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let's get started. Welcome everyone to the Autism-A-D podcast.. Today I'm talking about the overlap between autism and ADHD, because they do have some things in common. I'm going to talk about those things that they have in common and also the reasons behind them. So first, let's take a look at attention and focus.

Children with ADHD often struggle to focus and maintain that attention,

especially on tasks that are not very interesting to them and not very stimulating.

And that's why a child may have a hard time

focusing in a boring class and they could sit forever in front of a stimulating video game,

right? Very different situations. So kids with ADHD can get easily distracted by things that

happen around them in their environment, but even more so, they can get distracted by their

own thoughts. They may be thinking of something that you told them and then bam, it's gone

because they're thinking about something else and then that

might be gone again in a moment because then they're going to think about something that may be

related or not. And autistic children, attention can be kind of tough to you. And it's often because

they are super focused on something specific, almost to the point of tunnel vision,

which may be different than what we're asking them to focus on.

Again, it may be due to this hyper focus on this specific interest or an attention can be because they're overwhelmed by some sensory details

in their environment, which is making it hard for them to pay attention.

So for example, if an autistic child is sitting in class and we expect them to be listening

and doing their work, but they're having a hard time

paying attention because their clothing is so uncomfortable or the hum of the lights

is really distracting for them.

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