The Mini ADHD Coach. Tools and Support to Make Life Easier. A Visual Guide. A. Gendron. 2023. Chronic Prism. 202 real pages and 5 sections. $21.95. Amazon Link.
The punchline: The Mini ADHD Coach is one of the few Adult ADHD books that someone with Adult ADHD can use and enjoy. However, it was written by a French author with Adult ADHD who tries to make the content relevant to an international audience. You might find it worth checking out.
I'm not a fan of most of the books available for adults with ADHD. They seem to be written for people who don't have ADHD. However, Alice Gedron's The Mini ADHD Coach is a well organized and accessible book, with content broken into easy-to-digest pieces. It's tied to her website/platform (www.theminiadhdcoach.com), which s highly monetized and contains a significant number of advertisements on it (you've been warned!). Gedron writes from the perspective of lived experience.
The layout of The Mini ADHD Coach is well organized, with each chapter’s pages set in a different color. This makes it easy for someone with ADHD to find content. Some of the technical information is too general because it is written to be read by English readers from all over the world. This is most noticeable in the section relating to diagnosis.
In terms of organization, The Mini ADHD Coach begins with a few pages explaining ADHD, including the primary symptoms, as well as the different ADHD types (Inattentive, hyperactive/impulsive, and combined). It also comments on the old term ADD and briefly discusses working memory and executive function.
There is a brief section on how ADHD is diagnosed, that incorrectly suggests that diagnosis is primarily done by psychiatrists. In California, diagnosis can be made by physicians, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, neuropsychologists, and clinicians with MFT licenses. This is followed by a section that thoughtfully considers what happens after receiving a diagnosis, including the need to process feelings that arise after getting one.
The bulk of the book is devoted to a section called "A Day with ADHD." There are 25 parts (.e.g, "paperwork") and each section is divided into "My experience" and "My advice." Here you will find some tips that relate to the exact daily situation. The reader can flip to any section to get help without having to read the entire book.
The final section includes 16 tips, some of which I advise my clients. She refers to these as ADHD Hacks. Some ADHD Hacks are more useful than others.
One of the hacks she mentions is to use reminders. Some of the people I see already use reminders to some degree and we work to try to use them more regularly. This is a useful hack for adults with ADHD.
A less useful hack is to color code, to sort items like books, foods, and clothing by color. This can also be used to create organization, like using red for urgent matters. In practice, most of the people that I work with have trouble integrating color coding into their lives. If you haven't started to do this, my guess is that you are not likely to start doing it now.
The MIni ADHD Coach is a pretty good book for those with adult ADHD. If you want to spare $20, with a little effort you can find all of the information inside of it online and at no cost.
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