion, bouncing off the walls, unable to sit still, fueled by what seems to be an endless sugar rush.

But that image only tells part of the story.

In truth, ADHD comes in three distinct types.

And for many children, the challenge isn't hyperactivity, it's focus.

These kids may sit quietly in class, but inside, they're struggling to follow instructions, juggle tasks, and keep track of the details that slip through the cracks of a taxed working memory.

For children with inattentive ADHD, the hurdles are just as real, misplacing keys, forgetting assignments, or zoning out during conversations.

These aren't signs of laziness, they're symptoms of a brain wired differently.

On today's episode, we meet a Maryland family who's been navigating this journey since their son's third grade diagnosis.

Then experts break down the distinct types of ADHD and share practical strategies to help parents support children with inattentive symptoms.

And later, our difference maker segment spotlights a filmmaker who turned her personal experience raising a son with ADHD into a powerful documentary that amplifies voices from the ADHD community.

But first, we visit the Wilcox family, proudly cheering on their son Andrew as he navigates life with inattentive ADHD while reaching for the stars as he gears up for a career in space flight operations at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

(upbeat music) >>I heard a crash and went out to the garage and you two said Andrew just hit the shelf and it fell- >>It fell over.

Yeah, it just fell over.

>>And then when I went out there later after calling dad and yelling at him, [LAUGHING] his two children pulled down the shelf in the garage and made a mess.

>>I thought it was pretty inventive how we did it too.

My elementary school English teacher talked to my mom and was like, "He might be showing signs of ADHD."

So they had someone come into the class and evaluate me and then they got the diagnosis back.

And my mom one morning for breakfast, she said, "Hey, I want to talk to you about something."

And she was like, "I want to start off by saying this isn't like some horrible disease that you have, but you got diagnosed with ADHD."

And she was just like, "It's not anything bad, it's just you're a little bit different than other people."

>>So once we received the diagnosis of inattentive ADHD, >>So once we received the diagnosis of inattentive ADHD, I was not very educated on inattentive ADHD.

I knew what ADHD was and I had studied ADHD medications as part of my previous research, but my view of ADHD was probably what most people think about it, which is hyperactive little boys.

I had to do a lot of learning about what inattentive ADHD was in order to be able to help Andrew.

>>I was more confused like, what is it, like what's going on, what do I have?

It was more of a just like a, okay, I have this thing now, back to doing whatever I was doing as a third grader.

My brain is like an overstuffed garbage can.

There's a lot of stuff going on, a lot of junk and a lot of actual good things that you might accidentally throw away.

So there's just a lot going on in my brain all the time.

I'm thinking about just a bunch of different things at once.

Oh, you have to go do your homework assignment.

It's like, okay, I'm gonna think about it.

But then I'm also gonna be thinking about what am I gonna do after?

What am I gonna make for dinner?

What am I gonna do tomorrow?

My brain's basically going in a million miles a second is the best way I can put it.

>>When he was younger, I would say, you know, "Why can't you clean your room?

Why can't you put your bike away?

Why can't you just do your homework?"

And it took me a while to realize that he just couldn't do those things, not because he didn't know how to do them or because he was being defiant, you know, his ADHD was getting in the way and he forgot.

I asked him to put his bike away or he, you know, would go up to his room and start cleaning it and then find some cool thing he misplaced, you know, six months ago, and then he's playing with it instead of cleaning his room.

That's what took a long time to learn and was probably the biggest challenge of being a parent to an ADHD child.

>>It's not that I like couldn't do the math homework, it's, I didn't want to do the math homework because that's not fun.

I'd rather go play video games for two hours than sit and do all these 20 multiplication problems.

And also just staying organized.

So I would like, my desk in elementary and middle school was horrible.

Like tests from two weeks ago, homework assignments that I never did, writing assignments I never did, just all stuffed in my desk.

So I would lose track of things like that as well.

So like for me, in high school, I had a big whiteboard calendar that me and my mom would sit down at the start of every week and write down all my assignments.

And now in college, we use Canvas, and that does a calendar for you so I just look at that.

I just, that's just the big thing is finding what works for you to stay organized.

And in my case, that was a calendar.

>>What is today?

>>27th.

>>Oh, there you go.

What do you got, what do you got going on in December?

Our ADHD kids spend so much time hearing negative things about their behavior and they don't really hear a lot of positive things about their behavior.

So, you know, pick out those positive things and really celebrate those with your child and tell them what you admire about them.

I admire that Andrew's a risk taker because I'm not that way and he has made me more that way.

And I think he truly lives life because he's not afraid to go out and to do things.

And I've learned a lot by trying to be a little bit more like Andrew.

>>I would not be as successful without my mom.

So she's definitely the biggest like supporter.

I mean, they all support me, but she was the one that was the most involved.

I think part of that's because of her neuroscience.

She was like picking my brain at how I actually work as well.

But they've been very helpful and very supportive in making sure that I get to where I am now.

My dream will be to work in like a mission control center, whether that's in Johnson Space Center in Houston, or some other smaller space company like SpaceX or Blue Origin.

When I'm doing something I enjoy, I can focus on it for hours on end.

So if I have to sit there and manage a system for a spacecraft that I'm particularly interested in, I could sit there and I'd be motivated to do a good job because I would look at all the numbers changing and be like, "This is really interesting," and I would love doing that.

Best advice I could give is to find what works for you, so we all work differently, and don't be afraid to fail.

Yeah, it has its downsides.

Like there's been times where I don't wanna do this homework assignment, but then I'm like, "My ADHD is the reason I have this interest and why I'm going to school."

So that kind of outweighs the feeling of I don't want to get this done.

It's like, if I get this done, well one, I can have more free time, and then it gets me that little bit closer to doing something that I actually want to do in my life.

My big passion is space flight.

That's what I'm going to school for.

And I've always just loved it.

So my motivator is I want to do this thing that I've been in love with since I was a little child.

So that's my big push is that I want to do it because it's something that I've always loved and it'd be like a dream come true for me to work in that field.

>>Not bad, my boy.

My big boy, my baby boy.

>>Not so baby anymore.

>>I know.

(upbeat music) >>Next, our panel of national experts unpacks the diverse presentations of ADHD and shares practical strategies to help children with inattentive ADHD thrive.

(upbeat music) Dr. Oksana Hagerty is the developmental psychologist and dean of the Center for Student Success at Beacon College in Leesburg, Florida, the first accredited US college dedicated to neurodivergent learners.

She specializes in educational psychology, cognitive development, and learning disability interventions.

Previously, she consulted internationally on higher education strategies in the Ukraine.

Her insights have appeared in publications like "District Administration," and she's been quoted in outlets such as "The Los Angeles Times," "Reuters Health," and "US News and World Report."

Dr. Andrew Kahn is a licensed psychologist who specializes in supporting individuals who think and learn differently.

An associate director of behavior change and expertise at understood.org, he focuses on ADHD, autism, anxiety, and learning challenges.

He spent nearly 20 years in public schools working with underserved communities and developing mental health and learning policies.

Prior to understood.org, he held clinical leadership roles, and was a national presenter on neurodiversity topics.

Dr. Kahn, who identifies as having learning and thinking differences, earned his psychology degrees from Syracuse University and Nova Southeastern University.

Hilary Stern is a credentialed ADHD life coach, consultant, and founder of ADHD Advance Coaching and Consulting.

With 25 years in education and personal experience as a parent of three children with ADHD and an adult diagnosed herself, she brings deep empathy and insight to her work.

Hilary empowers students, adults, and families through coaching, workshops, and training sessions that blend compassion, practical strategies, and evidence-based ADHD education.

Her mission is to help individuals understand how their brains work, embrace their strengths, and build systems that support success in everyday life.

And we're gonna start our conversation with Dr. Hagerty.

Let's start from the top.

What are the defining characteristics of inattentive ADHD, and how does it differ from some of the more commonly recognized types of ADHD?

>>Yeah, so ADHD does have three major characteristics, inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity.

And understandably, we pay more attention to students who are hyperactive or impulsive because we can see them.

Those students who are inattentive, they are actually quite invisible or quiet because those are the students who fail to pay attention to details or make careless mistakes or lose things or have difficulty during conversations.

It seems like you're talking to them and they're not listening.

So those inattention characteristics are very common, and they actually, the foundation of hyperactivity, to some degree, hyperactivity and impulsivity, but individuals with inattention are not as visible.

And so to some degree, that's why we're not seeing as many diagnoses for purely inattentive ADHD.

And I would say that when we talk about, for example, attention to details, just to give a little bit of history, 300 years ago, we as educators, we discovered that if you bring, for example, 20 students in the classroom and tell them a story, they will all pay attention to the same details you want them to pay attention to, and they will all make the same conclusion.

This was the foundation of classroom instruction.

And then after years and years and years with classroom instruction, we all of a sudden begin to notice that there are some individuals who are not paying attention to details necessarily.

They're not paying attention to the details we think they should be paying or we expect them to pay.

They do pay attention to details.

And very often when you talk to an individual with inattentive ADHD, they can bring up parts of the story that you didn't even think about because their attention is directed very, very differently.

And so I would say that when we say inattentive, for example, to details, it's inattentive to details that an average person would pay attention to.

They do pay attention, but they are paying attention to details or features of the environment that are very unexpected for an average person.

So that's what inattention ADHD is, and it's a very, very interesting condition.

>>All right, so Dr. Kahn, as I understand it, many kids who have inattentive ADHD don't present with obvious behavioral issues.

So I'm wondering how this might lead to misdiagnosis or no diagnosis at all.

>>Sure, so for many folks, what we're not seeing obviously is what's going on within them.

Inattention is really an internal experience.

Often what we see in these situations is that if someone is struggling to direct their attention to something that they should be paying attention to for the environment, and when they're not, they often experience feelings of surprise or anxiety and worry around what's going on around me.

Oftentimes, we also see that they're not meeting the expectations of their environments or not engaged in the social interaction in a way that we would expect.

So this can often lead to feelings of anxiety, worry, feeling down, and lowered self-confidence.

So in turn, we don't often see externally those kind of behaviors that we see for kids who are more hyperactive.

What does this lead to?

Well, a lot of what it leads to is folks getting identified for things like anxiety and depression.

Because we may see that worry result in things like I'm escaping, I'm avoiding the activity.

Or a child who breaks down in tears when they're given some sort of prompt or cue.

The other reason that we may see misdiagnosis or people not being diagnosed at all often occurs when someone does something called masking.

Masking is the effort that people will make to try to show that they're just like everybody else.

Below the surface, they're having those challenges, but they might spend hours outside of school trying to study and bulk up on the things that aren't going well and doing all the things they can to look similar to other people.

We see that a lot in women and girls who have inattentive ADHD.

So they're spending tremendous amounts of energy, and what we're seeing now is that a lot of women and girls have gone undiagnosed because their masking skills, which aren't necessarily beneficial to them, are blocking people from seeing what's going on under the hood.

>>All right, thank you, Dr. Kahn.

So Hilary, what are some classroom behaviors that a child with inattentive ADHD might exhibit that signals that they have this condition?

>>So when we're dealing with students in the classroom, you might think that they're paying attention to everything that's going on, when in reality they, again, their brain might be focusing on something else because the misconception about ADHD is that we can't focus, but really we have so many things going on in our brain that we're focusing not necessarily on the right thing at the right time, but we're really good at masking and pretending like we are paying attention.

So the student might be looking at the speaker, might look like they are paying attention, but then they can't repeat the instructions.

They're struggling to follow multi-step directions.

Multi-step directions are really challenging.

So maybe, you know, one at a time would be helpful.

You know, their work is incomplete or not being turned in on time.

They need frequent reminders.

They often lose material.

They're gonna fly under the radar because they're not disruptive.

And I think that the most important thing that we forget to - we don't realize is a part of ADHD is that emotional sensitivity that comes with it, that emotional dysregulation.

So again, we might see some of those emotional behaviors, extreme emotional behaviors for a situation that might not warrant a certain response or reaction.

And that is definitely a sign of inattentive ADHD.

And I think these kids are often misunderstood as unmotivated or not trying hard enough when really their brain is just struggling to activate and to sustain attention.

>>All right, well thank you, Hilary.

So Dr. Hagerty, are there any common misconceptions or myths about inattentive ADHD?

And if there are, how do these impact the support for children who are living with it?

>>I would say that very common misconceptions are that it's hard to manage, and it is hard to manage unless you understand it.

And there are very practical, easy to implement tools that parents, because the biggest environmental factor which can mitigate the condition is access to services and access to supportive partners or adults if we are talking about children.

And so I think the misconception is that it's hard to manage, but if you do it the right way, you actually can do it.

For example, an individual keeps losing things, which is very common for individuals who are inattentive.

And the first question should be, well, where's the place for the thing?

For example, the student keeps losing the keys.

Most of the time when you ask them, where's the place for the key, and there's no place for the key, so they come into the house, they drop the key somewhere, and they never pay attention because their mind is elsewhere.

So the adjustment is a place for everything.

Everything is in place.

So you need to find a place.

So you need to front load the attention so that you just don't drop the key randomly, but put them in the place where they are.

Or we can say, for example, they're easily disruptable.

All of us are disruptable if we're tired or hungry, for example.

So we need to find the time of the day when the students are supposed to do their homework, when they are not tired, A, and when they are not hungry, B, or not too full right after lunch.

So there are adjustments that can be made very, I would say suggest easy environmental adjustments that can help individuals with inattentive ADHD, ADD to be more productive.

And so I would say that those are the strategies that ADHD coaches or educators who work with individuals with attention deficit can implement or suggest to the families.

So it's very important to seek help and support and services early on to make sure that we build the independent capacity for students to be able to show the true productivity that they can have.

>>Watch the full Ask the Experts segment on our website at awodtv.org if you wanna learn more about this topic.

You can also watch or listen on Facebook, YouTube, or on your favorite podcasting platform.

(upbeat music) Next, let's meet our latest difference maker.

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but for veteran producer and director Krys Kornmeier, it became a call to action.

As a mother of Jack, a young man with learning differences and ADHD, Kornmeier navigated years of uncertainty without a compass.

That personal journey inspired her to create a film that sheds light on the one in five Americans who are neurodivergent, not through statistics or brain scans, but through the lived experiences of those who face the world differently every day.

For Kornmeier, the goal of "Normal Isn't Real" wasn't to explain the science, it was to amplify authentic voices.

By spotlighting successful young people navigating neurodivergence on their own terms, her work offers viewers not only insight, but tools to uplift students, empower families, and challenge educators to see difference not as a deficit, but as a strength.

(upbeat music) (gentle music) >>I am a huge believer in the power of stories.

Personal stories have the ability to really create empathy.

When you create empathy, you're opening not only people's hearts, but they open their minds more.

(upbeat music) My name is Krys Kornmeier, I'm a documentary filmmaker, and I'm here to talk about my film "Normal Isn't Real: Succeeding with Learning Disabilities and ADHD."

I was a freelance television producer director for over 25 years and I loved it.

Lots of adventures, and I got to go to places I would've never gotten to go and meet people I never would've been able to meet.

I had never made an independent film.

I had to learn how to be a one woman band.

(gentle music) The first time my husband and I were aware that there were some issues with Jack, when my husband used to read to him every night.

And one evening, my husband came down and he looked kind of stricken and he said, "Jack and I just sounded out a word, and then about three sentences later, it came up, and he had no idea what it was."

We didn't really know what that meant, and we did have him tested, and that's when we found out that he actually had learning and attention issues.

My husband and I were very much on the same team to just do the best we could to explore every avenue to support him.

Once we sort of got him situated and getting some supports in place for him, we began to wonder what would his journey to adulthood look like?

I was looking for role models, other people who had had sort of similar struggles and what did their paths look like?

It's not always that easy to find a child's strengths, but they're always in there.

My main goals in creating "Normal Isn't Real" were to highlight the strengths of people with these challenges, to show some of their strategies for how they manage the challenges, and to show how they have really learned to embrace themselves.

That's a film I would really like to make.

They needed to be willing to show their talents, but also their challenges and some of the things they need to do in order to be successful.

And that takes a lot of guts.

The material I was using was out of their mouths.

The reception to the film has been incredibly gratifying.

It's inspiring to the people that have these issues to see others with similar challenges be successful.

And I think it's also real eye-opening for people who just don't understand these issues, to get a glimpse into what it's like in somebody's head.

And we did a screening at a university with students and they're like, "I want my friends to see this so they understand what I'm going through.

I want my parents to see this."

I have one man in his 70s come up to me at a screening and say, "I just watched your film and realized I've been dyslexic my whole life and didn't know it."

As a parent, you always worry, you worry about your children, you worry about what's gonna happen to them.

Looking back, I had my moments worried about Jack, but I also had a lot of faith in him, and I think it's really important to hang on to that.

I learned more things about my own son listening to other people's stories.

We would have long conversations about the film, and he'd say, "Yeah, that's exactly how it is in my head."

So even I learned something from my own film.

Jack is a storyboard artist, an illustrator.

I am so proud of him, he loved to draw.

>>When I was a kid, I was so caught up in what I couldn't do that I didn't realize that everyone, regardless of whether they have learning differences or not, has their own set of strengths and challenges.

And to be successful, everyone has to develop those strengths and find workarounds for the stuff they can't do.

>>The most important advice I would give to parents who are new to this journey is to don't panic, take a deep breath.

A piece of advice that was given to me way, way back when I was kind of in the panicky mode a little bit was from a mom who'd been down that road and she said the most important thing is to keep Jack's self-esteem intact.

When that gets damaged, it's very hard to repair that.

I just know your son has talent, your child will get there, and there are gonna be a lot of bumps in the road.

It's gonna be rough, and just brace yourself, and they're gonna surprise you in some hard ways, in some wonderful ways.

(upbeat music) >>Congratulations Krys Kornmeier for making a difference.

And that does it for this episode of "A World of Difference: Embracing Neurodiversity."

I'm Darryl Owens.

See you back here next time.

You can watch episodes of "A World of Difference" on the Beacon College Facebook and YouTube channels, and on the show's website, awodtv.org.

The website also provides tip sheets and other resources for your parenting journey.

You can watch the show from the PBS app available on your favorite streaming device, and you can listen on your favorite podcasting platform.

Thank you for watching and supporting "A World of Difference."

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