Practice Makes Progress, Not Perfect: ADHD and Perfectionism from the Journey With Me Through ADHD Podcast with Guest Host Katelyn Mabry - Best of Friends Series #201
How do you explain ADHD to your child?
Start with the Journey with Me Through ADHD, a podcast for kids. Katelyn’s humongous heart for helping kids understand their ADHD is contagious! She knows just how to explain tough or complicated stuff in a digestible manner so kids can feel confident and empowered.
Katelyn speaks straight into the heart and mind of kids with ADHD. Helping them learn and understand the way their brain is wired differently and come up with tools and strategies that work best for them. Her podcast is a great conversation tool for trusted adults to use as you navigate this diagnosis alongside your child.
In this episode, Katelyn Mabry and I chat about Practice Makes Progress Not Perfect: ADHD and Perfectionism on her podcast, Journey With Me Through ADHD, where Katelyn helps educate, empower, and encourage kids with ADHD and their families to understand their unique minds and discover tools and strategies that will help them thrive day by day. All this while gaining confidence in who they were created to be!
"Practice makes perfect" has always been a phrase that drives me bonkers because it's just not true!!! NO ONE is or ever will be perfect! We all make mistakes and then are faced with the choice of how to respond to our mistakes!
Who else here struggles with perfectionism? You may even have it and you don't even realize it's a struggle! Often times, kids are asked to "try harder" or are told that they are making "careless mistakes" and over time, this can lead to becoming a perfectionist because of fear of failure or simply not wanting to make a mistake and upset someone. In this episode, you will hear from Patricia Sung, who has ADHD like we do and she is on a mission to help other mamas with ADHD through her podcast titled, "Motherhood in ADHD."
You may be wondering why she's on a podcast for kids with ADHD and the answer is simple...she was a teacher for 7 years to kids from grade 4th-7th and has a passion for sharing her own journey through childhood with ADHD. One of her biggest challenges has been battling being a perfectionist. She shares about the kind of armor she found helpful as an ADHD warrior and uses a great visual of becoming a scientist as we face new things!
Be sure to subscribe to the Journey With Me Through ADHD Podcast.
Katelyn Mabry’s website: www.katelynmabry.com
Katelyn Mabry’s Instagram: @journey_with_me_through_adhd
Katelyn Mabry’s Facebook: Katelyn Mabry's ADHD Journey
Katelyn Mabry’s Twitter: @katelyn_mabry
While I’m slowing down for the summer, making space for more family time and accounting for our emergency construction project, I simply couldn’t leave you hanging for the next few weeks. And my ADHD brain didn’t want to do another vanilla Best Of series… Cue Light Bulb!
Welcome to the Best Of Friends Series, where you are meeting a few of my favorite friends in the podcast community. I’m sharing interviews that I have done on other friends’ podcasts. Not only do you get a new episode, I hope that you’ll find a few shows to add to your podcast queue. There’s a wide variety of topics coming your way, so keep an eye out for a new friend each week of the summer.
Struggling to let go of perfectionism?
Hop into Successful Mama Meetups because you deserve to make mom friends who are letting go of perfection, too! Join us here: https://www.patriciasung.com/meetup
Patricia Sung 00:02
Are you overwhelmed by motherhood and barely keeping your head above water? Are you confused and frustrated by how all the other moms make it look so easy. You can figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home, or your family. I get your mama, parenting with ADHD is hard. Here is your permission slip to let go of the Pinterest worthy visions of organization and structure fit for everyone else. Let's do life like our brains do life creatively, lovingly, and with all our might. When we embrace who we are and how our brains work, we can figure out how to live our lives successfully, and in turn, lead our families well, at the end of the day, we just want to be good moms. but spoiler alert, you are already a great mom. ADHD does not mean you're doomed to be a hot mess. Mama, you can rewrite your story from shame spiral to success story. And I'll be right here beside you to cheer you on. Welcome to motherhood in ADHD. Hey there successful mama, it's your friend Patricia Sung. Welcome to our summer best of series. Now over the summer, I'm going to be taking a break to slow down a little bit hanging out more with my kids. I'm also managing and like why am I seeing slowing down there is no slowing down. I just have to reshift priorities here, hanging out my kids dealing with all of the construction project that's been going on. It has been a lot this spring. And I realized like I gotta let up this summer, in order to be able to do all the things, shifting some stuff around. So it's like how do I still deliver great content, but also like, not just do the same old, same old because Hello, ADHD. So here's what we're doing, I am going to be sharing some friends with you. So while I will sprinkle in a couple of episodes from my own podcast, I chose some of the ones that were like the most popular downloads in the last few months. But I think that they are the most popular downloaded episodes because they cover a lot of the like basic things that we need to know about our ADHD. And we could use a little reminder sometimes of just the basic things. But I'm more excited about introducing you to some of my friends, I have asked several of my podcasting friends to share the interview that I did on their podcast, so that you can get to know not only you still get to hear from me about ADHD and whatever they're like podcast is focusing on but that I want you to be able to meet some other really great podcast host. Most of these are women. Most of these are moms who are doing great things in the world. And I love what they're doing. I want to support them. And I want you to have really great podcasts in your feed that are they're supporting you and showing you who you can be and like bringing more light and wonderfulness and fun to your summer as you are doing your mom thing and trying to juggle all the things. So welcome to the best of series. And let's dive into today's episode. Today I'd like you to meet my friend Katelyn. Katelyn Mabry hosts the journey with me through ADHD podcast, which is a podcast for kids. Katelyn is also one of my fellow former teacher friends. And she has a background in special education and had a ton of learning struggles throughout school with her ADHD and turn that into the focus of her career and her mission in helping kids with ADHD understand their brains and love all the good parts about it, while recognizing the struggles. And she wants kids with ADHD and their grownups to understand their unique mind so that they can discover the tools and strategies that are actually going to help them thrive day by day, because she wants little kids who were just like her to really gain confidence and being the person they were created to be. Her podcast journey with me through ADHD is adorable. They're short little episodes perfect for ADHD kiddos, and it's just so stinking cute, y'all, you gotta go listen. Okay, so Katelyn also has a book with the same title. So go grab that go subscribe to her podcast, share it with your little ones. And let's jump into our conversation with Katelyn Mabry and perfectionism.
Katelyn Mabry 04:32
Hey, there come journey with me. Let's take a trip through ADHD where we conquer the tough and celebrate all the good. empower our minds just as we should
Katelyn Mabry 04:45
welcome to journey with me through ADHD. This is a podcast for kids where we connect, we learn and we grow together as we talk about all things ADHD. I'm your host Katelyn Mabry, I live with ADHD I had or my daughter who has it. I'm an educator. And I'm the author of Hi, it's me, I have ADHD. I'm really looking forward to spending this time with you. Hello, Hello my fabulous friends. Welcome back to Episode 47 of journey with me through ADHD. This is a super exciting episode because I have my friend and fellow ADHD brain Patricia Sung here. And she is a mom of two boys who both have very unique minds just like you and I. And she also grew up with ADHD. She was a teacher for seven years. For fourth through seventh graders, she just has a lot of experience with living with an ADHD brain working with kids who have ADHD brains, but her specialty is actually working with mamas helping them learn about how their ADHD brains work better. So if you have a parent or a trusted adult who also has ADHD, Patricia would be somebody that they could turn to, so that they could learn more about living their best life with ADHD. So she is here today to talk with us about something called perfectionism. Can you guys see that with me? Perfectionism meds, right. Patricia, thank you so much for being here.
Patricia Sung 06:16
Thanks so much for having me.
Katelyn Mabry 06:17
So Patricia is going to tell us about how what perfectionism is how it has affected her life, and what we all can learn and grow from knowing more about it and taking steps to grow through it. So Patricia, can you please share with us what is perfectionism? Exactly.
Patricia Sung 06:36
So perfectionism is when we try really, really hard not to make any mistakes. But sometimes when we're so focused on not making any mistakes, that we can freeze, and not even try, because we're so afraid that we're gonna mess it up.
Katelyn Mabry 06:54
That's a very good definition and raise your hands if any of you feel that way. Sometimes I have my hand raised me do. Yep, I know a lot of my friends that are listening due to So Patricia, what is a step that we can take towards understanding how to combat because we're those ADHD warriors, right? So how do we combat and put on some armor to protect ourselves against that perfectionism?
Patricia Sung 07:24
I think the first thing we need to do is think about why we feel like we need to be perfect. I asked my six year old what, what does he think about when he's nervous about something or trying something new, he said that he worries that people might think or say something that makes him sad. So when we realize why we feel like we have to be perfect, that helps us make a different choice. So for me, I feel the same way. Like when I try something new, it's scary. And I don't really know what I'm doing. And I worry that I'm gonna mess it up. And that's what makes me think like, what if the other person thinks that I don't know how to do it, or maybe I'm not trying. And that's really hard, because I don't want to make them sad, and I don't want them to be disappointed. And I really want to do my best. And I'm trying really hard, and then I still mess it up. When we know that that's our fear talking, then that makes it easier to deal with when we can identify it. Because a lot of times we be feel like we need to be perfect, because we aren't really sure what our feelings are. So when we identify that it's fear, and I'm scared, and I'm worried that I'm going to mess it up, or I'm worried I'm going to disappoint somebody or I'm going to disappoint myself, then I can make a different choice. So what I like to do is when I'm trying something new, I think about putting on my lab coat like a scientist and I go into the situation knowing that I have to try lots of times to get something right, because I've never done it before. And I'm not going to know how to do it the first time that I try it. Because if we think about all the scientists or artists or anyone who makes something new, if you think about all those people the very first time they tried to do something the first time they tried to make an invention, or the first time they tried to write a song or the first time they tried to make a piece of art. If they did it one time and went Oh, that was no good. I'm just not going to do that anymore. Would we have anything new ever? No,
Katelyn Mabry 09:32
we wouldn't. We wouldn't have the lights on because
Patricia Sung 09:35
because Thomas Edison, Thomas Edison would have been like, oh, man, you
Katelyn Mabry 09:38
would have been like, oh, that didn't work. I'm done. But no, he kept going till he got that late on.
Patricia Sung 09:43
Right. So all of those scientists, all of those artists, all of those engineers, everyone who creates something new has to try over and over and over and over and over and over again until they find the right solution. So when I'm trying something new, I put on my imaginary scientist coat my white lab code and I know that when I go in, I'm going to mess it up, I'm going to make mistakes, because that's how we find what works is that we have to figure out what doesn't work in order to figure out what actually works. And we
Katelyn Mabry 10:11
can actually see mistakes as a gift because they help us learn and grow.
Patricia Sung 10:15
Right? Right. If we don't ever try anything new, when we don't mess it up, we're never going to get any better at something.
Katelyn Mabry 10:22
Absolutely. And that is just so important for each and every one of us to hear. And to learn more about because sometimes I think we miss the fact that we're a perfectionist. I think we kind of wait, you walk through life. And we're we don't recognize it for what it is. And we talk a lot about how the first step is identifying it so that it is something that we can work on and work through.
Patricia Sung 10:47
What if there was a way to put together your plan for the week so that you actually wanted to do the planning, you wanted to show up and figure it out? Because now your date is smoother, easier, calmer, it flows? You're not surprised by that field trip or that dentist's appointment, you know that that's coming? What have you had support to make the plan so you can actually follow through on it and feel good about yourself, this is the place to be to get your ish together, you are invited to successful mama meetups, it's a twist on productivity and community, it's time set aside to make your weekly plan followed by hanging out with other moms with ADHD who get you so you don't need to earn the fun, you're intertwining them in the same event. So you want to show up every week for just a few dollars a week, you'll have your plan set so that you can accomplish the tasks you need to get done. You know, you're trying to work on your next business idea. Do that fun craft with your kids, it's been sitting on the counter for months, you know the answer to the dreaded what's for dinner, you are present in the conversation with your kids after school or at dinner, because you aren't a ball of stress. You can take care of you when you have a plan. When you have this you feel confident, capable, energetic, hopeful, relieved, like you can breathe. So sign up now at https://www.patriciasung.com/meetup. And welcome to the successful mama community. We meet twice a week. So check the times and see which one works best for you. We also have a Facebook group where you can connect with other moms because this isn't just about the time that we're together. This is about building your support system. So join us every week. Sign up now in https://www.patriciasung.com/meetup. Because that's one of the hardest things for me, especially when I was little is that I would do like a Math Worksheet and I would make a mistake. And I remember my teacher saying like, Oh, you made a careless mistake, you didn't catch that thing you messed up. And so I would double check my work. And then I would still make the same mistake. And they would write the same thing. You make careless mistakes, double check your work, I'm like, But I but I did double check my work. So then I would try to triple check my work or quadruple check my work. And I kept checking in checking thinking that if I checked it many, many, many times that I wouldn't make the careless mistake. But when it turns out that it wasn't a careless mistake, because careless means I didn't have care. I wasn't being careful. But I was but that's part of having an ADHD brain is that sometimes our brain goes so fast, it misses something that other people see that our brain was just going too fast to notice. So it's hard because you feel like man, you're messing it up. And people are telling you you're being careless, when you know you're trying so hard to do it right. And that's really frustrating. And so we ended up turning that into perfectionism in trying to not make any mistakes, instead of looking at okay, why is it that I made that mistake? Was it that I didn't understand something? Was it that I didn't thoroughly read all the instructions, maybe I went too fast and thought I read all the instructions. But it turns out I skimmed the instructions instead of really reading them. Or maybe I need to ask more questions. So looking at it and figuring out why I missed that thing over and over again, that the teacher is saying or the adult or the grown up or the parent is saying it's a careless mistake, it's because they know that you have the ability to do it. So it's really just like a not a good way to say it. It means that they know that you can do this thing. They have confidence in your skills that you can do it, but you're missing something. So we figure out why is it that we're missing it?
Katelyn Mabry 14:27
Absolutely. And this is where I think having that conversation with your parent or trusted adult is so important because it really can bring to the surface some great conversations around am I a perfectionist is am I feeling that pressure from a parent or trusted adult but in having that back and forth conversation? Because you can grow both ways, right? Not only just as a child, but as the adult and that's where it's so important to grow alongside each other. Because we have
Patricia Sung 14:57
to remember that when we're trying really hard at something thing, but the other person can't see it. That's okay. But we need to explain to them how we're trying because they can't see in our brains just like we can't see in their brains. So if we can have that conversation of I am trying really hard, but I'm still not getting it, then you guys together can figure out what the problem is instead of feeling like it's there's something wrong with you and that you're broken, or you're just keep messing it up. Well, no, there's there's something that we can do to fix it. But we got to find the actual problem. First, I also think it's important to remember that when we try to be perfect, we're pushing towards a goal, that's not actually possible. It's not possible for us to be perfect. So we don't want to push ourselves towards something that we can never get to everybody makes mistakes. It's not just ADHD brains that make mistakes. All brains make mistakes. And that's okay. Because when we're trying something new, we have to mess up. And it's okay, because we just don't know how yet. And we're learning. And I also want to say that it's really important that we remember that, even though we mess stuff up that we're still lovable, and we're still worthy. And we're not valuable because we made a perfect thing. Our work is valuable, because we're the ones that made it and we're unique, and we're special. And anything that we make is a unique creation that nobody else can make. Because they're not us.
Katelyn Mabry 16:22
Yes, yes. Yes. Thank you. So, so much good stuff that we can take away. And we can work on each and every day. So thank you so much for being here. Patricia, where can we find you?
Patricia Sung 16:33
So I have a podcast for mommies. And it's called motherhood in ADHD. So tell your mommies to come check it out because I love helping mommies with their ADHD too.
Katelyn Mabry 16:45
Alright guys, so let's put on those lab coats become neuroscientists try something new, make a mistake, and then take that step. Knowing that making a mistake means you're learning and growing. I'm super excited to see you next week. Have a great day. Bye. If you want to hang out some more, click that subscribe button so that I know that you like it and share how this podcast is helpful to you in a review. Well, you can visit my website www.katelynmabry.com for more resources and to learn more about my book that I've written about ADHD we are on this journey together. Remember, see you next time.
Patricia Sung 17:23
For more resources, classes and community head over to my website motherhoodinadhd.com