Penn and Kim Holderness are well known for their viral videos on topics from the pandemic to parenting as well as their podcast covering range of topics including ADHD—the subject of their new book, ADHD Is Awesome (Harper Horizon). Penn and Kim sat down with us to talk about their book, the challenges ADHD adds as well as how it has enriched their lives, their Amazing Race Win, one of their favorite videos and more.
Newsweek _ What made you want to write this book?
Penn Holderness _ You write the book you need. I knew that I needed to write this book when I saw that raising a family added a new level of difficulty to my brain being able to handle multiple tasks at once. I felt myself letting people down around me.
What's it like parenting a child with ADHD while having it yourself?
P _ It depends on how many things are going on at the same time. When I was first looking after my daughter, I was the stay-at-home dad. And the way that the ADHD brain works is if there's something that's new and challenging and you have personal interest [in it], we're very, very good at that. It's sort of the central tenet of hyperfocus, this ability to—if you can block everything else out, you can be spectacular at your life.
But sometimes stuff that should be really easy, like listening to your kid when they're talking about their day and trying to drive at the same time, can be difficult. You never want your kids to think that you don't care about them. But sometimes I see the disappointment in my kids' faces when they know that I didn't get to the end of their sentence.
For someone who does have ADHD, your emotional reaction is probably even more intense.
P _ We ADHDers are really good at being ashamed. Understanding what it is is so important, so you can say, "OK, that wasn't me, that was my brain." It's an explanation. It's not an excuse. Then once you get past all of that, what's left is kind of a cool brain.
You have one child with ADHD, one without. It's hard to manage people with special needs. How do you balance that?
Kim Holderness _ As a partner, he's a grown man, he has got to make his list, he has to put his systems in place. I can't do that for him. But I can be supportive. And he can raise the red flag and say, "I'm redlining my executive functioning today." I got your back.
As a parent, I do feel more responsible. I have to work with my kid on it. And some days, I feel like I'm failing. Because there is so much repetition required. But now I understand that that brain just sort of requires it. Some days it's really hard. But the ADHD brain is just pure magic and creativity. Like fireworks and unicorns inside there, it is so much fun. Some days, I'm like, "Thank God these brains are wired this way."
You present having ADHD with all kinds of funny aspects. How has it benefited your career?
P _ I've actually sought out jobs that are ADHD-friendly. I went into working in live news television, where you have deadlines every day. And you've got to beat the clock. It allows you to throw away all of your other distractions and have one task. And then this wonderful thing was invented called social media, where you are literally able to present forms of entertainment to people sometimes as short as six seconds at a time. That is nirvana for an ADHD creator.
How do you deal with the toxicity of social media?
K _ You are missing the beauty of social media if you're not reading comments. To me, it's a conversation. I love that I recognize people's names in the comment section when it's on our page. That's why I say I don't love it when things go like crazy viral, because then somebody else has put them on their page and I don't know who that audience is, and then they don't know anything about us. I take that stuff super personally. I wish I didn't. Social media has been so good to us. But there are moments where I definitely want to log out, have somebody change the password and not tell me.
Are there any videos that you've done that stand out to you particularly as your favorites?
P _ We're proud of a lot of the stuff that we did. I liked the one we did about the Hamilton mashup. We wrote that very quickly.
K _ In about 12 minutes, he wrote that. And [we] shot it in an hour and posted it.
At the very beginning of the pandemic, you started filming The Amazing Race. For someone with ADHD, I feel like traveling is a whole other world of complications, right?
P _ I think that ADHD was more of an asset than a hindrance. It's the reason we won. They take your phones away. For me it was heaven because I didn't have distractions. I had very direct tasks in front of me.
What do you ultimately hope people take from the book?
P _ You're not broken. You're not alone. There's no reason to be ashamed. Your brain is not weird. It's wonderful, incredibly creative. The name is terrible. It's not a deficit of attention. It's an abundance of attention. All you have to do is learn more about what it is, take that knowledge and use it to build systems to minimize where you get in trouble. And what's left is spectacular.
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Periscope U.S.
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