Genetics + Environment = Executive Skills

Posted on December 06, 2012 by Mike Nachman, One of Thousands of ADD ADHD Coaches on Noomii.

Have you ever thought about how we as humans become afraid? We’re born as blank slates. If you would place a chubby little baby next to a Cobra they would try and stick it in their mouth. They wouldn’t have the slightest sign of fear until mom or dad scream, “No! Stay still!” Even then the “fear” would have to be reinforced time and time again in order for the child to be afraid of the long poisonous snake.

Now let’s look at the late Steve (the Crocodile Hunter) Irwin. His daughter would fearlessly bounce around the swamps with him and calmly watch just feet away as dad dove on snakes, and gators. Why? Because that’s how dad reacted her whole life, and it’s all she knew.

People ask me all the time, “How is he less ADHD than I am?” That’s not an easy question to answer, but the simple reply is, “How was your environment growing up?”

The environment you grow up in has so much to do with how your ADHD responds. For instance, my mother was as organized as any person I’ve ever known. Our home barely looked lived in. My father was a tidy person as well. He would walk into my room and point to a small piece of frayed notebook paper and say, “What’s that? Throw it out.”My family was also run on a tight schedule. Every night at 6:30pm dinner was on the table. Every Sunday my aunt would bring donuts. There was organization and I knew exactly what was coming next no matter what.

Genetically I had the ADHD genes, I presented symptoms, but because of the environment I was raised in, my childhood and adulthood ADHD isn’t as bad as somebody that grew up in different one.

I can walk into a client’s house and within 30 seconds of looking around the room tell how mom or dad address organizational issues. I also know how the child will. If mom has piles on the kitchen counter of keys, receipts, pocket change, and prescriptions, and dad has a pile of magazines on floor next to his recliner, and four remotes scattered about, I would bet everything I own that little Johnny’s room has piles of Lego’s, socks, t-shirts, and toy cars.

Your genetics can help predict certain things, and the environment they live, play, and grow up in, can almost 100% of the time predict what your executive skill issues are going to be as an adult.

Parent’s act as their children’s frontal lobe as they grow up. When Billy is next to the street mom has to say, “Billy, get back it’s dangerous.” Mom has to tell Billy, “We don’t just throw trash on the ground.” Mom has to remind Billy to get up for school each day, brush his teeth, wash his face and when he’s done, “don’t forget to turn the light out.”

As we grow up our parents serve as our brain and executive skills externally, with the hopes that one day all of what they are showing and teaching will become internal and spoken with our own voice of reason. In other words mom and dad want us to know how to live by ourselves, as well as within ourselves.

So what happens with ADHD? To put it in simple terms our brain’s chemically have holes (not really, but follow along for the sake of following.) Those holes show up at various times and we need help filling them in.

What are those holes? The holes are our executive skills.The four executive skills I focus on with my clients are:

-time management/prioritizing/planning

-short term memory

-organization

-meta cognition

How do we as adults re-build our lives and help build the lives of our ADHD children?The simple answer: build your executive skills. The complicated answer: I need more than a couple pages to answer that.