William Kirk

Your teenage son with ADHD has shut down, fallen behind, and pulled away. Nothing you've tried has really reached him.

I was that kid. ADHD, struggling through high school, barely getting by. I didn't get real support until the end, and treatment changed the trajectory of my life. I went from community college to the University of Florida, then to a Master of Social Work from Florida State.

My bachelor's in Education Sciences with a specialization in Educational Psychology means I understand how ADHD actually plays out in a classroom, which is where so much of your son's pain probably lives. Before private practice I worked across youth drug courts, inpatient psychiatric care, and community mental health, which gave me a strong foundation across a range of presentations.

You're not a bad parent. This is genuinely hard and most people don't have a roadmap for it. I see clients in the evenings and on weekends because these kids are already struggling in school and therapy shouldn't make that harder.

The goal is a kid who stops fighting himself and starts figuring out who he actually is. When that happens, everything else gets easier.

Most teenage boys don't want to be in therapy. I start there.

Your son gets someone who matches his energy, tells him the truth about what therapy is and isn't, and doesn't perform warmth at him. No clinical posture. Just real work on what actually matters to him in his real life.

Beyond the core ADHD symptoms I focus on what usually goes unaddressed. Shame. Poor self image. Emotional dysregulation. The exhaustion of pretending to be someone he's not. These are the things that do the most damage to your son and get the least attention in most therapy.

The first session has some necessary intake and background gathering, and I'm upfront with your son about that. The rest is relational.

I'm not trying to assess him or push him to open up. I'm trying to be someone worth talking to. Most of these boys arrive skeptical, and I validate that directly.

The early sessions are about earning his trust. A teenage boy who doesn't trust his therapist won't do the work no matter how skilled the therapist is, which is why most teens cycle through two or three before anything sticks. I go slower early so the work that comes later actually holds.