Lara and her husband, Ken, came to the San Francisco area in 1999 when Lara accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF in addiction studies. They found a home in the Walnut Green neighborhood in 2004 where they have enjoyed raising their two children. “We moved there as an ideal place to raise children in a kid friendly neighborhood,” says Lara. “I like to say that we raised our kids at Arbolado Park where we could easily walk to and spend long days there. There were always other kids there, and it was a great place to host play dates. We attended and hosted many birthday parties there as well. Now, during this Covid era, a community group of friends meet there twice a month to stay connected in an appropriate social distanced way and celebrate the return to seeing people in the real world.”
Lara and Ken met at the University of Michigan in their freshman year, got engaged the summer after graduation and got married one year later. They got engaged on the Greek island Santorini as they were backpacking through Europe. They returned to the island a year later for their honeymoon. Ken works in Fintech – an emerging industry that uses technology to advance and automate financial transactions. Lara is a clinical psychologist who specializes in ADHD and executive dysfunctions in private practice in Walnut Creek. She has written seven books and speaks regularly on advancing neurodiversity. “The goal of neurodiversity is to use a strength-based approach to reduce stigma for mental illness and to increase inclusion and accessibility,” explains Lara. Her books The Gift of ADHD and The Gift of Adult ADD, help parents and adults find their strengths so that they can advocate for themselves or their children from a position of confidence. Confidence helps to boost motivation leading to better outcomes.
Their oldest child, Kenny, is a senior at Northgate High School, Kenny ran Cross Country at Northgate prior to Covid halting athletics, and the whole family likes to stay active running, biking and swimming. Ken and Kenny have completed sprint triathlons, and Kenny qualified for the 2019 Nationals in Cleveland, which he competed in.
Audrey, a Sophomore at Northgate High School, plays competitive soccer and played on the JV Soccer and Lacrosse team before Covid.
Competing in triathlons has given the family opportunity for great weekend getaways to places like Napa, Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay. They also enjoy trips to Southern California and Disneyland.
“Living in the Northgate area offers an incredible opportunity to enjoy nature,” adds Lara. “We enjoy the paved sidewalks, canal trail with lots of wildlife sightings including ducks, birds and white herons. I’ve also seen spectacular rainbows that look like they end beyond Arbolado soccer field. I like to joke that I am going through my “Ansel Adams phase” as I take lots of nature photos on walks including photos of Mt. Diablo, blue skies with clouds and sunrises. We love to walk and bike on the trails and enjoyed the community pool. We have loved having groups of kids over to kick off trick or treating and gather parents on Halloween.”
Lara’s most recent book Six Super Skills for Executive Functioning: Tools to Help Teens Improve Focus, Stay Organized, and Reach Their Goals came out in October. She developed the six super skills over 15 years as she distilled dozens of treatment tools into a more memorable self-help strategy so easy even teens can use it. The six super skills are 1) finding gifts, 2) setting goals, 3) chunking goals into the next step, 4) boosting motivation, 5) mood management and 6) finding focus. Science shows that exercise and time in nature are two of the most powerful ways to boost attention.
Lara’s next big goal is to launch an app for teens using the 6 super skills to protect them from the risks of technology addiction and sleep cycle shifts. Just as many people such as “body builders” go to the gym, not to cure an illness but to create health, strength, flexibility, and endurance, so too can teens build mental strengths that we call executive functioning – attention, planning, flexible thinking, emotional regulation and impulse control.
Lara adds, “If I had one thing to say to my fellow neighbors it would be to watch the Netflix show The Social Dilemma. This show features many of the creators of the social media technologies who are ringing the alarm that these tools are designed to be addictive and may be linked to increased rates of depression and anxiety in teens. As they say ‘knowledge is power,’ and my hope to create an app to build the six super skills that can balance the risks with protective tools such as building confidence through setting and reaching goals.”
We are lucky to have professionals like Dr . Honos-Webb making a difference in their fields right here in our wonderful Northgate neighborhood.
By Kara Navolio, Resident since 1991
Do you know a neighbor who has a story to share? Nominate your neighbor to be featured in one of our upcoming issues! Contact us at knavolio@bestversionmedia.com.