Book Review: Winning With ADHD
In a quest to learn more and explore the resources out there currently for improving executive functioning skills I have been seeking out new sources of knowledge. One of these was the book Winning With ADHD by Grace Friedman and Sarah Cheyette. I was pretty underwhelmed by this book. While the premise is great and I think the authors came to writing this book with the best of intentions much of their advice and solutions were not great. There are a few useful skills and strategies the authors present but as a whole it does not provide what was promised.
Much of the advice they give seems to boil down to you need to do it so get it done. One piece of advice that I was baffled by was the suggestion that it was best to find a spot away from friends when doing work in the library or at school. While the intention is to reduce distractions, many of us know that we are really good at making our own distractions. And this advice runs counter to much of what ADHDers say works for them- strategies like body doubling or having accountability buddies. Thinking back to when I was in high school and undiagnosed I ended up reading a lot of great books while sitting in the stacks trying to avoid distractions. While I do agree that friends can be a distraction at times when you and your friends are all trying to get work done and helping to keep each other on task that can be when you are able to get the most work done.
The book does stress the importance of taking care of your body through movement, sleep, and nutrition. However few concrete strategies were offered to help make this easier, and the ones that were were what we hear all the time, no screens before bed, eat breakfast etc. One thing I did appreciate was how they did emphasize that getting more sleep, even if it was not as much as would be idea is better than nothing. This perspective helps to combat the perfectionist tendencies that many ADHDers develop over a lifetime of being told that our best is never good enough. Additionally there are some great self-advocacy strategies for dealing with parents and teachers that are broken down step-by-step with a purpose given for each step. The book does also address the ways ADHD affects emotional regulation and offer some advice and strategies for that. While much of the advice is pretty generic it is a helpful reminder. Emotional regulation skills can be a challenging to develop since they are meant to be used when we are least in control of ourselves and frequent practice and reinforcement is helpful.
Overall if you are looking for a book for teens to help deal with more of the social and emotional impacts of ADHD and build self-advocacy skills I would suggest reading those chapters. But some of the portions on study skills can send a harmful message to teens who are struggling with getting school work done and feed the negative self talk that can make those tasks more difficult. I would not recommend this book for that alone. And if you do want to read it I would avoid those chapters.
⭐⭐/5
