3 Things a Pediatric ER Doctor Would Never Let Her Kids Do

14:05Dr. Beachgem:You know, being in ER for kids, we do see a lot of mental health situations develop. A lot of them are in a situation where we've reached an emergency, we've reached a critical point, or there have been decisions made that impact their physical health after their mental health. And so a lot of this is related to bullying. It's related to things that are happening on social media. It's related to stresses at school. And so we are seeing a lot of the fallout of social media and things that are happening. And bullying really is such a big deal. As a teenager, you're looking through this nearsighted lens.

14:40Dr. Beachgem:You don't have the farsighted lens yet. And everything is magnified and all of those impacts feel really, really strong and intense. And so the bullying, the got a bad grade, the breakup with a significant other, a partner, they're huge deals. And so we end up seeing a lot of the fallout. And we have very limited mental health resources in pediatrics, unfortunately. So even when parents say, oh, I see there's a problem here and I want to address it, the resources trying to find ways to address it can be difficult.

15:12Big Little Feelings:That's shocking to me somehow. It shouldn't be shocking, but that's somehow shocking. So your job when these kids come in is to assess what is happening, assess what is going on. You're seeing these kids, you're under covering the why. I imagine you're actually pretty good at this in terms of many of the doctors that are in there, considering you have four kids. How does this impact you as a mom of four? Because I'll just say, and this is probably a blanket statement, and maybe you won't like it, or maybe a lot of people won't like it. I think my experiences with emergency doctors is very fast clinical, and it makes a lot of sense.

15:56Big Little Feelings:It's very depersonalized, very dehumanized, because they just have to get, they got to get to the next one. And also, So you're seeing so much horrible shit. I don't know if you're a swearer, but you're seeing horrible, horrifying shit. So I understand that disconnect. What about when these kids are coming in, when they are suffering, when they are? Are you going in and being a bit more on their human level and trying to unpack? Or is it difficult because you just need to kind of get in there, get your job, assess, and get out?

16:23Dr. Beachgem:Yeah, I think every case is a little bit different. And it's pretty easy to tell in the beginning how open that kid is going to be or how open even that family is going to be to talking about some things because we're asking some really intimate questions. You know, is there any history of mental illness in the family? What mental illnesses? Who had them? Is there any issues with suicide or anything in the family? What has the kid been exposed to? Are there any issues? Is there fighting at home that the kid has been exposed to? And so you know, we're asking a lot of really personal questions. And so a lot of times, you know, an ER where you can hear, you know, the naked person running down the hallway and there's a fight in another room and there's a thing going off.

17:03It's really hard to like get that good

17:05Dr. Beachgem:connection with someone. So in the ER, my first priority is going to be physical safety for everyone. And so if there has been, you know, an attempt, an overdose or something like that, we're going to address these medical issues first. I'm going to ask some kind of superficial questions about mental health stuff. But once we kind of get to the point where from a physical standpoint, we are safe. Now we're going to start to dive into some of the other stuff. What are some of the triggers for this? And then we also have things like we have people like social workers, child life, we've got our nursing staff, who are also kind of digging in asking some questions.

17:39Dr. Beachgem:Our social workers are really incredible about this as well, because they have the time to really sit and ask more questions. And ask they, you know, they do this so often that they're asking some of the better questions that I'm asking. And then we're making a plan for where either safety planning or we're moving forward to try to find somewhere that they can get a psychiatric evaluation more urgently.

17:59Big Little Feelings:And how does this affect you as a mom coming home at the end of the day? I mean, I know, and the whole spectrum, when they were little, did it really affect you when you saw something that was really affecting small children and head injuries and head traumas? And then now I imagine with teenagers, the idea of, because we know how prevalent it is. We know we're in an all-time epidemic of anxiety and depression amongst our youth. How is this affecting you when you come home?

18:26Dr. Beachgem:So as an ER doctor, I have to become an expert at compartmentalization because if I see one bad case, I still have 20 more patients that I need to take care of before I go home and really work on coping with all of this other stuff. And so if I have something that is traumatic or I have to give a bad diagnosis or bad news, I take my moment I go into the bathroom I cry for a minute then I wash my face I put on a decent face and I go to the next patient who's upset because they had to wait an hour extra you know they've been waiting for their results that they can see on the app they know their results are back but I didn't come into the room and so they're really upset oh wow you know because they're getting their their results on their phone immediately as soon as I'm getting them they're getting them but I had to deal with this other situation and they're upset now and so I have to come in after saying whatever I said to someone else and say, you know, I'm really sorry that you had to wait.

19:18Dr. Beachgem:These are the results. This is what I like to do about them. And, you know, I need to be totally focused on them now rather than this other situation that I had to deal with seven minutes ago.

19:27Big Little Feelings:You have to shove your humanity down a little bit. I mean, you can't walk in there. You know, we have a bad day at the office and sometimes one of us can walk in and be like, sorry, Dale, you know, I'm dealing with the spreadsheet over here, but you can't just walk in and be like, I just had to, you know, deliver XYZ news. You're fine. You can chill. You can never say that, obviously. No. Clearly. No. Wow.

19:47Dr. Beachgem:So you have to, you really have to give your entire focus to that next patient and all of those other patients that come after. But I do take the scenic route home sometimes where I just need a minute to just let's let it out and then deal with the home stuff because who knows who had a bad grade and who had a bad day. And so we have to deal with this stuff now. And then when they go to school the next day, I'm going to go for a long bike ride and I'm going to do some journaling and I'm going to do what I have to do to cope with all of these things. But, you know, this little box that we hide everything in, you know, if there's things that start to trigger and start to open that box, like sometimes it can be harder to kind of rein things in, but at work, box closed, move on.

20:27Yeah.

20:28Big Little Feelings:Do you ever have to explain to your kids or husband after a particularly, you know, horrific case or something that you saw? Have you ever had to come home and just say, I just, you know, I need the night or I need, I need space or whatever it might be?

20:42Dr. Beachgem:Yeah. My husband, we've been together for 20 years now. So he, he knows we did this whole med school residency thing together. Like he, I can walk in and be like, nope. And he's like, got it. Let's go. We'll do this. With the kids, it's a little harder because they live in this community and they may have connections to whatever happened. And so I have to be really careful because we've got these HIPAA laws and patients and families do deserve privacy in addition to the laws. And so I have to be really careful about what I say and the things that I talk about, even in earshot of the kids, because I don't want them going to school and saying, oh, my mom took care of so-and-so and this is what happened.

21:22Dr. Beachgem:So I have to be a little careful because they don't have the discernment that, you know, my husband, I can be vague and he gets it. And, but they don't, they don't have that discernment and they don't have that understanding really of there's rules and we have to just keep our mouth shut kind of thing.

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28:11Big Little Feelings:What are three things that you see parents are so incredibly worried about that as a physician, you could maybe give them permission to release where it's like, you know what, because I see this trend of like, everyone is so worried about this. This is not a thing. We can let this go. Yeah.

28:27Dr. Beachgem:I think the biggest one is feeding babies. And it's the whole spectrum of like the feeding babies. And so, you know, in the beginning, we all want the best for a baby. And I know a lot lot of moms want to give breast milk and breastfeed. And in the beginning, sometimes, you know, the baby's got bad jaundice and they're, they're losing weight and we just need to get something into them for their health. And so I know this is a priority and let's work on it together. But for now, for the next two hours, let's, let's give a little bit of pumped milk, or let's give a little bit of formula, or let's just give the baby something so that we can avoid having to do all of these other things like admitting and IVs and, and stuff like that.

29:06Dr. Beachgem:So I think feeding babies, it's just so important. Like we need to do it. And it doesn't entirely matter how it happens because when they get to kindergarten, they're still going to be bright and excited and stuff like that. And I, even when it's, you know, you're moving to the next stage and feeding solids, there's a lot of like baby led weaning purees, like how we're doing that. Just make sure baby gets fed. Do lots of things like diversity of textures. You can do that with different ways. the what actually is being fed to them. There's so many different ways to do this, but making sure that they're getting lots of diversity in their diet is the biggest thing that I care about, especially from an allergy development standpoint, but feed the babies.

29:45Dr. Beachgem:And when they get to kindergarten, it doesn't matter if they started with squash or bananas, just feed the babies.

29:50Big Little Feelings:They are all going to be licking Cheetos off the floor at kindergarten and as teenagers. I mean, it just gets, you know, you just, at a certain point, I think we all stop caring. I don't know if anybody in, you know, maybe first grade, if they're still the oldest, but like as much as we stressed and I was the first one to stress about this, you just don't. I mean, there is nothing. My child had a had cake for breakfast today, but I made sure she had a hard boiled egg first, you know, because we're going to school. So one day it's not going to kill you. I love that. So feed the babies formula. was that one of your struggles or what was one of your struggles?

30:28Big Little Feelings:And we have to get back to the other two, but what was one of your struggles that you wish you could go back and say, that didn't matter at all? That didn't matter.

30:34Dr. Beachgem:I really think for me, part of it was the breastfeeding. And I was, again, I was in med school for my first one and residency for my second one. And my med school baby, I started residency when she was six months old. And if you know about what intern in residency is, it's 80 hour work weeks, four days off a month. And that's not four days, It's only for 24 hour periods. So it may be 6 a.m. one day to 6 a.m. the next day you have off. So it's not even like a really a day and trying to I really wanted to give her breast milk and I really wanted to breastfeed. And really, once I started work, she no longer wanted to like latch on.

31:09Dr. Beachgem:She wanted to take bottles. And then I wasn't getting a lot of supply. And my residency wasn't super like, oh, yeah, why don't you take every four hours and go pump? And, you know, we're rounding for eight hours and I'm leaking through my shirt. And I was like, this is not this is not going well. And that's just it's residency is hard for everyone. So I had a lot of shame. And we got a lecture from somebody who's really high up, works with the AAP breastfeeding. And I'm sitting in the front row as they're talking about the importance of breast milk and really trying all these benefits of breast milk and actually breastfeeding on the breast.

31:43And I'm sitting here just I felt so much shame, you know, as and I'm a I'm a pediatrician.

31:48Dr. Beachgem:attrition. So, you know, for me, I had a lot of like guilt and feelings about that. And for my other babies, I was like all breastfeeding, all breast milk. I was, and none of my other kids got any formula because of all that shame that I felt. And I just like, I put myself through so much. And the first one grew the best out of all the kids, like the rest of them, I've got two on growth hormone. And I, you know, the first one that got formulas like 50 % off for everything. And I was like, well, I brought myself through all this. Yeah, exactly.

32:21Big Little Feelings:Isn't that funny how that works? I'm going to even make the most, you have ADHD as well. Is that right? Okay. So I'm about to make an ADHD hard pivot that's similar to that, that we both have ADHD. That's how I feel about the recent Tylenol announcement where I was so fearful of taking any medications of any antibiotics. I mean, I would die. I would be suffering. I'd be all of this. I didn't take anything. surprise the one the child that I have that has autism I never took Tylenol anything in my pregnancy with her the one neurotypical child that I got I was on antibiotics from the beginning of his pregnancy until the end of his pregnancy I had COVID and I had a fever of like 106 we were worried we were gonna have to like get him out I was in the hospital so I was getting like a stream of Tylenol as much as I could handle.

33:13Big Little Feelings:Obviously, you can never go to the higher doses. We know all the risks with the higher doses. It's the minimum dose that you can possibly do to treat the fever. But I had COVID. I had all of these different fever ones. And he's the only neurotypical child I have. And it's like that, where you're just like, oh, I'm so worried about breast milk and formula and this and that. And then you look back 10 years later and you're like, well, shit. It It actually didn't matter at all. They all turned out very differently. And there was no correlation between the extreme worry that I had and what ended up happening.

33:47Big Little Feelings:Or maybe it ended up happening anyway, but it was actually not correlated to the thing I was worried about.

33:52Dr. Beachgem:Yeah. And I had the exact same experience. I was so paranoid about everything that went into my body when I was pregnant. I was like completely eliminating caffeine, you know, teas. Like I was just very, very strict about what I put in my body. and two pregnancies, I didn't take any Tylenol. Two of them, I did need to take Tylenol. And my autism kid came out of one that I didn't take any Tylenol for. And again, I, you know, I beat myself up even for having, you know, oh my gosh, my headache is so bad. I feel so bad having to take this Tylenol.

34:22Big Little Feelings:Kid turned out fine. It turned out fine. You text everybody, you know, you're like, oh my gosh, I take the Tylenol. Everybody's like, take the, take the damn Tylenol. Take the damn Tylenol. Do you have more to say on autism? I shared your real the other day and maybe from both, you know, an expert in the medical community and also as a mom of a child with autism and as a neurotypical yourself, right? I mean, ADHD is so grouped into this feeling of being different and othered and are a problem that we need to sort of erase. Talk to me about the recent announcement and your sort of feelings as a doctor, but you're also your feelings as a mom to a child with autism.

35:07Dr. Beachgem:Yeah. You know, I and I think that they're separate. Right. So I had feelings as a mom and I had very strong feelings after watching. I started watching the initial announcement. I actually had to turn it off and walk away. And then I came back and I finished watching the rest of it. And so I had some pretty strong feelings as a mom because there's nothing wrong with my kid. he's he's a little bit different like the way his brain works is different but he is so smart and he's cool and i just like he's got so many of these positive qualities and like the the announcement just didn't say anything about how incredible some of these kids are and it it didn't talk about like how amazing the treatments that we've started especially early treatments can make an impact on on function and stuff like that.

35:52Dr. Beachgem:And so I had immediate strong feelings about that. And then the doctor in me, I want to focus on the data and the evidence and what we actually know about autism. And what we know is that we have, we've identified hundreds of genes that are associated with the development of autism. And we've got these really great studies. There was one study that came out and said, Hey, you know, we noticed that when you're giving Tylenol, maybe there are some links to some neurologic conditions. And then when we further study that out because that's how science works. We looked at sibling pairs that had autism and millions, like millions of kids.

36:23Dr. Beachgem:There was no direct causal link with Tylenol. Again, pushing more towards looking like there may be some genetic influences. So, you know, I love a focus on research for autism. I think that's great. And the spectrum of disease and, you know, links, but I think, you know there's all of these kids the 1 in 12 to 1 in 30 kids let's focus on ways to help improve function the help improve performance to help the kids who have struggles with some life skills let's work on life skills where's the research on that so I I really want to focus on the other aspect the data and the evidence but again you know as a mom I had some feelings and I think it's okay to have the feelings I think all that's valid and I think it's important to focus on how incredible our kids are.

37:11Dr. Beachgem:My kid is amazing. He's valuable. And he's just, his brain works a little different. Like mine, my brain works a little different. And there's a lot of benefits to that brain working different. I really see it as my superpower. And my kid that has autism, he is so gifted in math. We would be sitting at the dinner table when he was in kindergarten, and his sibling was in second grade, and we were doing math with the older sibling. And he's answering, he's yelling out questions from the bedroom. He's yelling out the answers in kindergarten. And so I think that he's so like, he's so cool. And there's so much good that he's going to bring to the world.

37:45Dr. Beachgem:And I just, I want to focus on that rather than these, you know, he's never going to contribute to the world because that's just not true.

37:54Big Little Feelings:I think there's, it's interesting touching on the feelings because there's so many feelings right now. I mean, I've sort of boiled this logic down to the internet and everybody screaming at each other as we are all parents of kids with autism who are in these comment sections being like, no, we need to celebrate them. We need to accommodate them. We need to put funding into this. And of course, yes, continue the research on the actual real cause and some genetic whatever. And on the other side, when we're talking about level three support, higher support needs, there's intellectual disabilities.

38:35Big Little Feelings:Those parents are having a lot of feelings about we shouldn't be celebrating autism. This is tragic. This is my son will never this, never that. The anger, the pain that I can feel from their side. I'm not sure why we're arguing? I don't know if it's, and this is only my theory, is it because they took the term Asperger's out and it made it a bit too, you can't talk about autism in general and celebrate and these two conflicting sides are trying to sort of define what autism is versus your feelings of having a high support needs, intellectual disability, wanting answers, wanting, feeling that pain is super, super valid.

39:28Big Little Feelings:And my feeling of wanting to celebrate and accommodate and uplift my level one, while also realizing it's very hard, those feelings are very valid too. We don't necessarily need to be, you know, clashing against each other.

39:42Dr. Beachgem:Yeah. I think two things can be true at one time that you can have, and certainly I take care of kids that are very high needs. their function becomes very difficult at home. We can have struggles at home and, you know, kids who are higher functioning. It's easier for me to celebrate my kid because the struggles that we have aren't as big as some of other people's struggles. And so I think that we can acknowledge that autism can create a lot of challenges interpersonally at school or, you know, in therapies. And we can also love our kids and celebrate our kids and our kids are valid and important and they play big roles in our community.

40:23Dr. Beachgem:I think both can be true at the same time. And I think we all want the same thing. We want increased support. We want acknowledgement that our kids are real and valid and important. And I think that we want the research, we want the funding, we want the support. And just like everything in politics, there's different ways to go about wanting those things to happen.

40:45Big Little Feelings:That was pretty spot on. That was spot on.

40:52Big Little Feelings:Yeah. I guess it's the internet sort of division that is not something that can be easily solved. And it's sad because I think any autistic parent, parent of child with autism, we want the same things. It's just on varying degrees. We have struggles. They're just varying struggles. We have different reasons to celebrate. Maybe it's one step or maybe it's, you know, finally somebody will actually play with your child at the playground because that hasn't happened in years in a level one even. There are different struggles. I do just wish we could, I don't know, rally as an autism community because I think that no matter the level of support needs, I think the, at least from my perspective, the adults that I've met with autism, my husband has autism.

41:38Big Little Feelings:He really identifies and wants to support and is involved with all spectrum on the autism. It's a shame to me because we see how different communities can have such a sense of pride and togetherness. Diabetes, LGBTQ, all the way around, you have a community. And I'm really, I think, for my daughter, hoping for more of a sense of community there because it's such a yucky place for these individuals that no matter what level they're on are fantastic members of society that are creating value beyond even just a paycheck. Even if they can't bring a paycheck in, they are creating value in our families.

42:22Dr. Beachgem:Yeah. I think that it speaks to highly how variable and how complex autism is. We know every kid with type 1 diabetes, they need insulin. And like, there's so much continuity and sameness there. Or in autism, I think a lot of the kids, there's more difference than there is similarity. And so it can create some, you know, my needs are not the same as your needs. We want to advocate, but we want to advocate for different things. And so it is hard because it's such a complex condition and the impacts to our families are highly variable as well. So I think our voices together, if we were all able to get together and advocate, our voices could be so strong.

43:01Dr. Beachgem:And I think that we need to find ways to do that. I 100 % agree.

43:05Big Little Feelings:So great. It's just like blind acceptance has to happen. You know, it doesn't have to be that everyone looks exactly the same to advocate or celebrate or be on the same page. You know, it's just absolute acceptance of everybody's feelings, where they are at, what their challenges are, what their strengths are. Yeah, just getting out there. it's pretty amazing that dina and i get to live our dream running big little feelings as a business for our living full time we get to help parents we get to help kids it's always been our dream to start this business and now we're doing it one part of this business that is not so fun is hiring.

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45:09Big Little Feelings:ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. This is about you. Is it harder to be a woman in the medical field or as an online personality?

45:26Dr. Beachgem:ooh that's that's tough that's really tough i think i've found peace with both of them if that makes sense i'm lucky enough to be in pediatrics where almost all of us are women it's probably it's probably even more than two-thirds it might even be like 75 25 like so many of us are women and so people usually come in with the expectation of the woman definitely could be a physician i do still struggle. I wear this gigantic badge on my chest that says doctor. And I still have so many people say it like, I never saw the doctor when I came or, you know, I just spent 20 minutes sitting at bedside. And then the nurse goes, Hey, are you going to go into that room?

46:06Dr. Beachgem:I was just in there. Oh, they said they haven't seen the doctor yet. So that can be a little bit of a challenge. Whereas, you know, when I talk about I've talked about my deployment potentials in online, and I've talked about, you know, my work and, you know, working overnight. And so I get a lot of the like, well who takes care of your kids or don't you feel bad that you're not you know home with them as much and like no one would ever ask a man that like oh you're getting deployed like who's watching your kids like no no one asks that to men so let's just clarify for the people who don't know

46:37Big Little Feelings:you're getting deployed for and i know this because i watched your content you're getting deployed for like a national disaster right right it's something like a flood happens in texas or or something like that. And you, which is wild to me, you are choosing and are chosen to get deployed and go help these emergency situations.

46:57Dr. Beachgem:Yeah. I'm on a deployable team that goes out in disasters. It is a job. It's not volunteer. I do get paid if we get deployed, but I spend a month at a time on call to go out in case there is a disaster. And it's very, you get just a couple hours notice. So my bags have to be packed. I have to be ready. And my husband has to be ready to take care of all of the home stuff. And we've worked it out. It's great. The comments that I get when I use the word deployment and when I start to talk about it, I get a lot of very interesting feedback about that.

47:26Big Little Feelings:Are these people men or are they women mostly?

47:29Dr. Beachgem:They're both. The vast majority of my followers are women. Upwards of 97 % of the people who like, comment, and follow me are women, which I love. I love. I, it makes me so happy. Yeah.

47:45Big Little Feelings:Love women. Love women. I mean, we love men too, but you know, the right men.

47:48Dr. Beachgem:Well, I'm just happy that I don't get certain pictures in my DMs. Like people are not propositioning me. Like I've never, I'm knocking on some wood. Like I'm, I love, I love the community that I've, I've created. It's amazing. Like the people that follow me are just incredible.

48:05Big Little Feelings:That's good. And then have you ever, have you ever let that guilt in? Like, did you have to at first when people started making those commentaries about not being with your kids and, and who's taking care of them and why aren't you around more? Did it affect you at first?

48:22Dr. Beachgem:No, not on social media. I gave myself that guilt in like residency when I was working as much. And I felt so, so my daughter, my oldest, I guess she was six months when I started residency. And so she had a very strong bond with my husband. So when I would come home in the evening, I'd be like, Hey, let's hang out. Let's go read a book. Let's do this. And she'd be like, I'm going to hang out with dad. And so crushing as a mom, like, I just want to spend time with you. I'd spent a, you know, day since I saw you. And she's like, I'm going to cook dinner with dad over here. This is what we do every day.

48:53Dr. Beachgem:And I'm like, Oh, it breaks my heart. She has no recollection of those, those days. And I have a really, really strong relationship with her now, which is wonderful. That was the shame that I had all comes from, you know, my medical training when I was so intensely working. Yeah.

49:09Big Little Feelings:Is there any other comment online that gets you?

49:12Dr. Beachgem:It's the big, the pharma shill. Everyone, oh, big pharma, big pharma. You're, you get all this money from big pharma. Every, every single, every single payment from pharmacy to a physician is reportable. Like you have to report it and it's open. Anybody can go and look. It's on something called openpayments.gov, I think. And I took, I had a$20 meal, I guess. I don't even remember it. I looked it up myself. Cause I was like, Oh, let me, let me see. Furious. Yeah. Uh, three years ago, like one of the drug companies gave me food that was like$18. And I honestly have no recollection of it. I probably should have, uh, created a thing like, like, did this really happen?

49:54Dr. Beachgem:I'm not sure. But even if it did, like if I got a Panera sandwich or something three years ago, that's the only money that I've taken from a pharmaceutical company or value of money.

50:07Big Little Feelings:And now you're pimping out the COVID-19 vaccine. It's so frustrating. For a$20 Panera sandwich. It's a good sandwich. It must be a good sandwich for$18. I'm not sure. Why do we get that? Even we get that a lot of big pharma. And I'm trying to even think, Like, it's just, you know, it's the internet.

50:23Dr. Beachgem:Anytime you talk about vaccines, people always want to know what your motive is. And my motive deep down is I want to keep kids safe. I want to educate people. I don't want to see the badness that comes from these vaccine preventable illnesses. But every single time people come back and you're getting paid, you know, you're big pharma. It's not.

50:42Big Little Feelings:It's not. It's not. No. All right. My final question for you today. You were circling back to the ADHD. So, A, when were you diagnosed? Early, late in life. And then B, tell me a little bit about, I imagine it helps you do exactly what you do. I'm not sure that you could be doing everything you're doing right now without this superpower. So, for those listening and have a child with ADHD, and that's the hardest part of ADHD is being a child and struggling in that way, I would love for you to explain, if you think so, how ADHD plays into doing exactly what you're able to do.

51:28Dr. Beachgem:So I was diagnosed later in life. I think I was in medical school. It was after my first year of medical school. I think I got a C. And if you got a C, then you had to meet with the school psychologist just to make sure that they were addressing any of your needs and learning and stuff like that. And I walked in, and the very first day I sat down, I started talking. And she said, I think you have ADHD. And I said, no, no. And then by like the third or fourth meeting, she was like, I let's just hear me out. Let me just test you and we'll see what happens. And I tested very positive for ADHD. But through that, we were able to come up with some learning techniques that work better for people with ADHD.

52:10Dr. Beachgem:So getting that diagnosis and working on things, you know, learning activities like using flash cards is much easier for me than sitting and reading a book. Or if I do need to sit and read a book, I need to be highlighting the words so that I'm paying attention to what I'm reading. And so just finding little tactics that worked for me with ADHD was helpful. And what I'll say about working in the ER is, I would say probably 90 % of the people have ADHD, even if it's not diagnosed. We are adrenaline filled, we're action packed, we're fast paced, we multitask constantly. And you have to have all of these different things happening in your head at the same time where that comes naturally to us.

52:51Dr. Beachgem:I feel like with with ADHD, like we're there's all this stuff that's constantly happening. Sometimes I do have difficulties with like organization like, all right, I have to put this order in. And sometimes the nurses will have to be like, hey, you got to you got to put this in or we got to do this. Don't forget about this. But really like that constantly being interrupted, constantly multitasking really fits in well as an ADHD person in the emergency department. So there are jobs out there that, you know, the superpower was perfect for.

53:21Big Little Feelings:Because I think that even a lot of parents and even I, before I had ADHD, I didn't think I had ADHD either because I was like, that's not me. I'm not hyperactive. I'm not, you know, I don't have all of these. I'm not a five-year-old boy with hyperactive ADHD is what my thought was, right? And it turns out there's a few different kinds of ADHD and I had a different kind, But I think parents and the world in general sort of sees ADHD as, you know, the typical kid who just cannot pay attention, who just defies everything, is talking all the time. And that's true. I did all of those things. And that's because for kids and adults with ADHD, it's not that we can't focus.

54:03It's that we can't focus on something without a surge of dopamine.

54:08Big Little Feelings:mean. And so there are so many jobs in this world, creative jobs, innovative jobs. These are music, every musician I've ever met has ADHD, every actor that I've met doctors in, but we Lord, you want to sit either one of us down and try to do math in a desk all day long for nine hours. Even today, I couldn't do it. We can't, we can't physically be forced to do it. So if you're listening and you have a child with ADHD that's just driving you crazy, what is your best advice to that parent actually? What's your best advice to get them through?

54:46Dr. Beachgem:I would try. There are people out there that can help if things are not working. There are different therapists, sometimes even their teachers, school counselors can help find ways that will work with your child in the way that they're doing. And so like adaptive seating and things like that can help. Ways that you're working on things at home, like switching to flashcards, you know, switching colors up, there's different ways that we can help our brains function. And so working with that rather than against that can be helpful. And every kid's different. So more specific advice is hard, but there's nothing wrong with them.

55:18Dr. Beachgem:They work a little differently and you have to try to find ways to work with them that it's in a positive direction.

55:24Big Little Feelings:Yeah. And I mean, this sounds terrible, but it's almost for me, it's like, get them through school, get them through school find out what they love and what they're really passionate about try your best to somehow tie that schoolwork to the something that they're obsessed with and foster that thing that they're obsessed with you know because that will stay with them whether that was I don't know if you were into medical stuff when you were a kid and that was what it was or if it's theater or whatever it is find the thing that they're obsessed with because that's the thing that they're going to be really successful at and I also love your practical advice because executive functioning coaches are phenomenal and fantastic for children and adults.

56:04Big Little Feelings:My number one rec, executive functioning coaches. They can even teach you, the parent, how to be talking to your child in a way that makes it so that they understand. We now have one of those things, you know what they're called? They're called like a hearth calendar on the wall. It's an electronic calendar on the wall, but it has almost, it has like a neurodivergent thing built into it where all of the tasks for my kid in the morning, let's say, and, you know, an older kid, she should probably know, she should know by now how to brush your teeth and then you brush your hair and then you do this, but ADHD, right?

56:41Big Little Feelings:And it's actually, each time you press the button, there's like a sprinkle of confetti that goes off. What is that? That's dopamine. That's dopamine. And so then she goes to the next one in the school books and she gets it. And so now I, the parent, I'm not going, dude, get your shoes while, you know, they're distracted by tinkering with the little thing in the corner. It's been a game changer. And it was the executive functioning coach that recommended it. So I highly recommend all the therapies to get them through. And then they're, they're, if they're fostered, I think they'll take over the world and, and find exactly what they're meant to do.

57:14Big Little Feelings:If they're just fostered. Yep. Okay. We ran out of time. I'm going to text you or your publicist or however we just DM you all my personal anxiety questions after this. And I'm surprised they didn't come out. I think I only let one come out. That was a lot of self-control and impulse control. Just send me a message.

57:36Dr. Beachgem:We'll deal with it.

57:37Big Little Feelings:Okay, great. We'll deal with it. Okay, great. Thank you so much for being on. Thank you for all of the content that you do. I hope you never stop. For me, it's such a breath of fresh air. I get so excited when I see your face come on, even when you're doing just personal things. I think you were at a wedding the other day. I know this sounds crazy to say, but I just, I and so many people just really love seeing you, you know, daily, weekly. You're like, you're a breath of fresh air in a sort of otherwise overwhelming world. So thank you for what you do. And I hope you I hope you go forever.

58:15Dr. Beachgem:Thank you.

58:16Big Little Feelings:I appreciate it. Wow, besties. I don't know about you, but I feel better. Why? How is it that every time we have a guest, I feel better? I hope you feel better, too. I think maybe the bottom line is that we are worrying about a lot of things that maybe we don't have to worry as much about. I'm going to lean more into worrying about social media, which I already do. I'm going to have some action steps around that. But I am going to release feeding my children, you know. Well, let me clarify. Parenting expert doesn't feed her children anymore. No, what I mean is I'm going to release the oh my God and they're not having this and then look at this person on Instagram and their baby is eating, you know, 150 wild fruits from Africa before the age of one or three because they need to be exposed.

59:12Big Little Feelings:I'm going to let that go. That's totally fine. I'm going to worry about e-bikes. I'm going to worry about social media. I'm going to make sure my kids always have a helmet on, which I already do, but I'm going to be hyper vigilant about that. And I'm going to go ahead and send my husband a couple of articles about trampolines that I have Googled in the time since this episode has wrapped up. I hope that you walked away feeling empowered, feeling like a parent who is doing a really good job. Like everything we are doing right now, we're doing pretty damn well. And I think Dr. Beachjem just reminds me there's a lot in this world.

59:54Big Little Feelings:There's a lot of things happening. There's a lot of things that she sees that I cannot even imagine seeing. And there's so much that is out of our control. and there's a few things that are in our control. And so I'm going to try to shift into really focusing on enjoying my time with my kids. And yeah, definitely looking into researching things around the big, big, big stuff like social media, what to do about that when we get to that age, but kind of letting the rest go. And if you've made it this far into the episode, please do us a favor, hit the follow button wherever you listen to podcasts.

1:00:36Big Little Feelings:It's completely free, but it is a way for you to support our podcast so that we can have better guests, better conversation, make the show the best it can possibly be. Hit that little follow button, leave us a review. It means more than you know. And I will see you next week.

1:01:23Dr. Beachgem:Thank you.