How to Manage ADHD Hyperactivity Without Fighting It

ADHD hyperactivity isn't a behavior problem to suppress. Learn 5 neuroscience-backed strategies to channel your child's movement, including the PINCH framework.

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Your child can sit completely still for an hour playing a video game. They cannot sit for five minutes doing math. And you're wondering... is this a choice?

It's not. Their nervous system is running on empty and their body is trying to tell you.

In this episode, Apryl breaks down why the old model of "suppress the hyperactivity with consequences and stillness" doesn't work and what neuroscience says to do instead. You'll learn the PINCH framework from Dr. William Dodson that explains WHY your child can focus on some things and not others, plus five practical strategies you can start using today to channel the movement instead of fighting it.

You'll learn:

• Why hyperactivity is a nervous system signal, not a behavior problem
• The PINCH framework: 5 neurological triggers that activate the ADHD brain
• How heavy work and proprioceptive input calm hyperactivity from the inside out
• Why trying to suppress movement actually makes attention WORSE
• Polyvagal theory: What's really happening when your child is "stuck" in overdrive
• The science of productive fidgeting (and which fidgets actually help)
• Novelty engineering: How to use dopamine architecture to reduce hyperactivity
• Practical strategies for the car, homework, mornings, and the classroom

After this episode, you'll stop saying "sit still" and start asking "what does their body need right now?"

Ready to Build a Calmer Home? Start Here:

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Transcript

Why Hyperactivity Happens

Apryl 0:00

If your kiddo is bouncing off the walls, super hyper and impulsive, this episode is for you. We're going to talk about ways to help with that hyperactivity. Get your kiddo to maybe not sit still, but be able to control that hyperactivity a bit so they're not driving you absolutely batty. Welcome to Raising ADHD, the podcast for parents and teachers raising ADHD kids. If you've ever felt frustrated, overwhelmed, or just unsure what to do next, you're not alone. I'm April Bradford, a former teacher and ADHD mom, and alongside my husband, Dr. Brian Bradford, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, we're here to give you the clarity, strategies, and support you've been looking for. Every week we break down the misconceptions, answer your biggest questions, and share real tools you can use right away at home and in the classroom. So if you're ready to feel more confident and less overwhelmed, you're in the right place. Hey there, welcome back to the podcast. Okay, like I said, we are diving into hyperactivity today. Here's the thing we do have the two different types of ADHD, right? I mean, I think eventually there's going to be more, but right now we specifically have the hyperactivity and the inattentive. So this is for you parents who are struggling with those kiddos with the hyperactivity. Now, when I was doing the research for this, there was definitely very significant data on all the things that we've talked about with how to manage behavior with ADHD. If you go back to listen to the last episode on consequences and discipline, that one's going to help because everything in that episode was actually in the research for helping with hyperactivity. So things like specific and immediate praise, specific and immediate consequences, being very specific on what behavior we're looking for, all of those types of things. So today I actually want to talk about non-traditional ways because obviously, you know, we're like, okay, for kiddos who are hyper, we need movement. Let's get them moving. Yes, that is true. But we're going to talk about more ways to get them moving and some different strategies and things like that. Let's talk about what we see as the conventional model and when we actually start looking at this from a neuroscience-informed model, because that's the problem. The conventional model is the problem. When we start seeing it from the neuroscience side, that's when we can make the biggest difference. So the conventional model is hyperactivity is a behavior problem that we need to suppress. When we look at it from the neuroscience model, then we see hyperactivity as a nervous system signal that we need to interpret. So, what is going on in their nervous system right now that's making so hyper, right? Instead of this is a behavior problem, let's squash it. No, let's see what's going on and what can we do. So, with the conventional model, the solution is consequences, compliance, and stillness. Oh my gosh, are we still in the 1950s? Why are we forcing our kids to sit still? Our bodies were not made for this. So when we look at it from the neuroscience side, there is a solution. The solution that we look at is we need to meet the underlying sensory or the neurochemical need. No, with our ADHD kiddos, there is dopamine deficit, that they that hyperactivity, they're looking for that dopamine, right? So how can we give that to them? That's for looking for that solution. How can we meet that? In the conventional model, the child is expected to control themselves. When we start seeing it from the neuroscience side of it, the child needs to build regulation capacity from the bottom up. So we are going to start with baby steps. One of my favorite movies is What About Bob. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend it. It's an oldie but a goodie. And in it, um, Richard Dreyfuss is a psychiatrist and he writes a book called Baby Steps. That's what we want to remember: baby steps, baby steps, baby steps here, because we want them to build that regulation pass. Start with baby steps, then they can actually do it and increase over time. When we look again at the conventional model, movement is a disruption. When we're looking from the neuroscience side of it, movement is a regulation tool that can be directed. Regulation tool that can be directed. It's not a disruption. And then again with the conventional model, novelty seeking is impulsivity. It's just impulsive. When we look at it from the neurological side, novelty seeking is a biological dopamine-seeking drive to channel. Okay. So two very, very different ways to look at this. And as we're thinking about this, we have to start seeking from the neuroscience side. There is something going on in the brain that the brain is seeking and looking for. This is not just a squash and squander and discipline this out of the kid. It's not gonna work. Okay. You may see a reduction in behavior at the moment with discipline, but it is not going to build, like I was talking about, building those baby steps of increasing that capacity of regulation. Okay. So that's where we're going today. We're talking neuroscience. So let's dive in. In this last year, um, Dr. William Dodson was one of the keynote speakers at the Chad conference. He was really, really good. I really enjoyed his talk. And he actually um, he's one of the ones who has studied, does a lot with ADHD, and he describes ADHD as an interest-based nervous system. So when we think about that, their nervous system is constantly looking for interest, right? The most underutilized lever for managing hyperactivity is the type of engagement, not the amount of control applied. Okay. So what type, how are we engaging the brain? What types of engagement are we using here, not trying to control this brain? That is the conventional, the old model. We're we're past old models. We're looking at the neuroscience, right? But what's interesting with this interest-based nervous system, as Dr. Dodson described it, is that unlike their neurotypical peers, uh, the neurotypical peers can activate attention based on importance of consequence alone. So if they know that they're gonna get in trouble, they can pay attention because they don't want to get in trouble. Arkidos with ADHD, though, require at least one of five specific specific neurological triggers, and he put it into an acronym called PINCH. So, what does PINCH stand for? P is for passion or play. I is interest, N is novelty, C is competition or connection. It can stand for both, either one of those would work. And then H is hurry or urgency. I want you to think for just a minute about your kid and think about when they're passionate or they're playing something, they're doing something they love, their hyperactivity and their focus and everything is like narrowed in, right? And if they have interest in it, if it's novelty, if it's new, if it's fun, right? When none of these are present, the ADHD brain is essentially offline. So think about a lecture. A kid sitting through a lecture, the brain is offline because unless the teacher is doing things to make it fun and active and engaging, then their brain is going to be offline. And the child's body then compensates for this by moving with that hyperactivity. This is why the hyperactive child can sit completely still for an hour playing a video game, but cannot remain seated for five minutes doing math problems. The game hits multiple of the pinch triggers simultaneously. Here is what I want you to take away from that is that it's not just making things fun. We need to reverse engineer pinch triggers into everyday activity. If your kiddo is just hypers all get out during homework time, well, how can we make this? How can you incorporate pinch into that time? Because right now it's just boring sitting doing math, right? But if we can do it like urgency and competition with self, I do this almost every morning with my daughter. Her medicine hasn't kicked in yet. And on the mornings that she's just really struggling to get ready, we do things like competitions. I've talked about this before on our morning routine uh episode of what I've done for our morning routine, but I'm constantly body-doubling with her. She's in my bathroom, I get ready in my bathroom, she gets ready in my bathroom. So we're brushing our teeth at the same time. So I'm like, okay, let's see who can get dressed first, who can get their shoes on first, getting that competition, right? If you can make things novel, so let the child choose the order of the tasks. That's another thing, especially with our kiddos who do not like demands, right? They feel like when you ask them to do something, you're demanding. Well, if you can give them some autonomy and make it novel for them, like, hey, what order do you want to do this in? That's going to help them. Use racing or scorekeeping or progress charts on chores. It's that competition. And anytime you compare a boring task with something engaging, that's called dopamine stacking, listening to music while doing math practice. Or um one of the hardest times for us tends to be riding in the car in the evenings because medicines wore off and the car ride can be very boring. So instead of just handing the phone back to my daughter, we'll do things like listen to a podcast. Trivia for kids. We love trivia for kids. That's a fun one. I have things like um hidden pictures, the highlights hidden picture books. She loves to do right now. Her current hyper focus is making pom-poms. So I have a bag of yarn with scissors and pom-pom makers that she can make it in the car. Anything you can do. And if there's if you have nothing, then try to do things engaging. I spy, right? Um the other day we were playing. She actually brought this up. It was something that she saw on Bluey, but doing the finding a rainbow of cars. So having to find like a red car, an orange car, a yellow car, a blue car, you get it, right? Makes it novel and fun. And it was competition because we were all trying to find the different colors. So anytime you can do that, and again, if you compare a can when you can compare a boring task with aging, that is dopamine jacking. When hyperactivity escalates, it's often a sign that the child has been running on an empty pinch tank for too long. So think about treating the condition hyperactivity means refilling that tank. So not by demanding that they sit still. It's like, okay, we've got to make this fun, we gotta go back to pinch passion or play, interest, novelty, competition, or connection. So that could even be, you know, like maybe they're super hyper hyper. Well, maybe you could sit down and play a game with them and connect with them, right? And then hurry, make it urgent, okay? So we want to make sure that we're filling up their pinch tank and not demanding that still stillness because their nervous system, their interest-based nervous system. Number one is the pinch system. If you can just think of when your kiddo's hyper, my kiddo's pinch tank is empty. We need to refill it, okay? And then refill it with one or two or three of those pinch factors. Number two is heavy work and proprioceptive input. What the heck does that mean? Great question. This is where we're gonna feed this sensory system. So this it comes from an occupational therapy perspective. Hyperactivity in ADHD children is often a biological craving for proprioceptive input, which is the sensory feedback the body receives through pressure, resistance, and joint depression. So when this input is unmet, the nervous system starts to escalate its demands through physical movement or the hyperactivity. So heavy work can be things like pushing, pulling, lifting, or carrying. This directly satisfies that craving. And we talked about this in one of the school episodes. We have those kiddos that just can't sit, having them carry some books to the classroom next door. That would be that heavy work. Wall push-ups or chair push-ups before demanding seated tasks is super helpful. Carrying the backpack with you know a moderate weight uh between classes, pulling a wagon. So, you know, put the little brother in the wagon and go for a walk and have the sibling pull the wagon, carrying groceries or carrying a laundry basket. All of those are super helpful. Obstacle courses involving crawling, climbing, and jumping are another great thing as well. The mechanism that's working here is a neurochemical. The proprioceptive input through heavy work stimulates joint receptors that signal the nervous system to downshift. And research links this input to serotonin nervous fluid. Okay, so that's another thing that you can do if your kiddo is just bouncing off the walls. It's time to do some heavy work, some lifting, some setup, the obstacle course, something like that. And again, this can be used in the classroom. Have all the kids, you know, do some chair push-ups or have all the kids find a place on the wall. Do not just uh call out the kittle that can't sit in their seat and be like, go do wall push-ups. Do not do that. But the whole class doing it, it's the whole class is gonna benefit from it, okay? Or, like I said, have them carry some books to the teacher next door or pull a cart. I used to have in my classroom like a cart of dictionaries. The the cart was a rollie cart. They can roll that, or the cart with the laptops, have them push the laptop cart to the next classroom, okay? So another thing that can be helpful actually is a weighted vest. This is something they can use in the classroom as well. So a randomized crossover study with 110 children with ADHD found that wearing a weighted vest, and this was sized at 10% of their body weight, produced significant improvements in attention, on task behavior, and out-of-seat fidgeting behaviors. Very interesting. So while they were weighing that wearing a weighted vest, that's what they saw. And while the effects, the effects though, did not persist after the vest was removed, the strategy can still provide a practical low intrusion option for the school setting where you know sometimes movement just is not possible. And this the weighted vests work because it is that deep pressure touch simulation. And this is sometimes described as a portable hug, like a big hug for your little kiddo, and it dampens the sensory modulation dysfunction by changing arousal levels in the nervous. So occupational therapists typically recommend 20 minutes on, 20 minutes off cycle rather than continuous wearing. Guessing probably if they wear it continuously, they're just gonna get used to it. So don't use it consistently. But if there is a time in the day that you're like, oh, we need them to be able to sit still, maybe a weighted vest is the way to go for that kiddo. Okay, number three is polyvagal informed regulation or understanding the on switch. This theory, the polyvagal theory, was developed by Dr. Stephen Forgus, and I'm not certain I'm saying that right, and he offers one of the most practically useful neuroscience frameworks for understanding ADHD hyperactivity. It describes three autonomic service nervous systems. Number one, the ventral vagal, and this is the safe and social, so calm, focused, connected. Number two is the sympathetic nervous system, which we hear a lot about. It's the fight or flight, so the activated, hyper-aroused, and reactive. And that's really when you have those skiddos who um lash out, get violent, run, right? That's they're in that fight or flight mode. And then we have the dorsal vagal, which is the shutdown. So this is collapsed, checked out, and disassociated. Children with ADHD have a narrower window of tolerance than their neurotypical peers, meaning that they will shift into that sympathetic fight or flight state more easily and have more difficulty returning to a regulated ventral vagal state. So, what looks like willful hyperactivity is often a child stuck in sympathetic overdrive and they're unable to access breaks. One thing that I really want you to hear here is that verbal redirection and consequences do not work when our kiddo is stuck inside the fight or flight. The prefrontal frontal cortex is offline at this stage, and their nervous system must physiologically be regulated first, then behavior can be addressed. Let's look at some bottom-up regulation tools. These interventions work by body first. So we're gonna bypass the thinking brain, trying to, you know, talk them down like, hey, calm down, it's okay, right? That's not gonna work. We're gonna go body first and bypass the thinking brain and directly shift the nervous system state by doing this. So things like bilateral rhythmic movement, so marching, rocking, marching in place, or like left-right, alternating physical movement engages both hemispheres of the brain and promotes sensory integration. This predictable rhythm calms a brain that's flooded with simulation stimulation. So that's the first one bilateral rhythmic movement, slow diaphragmatic breathing or box breathing. Now we have to be careful with this one because if your kiddo doesn't come up right, it can actually stress them out more. But when they do it right, it stimulates the vagus nerve directly, activating the parasympathetic system and pulling the child out of the hyper arousal. So you have to make sure that they are belly breathing and not just breathing and tensing everything up in their shoulders, because then that can cause more stress. Self-soothing or deep pressure. So hugging, wrapping in a blanket, or firm squeezes on the shoulders helps to release oxytocin and reduce amygdala overactivity. And then interceptive training, teaching children to notice internal body signals. So start to notice your heart rate or your heartbeat, your breathing rate, your muscle tension. When we can build that self-awareness, they can start to catch their dysregulation before it becomes explosive behavior. So the goal with the bottom-up regulation tools is to expand the child's window of tolerance over time and not just manage the episodes with her. So we're teaching them these skills so that they can again go longer without exploding or you know, the hyperactive movement. The next one, number four, is micro movements and the science of productive fidgeting. Here we have motor overflow. The counterintuitive finding from this research is that trying to suppress the movement may actually worsen attention. So if you're trying to get your kiddo to pay attention and we're like, sit still, don't do that, you're actually making it feel they can't pay attention. Several studies suggest that allowing and directing minor movement rather than eliminating it produces better cognitive outcomes for our children that with. ADHD. Here is where you can teach your kiddo of this framework, which this is an emerging thematic framework. It's called manually induced micro movements. This is where you teach your kiddo to consciously, like when they're starting to feel the hyperactivity and the boredom, right? To consciously initiate subtle movements. So that can be like finger tapping, foot pressure, small rocking. My husband shakes his leg. Sometimes it will drive me crazy, but I know what he's doing, right? So leg shaking, finger tapping. This can recalibrate that neural feedback system and enhance interoceptive regulation. So unlike uncontrolled fidgeting or hyperactive, right? This is deliberate and it's low amplitude movements to provide the proprioceptive input without distracting others. That can be key in the classroom or in public places, right? Because we don't want to distract others. And you'll find, you'll see a lot of adults with ADHD diagnosed or not. They will do things because as they've gotten older, they've learned how to, you know, manage the hyperactivity. We don't see a lot of adults just bouncing off the walls. You will see the pen tapping, the nail biting, the leg shaking, right? That's what they're doing. Teaching our kiddos to do things like that can be helpful as well. Some practical implement implementations here are approved fidget tools. A good fidget is one that does not make sound and does not take any brain um, you know, capacity to use. So uh things like um exercise bands on the chair can be super helpful. They can, you know, like the resistance bands, because their feet are under the desk. It's not bothering anyone, it doesn't make sound, but they can like bounce their feet, they can kick the resistance band. That's really, really good. Um, the quiet spinning rings, so textured bands can be helpful. Um, stress balls, you know, just like the needos are a big one. I actually have one that my a squishy that my daughter made. You know, you can make these squishies, these are good. Um, oh, I have another, I have fidgets all over my desk. Here's one. This one makes noise though, but would not be helpful in the classroom. We don't want them to make noise. Um, so yeah, fidgets that are that satisfy the sensory motor needs with visual, without visual distraction. We don't want to visually distract what's going on. Like I said, resistance bands, standing desks, or wobble seats can be helpful, and then doodling. Let your kids doodle, let your students doodle. Or, like I was saying in the car, if you just have a notebook and pens, letting them doodle during listening tasks, their brains are still listening while they're doodling. And research actually suggests that doodling can improve recall in children who need sensitive input to maintain. So actually, doodling is really, really helpful for these kiddos. Especially, I know our teachers are so stressed about testing and all of that stuff. Well, if you want them to do it on the test, let's go. Okay. So number five is novelty engineering. So harnessing the dopamine architecture rather than fighting it. ADHD brains are dopamine deficient. They that's the fuel, right? That is they just don't have enough fuel there. They need this stimulation to help feel regulated. Novelty is really, really big here that can help them. So new experiences trigger a reliable dopamine release that temporarily normalizes motivation, attention, and motor regulation. This is not a quirk, it's actually a biological mechanism that can be deliberately leveraged. Let's leverage it while we can. So if we got a kiddo that's hyper, can't sit still, right? Things like doing their homework. If you can rotate the physical location of the desk, so you know, maybe you normally do it at the table. Today's one of those days that you're like, this is not happening. Take it out back. Let them, you know, go sit out back and do it, or sit on the front porch and do it, go to a park and do it. That can increase novelty and change, you know, just build some of that dopamine because it's different. Use novel physical formats for the same task. So we do this in my house. So for spelling, I will actually let my daughter on days that she is like, I don't want to do my spelling, right? Um, I will let her use dry erase markers on the windows because it comes off just fine. It doesn't do anything, and it makes it so she will do her homework. It's novel, it's fun, it increases that dopamine. Introduce challenge versions of familiar activities. So when engagement drops, make it a challenge. Can you beat your own record? Uh, try it with your non-dominant hand. These are all super simple ways that we can um increase dopamine and reduce the hyperactivity. And then switch task types every 10 to 15 minutes rather than trying to push them through decreasing engagement. And I will say 10 to 15 minutes, that may be too long for your kiddo. Depending on their age, it may need to be sooner. So being able to switch tasks, maybe come back. You know, if you have 20, 15, 20 minutes of reading, well, maybe we only do five, five, and five, and five, depending on if it's 15 or 20, throughout the night instead of trying to do all 20 at once. When we can teach our kiddos how to manage this deliberately, it becomes a regulation tool for them. So when we can teach them, you know, to fidget or to rotate where they're doing their homework or increase, decreasing the time they're doing it, and then having something in between, we can teach them to regulate their own need for movement and hyperactivity. So those are some strategies that you can try when your kiddos hyper. And again, we do not want to be stuck in the conventional model as hyperactivity is a behavior problem that we need to suppress with consequences and making them compliant and still. We are now looking at hyperactivity as a nervous system signal that it needs input, and we need to find and meet that underlying sensory neurochemical need. Don't forget, pinch is a really, really good way to help with this. So I'm gonna repeat it again. Pinch is the passion or play, interest, novelty, competition or connection, and hurry. So we want to make it urgent. Make things like hurry, speed up, make it a race. So there you go. There's some practical tips to help your kiddo when they are hyper, help bring down that hyperactivity calm back to your home.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

Alright, I will see you next time.

Brian Bradford 29:27

Thanks so much for joining us for today's conversation on raising ADHD. Remember, raising ADHD kids doesn't have to feel overwhelming. Small shifts can make a big difference. If you found this episode helpful, it would mean the world if you would hit subscribe, if you would leave a review, or if you shared it with another parent or teacher who needs this support. And don't forget to join us next week for more real talk, practical tips, and encouragement. Until then, you've got this, and we've got your back.