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Jeremy Didier, LSCSW, and Kristen Stuppy, MD, discuss the history and evolution of the ADHD KC chapter, asking for your input to learn what your needs are. We’d love to hear your comments - message kristen@adhdkc.org and we’ll take everything into consideration!
We start this episode with Jeremy sharing how the chapter started after her son was diagnosed with ADHD and she felt the need for support and connection with other parents facing similar challenges.
The conversations continues as we talk about the different support groups and programs that ADHDKC offers, including parent groups, adult groups, women's groups, and teen groups. We talk about the challenges of organizing in-person meetings and the impact of the pandemic had on our organization as we work to build back up the momentum we had pre-pandemic.
We also talk about the challenges of communication and finding the right balance of emails and social media posts to keep members informed. Again, we want your feedback so we know how to best reach you!
AI Generated Transcript
Excuse the errors…
Kristen Stuppy, MD (00:02.445)
Well, hello, everyone. I am Kristen Stuppy, and I'm super excited for those of you who are going to be joining my very good friend, Jeremy Didier and I, as we talk about the history of ADHD KC. And I want Jeremy to start off. She is the one that came up with starting a local CHADD chapter. So kind of tell us where you arrived at that.
Jeremy Didier (00:10.286)
Thank you.
Jeremy Didier (00:23.47)
Yeah, absolutely. Kristen thank you so much for putting this together. And Kristen always says that I'm the one who started everything, but that's not entirely true. Kristen has certainly been involved ever since the beginning. But I'll talk a little bit about why I started it, and then we can kind of go from there. Gosh, we were just talking. It's been, what, 12 years now since we started ADHDKC. It seems like not that long ago and like longer ago, actually, the more that I think about it.
Gosh, so let's see. Our son Theo was our first child to be diagnosed with ADHD. And he was like three, almost four, I think, when he was diagnosed. And he's 20 now. So if you do the math, we didn't necessarily start our ADHD KC journey right when he was diagnosed. It took a couple of years. But as a mom with three young kids at the time, almost four, and one kid who behaved very differently from his peers. And.
from his siblings and from, you know, most people that I knew, their kids were not doing the same things that Theo was doing at home. And, you know, he he the classic ADHD presentation. I mean, like ran out into streets, jumped out of trees. Absolutely no fear, no regard for his safety or anyone else's. And, you know, we were a little freaked out, I'll be honest. He was a pretty physical kid too. And I just needed people to talk to. You know, I found CHADD online,
which, gosh, when I think back to what the internet looked like, that was probably 14 or 15 years ago. And they said you could start a CHADD chapter if you wanted to have a parent support group. And our, I guess, psychologist at the time, Carla Allen, who was at Children's Mercy's ADHD clinic, had also recommended that we do something called the Summer Treatment Program with Theo. And she had talked about CHADD as well and what a benefit it had been for some of the families that she'd worked with in Florida.
And ironically, Florida is where CHADD started. And that was, you know, it was started by a group of parents just sitting around the kitchen table who wanted to advocate for their kids who had ADHD and thought they'd just start a group. And, you know, it's grown into this incredibly influential nonprofit organization that we know today. But from my perspective, the best thing about CHADD is, you know, the local chapters and the local community. And,
Jeremy Didier (02:41.55)
I needed other people to talk to and I tell Kristen this and I'm not embarrassed about it. You know, it was purely self -serving. I needed to know that there were other people who had, you know, things going on in their house that looked something like what was going on in my house because I was feeling like a really bad mom. And I knew I didn't know what I was doing, but I wanted to learn. You know, I wanted to figure out how to do things differently. And I also wanted to know that there were other people who were learning as well.
as well as talking to people who had kind of been there, done that, you know, so to know that things could get better and likely would get better and, you know, what helped those things get better. And so, you know, it turned out there wasn't a CHADD chapter or really any kind of ADHD support at the time in Kansas City. There had been one. I think they had kind of stopped meeting maybe five or so years before we started. And so we were just fortunate that we were in the right place at the right time. And,
My good friend, Kristen, who was also our pediatrician at the time and does not have ADHD, was kind enough to come and help out. And then I don't know why, how we convinced her to keep coming back, but she did. And so that was the beginning. You know, we we off running it as a business really, because nobody in Kansas City knew what CHADD- Who's CHADD? What's CHADD?
So we thought if we called it like ADHDKC, you know, Kansas City's CHADD chapter, then we could kind of, you know, spread the word and we set up our own stuff. And the great thing about CHADD at the time was that, you know, they gave you some support in terms of chapter creation and how you ran it. But you could also kind of do not whatever you wanted, but you had a lot of flexibility. And so that was great. And we had, we started meeting in libraries, you know, kind of like around the kitchen table sort of thing. And.
trying to figure out if we wanted it to be like a true support group or if we wanted it to be like a psychoeducational group or have speakers come and talk about things. And we tried a bunch of different things, I think, over the years. We started out just having the parent group, right? And then it just grew from there. Do you want to take it from there and talk about what happened after, as we kind of got bigger and added on more groups?
Kristen Stuppy, MD (04:48.077)
Right?
Kristen Stuppy, MD (04:56.653)
Well, the parent group has remained very similar in structure where we have a speaker who introduces a topic, talks about it, and the people who are there can also talk and ask questions and identify with other people, find their tribe kind of stuff. And then we also, we had people who wanted to talk just among adults and women specifically. So we've started an adults group for adults and their partners with ADHD and a women's group.
Jeremy Didier (05:13.55)
Mm -hmm.
Jeremy Didier (05:18.766)
Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (05:25.006)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (05:26.317)
Those are structured very different than the parent group. Those are structured with a moderator who is either a coach or a therapist, psychologist, and they have a topic to talk about, but the people in the group talk about those things. And those groups have been very popular. They had to stop when everything shut down with the pandemic because they were small groups live. Originally the person leading was meeting in a
Jeremy Didier (05:29.71)
Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (05:43.758)
Mm -hmm.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (05:55.629)
church room and that has never resumed. But we've had others, different moderators who do different things and each group kind of takes its own little flavor. But those have been very popular. And then I have been involved with the teen group when actually, Jeremy, in a minute you can talk about the Midwest ADHD Conference. The original one. When that was happening, we introduced the teen group.
Jeremy Didier (06:05.87)
Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (06:11.119)
Mm -hmm.
Jeremy Didier (06:15.566)
The original one. Yep.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (06:24.333)
that was for middle school, high schoolers. And this was something that both of us having children who were at the time teens, my daughter really wanted a teen group. She saw how active I was with the CHADD chapter and how I talked about it helping parents. And she's like, kids need this, teens need this. They want this kind of information for themselves. So,
Jeremy Didier (06:32.078)
Yes. You grow well.
Jeremy Didier (06:49.742)
Mm -hmm.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (06:51.309)
we introduced that with a panel of teens ranging from a middle schooler all the way through an upcoming or just recent graduate from high school. So that panel was great to have those kids talk about themselves growing up and learning about ADHD from their perspective. And parents could ask questions at that conference. And then from that, we started the teen group, which is for middle school, high school kids.
Jeremy Didier (07:00.782)
Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (07:12.686)
Absolutely.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (07:21.165)
And initially that was set up similar to the parent group. And it was even at the same place, which I think we were at St. Joe's hospital at the time when that started, but we had two different rooms. The parents were in the bigger room and the teen group was in a room and we had a speaker lead it. Sometimes it was an activity where one time we did mindfulness. One time we did sensory things. We've done all kinds of different things where they could learn skills and that.
Jeremy Didier (07:21.646)
Okay.
Jeremy Didier (07:31.022)
Yup.
Jeremy Didier (07:45.198)
Mm -hmm.
Jeremy Didier (07:49.742)
I'm gonna go to bed.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (07:50.541)
also was very popular. And when the pandemic happened, the parent group and the teen group, the adults group, the women's group, all of them had to shut down. And...
Jeremy Didier (08:00.622)
Yeah.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (08:03.149)
you and I worked very hard to keep at least the parent and teen groups still going. So still recruiting speakers and having Zoom, which at the beginning, everybody really appreciated the Zoom. That was very popular. I think that fell out of favor. And when things started opening up, because I do a lot of the emails from our people.
Jeremy Didier (08:05.39)
What you did.
Jeremy Didier (08:18.766)
Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (08:30.286)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (08:30.893)
I was getting lots of requests to get back into in -person events. It took us a while, but we had lots of interest and I was excited to get back into it, hesitant in other ways, but excited to get back into it. And it's just never grown. I mean, our audiences have been, I don't know, maybe up to 50 people when we were having pre -pandemic, you think?
Jeremy Didier (08:33.87)
Yeah. Mm -hmm. Yep.
Jeremy Didier (08:51.538)
Yeah, depending on the topic and the speaker, I think it was rare to have a meeting where we had certainly fewer than 15 people, but we've had meetings where we had as many as like 75 or 100.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (09:00.205)
Right.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (09:03.917)
Yeah. So I think people got a lot out of that from going. And I think lives have shifted since then. We've gotten back into things, but I think we've just dove in and everybody is again over scheduled and it's just hard.
Jeremy Didier (09:08.206)
Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (09:12.43)
Mm -hmm.
Jeremy Didier (09:19.126)
And I think, I mean, this is like a common challenge. I think, you know, know, we have like CHADD CHADD meetings, everybody talks about, you know, how is it going in person? And, you know, I think most, not just CHADD chapters, I think lots of, you know, support groups or organizations like ours are, you know, challenged to get people to come in person just because, you know, lives are busy. You have kids who have some special needs, you know, they have the neurodiversities and...
That means that life can be a little up and down. It's hard to be consistent sometimes. If someone's having a meltdown or a bad day, some days you just can't do it. And more often than not, I think people come to us when they're in crisis. And once things kind of even out and you get a little more stable at home, on the one hand, maybe that makes better sense then to start.
me coming in person. But more often than not, people are like, okay, now I can do like fun things. And so that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be able to come in person to the support groups then either. So I don't know, I think it's important to keep the in -person option out there. I think it's you get something different out of being there in person and, you know, connecting with other people who are going through what you're going through. There's
nothing quite like that. But I'm also a person who signs up for webinars knowing I can't attend the actual webinar, but wanting to watch the recording later. And so do I ever actually watch the recording? Not very often, but I like knowing it's there. In case I want to.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (10:48.461)
we do have people who actually watch, because we can track that. We can track how many views. And people do watch the recorded sessions that we have continued to keep offering. So I do know the word's getting out there. But I guess what I'd like in part from this session is to hear from people how they would like to learn. And I don't know if there are any comments coming up at all yet. I don't see them.
Jeremy Didier (10:51.99)
that's true.
Jeremy Didier (10:56.142)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (11:12.846)
I don't see any right now, but I'm checking the CHADD on my phone to see if anybody's posted anything. So if you're watching live, please go ahead and post a question in the comment section and we'll be happy to answer it. And if for some reason you're watching us recorded, shoot us an email or message us through the Facebook portal or through Instagram or send us an email at which email do you want to use, Kristen, the ADHDKC one or the teen one? Pick an ADHDKC one.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (11:39.693)
The ADHDKC one is fine she can't see
Jeremy Didier (11:42.318)
Yeah, email us and we'll get right back to you if you have a recommendation.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (11:46.477)
If you're a member of our newsletter. When we send out newsletters, you can reply to that. And it goes to me as well. That's maybe an easy way or from our website, adhdkc .org, which is probably the easiest one to find. You can comment or send a question through that on the comments.
Jeremy Didier (11:52.11)
Yeah, that's perfect.
Jeremy Didier (11:59.406)
Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (12:03.374)
Yeah, that would be great because we'd love feedback. I mean, good, bad, you know, suggestions, recommendations, you know, because we have been doing this a while. And I mean, you see young kids all the time because of what you do for work. But our kids are older now. And so there may be some things out there that we're unaware of that that we would like to that you would like us to incorporate that we may not have known was a thing. So definitely let us know. I think we get a lot of questions about when the meetings are, where the meetings are.
you know, and suggestions over time about where we can have the meetings and what nights and what days to have the meetings. And we're generally open to moving things around. But like you said, it's hard if we move the meeting to a different location and then no one shows up. You know, so for a while there, I think we kind of scheduled things that were convenient for us because this is not a paid gig. We do this on a purely volunteer basis and we both have day jobs. And so, yeah.
We try to do the things that we hope are going to reach the most people. But ultimately, if reaching the most people also involves the place that's closest to our houses and works for us, sometimes we're going to err on that side too. But we have an incredible professional advisory board. I think that's been one of the really great things about our group is that so many clinicians and educators and even people in law enforcement and attorneys and
You know, all walks of life are passionate about helping other people with ADHD, whether they have ADHD themselves or they have kids with ADHD or they, you know, their job is working with people who have ADHD. Our professional advisory board has been just incredible at helping us spread the word and also being, you know, amazing speakers and, you know, volunteering to staff different locations when we have meetings, because it does take, you know, it's not just us, you know, we.
There's the speaker and then someone needs to greet people. And so we're always looking for volunteers. So if you're interested in volunteering at a meeting, definitely let us know that as well. Let's see. What am I missing? ADHD coverage? Go ahead.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (14:07.541)
Well, you brought up that we're going to try to branch out and try different locations because we have been so fortunate to have Horizon Academy who has allowed us to use two of their rooms every time we meet there. They do not charge us, which is fantastic. It does require one of their staff to stay there late and help keep the doors open. It's not a super convenient place. It's not off a highway. It's
Jeremy Didier (14:21.226)
Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (14:26.51)
Yes.
Mm -hmm. Yep.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (14:36.269)
It's not convenient for many people. It is fairly central in the Kansas City area. More north than where I live, but it's closer to where other people live. So we've struggled with getting attendance there though. So we're going to try something new in August.
Jeremy Didier (14:37.966)
Mm -hmm.
Jeremy Didier (14:41.774)
Yeah, it's not easy to get to. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Didier (14:56.27)
Yeah, I'm excited. We're going to try a new location, right?
Kristen Stuppy, MD (14:59.149)
try a new location. And so we'll see how that works. And, you know, when we used to move around with libraries, we would get to different places around similar areas, but different libraries to hit different areas. I guess zip codes to get closer to different people. Those are hard to schedule. You can only schedule three months in advance and getting two rooms at the same time to do the teen and the parent was difficult.
Jeremy Didier (15:00.91)
See how that goes. Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (15:11.278)
Mm -hmm.
Jeremy Didier (15:16.558)
Congratulations. Yeah. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Jeremy Didier (15:28.366)
Right. And I think.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (15:29.293)
So that's when I think Horizon started being used. When we really started wanting the...
Jeremy Didier (15:33.262)
Yeah, and they've been so gracious. And I mean, that's, you know, their student population is our community. And so it's a lovely, you know, we kind of dovetail together, I think, quite nicely, because we have very similar missions and similar passions. And yeah, we can't thank them enough for everything that they've done to help ADHD, KC be successful. And, you know, if you ever, yeah, they're just, they're phenomenal. You know, St. Joe was great when we were meeting at St. Joe Hospital, because it was, you know, kind of
kind of centrally located, but also really easy on, easy off the highway. And they were letting us be there free for a while, but then, you know, like many places, they have to start charging for the meeting rooms. I think more people were vying over that place. And so that makes sense, but you know, we're a nonprofit. We don't really have much money. And so we have a very, very little bit.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (16:23.437)
You can come for free though. You can come to all of our events for free.
Jeremy Didier (16:27.15)
free, yes. Although we do encourage you to be a CHADD member because becoming, you know, over 50 % of your CHADD membership fee comes back to the chapter. So if you identify, you know, ADHDKC as your local CHADD chapter, we actually get half of that feedback and we can put it towards programming or put it towards events or put it towards, you know, maybe staffing, I don't know, having a paid volunteer at some point or having snacks or water bottles or.
you know, additional maybe Instagram ads or Facebook ads or, you know, some way to.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (16:58.829)
for a scholarship to go to the national job meeting. We've talked about.
Jeremy Didier (17:01.934)
better scholarships to go to the National CHADD Meeting, which I just have to plug really quickly because if you're not aware, and I'm super excited about it, at the 88, it's the International Conference on ADHD because it's not just CHADD anymore. We've joined forces with with ADA, which is ADHD, the ADHD Organization for Adults, and ACO, which is the ADHD coaching organization to create one big, fabulous conference. And it's in Anaheim this year, in November. And our, you know, our keynote speaker, the
The one that I'm most excited about is Penn Holderness, the Holderness family that you see on, you know, he's everywhere. They're hilarious. And we just, I'm so, so excited. And then Kansas City's very own Sasha Hamdani is going to be there. People don't realize that she's here in Kansas City, but she's written a very famous book, has a huge following on social media last year or the year before she was CHADD's, you know, up and coming, you know, influencer of the year and just a phenomenal physician.
And then is it Kojo, Dr. Kojo? I'm not as familiar with him, but he's our third keynote presenter and he'll be there as well. So lots of incredible information. If you've never been to an ADHD conference, they are, there's nothing quite like it being around people where most everyone has ADHD. And you always make, you know, fast friends and you always come away with something that you didn't know before. And just a great time all around. And Early Bird registration opened, I think just last week and.
end of last week and early bird pricing goes I believe until the end of July or maybe even the beginning of August so now's the time to sign up because it's much cheaper. So that was my plug for that.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (18:38.669)
That is awesome. I have been to only one CHADD conference, but it was amazing. There were so many talks. It was almost hard to choose which talk to attend at any given time. It was amazing. You will learn something if you were able to go.
Jeremy Didier (18:48.846)
Yeah, it can be overwhelming.
Jeremy Didier (18:55.47)
Yeah, without a doubt. And the reason Kristen went to that one was because that was one of the ones where we won an award, right? Didn't we win chapter? Yep. Chapter of the year. Yep. Well, I mean, you know, it was a good reason. Yeah.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (19:02.541)
This is true, yes. I didn't just go because of the award, but it was certainly a good motivator. Sometimes we need that motivator to get actually to something.
Jeremy Didier (19:16.718)
Family stuff. But I'll be there.
Jeremy Didier (19:26.318)
Ew. Yes, I know more than I need to know.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (19:30.189)
So in the 12 years that ADHDKC has been a chapter, she has been amazing at leading this chapter and not just this chapter, but also in the national level, really making some changes.
Jeremy Didier (19:42.574)
I appreciate that. Thank you for saying that, but I mean it. I mean, this has been more than a 50 -50 gig, you know, the entire time. I mean, you know, there was almost three years there where I went back and got my masters and Kristen pretty much ran the whole show. And I don't, you know, any of the marketing that you see from ADHDKC, any of the newsletters, the emails, our website, all of that is done by Kristen. And, you know, you're, I mean, I say it all the time. Is there anything you can't do? You're like, you have this very busy, like,
pediatric practice and by day and then by night you're like, you know, doing webinars and, you know, creating programming for various organizations and then these just gorgeous marketing pieces for our social media and for all of our followers. I mean, I can't thank you enough for everything that you've done. It truly has been a joint effort. There's never been a time where it's been just me for sure. You've been there the whole time. We maybe do things at different levels and I think we compliment each other well. But.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (20:39.373)
I was just gonna say we balance each other out and complement each other very well. So.
Jeremy Didier (20:43.342)
We do. Yeah. People say, how are you guys so successful? And I say, you have to have one partner that has ADHD and one that doesn't. I don't think you have it. I know I really don't. We all have symptoms sometimes, but yeah, I mean, I think it'd be.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (20:51.501)
I've never been diagnosed, but I don't think I do either. But I am certainly, I see from my practice what people truly go through when they have ADHD and what my child went through growing up with ADHD. The little brain episodes that I have sometimes, I don't think of ADHD.
Jeremy Didier (21:11.658)
Right.
Jeremy Didier (21:20.686)
Yeah.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (21:21.357)
I do love helping people. And one of the reasons that I got involved so much with ADHD is of course, because as a parent of a child with ADHD, I realized that the stuff I learned in medical school wasn't all that she needed. She could take her medicine from her pediatrician, but that wasn't it. I needed support. I needed tips. And actually at the Midwest Conference that we need to get back to, I saw...
Jeremy Didier (21:38.094)
Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (21:43.182)
Mm -hmm.
Jeremy Didier (21:48.526)
yeah. Good.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (21:49.997)
I think that was the first time I saw Elaine and Diane talk from Impact Parents and what they said made such an impact on me as a parent, but then also helped me as a pediatrician, advise my patients and their parents a little differently. So these can be impactful even for people who know a little something. We can always learn a little something more. And so I think that's fantastic. But I don't know, do you want to talk about that Midwest Conference? Because that was a big deal.
Jeremy Didier (22:05.774)
Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (22:12.526)
Absolutely. Yeah. I mentioned. Yeah, I will, but I just remembered Elaine, actually, Taylor Klaus reached out to me on email last week and was like, it's been a long time since Diane and I have come to Kansas City. We'd like to come and.
you know, speak for ADHD KC sometime in 2025, if you're open to it. And I was like, are you kidding me? You guys are coming to town. Heck yeah. Let me know when you want to come. So we'll definitely promote the heck out of that. Cause if you, if you're not familiar with Impact Parents and formerly Impact ADHD, they are ADHD parent coaches and they just, they do a phenomenal job. And while we were, we're, we're CHADD, we can't endorse or recommend or, you know, say that we.
prefer one program over another. I can't step back a little bit and just give you their history and tell you how influential I think they've been in terms of shaping parent training, which is one of the recommendations when your kid is diagnosed with ADHD, particularly if they're young, is to go through some parent behavior training, because it's awful hard to train five -year -olds. I think it's a lot easier to train.
Trained parents. And they were one of the first, you know, really, I think pioneers in ADHD parent coaching. So if you get the opportunity to hear them, I highly encourage you to do so. But yeah, gosh, the Midwest ADHD Conference, what an incredible accomplishment that was. You know, looking back, I can't, I really can't believe we pulled it off. The late Chris Dendy was hugely instrumental in putting that together because her good friend Russ Barkley was,
really, really who we wanted to come and talk. And she gave him a call and said, hey, my friend Jeremy in Kansas wants you to come and talk to her ADHDKC group. And he agreed to come and do like two days of presentations. And the data that we talk about now about people with ADHD having a decreased life expectancy of up to 13 years, not many people realize this, but he shared that for the first time he released that data was at our conference.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (24:18.381)
I did not know that.
Jeremy Didier (24:18.638)
it later on a much grander scale, like at the ADHD conference in the fall and at APSAR. But the original Midwest ADHD conference was where he first released it. And yeah, it just kind of gives gives chills to think about because it was such a great conference. We had Christendi Chris Dendy and Elaine and Diane came and Alan Brown, and we had a few other people that came and presented.
just it was like all the planets aligned, we were able to offer CEUs. And I think it was like a year after that, that CHADD received a grant from the CDC to put together regional centers so that, you know, one to reach underserved areas, you know, and provide better access to information about ADHD and providers with ADHD, but also to kind of help streamline the chapter structure. And so, you know, we talked about doing it again and, you know, maybe every two or three years and, you know,
The Midwest region was actually the first region that was formed for CHADD. And they're like, we'll do a true Midwest ADHD conference. And so the past couple of years, the Midwest ADHD conference has been in Iowa. But they're going to move it around, I think, coming up. So we haven't gotten to do anything nearly quite as grand as we did then. But wow, that was such a great, great conference, wasn't it?
Kristen Stuppy, MD (25:42.317)
That was, it was amazing. And for it all to be here made it easy and we had, I don't know how many people there, but just the knowledge shared that weekend was amazing.
Jeremy Didier (25:50.99)
hundreds.
Jeremy Didier (25:54.926)
It was, yeah. I want to say, you know, I'm bad with the numbers and the visuals. It was more than 500 people, I want to say, that attended. But in my mind, it was like 5 ,000. It just seemed like it was a lot. We did, yeah. The Overland Park Convention Center was really, really great about, yeah. You know, we need to add lunch because I need food. So.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (26:08.205)
We filled a good conference room. That was, that was.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (26:19.277)
But with these regional chapters now, or regional groups, there is a lot of talk about sharing speakers. So because so many things are online, when we have our talks, we invite other local, or not local, but other Midwest chapters to join in, invite their members. And then we are also inviting our members to their chapter meetings that are available online. And that's...
Jeremy Didier (26:23.79)
Regional Center.
Jeremy Didier (26:27.694)
resources. Yes.
you
Jeremy Didier (26:45.261)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (26:47.085)
of our special events page. All of the chapters are now listed out there and some of them aren't even in our region but in California or other places where they've invited anyone because with Zoom you can join from anywhere. It might not be an ideal time zone for you but you can enjoy. So.
Jeremy Didier (26:54.67)
Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (27:00.654)
Anywhere. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because one of the things that, you know, like, I love getting emails from other chapters about the things that they're doing. And I'm like, I want to go to that. I want to go to that. But then I forget. And so I know one of the things that we wanted to talk about was like, how often do people want to get notified about things? You're like, no one likes to get multiple emails, you know, weekly or daily, but I don't know, maybe if we have like a special
Personally, I know I need reminders and like I'm an adult with ADHD and while I know ADHD looks different in everyone, my guess or my suspicion is that there are other adults out there with ADHD who do the same thing. They're like, I want to go to that. And then they get distracted and forget to sign up for it so that you really need like the follow -up email or two to kind of lock in and at least register even if you just want the recording. So I don't know. What do you think? Do you think that?
Most people, what's your impression in terms of what a good balance is for emails or communications? Text.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (28:05.229)
I'm not a marketing person. I'm a pediatrician. I just kind of jumped into this marketing thing. Well, but I don't really know the background of it. I have historically tried to keep it to one newsletter a month because I know people complain about too many emails. But when the water main broke for the women's group last month, we had to send out an emergency email and we had so many additional people sign up.
Jeremy Didier (28:08.654)
Yeah.
You're so good at it.
Jeremy Didier (28:16.526)
Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (28:22.958)
next.
Jeremy Didier (28:28.27)
yeah!
Yeah.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (28:34.669)
and show up to that meeting. So I'm wondering if we should send out this, you know, alert kind of messaging of each individual thing. So people will be getting more emails and I would like to hear from you guys, whether it's if you're here live listening or if you're watching recording, would that annoy you and have you unsubscribed from our newsletter? Because I don't want to lose subscribers if we're sending too many out.
Jeremy Didier (28:35.086)
Interesting.
Jeremy Didier (28:42.766)
I like that.
Mm -hmm.
Jeremy Didier (28:52.814)
Yes.
Jeremy Didier (28:58.734)
Yeah.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (29:02.093)
But since that Waterman break, I also sent one that following week for the adults group because I thought, hey, it worked for the women's group and the adults group still had chairs. So they had a few more people sign up. And so I'm thinking about trying it again for the July, actually the July parent and teen groups are meeting together. So, and yours truly is talking about mindfulness. I'm so pumped about mindfulness.
Jeremy Didier (29:02.542)
Right?
Jeremy Didier (29:12.566)
How about that?
Jeremy Didier (29:21.65)
Yes. And it's mindfulness. Super amazing. But most people with ADHD are like, there's no way in heck I can do a mindfulness thing. And I'm telling you, you can. And Kristen's presentation is absolutely phenomenal and it will convince you. Hugely helpful.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (29:37.549)
Well, yeah, it's actually been shown to be one of the things that can help you retrain your brain to focus again. That's what's so cool about it. It changes gray matter. It changes chromosomes. I mean, like it changes things, which blows my mind. So for those of you who want natural treatment, this is something that has evidence behind it that is completely natural and could be free if you just focus on breathing. But there are apps and things that you might have to pay for. So anyway, we'll talk about that in my talk. But I do want to hear from you guys.
Jeremy Didier (29:41.902)
Yes, neuroplasticity. Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (29:48.334)
It's amazing. Amazing. Yes. So cool.
Jeremy Didier (29:59.534)
Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (30:04.942)
Definitely.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (30:07.309)
how often would be too much where you would just like pull the cord and just unsubscribe because I don't want people to unsubscribe.
Jeremy Didier (30:13.998)
Right. Yeah. Do we have an option where, you know, some places you can like say, which, which emails or newsletters do you want to get? Do you want to get the monthly one? Do you want to get, you know, the, I don't know, women only one? So everybody gets like the monthly one, the big one. But then, you know, people get some subscribes to get different reminders for ones. You know, if you want to just get reminders for the adult group meeting or just reminders for the apparent group meeting, I don't know if we have that option yet.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (30:37.933)
I think in theory, Substack allows that. We are currently using Substack because it's free. We outgrew our MailChimp free. We have too many subscribers, which is a great thing. But again, we are offering a lot for very little money. The more people we have who actually join Chad, CHADD, guess the more money we will have. But historically, most of the people who come to our meetings and follow us are not official Chad CHADD So.
Jeremy Didier (30:53.582)
Yes.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (31:06.957)
We don't have a lot of funds, so paying for a newsletter that probably offers more bells and whistles is not necessarily on the table.
Jeremy Didier (31:07.31)
Which is fine. Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (31:15.566)
Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Good to know. Sometimes we have people make donations for specific things. So maybe that could happen. And one of the things that I've been looking into more, you know, at least in the national level is our grants, you know, and there's definitely some local Kansas City, Kansas, Missouri grants that are out there to support neuro inclusive spaces and education and workplaces. And so,
Kristen Stuppy, MD (31:16.781)
alone.
I think so.
Jeremy Didier (31:43.054)
Yeah, if anyone wants to volunteer to write a grant or apply for a grant for us, that would be a huge help. Or if you work for an organization that's just trying to give money away, we'd be happy to help you out there as well. That's right. Why not? Let's see. What haven't we touched on that you want to touch on? We're coming up on a little bit after the top of the hour.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (31:55.565)
Get that plug in there. Love it.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (32:05.149)
we are. I guess, where do people want us to focus our reminders? Do you prefer emails? Would you prefer one of the social media things? Currently, we have Facebook and Instagram. Our Twitter account has never really been very busy and I don't get on X anymore. Do people prefer other things? I don't see the two of us doing TikToks, so please don't recommend that one.
Jeremy Didier (32:11.246)
Mmm.
Jeremy Didier (32:31.726)
Never know. Our team group, right?
Kristen Stuppy, MD (32:33.965)
do the little dancing. Maybe. We currently don't have any teen leaders. That's one thing we used to have before the pandemic is we had teen leaders where teens who were motivated and wanted to help got service hours and helped us out setting up rooms. And we had one who did some of our social media graphic stuff because she was interested in graphic design. We have all kinds of opportunities if people would want to do something.
Jeremy Didier (32:41.102)
yeah.
Jeremy Didier (32:50.222)
Mm -hmm.
Jeremy Didier (32:58.798)
Yeah.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (33:02.893)
They can volunteer as teens or parents, adults, things like that.
Jeremy Didier (33:03.246)
Mm -hmm.
Right. And that's a great resume builder too. I mean, in addition to, you know, obviously getting the, you know, the feel good piece of it and getting, you know, more information about your, you know, your own ADHD and how it impacts your life. I mean, there are several other organizations and I wish we did this at CHADD. And in fact, that's another thing that I'm trying to get past is, you know, have like teen ambassadors, you know, where you go to the conference.
or you have a separate teen conference and it's all about reaching other teenagers with ADHD and talking about all the things that come up when you're in high school with ADHD and how your peers handle it and how your parents can help and what teachers can be doing better and differently to support you. And so, yeah, we'd love to have more teen volunteers and hopefully, since I am the CHADD president right now.
We're kind of uniquely positioned, I think, to be a beta site for the Teen Ambassador Program. So yeah, if you're interested or you're watching this and you have a teenager that's interested or a teenager that's not interested but that you would like to, you know, kick out of the house every now and then to pick up a volunteer gig, let us know and we can definitely figure out a way to make it worth their while because what a great experience. I wish I'd have even a fraction of the knowledge that I have.
I think our kids that are now adults, which is terrifying, would agree. A lot of the things that they learned about their own ADHD over the years, I think, if they'd had that information earlier or understood what that meant earlier or how to advocate for themselves earlier, it would have made a big difference.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (34:42.381)
There are studies that show that when people understand, they are much better at managing. So it's getting that information out there is what we want to do. We want to meet people where they are. So we want to hear physically where you would want us to hold meetings. And we would be interested. We can't obviously have it everywhere for every person. There are logistical things there, but we're willing to hear all of your thoughts about that.
Jeremy Didier (34:49.514)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (35:06.478)
Great.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (35:12.237)
When we send messaging out, how would you want us to send those messages? How many emails, how many social media posts, which social media platforms? Is there another way that we're not thinking about?
Jeremy Didier (35:25.486)
Text reminders, I mean, I don't know if a text reminder is something that might be helpful. Yeah, I don't know if we're set up to do that or how much it costs to have like a kind of a Robotext thing. One of the things we talked about in this, I mean, it sounds a little scary, but I think it's actually a great idea is having people commit to paying if they're gonna come in person. So let's say, it'll be a $30 charge on your credit card to come in person, but if you show up, we refund the charge to you.
So it's just kind of a way of making sure that people show up. You know, we don't want to take your money. I mean, we will, but we'd much rather have people come and, you know, hear the speaker, you know, and get their money back. But, you know, if that's...
Kristen Stuppy, MD (36:04.589)
It's really disheartening, I think. When people sign up, we might have a list of 10, 15 people. And once we only had one family show up, like one. And that was really dejecting, I think, for the speaker because she had prepared something that was interactive with multiple people and she couldn't really do that. And so if we're expecting a large group, it would be nice if a large group shows.
Jeremy Didier (36:10.702)
50 people. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (36:22.926)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, it was hard.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (36:33.293)
And then if nobody signs up because it's not the right date, time, location, then we know that and we cancel that. And that is much preferred. So if people put their money where their mouth is, I think that actually might help people remember to do it because it won't be an atrocious fee. It won't be $200, but it still won't be just, you know, a dollar. It'll be something. Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (36:33.582)
Yeah.
Jeremy Didier (36:37.806)
cancel it.
Jeremy Didier (36:50.67)
No, it wouldn't be like two bucks. Yeah. It'll be enough to where it'll, I mean, it'll sting a little bit to lose, you know, if you don't show up kind of thing, but not so much that, you know, it's outrageous. but that's, we haven't instituted that yet and that's just something that we're kind of kicking around, but I kind of love the idea. Cause for me as a person with ADHD, you know, five bucks, I probably will be like, it's five bucks, which.
It doesn't mean that I have like five bucks to lose. It just means it doesn't hurt as much, but like 30 bucks is, you know, at 30 bucks I'm not going to blow off, you know, several times probably.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (37:25.037)
And there would be an out. Like if something happens, you can cancel, but fine.
Jeremy Didier (37:26.958)
Yeah, if you can't come, cancel 24 hours ahead of time or something, or we'll figure it out. We haven't figured out those details yet, but I think, yeah, we'd love for you to be there. That's the key piece. We don't want to be charging people for it. We want you to come and hear the speaker, and we want our speakers to know that their time is being rewarded as well, because we don't pay our speakers, they're all volunteers also. And they do it for the same reasons that we do. They have a family member with ADHD, they have ADHD, or they're...
Occupation is ADHD connected and they just want to share what they know and help other people.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (38:02.989)
I just checked some comments and there aren't any. So either we're answering all your questions or people are gonna hopefully watch later and get us their thoughts on what all the things we talked about. So.
Jeremy Didier (38:03.662)
I know because we're answering all the questions.
Jeremy Didier (38:14.83)
That'd be great. Yeah. Cool. Kristen, thank you for putting this together. I think this has been great and hopefully very informative and helpful for people who are interested in either getting involved or learning more about ADHDKC or wanting to connect with us.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (38:29.773)
And if people can't tell, both Jeremy and I are super passionate about this. We want to help you. So let us know how we can help you.
Jeremy Didier (38:37.23)
Yes. Let us help you. Help us help you. All right. Thanks so much. Take care. Bye.
Kristen Stuppy, MD (38:43.885)
All right. Thank you. Bye -bye.