What Now? with Trevor Noah
Neuro-Spicy: Discussing ADHD with Dr. Kristin Carothers [VIDEO]
Thu, 01 May 2025
Noted clinical psychologist Dr. Kristin Carothers joins Trevor and Christiana to discuss ADHD. The three demystify the condition, how it’s diagnosed, how it manifests, and its impact on everything from education to relationships to professional sports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Dr. Kristin Carothers and what is her expertise in ADHD?
This is What Now? with Trevor Noah. Well, Dr. Corrales, thank you for joining us on the podcast. You're a clinical psychologist.
Yes.
Just to set the scene for the conversation I wanted to have today, help me break down what you do and how it applies to ADHD.
Okay. I'm a clinical psychologist. And when you work with children and adolescents, one of the predominant disorders or mental health presentations you're going to work with is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Yeah.
And so for me, I diagnose ADHD in its three forms. I provide intervention and I do consultation or coaching of parents when it comes to kids. Now, my practice has taken a bit of a turn and I work a lot with adults who have just learned they had ADHD or they have it.
And I'm teaching them how to manage like parenting and having a relationship and having a career while you're trying to also live a life with ADHD. Does does everyone have ADHD? We all have characteristics. But that does not mean we meet clinical criteria for the diagnosis.
But we meet TikTok criteria.
We definitely meet TikTok criteria. I mean, we all meet TikTok criteria.
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Chapter 2: What are the different types of ADHD presentations?
So there's hyperactive impulsive presentation.
Wait, hyperactive impulsive?
And what does that look like? That looks like you are always on the go, energizer bunny. You keep going and going and going. You talk nonstop. You're doing 15 different projects. You are moving from one topic to the next. You're running when you should be walking. If you're a little kid, you're climbing when it's dangerous to climb. You're just acting before you think.
Can this be presented like, so I know with some people, it's like the persistent tapping. Is that the hyperactivity?
Okay, so that hyperactivity.
Like their knee will be constantly moving or they can't sit still in a chair for a while.
So people can be anxious and do that. People can do that to self-soothe. There can be lots of different functions of certain behaviors. So that's another thing. Like the tapping doesn't mean you have ADHD, but what you will find is that people with ADHD tend to be a little bit louder. They tend to move their bodies more. They tend to have difficulty being aware of like,
their bodies and that their bodies are moving. And that's sometimes it's restless energy, but that can, you can also see that for people who have like anxiety. Then you have the inattentive presentation, which is like space cadets. You are forgetting things. You're losing things. You're drifting off into space. You're supposed to be focused on one task.
And before you know it, like a bunny runs across your path and you're onto the bunny.
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Chapter 3: How is ADHD diagnosed in children and what behaviors should parents watch for?
Your brain is willing to think creatively to problem solve. But it can be depressing for you if you're in a setting where everybody seems to be able to go with the flow and go with the grain. And you're like, I am dying. I am miserable going along with this. This is driving me crazy and nobody gets why you're so bothered.
And that's what I find happens when you finally get validated or you get the diagnosis. You know, they're like, OK, I knew I wasn't crazy. This is actually boring for me. This is not the way my brain is reinforced. This is not what I'm meant to do in life. And.
The reason I say congratulations to you is because I think once people know what's going on with their brains, then they can like not just look at it from like a negative point of view, but almost like embrace it. Like, OK, so this explains it. And now that I know this, I've got to figure out how I work.
I'm curious because you specialize in children. And the thing about early childhood is that it's very difficult to articulate your own experience.
Yes.
And what's going on in your brain. Yes. A lot of the things you describe, you're like, oh, that sounds just like a toddler.
Right.
Or that sounds like a five, six-year-old. Right. So for parents with young children that are displaying some of these behaviors, how can they know the difference between it being like, okay, this brain is wired differently and this is just emerging childhood?
Okay, so a couple of different places. ADHD used to be diagnosed, you had to have the symptoms before age six. Now we say you have to have them before age 12.
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Chapter 4: Why do girls with ADHD often go undiagnosed and how do their symptoms differ?
Come on.
And then my mom said to me, and my cousin always tells a story as well because he says that day I got one of the all-time beatings. And he says he remembers like watching me going, but this could have been avoided. He was also a child. He says he watched me and he thought to himself, but he could have avoided this.
And what had happened was I came home and apparently my mom was like, where's all your stuff? And I said to her, I said, the bag got heavy.
So I put it down.
I literally left it on the side of the road.
I put it down.
To me, logical. And then she said, and what happened to the shoes? And I said, the shoes were new and I didn't want to finish them. So I left them somewhere close to school so that I don't have to wear them out on the way home. Because you know, like your shoes would get worn out on the sides, right? Like we couldn't afford new shoes the same way other kids could.
So I noticed kids always had like a flat heel on their shoe.
Look at how observant you are though. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What role does race and systemic issues play in ADHD diagnosis and treatment?
Or we'll say like, oh, it's part of being a boy, but then if it goes too far, it's like, okay, well then we probably need to look at this boy. I think a lot of girls present as inattentive initially and people miss inattention. Or the girls that get caught are the girls who are super talkative, super busy, super on the go.
And so for girls, you could meet those six out of nine criteria for hyperactivity, But if it's not at a level comparatively to like a boy who's hyperactive or another girl who's super hyperactive, you could get missed. It's like based on like our cultural expectations for girls' behavior, for boys' behaviors, which make it tough.
Yeah, but there are girls who are struggling.
Absolutely.
What would you look for, I guess?
I think you would look for how the girl is doing in friendships.
In friendships? Yes.
Are they making friends? Are they sustaining friendships?
Whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's break this down. Yes. Why is that one of the signifiers of potentially having ADHD?
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Chapter 6: How does ADHD affect daily routines, time management, and sleep?
Time blindness.
It's completely time. You know what I'd love to do is break down each part to help us understand the whys behind it. Okay. Because I think a lot of people will, you know, a lot of people will recognize this stuff, right? They'll go like, oh yeah, that's me. I can't wake up or I'm late or I'm... Help us understand the why. So why is it hard to wake up if you have ADHD?
You likely don't have great sleep hygiene. Right. You know you should go to bed at 8 o'clock, but you really want to watch that show.
Okay, now let's go down that rabbit hole. Why do you not go to bed then?
Because your brain is like, but I could just watch this one episode and it won't be that bad. And then you get hooked on the episode and you're like, but now I want to watch another. Or you're like, I want to read this book and my brain isn't tired yet. So I'm going to read a few chapters of this book. Like I need my brain to be exhausted to fall asleep and stay asleep.
Okay, but then why is your brain wanting to do another episode?
Because your brain is reinforced by dopamine.
Okay.
What is happening with ADHD is your brain functions differently.
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Chapter 7: What challenges do people with ADHD face in relationships and partnerships?
So I switch my alarm back 30 minutes. And before I left... Atlanta, one day I decided like, oh, I'll just take him to school. Forget getting on the school bus. Right. That's me deciding I'm not going to engage in routine because I just decided I didn't want to. But I am training my child to respond to an alarm.
And so I was still in the bed and got a knock on my door and my child is like, it's 630. And I was like, oh, I was going to take you to school today. He's like, I'm dressed. I was like, okay, you know the person. So, yeah.
So it sounds like to me you have ADHD.
Absolutely. But I was like, good. Look at me. I'm making excuses. So in school, I don't think my teachers would have complained about me. I just talked. I just talked.
And I had to doodle. But did you know when you got into clinical psychology? Did you know by that time or did you know afterwards?
I'm black. And when I got into my clinical psychology program, I had never been to therapy. All of my white colleagues, most of them had been to therapy before. They had seen a psychologist. So I decided to do this sight unseen. I never went to therapy or nobody in my family went to therapy.
You just pray.
You pray.
I mean, that's what we did.
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Chapter 8: How can partners of people with ADHD support them while setting healthy boundaries?
Absolutely.
Okay. You don't tell them to make their bed from the living room. You're saying you go with them.
You're supposed to go with them. And nobody has time for that. That's our issue, right? We don't have time to go. I need you to go to your bedroom and make your bed. Actually, you go to the setting where you want the behavior to occur in order to increase the chances that the behavior will occur. So ABC, antecedent, behavior, consequence. Antecedent, we're going to go to the kid's room.
We're going to say, if you're going to give some information, you give it now. I need you to make your bed. The room's a mess. You don't have to throw in the room's a mess, but I need you to make your bed.
I'm going to throw in the room's a mess.
The room's a mess. I need you to make your bed. Please make your bed. And you can say please because it models a social skill, being polite when you make a command. And it's not a question. It's not like, are we ready to clean up the room? It's like a question. No, it's a command. So this is not gentle parenting where it's like, oh, I'm being nice to the kid for the sake of being nice. Got it?
There's a difference. So please make the bed. You wait. You say nothing. The kid starts to make the bed. Great job, listener. I'll be back in two minutes. You think you could get this done in two minutes? Like, make it a little game. Kid's like, yeah, I got this in two minutes. You go.
I like that. Make it a game. Make it a game.
Gamifying tasks that are non-desirable or non-reinforcing is a big thing for people with ADHD. You set that timer. You see if you can beat it. So back to the kid. We want something done. We have to do the command in a setting where we want it done. If you do it from afar with multiple parts, they're going to lose it.
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