[PODCAST] Best of 2023: Podcast with Penn Holderness

[Episode 19] ADHD as a Superpower

Hey Y’all!

I just want to thank you all for a great first season of the Learn with Dr. Emily podcast. I wasn’t sure if y’all wanted to hear me talk about all the things that are swirling around in my brain, but it seems that you do! I’ve already started booking interviews for Season 2 and I’m EXCITED. More on that later but trust me…We will keep learning, with each other, and for our kids. Thank you for being here!

Now, on to the fun part! Not surprisingly, my friend, Penn Holderness held the top spot for most-listened to podcast episode this year. Penn was so gracious to record this in person (video of the entire interview can be found here). Or, you can listen to the episode here. If you learn better by reading, you will find the full transcript below.

Happy New Year, everyone!

~Dr. Emily

To support my writing and podcast, consider becoming a paid subscriber. I appreciate you!

Penn Holderness - 00:00:04:

Well, you've got a great brain. It's not broken. It doesn't necessarily line up with traditional education. And unfortunately, it doesn't line up with most traditional jobs. It doesn't mean that there isn't a number of opportunities, aren't a number of opportunities out there for you, both in your education and in your life that will give you a chance to shine.

Dr. Emily King - 00:00:30:

Welcome to Learn with Dr. Emily, the podcast where parents and teachers come together for neurodivergent youth. I'm your host, Dr. Emily King, child psychologist and former school psychologist. And I am on a mission to help everyone understand that nurturing neurodivergent children isn't about changing them, but about changing us each week. I share my thoughts on topics related to child development, mental health, parenting, education, and parent teacher collaboration. You can read more on my Substack @learnwithdremily.substack.com or listen here. So let's get started with today's topic. On today's Learn with Dr. Emily King podcast, we are welcoming none other than Penn Holderness to talk about how ADHD is awesome and then sometimes how it's not awesome. So I'm going to be asking Penn some questions from his neurodivergent perspective. And I don't really know what's going to happen.

Penn Holderness - 00:01:28:

Okay, so you've got a very penetrating look that you're giving me right now. We here's let's just let everybody know this. Emily and I have our friendship has mostly grown digitally over the last two years because of a COVID-19 and two. It's just easier when you're doing a podcast. And I don't know what I'm going to say or what's going to happen to me because here you are in the flesh. I feel like you're going to extract.

Dr. Emily King - 00:01:50:

Yeah. So Penn has graciously agreed to... Being asked some vulnerable questions about what it was like growing up with ADHD. And so we're going to dive in. And my goal in sharing his story and asking him questions that I often ask kids or might ask parents is to help all the parents and teachers listening to jump inside the shoes of a kid or a teenager or an adult with ADHD to think more about what that experience is like. So here is a probably not so quick bio because there's a lot to say about you. 

Penn Holderness - 00:02:21:

It's quite a few sentences.

Dr. Emily King - 00:02:23:

So Penn Holderness was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina, to a Presbyterian minister and a public school teacher. He played high basketball and was a choral music student at Governor's School; at North Carolina, for those who know what that is. Penn went on to graduate from University of Virginia with a degree in philosophy, where he sang in the all-male a cappella group, the Hullabahoos. That was not on Wikipedia. I just happen to know that.

Penn Holderness - 00:02:47:

I just know that because you're an a cappella person. That's right. That's right. That's right.

Dr. Emily King - 00:02:51:

Penn's first on-air journalism job was in Grand Junction, Colorado, followed by five years in Orlando. He then hosted three seasons of designer finals on HGTV and hosted a basketball show on CSTV with former University of North Carolina basketball coach Matt Doherty. Penn also worked as a video essayist for ABC and ESPN while living in New York before returning to North Carolina where he anchored the evening news for WNCN-TV.

Penn Holderness - 00:03:20:

Bingo a lot of letters this is a very long i feel like you have more can i save this for my obituary when it happens in 50 years there's not because i'm not gonna do much else 

Dr. Emily King - 00:03:31:

you've done so much yes okay so you have probably first discovered Penn and the Holderness Family from the christmas jammies parody of Will Smith's Miami that was really meant for a digital christmas card but long story short it went viral and now they've been making videos ever since Penn and his wife Kim have been married for 16 years is that accurate or is it standby standby

Penn Holderness - 00:03:55:

No, 17 and 18 is in April. Awesome. Yeah. Okay.

Dr. Emily King - 00:04:01:

And their videos have resulted in over a billion views and 4.5 million followers on social media. Did you even know that?

Penn Holderness - 00:04:08:

Yeah, we have to keep track of those things. But it's pretty overwhelming.

Dr. Emily King - 00:04:14:

Yeah, so Penn and Klm both have TV business experience, and so they're great storytellers, and now they own their own company, Holderness Family Productions, where Kim is CEO and Penn is CCO, Chief Creative Officer.  I first met Penn and Kim as a guest on their podcast where we discuss mental health mixed with fun topics. And they also, of course, have talked about winning the amazing race. And they have a book that was released in 2021. And they live in Raleigh with their children, Lola, Penn Charles, and their dog, Sunny. I had to include it all.

Penn Holderness - 00:04:50:

Well, thank you for including Sunny. Yeah. That's important. I see that it says fluffy on your... It does. But you didn't use that when you said it.

Dr. Emily King - 00:04:57:

I didn't. I skipped it because I felt like it was getting a little long.

Penn Holderness - 00:04:59:

So you just figured if you took out fluffy...

Dr. Emily King - 00:05:01:

But Sunny is fluffy.

Penn Holderness - 00:05:02:

Yeah. It was just going to be way shorter.

Dr. Emily King - 00:05:03:

If you need to know...

Penn Holderness - 00:05:04:

You're the best.

Dr. Emily King - 00:05:05:

Just check out some videos of Fluffy Sunny.

Penn Holderness - 00:05:08:

Thank you for that lovely introduction. 

Dr. Emily King - 00:05:10:

You're welcome. Okay, so I wanted to dive in first with, were you diagnosed with ADHD? Or do you feel like you kind of knew something was different? Like, what's your memory of the very first time you were like, I think I might be different than my friends?

Penn Holderness - 00:05:26:

The first time I felt that way was pretty early. Okay. It was, I think, honestly, the tics. I had other friends who would, you know, they would fly off the handle and, God, you can't use any of these words anymore. But I was called a spaz a lot. Uh-huh. And I know that's not, that word is no longer there, but that's what I was called. Yeah. And it was insinuating the fact that I would have a lot of energy and sometimes it would get the most of me. And I would cry really easily or get really, really happy and stop making so much sense that the people around me would just move on with their day and say, we're going to let him go be over there by himself. The one time I remember, and I don't blame her for this, my mom was really grossed out. About it was I got back from basketball practice when I was about eight. And it was one of those practices where I wasn't running much, but I was having to learn all these different parts of an offense and just sitting there and not being able to shoot baskets. I, my nervous tick was I chewed on my shirt. So my cotton shirt, and there was a ring of what she thought was sweat. And I was like, Oh no, I'm not really that sweaty. And she's like, and she looked and she could see that it was, there was almost like a tear in my shirt. And so for about an hour, I was just chewing on my shirt.

Dr. Emily King - 00:06:04:

Because when your body couldn't move, your mouth had to move. You tell me. Yep. That's what's happening.

Penn Holderness - 00:06:48:

Okay. But that was, that was the first time I realized, Oh, I think her reaction as a neat person, very, very neat person. Not unlike my wife was horror and disgust and, uh, probably not saying, Oh, you're neurodivergent because no one knew what that was. I didn't hear the term ADD probably until college. Okay. So you weren't diagnosed with, she has a child. No, I didn't get tested until it became a real issue with, uh, my ability to graduate from college.

Dr. Emily King - 00:07:19:

Okay. So what do you think happened in high school? How'd you make it through?

Penn Holderness - 00:07:24:

Well, I took a lot of courses that were, I think, quick reward intensive. I was pretty good at science. I was pretty good at math. I was pretty good at memorizing vocabulary words. I was god-awful at... Comprehension and really bad at history. Just hearing like long stories of anybody that wasn't me. You know, I want to hear about me. And, but then also it was kind of an art school, Jordan was, I think you can. So chorus was a class that was hard to get into, like the high-end chorus. So it was a little bit of a performing arts school. And that was, when you look at my college resume, it was, very largely performance-based. And so my grades were good. I definitely, I don't remember ever getting a math question wrong until I got into AP. It was just, it was just pretty simple for me. And they were good enough. And I tested really well. And the SAT, I think the SAT actually from everything I've heard from other people that I know who have a neurodivergent brain, if you are able to really get into that kind of hyper focus mode and block everything else out, it can, you can be advantageous. You can be better at taking those kinds of standardized tests.

Dr. Emily King - 00:08:43:

Yeah. So in a way, the testing part of school worked for your brain. 

Penn Holderness - 00:08:49:

It did, yeah.Until I got into more critical thinking.

Dr. Emily King - 00:08:52:

Right, which was college.

Penn Holderness - 00:08:53:

Yes, or some of the AP classes as well. But that was, you know, senior year. You're already – Crades are already out there. Yep.

Dr. Emily King - 00:09:02:

So let's talk a little bit more about that hyper focus. So you've talked about that as your superpower. When did you notice that in school? And then when did you realize, oh, I think I can make this part of my job?

Penn Holderness - 00:09:14:

Well, in school... I think musically, there was an element of... Concentration when you have to very quickly memorize, understand, and then produce a sound, whether it's with a piano or with your voice. And I picked up things very quickly. So I know that's not necessarily school, some of that was outside of it. Think the other, I'm not sure, I'm trying to separate hyperfocus from memorization.

Dr. Emily King - 00:09:46:

Right, because they are different. So would you say hyper-focus is more aligned with your interests? When your interest it's loaded with your interest, cause you can memorize things really well if you're not interested, although it's probably better when you're interested. So if you're really interested in it and you're like getting in a zone basically.

Penn Holderness - 00:10:07:

This might be the best example of it. I, I, was always a little bit jazzed up when someone gave me math homework that had a bunch of problems. And that gives me a panic attack. I know. I know. And it gives, it gives Kim one too, but it's, it's this, uh, it's this problem that you can solve and you're good at it. And, uh, you have the tools. And if, if you sit there and stare at it for a long time, you get frustrated. And I've seen my daughter like stare at a math problem for 45 minutes and until she cries and just not reach out for help. And so I would do my math homework in the 10 minutes in between math. And when I got to English class, I would do it every night. And it was about an hour worth of homework that the teacher would say it's like an hour worth of homework. But I would, um, I stayed in my seat that the math teacher knew I was going to do it. No one ever came into the class really early. So I'd stay in the seat for, say it was 10 minutes, like seven minutes. Cause my class was really close and I just did it all right there. And I turned it into a challenge for myself. Okay. Sure. There were some days when I couldn't get it all the way done, but on a lot of occasions I would finish an hour's worth of math homework in about seven minutes. 

Dr. Emily King - 00:11:09:

So that's a really great coping strategy. Usually, sometimes we try to teach kids that, but you obviously made it up on your own, which is. Turn this into a competition with myself, which was basically a timed competition. Like you knew you could do the thing, but can I do it really quick? Because I know maybe later I'm not going to do it because I'll be distracted. And would you have forgotten about it later and you're trying to get it done right then?

Penn Holderness - 00:11:32:

I just don't think I would have done it as quickly. I think I would have, if I probably would have gotten frustrated. Like it was fresh in my mind. I think that my brain has a lot of really good RAM. Yeah. Like the hot memory and the RAM, like the cold storage memory, once it gets there, it's hard to bring it back out to where it is. So once my brain is working, I'll tell you some stories as an adult that mirror that as well. When we are, seeking out brand deals or creative meetings with other people, and we have to sit there for an hour and listen to whatever their brief is, they almost always want to come away with some sort of musical option. And in three occasions, you can ask Anne-Marie this, because she's been in the rooms with me. I'll excuse myself from the meeting because I've already started writing it in my head and I can't pay attention to what's going on. And in a lot of cases, I will have the full, complete song by the time the meeting has just ended or maybe by the end of the day.

Dr. Emily King - 00:12:32:

So that's the hyper-focus you're talking about, because a neurotypical brain cannot do that.

Penn Holderness - 00:12:38:

I can't not do it. I can't, like, once I get an idea and people are talking, I'm like, what are you doing?

Dr. Emily King - 00:12:42:

What are you people just talking about? Right. So that is, it's almost, sounds a little bit like a positive compulsion. Like, you have to go do it, get it out. Does it feel like that? Like, you have to get it out? Or, I mean, I think a lot of songwriters will also describe that. Like, I kind of already knew the song. It just came through me and came out of me, and I had to get it out.

Penn Holderness - 00:13:03:

Well, it's interesting. So Lin-Manuel Miranda and I have a mutual friend. Okay. And he's the guy who actually was his musical director. And he was, I've gotten to know him very well. And I, like, if you're a friend of a friend, you shouldn't be asking him about Lin-Manuel all the time. But he did, he volunteered this information to me because he saw how quickly I wrote music sometimes. And he said, it took him 18 months to write his first song. It took him the rest of the musical he wrote over the course of maybe, like, another year. So he has this perfectionism about himself. He has this perfectionism about himself that he has to get it just right before he sends it out to someone. So there are some people who don't do that, and they're really, really good. And I wish I could be more like that and let something simmer just a little bit longer. Okay. To, I mean, almost to just kind of edit myself and make it better instead of being like, oh, we're done.

Dr. Emily King - 00:13:56:

So is that the downside of hyperfocus and impulsivity probably? 

Penn Holderness - 00:14:00:

Quality control? Yeah. Well, I just think that there's a governor on how good your work can be if you don't take enough time to really try to perfect it. But I mean, look, my job has, they want things fast. Right. They want things turned around quickly. Yeah. And so I've been very fortunate to find something for now that is asking for that.

Dr. Emily King - 00:14:22:

Yeah.

Penn Holderness - 00:14:23:

But I really, I am curious. I know you don't normally do adults, so I'm just trying to get free therapy out of this. What it is about the ADHD brain, and this is frankly for me and for my son, who also has been diagnosed with it, that just won't do long-term projects.

Dr. Emily King - 00:14:38:

Mm-hmm.

Penn Holderness - 00:14:39:

Because those are the important things. That's what you should be learning and should be doing. 

Dr. Emily King - 00:14:43:

Well, it's all about executive functioning and the weaknesses that can occur in executive functioning. So... For everybody listening, executive functioning is we. Dream up a plan in our head, you're good at that. We get started, you're good at that if it's your thing, not if it's a history project.

Penn Holderness - 00:15:02:

Yeah, it has to be of personal interest.

Dr. Emily King - 00:15:03:

Right, it has to be of personal interest. And then you maintain focus to that thing. So here's where ADHD comes in. You have trouble maintaining focus, and then you follow it through to completion, and then you monitor how it went. And that's where revisions happen and drafts happen. And all of that takes time so that you can – it's like the beginning of that ADHDers are pretty good with. Not so much initiation if it's not of personal interest, but that's where in school we have to really pair the task with an interest if we're going to get kids started on anything, right? And it sounds like in your schooling, you were able to find... You know, things that worked for you and you just kind of stayed in those lanes. And I always tell parents, find the interests, find the strengths, and teach from there. And there's going to be stuff kids hate about school. And I'm guessing that just being in a school building all day was probably something that you did not like about school.

Penn Holderness - 00:16:02:

Yeah, I mean, thank God for the performing arts element, which was sometimes twice a day, that was very kinetic and up-moving, and it was challenging, and sometimes you were sweating when you left because, you know, choreography.

Dr. Emily King - 00:16:18:

Choreography

Penn Holderness - 00:16:19:

jazz hands, jazz hands, don't do themselves and it was interesting because When I got to college, everything kind of crashed. 

Dr. Emily King - 00:16:27:

Yeah.So let's talk about that. Yeah. So college, of course, is different in structure because you are able to get up and move around and walked to different buildings, but, but, No one's checking in on you. Right. Yeah. So it's like K-12 school probably had its downsides with being in a building all day and having to take things that were not your thing, but you found your way. And then college, what kind of fell apart for you in college and what did you start to notice?

Penn Holderness - 00:16:56:

I mean, pretty early on, I just felt outmatched with some of the things that people were doing, which was like they were going out and partying. And then they were waking up at 7 o'clock in the morning and going to class and then studying for three hours and then going back. I mean, kids back in the 90s. It wasn't quite a binge drinking culture, but it was like, have a couple of beers, explore the social side of your life, which by the way, I think is a great thing. It was good for me in college because I didn't have any social life outside of performing arts. Before that. Before that. I played a little bit of basketball. That wasn't really, I don't know how social that was. But I think my parents always thought and believed that I didn't get good grades in college because I partied too much. And some of that might be true. I mean, I definitely was like, whoa, like no one's here. No one's checking on me. I don't have to go to class. Right. They don't even hold you accountable until the tests come out. Well, I'm sure I'll just be able to like the night before memorize this and just handle it.

Dr. Emily King - 00:18:00:

Is that how you got through high school?

Penn Holderness - 00:18:03:

I didn't party in high school.

Dr. Emily King - 00:18:04:

No, no, no, I'm sorry. Let me rephrase. Did you just sit through class, not take notes, and then you just took the test and did well?

Penn Holderness - 00:18:13:

Yeah, I didn't take this.

Dr. Emily King - 00:18:14:

Because a lot of students with ADHD, usually they crash and burn it in either ninth grade or college. And what happens is they've sat in school and they're like, I get it. I don't need to write it down. I'm not good at writing it down and paying attention at the same time. So I'm just going to maybe listen. It's in here. And then I'll take the test. And they make it just fine through school. Sometimes it's ninth grade gets hard. But it sounds like you made it all the way with probably not a lot of study skills because you didn't practice that part. You just took the test.

Penn Holderness - 00:18:43:

That's a really good point. So let's go through each subject. Math, you don't really take notes. Right. You solve problems. You got that. And once you solve it once, you solve it again. It's there. It's locked in your brain. Chemistry, Science, to me, they were all parts of the universe and parts of the body that as soon as, you know, or whatever it is that as soon as you learn it, like, that's me. That's a personal interest. That's my molecules. That's the space. Oh, my God. Space. You could tell me something about space. I'll remember it for the rest of my life. And then, but then you get English. You memorize a word. You use it in a sentence. Good. Like that's not going, it's not going anywhere. Yeah. But then you got like history and, you know. Some levels of like poetry, understanding, like Chaucer. And if you don't take notes on that and understand those things, you run into trouble. So I don't know that I went to the most challenging school. It was a great school and the teachers were fantastic. But I think if I'd gone to a more challenging school, all of my deficiencies would have been discovered while I was still in high school, potentially, and not when I was off on my own enjoying myself.

Dr. Emily King - 00:19:50:

So whose idea was it to get tested?

Penn Holderness - 00:19:53:

It was mine.

Dr. Emily King - 00:19:53:

Okay. How'd you know about it?

Penn Holderness - 00:19:54:

A friend of mine who, I mean... It was my junior year. I was, it was on my second stint of academic probation. I can say this now because I don't think I'm going to ever apply for a job where they ask me for my GPA, but I was-

Dr. Emily King - 00:20:09:

I think you're in the clear Penn.

Penn Holderness - 00:20:11:

I was always terrified that people would ask me for my GPA. It was like a 2.8 or something. And it was not good. And so I had a friend who actually approached me and said, have you ever been tested for ADD? And at that point, I'd heard of it. And I was like, No. And she said, well, you have it.

Dr. Emily King - 00:20:31:

Your friend, like your college friend. 

Penn Holderness - 00:20:33:

Yeah, yeah. Her name's MJ. And she also had ADD. She's like, that's why we're buddies. That's why we're friends. That's why things go so sideways when we hang out. And she offered me a Ritalin. I didn't take it. It just was, I didn't want to take a pill that I didn't have. And so I went home between my junior and senior year and had the testing. And it was pretty obvious. And they immediately put me on medication because at that time, I don't think that there was really a holistic option. Right. When it came to that, I think if you had ADHD, they gave you either Ritalin. For me, it was like a time release capsule called Dexedrine, which I thought was Dexedrine. When the first time they said it, I'm like, why are you giving me a weight loss drug? I'm like, what? I look like this. By the way, I did lose about 15 pounds.

Dr. Emily King - 00:21:25:

You do lose weight on stimulants sometimes.

Penn Holderness - 00:21:27:

Yeah, and I didn't have much of an appetite anymore. All my fraternity brothers tried to steal my pills. Um, which we can talk about that later, but, uh,

Dr. Emily King - 00:21:35:

Yeah, we're not advocating several things that have been mentioned on this podcast already.

Penn Holderness - 00:21:38:

No, but you asked me the story.

Dr. Emily King - 00:21:40:

This is the truth of what it looked like in the 90s as a college student. This is true.

Penn Holderness - 00:21:45:

So that's, that's what happened. And, uh, I returned to school. Well, first of all, I spent a summer just kind of seeing what the medication did for me, which was, I think the first four or five days were pretty incredible. Um, just, just noticing things.

Dr. Emily King - 00:22:02:

Okay. Like what? What did you notice?

Penn Holderness - 00:22:03:

Walking on the beach and being able to compartmentally appreciate a bird, the sound of the ocean, and the person who you're talking to without losing any of that experience.

Dr. Emily King - 00:22:15:

So it allowed you to hold on to things at the same time.

Penn Holderness - 00:22:19:

Yes.

Dr. Emily King - 00:22:20:

Okay. Because what would your brain, what does your brain do on the beach?

Penn Holderness - 00:22:23:

Well, my friend's talking and I see the bird or I hear the ocean or the ocean reminds me of a shark or something.

Dr. Emily King - 00:22:33:

Right, so when someone calls your name, you're just like, bird. I missed what you said, because I was looking at the bird.

Penn Holderness - 00:22:38:

Yeah, or you just go to the famous ADHD crutch of when you're not paying attention, you say, wow, that's crazy. Because that can really cover anything. That can cover something that's funny. That can cover like a death in the family. That can cover like a really good job promotion. It's all crazy.

Dr. Emily King - 00:22:55:

That's actually a really good tip.

Penn Holderness - 00:22:56:

I feel awful telling you, but I use it all the time. ADHD teenagers. If you hear me say, wow, that's crazy, I haven't paid attention to a single thing that you just said.

Dr. Emily King - 00:23:03:

And now we know. Yeah.

Penn Holderness - 00:23:04:

Well, I already told my wife, and so she... Anyway, yeah. So you go to one of those crutches. Yeah.

Dr. Emily King - 00:23:09:

So do you remember thinking back on all those school experiences and Do you remember teachers... Who got you, even if they didn't know, like, what it was they were getting, you know? But they understood that something was different. You needed to kind of be in charge of saying, no, I need to do this because I'm interested, or I need to stand like this while I learn, or whatever it is. Who do you remember getting it?

Penn Holderness - 00:23:35:

Mark McCombs, Hollis Self, Dorothy Finlan, and Scott .

Dr. Emily King - 00:23:41:

Okay. And I just want to point out to everyone listening that if you're working with kids right now, they're going to remember your name.

Penn Holderness - 00:23:47:

I know their first names. Yeah. Those were the four that they got me the most.

Dr. Emily King - 00:23:53:

Yeah. And what did they get?

Penn Holderness - 00:23:55:

Different things. Ms. , who I think she passed away, she challenged the crap out of me.

Dr. Emily King - 00:24:01:

Okay.

Penn Holderness - 00:24:01:

She wanted me to get better, and she was very harsh on me. And even when I thought I was doing the best, she said that it wasn't good enough. But she did it in a way that she knew that I had more potential than this. That kind of thing works for me, too.

Dr. Emily King - 00:24:17:

Okay. Yeah.

Penn Holderness - 00:24:18:

I know that sounds crazy, especially-

Dr. Emily King - 00:24:19:

It may not work for kind of more sensitive, anxious people, but it worked for you. 

Penn Holderness - 00:24:24:

For sure. And she rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but she also, she taught video editing in ninth grade.

Dr. Emily King - 00:24:32:

In like the, what was that?

Penn Holderness - 00:24:34:

It was 1989. Yeah. Um, so, but it was like a stop motion. Like, uh, I did, I did a video called The Death of Gumby. I still remember it. And it was an animation of, and I, we built a set in a theater, but we also like studied Citizen Kane and Battleship Potemkin. She had an entire film studies thing, but it was in the third quarter and you couldn't do it unless you got a beer better in the first two quarters, which were like heavy duty, critical, like honors English in ninth grade. Yeah. It was competitive. It was difficult. Every time you stepped in class, you were terrified that you were gonna get something wrong. Honestly, that works.

Dr. Emily King - 00:25:10:

Was that fun for you? Being terrified? 

Penn Holderness - 00:25:13:

No. But it was, okay, remember the three things, and this, who's the woman who does How to ADHD on YouTube? I want to give her credit. She's wonderful, and I can't remember her name. Jessica McCabe, that's her. She has a bunch of just little kind of digestible things about her ADHD, and she says, here's the three things that ADHD people need for their dopamine sensors to kind of get along with the environment and to move forward. It has to be something of personal interest. It has to be something that's challenging. It has to be something that's new. Mm. So I feel like there's something new every day in that class. Yep. It was definitely of personal interest because you get to this film school. There's something at the sort of mini film school in the third period, and boy, it was challenging. Yeah. It was hard.

Dr. Emily King - 00:25:51:

So here's my question. At what point does challenging become terrified or scared? Because so many students and kids I work with, they'll shut down when they're scared. There was something about challenging, and of course, it's individualized to every person, but for you, what was the secret sauce for challenging?

Penn Holderness - 00:26:12:

Okay, so can I ask you this question back? Yeah. Why are they scared? Is it because they feel like they're-

Dr. Emily King - 00:26:16:

Oh, so most kids would not feel like they could do it. So it's more about a capability thing. So you must've felt capable.

Penn Holderness - 00:26:25:

Yeah, I think that I had a really inflated opinion of my intellect when I was growing up. Like I thought I could do anything.

Dr. Emily King - 00:26:32:

Okay, so there was a confidence about you that I think helped you stay in the challenge zone.

Penn Holderness - 00:26:39:

It's also the reason that I almost failed out of college.

Dr. Emily King - 00:26:41:

I mean, because you were confident and you were like, oh, I'll be fine.

Penn Holderness - 00:26:44:

Oh, yeah. I'll be fine. No, I'm serious. I think that's what happened. I just really thought I was bulletproof. I thought I was smarter than everybody else. That did not help my social life in high school. Mm-hmm. But I did. It was probably irrational confidence, but I had too much confidence.

Dr. Emily King - 00:26:59:

So it worked until it didn't work.

Penn Holderness - 00:27:00:

In academics. I had no confidence in my social skills or my physical skills or my emotional skills. But I think academic, I felt pretty confident.

Dr. Emily King - 00:27:07:

And of course, musical, And confidence, as we all know, has to do with when our anxiety is low when our confidence is high. And sometimes, like you said, you needed a little more anxiety at UVA. Like just a little bit more. Yeah, I needed a lot more. But when we're confident about something, that means that we are okay. We are okay to stay in that challenge zone and it's not scary. It's almost like a fire being lit under us, which is a good thing.

Penn Holderness - 00:27:33:

I also think I had, I didn't have like as many friends as the captain of the football team, but I had really good friends who I think understood, supported, and helped with that confidence. And I definitely had good parents when it came to that.

Dr. Emily King - 00:27:46:

Yeah, let's talk about your parents.

Penn Holderness - 00:27:48:

They were great.

Dr. Emily King - 00:27:49:

Yeah, so even though you don't think they knew it was ADHD...

Penn Holderness - 00:27:52:

No, no one knew what it was.

Dr. Emily King - 00:27:53:

No one knew what it was. No. What did they see in you and... I mean, how did they nurture that? I mean, what are you just so grateful that they maybe did without knowing that they were doing it?

Penn Holderness - 00:28:04:

Yeah. So my mom was the primary parent and this is not a knock on my dad. My dad was a Presbyterian minister in a medium-sized church. So he didn't have a lot of people, at least early on, who were taking things off of his plate. So he was gone most of the time, but he wasn't like gallivanting around. He was in hospitals and in hostels and dealing and raising money. He was like a tireless fundraiser in the Durham community. So he did make his time count, but the most of the day-to-day was with my mom. She was also a musician and just found ways to inject music into every single part of my life because she knew that I liked it. She knew that I was good at it. And I think she liked it as well. So that was the way that we communicated. That's awesome. When I was 13, she bought me this ridiculously expensive synthesizer called a Roland D50 that I had seen in a shop window and knew because the clothes that I wore and the job that my dad had, and I knew that I wasn't well off. And so I didn't even ask for it. It just would make no sense to ask. I remember it was $1,395. Wow. And it was on sale from like $1,700. But this place called The Music Loft had it for $1,395. I'll never forget that number because it was blowing my mind. And she gave it to me for Christmas. And poor my mom. So if you give one kid, even if they love it, like a $1,395 gift, you have to give the same amount to the other guy. And my brother didn't really ask for anything. So she gave him a bunch. This year was, Dale will tell you all about this. She gave him as many CDs or records or tapes or whatever she could find because my brother was a big music fan. And then like $400 worth of socks. It was like the biggest sock haul of all time. Dale still talks about this. But it was my parents making sure. And I think after that, he's like, mom, you can just give me cash next time. It's totally okay. Okay. I mean, there weren't a lot of presents like that. But that was one that I think she gave it to me because she believed that that was something that I was meant to have to develop my brain. 

Dr. Emily King - 00:30:19:

And I bet you pretty much felt very seen in that moment. 

Penn Holderness - 00:30:23:

I did. I did. I mean, for my dad too, I'm sure he, I mean, he was the ones who was signing the check and was probably like, what? I think we can buy a grand piano for this much. And I kept that thing through until we moved in until Kim and I moved to New York. It's what I played with our college band. And it's what I used when I was in 10th grade because I hadn't made the top show choir and they brought me on as a musical accompanist for like special effects sounds. So I mean, it was with me most of the time. That's awesome. It was my best friend. It was my only friend.

Dr. Emily King - 00:30:57:

It sounds like a security blanket.

Penn Holderness - 00:30:58:

It was a little bit of a security blanket. And then I found one on eBay and I bought it like two years ago. So I have it, I have like, I don't even play it. I just, it's just sitting there next to me when I write stuff.

Dr. Emily King - 00:31:08:

That's amazing. Yeah. So I want to talk real quick about... Who's listening to this podcast because it's parents raising kids and teens with ADHD. I know I have some teens with ADHD who listen. They've told me. They're like, thanks for having a podcast. Oh, that's cool.

Penn Holderness - 00:31:27:

Do you feel hip when you hear that?

Dr. Emily King - 00:31:28:

I kind of feel hip that I'm on their list. Radar. Yeah. So... Let's start with parents. What would you want parents to know? You are a parent. But also, what do you want parents to know maybe if they're – their kid is young. So kids are now getting diagnosed with ADHD pretty young. So... Not super young because all kids are active. All kids have a short attention span. But around five to eight years old, if it's a more severe presentation of ADHD, we can pretty much name that that's a struggle. So if a parent is new to this journey, what do you want them to know?

Penn Holderness - 00:32:07:

We really love you. We do. We know whether it's in the front of our head or the back of our head that we can't do this without you. Mm-hmm. Having said that, we really can't help some of the weird stuff that we're doing. I know that because I've lived for 48 years now and I still do some of the things that I did back then. I'm currently not medicated. I was only medicated for a couple of years because I was blessed to find... Something that worked for my type of brain. We need a different type of education than the type of education that at least most schools provide. And I know this because I've been through it and we do, we do very well with quick problem solving, I think for the most part, but it's sometimes hard to see that far down the road. And it's not because we don't care. That's not because we don't want to be good. It's because our brains are fixated on what's right in front of us.

Dr. Emily King - 00:33:16:

Right.

Penn Holderness - 00:33:17:

So I think I said it before, if you have a computer, there's RAM and there's RAM. And Our RAM is amazing, which is that's the stuff that like really quickly gets to stuff and then like our, our longterm storage is, is a little problematic. Mm-hmm. We really don't want to use it as an excuse, but we have to sometimes. If you give us grace with understanding and if you give us some time and if you take the time to understand what is going on in our brain, I think that grace will come naturally. We will try harder to fix it. Than if we're being shamed for it. And that's not going to be easy for parents to do because we are maddening sometimes because we probably don't match up with your brain. Right. Even if you, even if you have ADHD.

Dr. Emily King - 00:34:08:

So that was the other thing I was going to say is in my line of work over the last probably 20 years of, you know, I started working in schools in 2001 all the way until 2010 and then have been in private practice since then. But just in my career, as we were talking about the timeframes of when no one really knew what this was and then you weren't diagnosed till college, I work with lots of parents who for the first time are, I will give, you know, feedback about what I think is going on with their kid. And they're like, you just described my brain. I've just been.

Penn Holderness - 00:34:45:

Diagnosed.

Dr. Emily King - 00:34:47:

I've been overcompensating all these years. And it's like, you look around and you're like, wait, this isn't hard for everyone else. And so. I think there's a parent journey there too, that obviously you're going to have compassion for your kid if you also have ADHD, but you're absolutely right. Even two brains with ADHD are very different.

Penn Holderness - 00:35:06:

Well, I think because for the most part, if you're a parent like me, you've coped with these things for so long and it's taken you probably 30 years to get to that point. If like you not understanding why your, your son or daughter is acting like this. Is like saying, why aren't you 30 years older? 

Dr. Emily King - 00:35:26:

Right. They don't have the experience.

Penn Holderness - 00:35:28:

But I even struggle with it too because I see, boy, I see all of it. My son chews on his shirt. He chews, like, that's the weirdest thing. Why is it just us? It's just me and him. It's not. But it seems like it. I don't know anybody else who does it.

Dr. Emily King - 00:35:39:

It's not just you.

Penn Holderness - 00:35:40:

But I still, I look at it and I'm like, dude, stop it. It's gross. And I have to, that's wrong. That's the wrong response. But I still do. So it just is impossible for someone to give full grace. Like, full grace, empathy, and understanding. But I think both sides have to try. Here's what I would tell, the one thing I would tell kids and parents is, You've got to be forgiving, but you got to try. You can't use it as an excuse and just lean on it. You've got to, if there's a list or if there's something out there that works, you've got to say it and not have shame in it. That's the reason why a lot of people haven't said, oh, I got to make a list or I got to go to a, even to a therapist or a counselor to help us out with that is because there's shame around this. There's shame as a parent. There's shame as a kid. There's shame everywhere. So if you don't get out and talk about it and make an effort, then that just kind of festers.

Dr. Emily King - 00:36:35:

And that's why we're here talking about it is because I want everyone to just, this is normalized. You are working and playing and in school with all kinds of brains. And the more you understand that everybody's brain is different. The better. So what would you say to any kids? Who are listening? Teens, kids, teens, college students with ADHD.

Penn Holderness - 00:36:59:

Well, you've got a great brain. It's not broken. It doesn't necessarily line up with traditional education. And unfortunately, it doesn't line up with most traditional jobs. And so that's what school is, right? It's preparing you for... Jobs and because jobs are all kind of their own way, then school kind of has to be its own way too. Sorry, that's a bit of a tough start for this, but it doesn't mean that there isn't a number of opportunities, aren't a number of opportunities out there for you, both in your education and in your life that will give you a chance to shine.

Dr. Emily King - 00:37:37:

Yeah. And then this is going to be our final question because I think it might have some discussion is I feel like we're at a point in our just generational shifts where jobs are a lot more diverse in terms of being able to do different things that have matched your brain and school is not. So school is still preparing our kids for a traditional track usually. And you have had a very nontraditional career over time. Yeah. So you've asked me this question actually before, but I'm going to ask you if you could design a school for – your brain and other similar, but of course different brains from yours. What would it look like that would have prepared you maybe sooner or more confidently? Although you didn't need any more confidence. It doesn't sound like.

Penn Holderness - 00:38:27:

Really? Maybe other kids. Other kids need it. That's the big thing we got out of this. I was a cocky son of a gun.

Dr. Emily King - 00:38:34:

So how would you design that school? What would you want to see differently in your perspective of how we're educating our kids?

Penn Holderness - 00:38:42:

I think I would, you know how Derek Zoolander had this school for kids who can't read good? Like it was just, it was very out there and kind of on the nose. He wanted to build, I think I would call it the school for people with neurodivergent brains, even though ADHD is a horrible name. It'd be like a long, ridiculous name. Like I would lean into it instead of just walking around saying, well, I'm going to get over this. Like you have ADHD or whatever we're going to call it. Cause we're going to change the name because the name sucks.

Dr. Emily King - 00:39:08:

Uh-huh. We've talked about this.

Penn Holderness - 00:39:09:

Yeah. EFD, executive functioning difference. Let's just call it that. I like it. We'll call it the school. And everyone who goes there high fives each other's and like, this is our brain. And we will have classes like math and science and we'll, I don't think, there's definitely not going to be people sitting and facing a teacher. They got rid of that, right? They don't do that as much anymore

Dr. Emily King - 00:39:32:

Not as much, but middle school and high school are still very much, you're sitting and facing a teacher. 

Penn Holderness - 00:39:37:

And we're just going to lean into it. We're going to say, here's your dopamine hit. Like, here's something you're going to do here. It's a natural dopamine hit. We're going to do this. And then when we have to learn history and English, we're just going to call that the crappy classes or just like something that we're all in this together. Like these are the hard, really tough classes. And we're going to make those things of personal interest, new and challenging. So they're going to be taught not in a textbook format, but in some way that either allows you to imagine it I'm not saying put up a video and watch it, but in some dynamic way that allows you to imagine it, whether that's taking on a role of someone in history for an entire year and have to live it through them, like something different. The history classes and the English classes are going to be freaking 15 minutes long. But we're going to do them three times a day. Or something like that. We're not going to sit there for an hour and hear about, the New Deal. It just doesn't, like, it doesn't work.

Dr. Emily King - 00:40:39:

Because probably 15 minutes in, you're ready to write a song about the New Deal. And you can't listen to the rest of the lecture.

Penn Holderness - 00:40:46:

Yeah, I want to test after 15 minutes. Okay. And then literally later that day, let's do it again and give me another test. But it's so we just need for things like that. We just need to break it up. And I don't think there's anything wrong with learning that way. I think I might have 47 classes in a day. And each one is 10 minutes.

Dr. Emily King - 00:41:09:

Yeah. And of course, there are huge.

Penn Holderness - 00:41:11:

Every parent's like getting a hives right now. Teachers and principals.

Dr. Emily King - 00:41:14:

There's huge structural systemic issues with creating this school.

Penn Holderness - 00:41:18:

But not if everyone's got it.

Dr. Emily King - 00:41:19:

But if everyone is there who needs flexibility and it's normalized and it's not othered, that's the point.

Penn Holderness - 00:41:27:

What about also, I always felt like I learned more when I was either saying it out loud or teaching it or something myself. What if there's like an apprenticeship situation where you actually have to teach it?

Dr. Emily King - 00:41:40:

Right. So, I mean, I think that many would say in the research on memory and recall that information's really not synthesized until you can teach it. And so when we're just testing and we're spitting it back out, we all know that there's stuff we knew in school that is gone forever from our brain because we memorized it. It was not really something we actually learned and could apply. So there's definitely something to be said for that. And I think for a lot of things that you're describing actually work for all learners and just works a little better and in a shorter timeframe for ADHD brains.

Penn Holderness - 00:42:18:

So it's funny. We haven't really talked about as much about the curriculum as we have about the approach to learning it. Yeah. But I never really sat and thought, like, do we really need... History. Can't you just read a book about that in your spare time if you're interested in? Because a lot of our history is really depressing and teaches us that we were terrible people.

Dr. Emily King - 00:42:35:

Well, I think that that's all in the conversation about education. I mean, not currently, but I think that many people who are educating neurodivergent learners are asking some of those same questions. It mostly comes up with math. I know you liked math, but there are many, many kids who the most common question is, I am never going to use calculus ever in my life.

Penn Holderness - 00:42:58:

I mean, there is a certain level.

Dr. Emily King - 00:43:00:

There's definitely a, you might feel like history, how many kids feel about math because it doesn't feel relevant. So I do think there's this relevancy factor that goes along with what we've talked about, about, you know, we need to be educating our kids in a way that prepares them for what they're doing in the world. And we're in this like shift of jobs are evolving, but education is not. Yeah. And so that's what I'm super passionate about.

Penn Holderness - 00:43:29:

And you're much better than I am. So I just designed the most ridiculous school of all time. That I would go to and probably not even anybody else. But I guess the point that I'm trying to make is I just think for me and probably a lot of people like me, and this really affected me in college, like sitting there for two hours sometimes for a lecture or for 90 minutes or for however long it is. And expecting your brain not to wander, and then feeling ashamed when it does, and you snap back out of it, and all of this stuff has happened, there could be some other way to do this that allows for just a little bit more... I use the word staccato, kind of like bouncing around like a little bit, learning, as opposed to this very long period of,

Dr. Emily King - 00:44:19:

Yeah, and I think that there are ways that we can't change the overarching system of education, but you can absolutely pull some of the things you've said just today. A teacher could say, oh, I can make that happen in my classroom for this one kid within the structure that that teacher's working in. Or a parent could say, oh, yeah, I'm going to make sure my kid gets tons of movement or we align it with interest or whatever for a task at home. We have to just start on that level, on that micro level, because that's the stuff that makes the difference. Like you were saying with your mom and how she incorporated music. Can you imagine if you just had somebody telling you to do stuff all day long and it wasn't aligned with your interests?

Penn Holderness - 00:44:57:

I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing right now.

Dr. Emily King - 00:44:59:

Yeah.

Penn Holderness - 00:45:00:

ADHD is very important with the people that you have around you. I think that's the case with anything. Yeah. With anxiety, with any of it. But I'm not, you're not interviewing me as someone who has a bio, who has any level of success right now if it weren't for my wife. And her ability to put up with me, give me grace, but also motivate and challenge me not to let it be an excuse. So I'm really fortunate in that sense that I found someone who's able to do that. And that is proof that if you are living with someone with ADHD, like you're the first person they'll thank when they win the Nobel Prize or an Oscar or whatever the heck it is that they win, because they can win if they work really hard. But that is so important.

Dr. Emily King - 00:45:49:

So just keep showing up for your ADHD people.

Penn Holderness - 00:45:52:

Keep showing up for ADHD people. Give them grace. Don't let it be an excuse. And don't be afraid to talk about it. Talk is what makes shame go away.

Dr. Emily King - 00:46:00:

Yep. Thank you so much for being here today.

Penn Holderness - 00:46:03:

Thank you. 

Dr. Emily King - 00:45:10:

This has been Learn with Dr. Emily King, the podcast. For more resources, including both parent, teacher, and school resources, visit learnwithdremily.com or read my sub stack at learnwithdremily.substack.com. Also, we are publishing this podcast weekly, so make sure you're subscribed by pressing the plus, follow, or subscribe button on whatever podcast app you're using right now. This podcast is edited by Earfluence. All information discussed on this podcast is for educational purposes only. If you have immediate concerns about your child, please reach out to a mental health or medical professional. I'm Dr. Emily King, and we will keep learning together next week.