In this episode, I’ll be exploring how ADHD impacts on motherhood, with Dr Pragya Agarwal.
Parenting can highlight the ADHD impairments you might have spent years covering – I mean, you try covering ANYTHING when you’ve had one hour’s sleep in a week and your tits have just exploded in the supermarket’s bread aisle. Parents with ADHD can struggle with working memory impairment, planning, social communication, feelings of inadequacy, guilt, self-loathing, low self esteem, anxiety and overwhelm. Reading up on ADHD it seems it’s common to fluctuate between harsh and lax parenting. There is also a higher incidence of post natal depression.
A behaviour and data scientist, Dr Pragya Agarwal is also a journalist, professor, Ted speaker, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and the Director of research think-tank ’50 Percent Project’ addressing gender bias and running unconscious bias training and sexism workshops for organisations and schools. She is also an author, most recently of (M)otherhood: On the Choices of Being a Woman, a memoir that takes in the wider political, scientific and historical contexts for our understanding of womanhood, fertility and motherhood.
Pragya shares her experiences, both as a single parent to her first child, and more recently, raising twin girls with her husband.
We discuss how sensory overload affects our parenting, the part society plays in shaping our idea of what motherhood should look like and the resulting shame when you ‘fall short’, and how to let go of that shame and focus on what your child needs from you without sacrificing your own needs.
Pragya explains how child-led parenting has helped her know both her children and herself better, and what it’s like to come to a diagnosis via your child.
She also reveals why she doesn’t like the term ‘neurotypical’.
Pragya’s book (M)otherhood is now available in paperback and Pragya’s new book, Hysterical: Exploding the Myth of Gendered Emotion is available to pre-order now in advance of its release in September 2022.
You can learn more about Pragya’s work at drpragyaagarwal.com
*I do not want to exclude non-binary or trans listeners with the binary concept of ‘motherhood’, and so have used the terms ‘parent’ and ‘mother’ throughout. That said, part of this conversation is specific to the gender norms associated with womanhood, which is inclusive of all who identify as such.
THE EXPERT
Dr Mohamed Abdelghani is a consultant psychiatrist who specialises in mood disorders and adult ADHD. www.Dyad-medical.com
Please note, your first port of call if you think you might have ADHD should be your GP. In the meantime, you can find more information here:
Understanding ADHD in Girls and Women, by Joanne Steer
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