Embracing Change: Supporting ADHD & LD Across Life Transitions Conference
About this Event
Change is all around us and while we can’t anticipate everything that might come at us, there are transitions from one stage of life to another that we all recognize as foundational milestones across our lifespan. In those spaces, we grow into new roles and responsibilities, explore our talents and passions, and seek new understanding and connection.
When ADHD and LD are part of that evolution, the timelines and supports might be different, but the transitions, passions and hopes are the same. Let’s make it easier for ourselves and the ones we care about by looking ahead to what we can anticipate, prepare for and even dream about!
Join us for a full day of engaging expert speakers focusing on insights, best practices and real empowerment for adults and partners, parents and caregivers, educators, colleagues and anyone interested in the ADHD and LD world.
Topics include:
- Navigating Change
- Hormones and Women's ADHD
- Teaching Complex Students
- Retirement as Disruption
- Courageous Disclosure at Work
- Money Management for the ADHD Brain and more!
Check out the resource fair during your breaks. Calgary agencies, post-secondaries and community organizations will be available throughout the day to answer questions.
A nutritious lunch is included, individually boxed and labeled. V, GF, Veg and H available.
Just a note on our ticket prices. At only $30 for the day, they are heavily subsidized and have been kept low to make this important conference as financially accessible as possible.
Free parking, too.
This is an in-person event; sessions will not be recorded so we look forward to seeing you there!
Conference Website
Agenda
🕑: 08:00 AM - 08:30 AM
Registration & Browsing Resource Fair
🕑: 08:30 AM - 08:50 AM
Welcome & Opening Remarks
🕑: 09:00 AM - 10:15 AM
1A Finding Your Footing During Periods of Change and Life Transition
Host: Dr. Brenda McDermott
Info: Change or life transitions can feel overwhelming for anyone including individuals with ADHD or learning differences. Yet these experiences can also be powerful moments for growth. This engaging presentation explores how to cultivate self-compassion during times of change, helping you move forward with greater confidence and clarity.
Participants will learn practical strategies to reframe self-critical thoughts, manage overwhelm, and build supportive habits that align with how their brains work. The session also highlights how to recognize personal strengths, celebrate small wins, and draw on past resilience to navigate new challenges.
Whether you're starting something new or adjusting to change, this session offers approachable tools to help you reconnect with your strengths—and find your footing with confidence. This presentation is geared toward individuals with ADHD or learning differences as well as to those supporting them.
🕑: 09:00 AM - 10:15 AM
1B Where Social Skills Come to Life: Apply the Camp Amicus Framework at Home
Host: Luke MacKinnon
Info: Youth with ADHD and learning disabilities often have strong cognitive abilities but experience challenges with social communication, perspective-taking, and navigating group dynamics in real time.
Drawing on years of experience of developing and delivering inclusive summer camp and year-round recreation programs like at Camp Amicus, this session will highlight how structured, high-engagement environments can be designed to support social skill development for neurodivergent youth. Skills such as reading social cues, understanding personal space, emotional regulation, group problem-solving, and flexible thinking are taught explicitly and reinforced through play, collaboration, and shared experiences.
Participants will leave with adaptable strategies for structuring their own experiential environments whether at home, at a friend’s house, in community groups or in educational, therapeutic or youth-serving settings to better support social development for neurodivergent learners.
🕑: 09:00 AM - 11:45 AM
1C The Science of Learning Across the Tiers
Host: Eryn Coughlin
Info: This session explores how the science of learning can be used to strengthen instruction across Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 settings, especially for neurodiverse learners, including students with ADHD. We will unpack high-impact strategies such as retrieval practice, spaced practice, interleaving, and explicit instruction, and examine why these approaches are particularly supportive for attention, memory, and long-term learning.
Attendees will see how these practical strategies can be embedded into everyday learning, not as add-ons but as essential practices. From simple retrieval routines and cumulative review to clear modeling and guided practice, this session focuses on what works, why it works, and how to apply it across a range of learning environments.
Participants will leave with actionable strategies to support learning, reduce cognitive overload, and help all learners, children and adults alike, engage more deeply, retain information, and apply their knowledge with confidence.
🕑: 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
2A Reclaim Your Time: Flexible Structure for Real-Life Impact
Host: Rhiannon Carter
Info: Many neurodivergent adults thrive in structured settings — yet struggle to translate that success
into their personal lives. When structure disappears, things can feel much harder. Evenings,
weekends, and time off may become unexpectedly draining, with time slipping away through
avoidance, doom scrolling, or decision paralysis.
If unstructured time leaves you, or someone you care about, feeling stuck, depleted, or
disconnected from what matters most, you’re not alone.
This session explores why transitioning into unstructured time can feel so challenging and offers
practical, neuroaffirming strategies that can help. You’ll leave with tools to create a flexible,
personalized structure—helping you reconnect with your energy, relationships, hobbies, and a
greater sense of meaning beyond the workday.
🕑: 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
2B From Online to Real Life: Relationships as a Neurodiverse Young Adult
Host: Uma Vandekerkhove
Info: This presentation explores the nuanced process of managing romantic and social relationships as neurodiverse young adults with a focus on the common transition from online connections to in-person interactions.
Some of the topics will include how executive functioning differences, emotional regulation, rejection sensitivity, and social communication styles can shape relationship experiences. Common patterns will be explored such as rapid attachment, difficulty with ambiguity, challenges in pacing intimacy, and navigating boundaries, especially when relationships begin online.
This session is designed for neurodiverse young adults and community members supporting neurodiverse young adults, with the goal of building understanding and sharing practical strategies to support intentional connection building, clearer communication, and smoother transitions from online to in-person relationships/friendships.
🕑: 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
2C Now What? Retirement as Disruption and Discovery for Adults with ADHD
Host: Dr. Brandy Callahan
Info: Retirement is widely regarded as a time of freedom and reward, yet for adults with ADHD, this transition can present a uniquely complex set of challenges and opportunities. The structured routines, social engagement, and sense of purpose that employment provides often serve as natural scaffolding for managing ADHD symptoms — which retirement can abruptly remove. This presentation explores how the loss of external structure may exacerbate difficulties with time management, motivation, emotional regulation, and executive functioning in adults with ADHD.
At the same time, retirement offers meaningful opportunities: the freedom to redesign daily routines, pursue stimulating interests, and build self-directed systems that align with individual strengths. Drawing on research and clinical insights, this talk will examine practical strategies to help adults with ADHD approach retirement proactively, including the development of intentional structure, social connection, and ongoing engagement.
🕑: 11:45 AM - 12:30 PM
Lunch & Resource Fair
Info: Individually boxed lunches are included in the ticket price. Vegan, Vegetarian, Gluten Free and Halal options available.
🕑: 12:30 PM - 01:45 PM
3A Transforming from Overwhelm to Confidence: A Simpler Way to Manage Money
Host: Christine Urbanowski
Info: Managing money can feel overwhelming—especially when traditional advice depends on consistency, tracking, and willpower. This session explores how ADHD impacts financial behaviour and introduces a simple, low-effort system that reduces decision fatigue and helps money management run more automatically—even on low-capacity days.
🕑: 12:30 AM - 01:45 PM
3B Pathways Forward for Adult Foundational Learners with ADHD and LD
Host: Nada Jerkovic
Info: Adult foundational learners are adults building skills such as reading, writing, numeracy, and digital literacy for daily life, education, and work—often after leaving high school before completion or experiencing challenges in traditional school settings. These challenges are frequently related to learning disabilities (LD) and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and can contribute to reduced confidence, gaps in foundational skills, and uncertainty about how to move forward as learners.
This presentation explores programs and pathways designed to support adults with LD and ADHD in rebuilding skills and progressing toward personal, educational, and employment goals. Emphasis will be placed on understanding common barriers to learning, how these challenges present in adulthood, and practical, strengths-based strategies that foster confidence, persistence, and meaningful progress in learning environments.
🕑: 12:30 PM - 01:45 PM
3C When the Numbers Don't Add Up: Exploring Dyscalculia
Host: Lindsey Bingley
Info: This presentation will explore dyscalculia, a specific learning disorder that affects the understanding and use of numbers and mathematical concepts. We will outline how dyscalculia may present in learners, including difficulties with number sense, basic calculations, time, and money, and clarify what these challenges do, and do not, indicate about intelligence.
The session will also examine the broader impact on academic performance and everyday life, including the potential for math-related anxiety. Practical, evidence-informed strategies will be shared, such as the use of visual supports, step-by-step instruction, and real-world applications, to help educators and caregivers better support individuals with dyscalculia and foster confidence in mathematical learning.
🕑: 02:00 PM - 03:15 PM
4A Courageous Disclosure at Work
Host: Nicole Owen
Info: Deciding whether to disclose a disability can be difficult. Fears of being seen as “less capable,” concerns about hiring outcomes, or worries about job security often lead people to stay silent. Regardless of the reason, the cost of non-disclosure can be significant for you and your employer as it impacts your confidence, your performance and the organizations’ overall effectiveness.
In this session, we will explore whether, when and how to disclose to an employer and understanding, it’s not about asking for special treatment – it’s creating the conditions for your success. Choosing to disclose is your path to creating an environment where you can perform at your best.
🕑: 02:00 PM - 03:15 PM
4B Bright Minds, Hidden Struggles: Supported Gifted Learners with ADHD/LD
Host: Colleen Fleming
Info: This presentation explores the gifted learner who also has a learning disability, ADHD, or both. The cognitive capacity of these gifted students is often masked by dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and/or ADHD. Designed for parents and educators, this session defines this unique profile, models the candid questions families ask schools that specialize in learning differences without promising gifted enrichment, offers parents practical tools at home, and equips teachers with classroom strategies. The key message is that these children thrive when adults learn to hold three truths at once: giftedness, LD, and ADHD.
🕑: 02:00 PM - 03:15 PM
4C Why Does My ADHD Feel Different Right Now? Hormones and Women's ADHD
Host: Dr. Emma Climie
Info: Many women with ADHD describe feeling as though their symptoms suddenly change during major hormonal transitions — yet these experiences are often misunderstood or overlooked. From pregnancy and postpartum to perimenopause and menopause, shifts in hormones can affect attention, memory, emotional regulation, sleep, and daily functioning in ways that deeply impact quality of life. This session explores what current research — and women themselves — are teaching us about the relationship between hormones and ADHD. Participants will gain insight into how ADHD may present differently during pregnancy and menopause, why these transitions can be especially challenging, and what kinds of supports may help. The presentation will combine scientific findings with lived experiences to provide a compassionate, practical, and strengths-based understanding of women’s ADHD across the lifespan.
🕑: 03:45 PM - 04:15 PM
Resource Fair & Networking
🕑: 03:15 PM - 03:45 PM
Expert Panel Q & A
Info: Still have questions? Join other parents, educators and adults along with a select group of our presenters in wrapping up our Insights Event with an audience Q & A.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
CAD 0.00 to CAD 30.00
