Parenting a Struggling Child with ADHD: Where to Start When Your Kid is in Crisis #219
Watching your child struggle is pretty much the worst. Not knowing what to do about it is more than icing on the doo-doo cake.
I've got your back, mama! In this episode of Motherhood in ADHD, I dive into the rollercoaster of emotions and challenges of parenting a struggling child. When your child needs help, but you don’t know where to begin, this episode is for you.
From dealing with overwhelming chaos to understanding the unique dynamics in a family affected by ADHD, here are my key tips to help you navigate the stress. So, buckle up, mama, because we're about to unpack the struggle bus and turn it into the ambulance you need for support during a crisis.
In this episode, I’m sharing the five essential C's for helping your struggling child. First up, we zoom in on crisis management and understanding what’s on fire before taking action. Then, we delve into the critical aspect of self-care for moms because, let's be honest, we can't pour from an empty unicorn mug. We also explore caring for our kids, making sure they find their own spaces to shine and thrive. Plus, we emphasize the importance of building strong connections and boosting our kids' confidence, because every little victory matters.
So, put on your driving gloves, grab a cup (or 40 oz travel mug) of coffee, and get ready to drive into a world of empathy, support, and practical advice on nurturing your struggling child. If you want to join us in person, we’re discussing parenting WITH ADHD in March & April in Successful Mama Meetups. Because among the chaos, you're already a fantastic mom who’s trying her best, and you're not alone in this bumpy journey.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Episode 158: Symptoms of Inattentive ADHD or Just Your Quirky Personality: What does Adult ADHD look like in women?
New workshop alert!
Your Gifted Child: a 3 workshop series to help you understand your gifted child better, parent them well without losing your sanity, and learn the skills to help them be calm, well-rounded and successful. We'll talk about 2e, comorbidities, emotional regulation, and executive function skills.
Come to the live workshops OR listen to the private podcast version OR watch the replay.
In case you’re new around here, I'm a certified K-12 GT teacher and taught middle school for many years before becoming an ADHD Coach, so I’m using my years of experience teaching gifted & 2e kids to support my boys’ school GT program.
It's donate-what-you-can admission! Sign up here: patriciasung.com/gt
Patricia Sung 00:00
Before we dive into this week's episode, let's read a review of the week. This one is from OcoO3003 who says, “Such a helpful podcast! Five stars. I just recently started listening to this podcast. I am so grateful for it. I appreciate that the episodes aren't long, and that Patricia breaks everything up into smaller topics, just what my ADHD brain needs. I've been able to take away so many helpful tips in the last week. Thank you, Patricia.” You are so welcome, my dear. And if you mama have not yet rated the podcast, please head over to your app. Hit five stars and let me know what you think.
Patricia Sung 00:36
Are you overwhelmed by motherhood and barely keeping your head above water? Are you confused and frustrated by how all the other moms make it look so easy, you can figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home or your family? I guess your mama parenting with ADHD is hard. Here is your permission slip to let go of the Pinterest worthy visions of organization and structure fit for everyone else. Let's do life like our brains do life creatively, lovingly, and with all our might. When we embrace who we are and how our brains work, we can figure out how to live our lives successfully, and in turn, lead our families well, at the end of the day, we just want to be good moms. but spoiler alert, you are already a great mom. ADHD does not mean you're doomed to be a hot mess mama, you can rewrite your story from shame spiral to success story. And I'll be right here beside you to cheer you on. Welcome to motherhood in ADHD.
Patricia Sung 01:42
Hey there successful mama, it's your friend Patricia Sung, I am so excited to be back here with you. In my fancy recording studio aka master closet. It has been a hot minute since I have been sitting here on the floor using the kneeling pad for the bathtub as my chair and using my clothing as soundproofing to try to get the best sound possible. It's been a minute since I've been sitting here on my floor with you. I'll be honest, I didn't think I was going to take that long of a break.
Patricia Sung 02:13
When I recorded the last episode in November, I knew that we would need a minute through the holidays. And we were like cleaning up a bunch of stuff in the backend of my business and like creating systems and organizing everything and making sure my new team is fully trained. And you know that moment when you organize your closet and you pull the stuff out. And then you look around and you're like, Why did I do this to myself, and you hate every decision you have ever made. And you're like I remember bigger mess now than I did when I started. That is what I felt like in January, when I had pulled all the pieces of my business out on the floor of my closet and realized I still had to put them all back and try to run a business at the same time. And so here we are. I'm now recording this at the beginning of March.
Patricia Sung 02:59
Like literally like four months later, three months, four months. Yeah, four months later. And I can confidently say that we have gotten most of the pieces back in the closet, we're still picking up some random bits and bobs and what's not what they say in England bits and bobs in trying to find homes for the last few things. But I can say that a project was worth it. I did not feel that way 90% of the time, but you can do hard things to you can clean out the closet, it will be okay. I survived. And I'm really glad that I'm back here with you. Because in all that cleanup and doing things like moving our successful meetups group to Slack and cleaning up the email system and making sure people are getting all the things that they needed when like when you sign up for a course that you get the information that you need and like all those little pieces making sure that everything was lined up and correct and all those like foundational pieces of running a business while are in place.
Patricia Sung 03:56
Like I there were many times where I'm like this is not why I started a business is not so that I could figure out all the tech automations behind the scenes like what I want to do is talk to you and help you and coach you. I do not want to be behind the scenes cleaning out tech automations and renaming email tags. I think that's a really good analogy for being a mom to like there's a lot of parts are like I didn't sign up for this man. Like I be a mom for the stuff that I love to do. Like I love my kids I love when we're making great memories. We're like this whole like unloading the dishwasher for the 14th time in trying not to roll my eyes while somebody complains about you know, the orange cup over the purple cup like Man, this is not what I signed up for. And we we can do hard things those pieces of our lives that are not the fun stuff.
Patricia Sung 04:51
Like sometimes you just gotta go sometimes it's just this isn't a trash pile move along. But when we are doing things that we know need to be done, and they're not so motivating, being able to dig in and figure out like, what's my actual motivation here? Why do I actually want to do this can make it a whole lot easier because when we have ADHD, we don't understand the motivation behind something. You're like, why are we doing this? We're not doing it, not doing it. But when we can figure out why we're doing it, like, why am I cleaning out all these tech automations because I want to be able to help a lot of moms and I want it to run smoothly so that when a mom comes into my space, they feel taken care of, they have everything they need, no one's confused.
Patricia Sung 05:28
I want them to know like, hey, look, here's a welcome video of how successful mama meetups work. Here's the tour, you can click over here and you find this, you go here and you find that like, I want you to feel welcome when you come in. And you're not like I like I really have to pee and I know where the bathroom is. And I don't want to bother anybody to ask like, I don't want you to feel that way in my house, if you will, like I want you to feel super welcome and know where everything is. And that's why I did this big giant project. Because because I want when you enter my space that you feel welcome and you feel loved and supported and can be successful here. And we can ask ourselves that same question when we do hard things. As a mom, why am I actually doing this? It's not like so that I can have a beautiful magazine where the house and if it is great, like that's your motivation. But if you don't care about the magazine, perfect house, why are you bothering to clean off the counters? What's your motivation there? Because you want to prepare great meals for your family? Because your love language is food and caring for them in that way? Is it because you want to be able to find things so that you're not stressed out? When you're trying to find that permission slip? Is it because you want to be able to do fun Pinterest projects on a random Tuesday and have the space to do them.
Patricia Sung 06:40
And it not be like oh no, why did I do this to myself? Because now my kitchen has exploded. Like I want you to know that you can ask yourself why and figure out the motivation to do a whole lot of things. Today's episode is inspired by one of the moms who was on the retreat last year, she had texted the group of us and was asking like, Hey, y'all, I don't know what to do. Like, my son's really struggling? What do I need to ask for? Like, where do I even start? What appointment do I need? Like? What did you know, in hindsight, she's like, I just I really want to help him. And I don't know where to start. And while I can give a fair amount of information and text message, I realized that this is one of those things that I want to talk to you about in detail in depth of like when you have a kid who's really struggling, where do you start? Are you curious, if you have ADHD, like you're still just not quite sure is this me or not, maybe you're getting ready for your diagnosis appointment.
Patricia Sung 07:36
Or maybe you want to bring it up with your GP, but you're not quite sure how to talk about it, I put together a checklist of symptoms, that's not your average boring list of symptoms. It's the Patricia take on from what I've seen of working with 1000s of women ways that I see these symptoms actually showing up in real life. I put it all together in a downloadable checklist. And I want you to go get it, download the checklist, go through and check off here are the things that are show up in my life. And there's space in there for you to write in where you see these things showing up in your life. And then you can take that list to your doctor's appointment and show them like when I say I'm being forgetful. Here's what I mean. When you asked me like, are you hyperactive? This is how hyperactivity shows up in my life in my brain, so that you have concrete examples.
Patricia Sung 08:24
And you don't freeze up. When it comes time to talk about it. You have your preparation there and you feel competent and capable and talking about you because you know yourself best. So head over to my website. And you can download the free checklist at https://www.patriciasung.com/adhd-symptoms. And that'll go right to your email and you can take that with you and be prepared for that tough conversation. Again, that's https://www.patriciasung.com/adhd-symptoms.
Patricia Sung 08:56
So I came up with five C's to help you get started on how to help your kid when they're really struggling. C number one is crisis. What is on fire at the moment you want to start here, when your kid is really struggling. There's usually something that's a major issue, maybe multiple some things, we want to start there. Because when we're in a really stressful situation, we have to put the fire out first, then we can go back and figure out like well how did we get here? How did this catch on fire like and look at all the different pieces of the puzzle. But we want to start there.
Patricia Sung 09:28
Now. We want us to help. And if you're not sure where you can write down all the questions you have, and then take a look and see where the themes are. And unfortunately, you won't get it right the first time because it is individual to your kid and you may look back, you know a year from now and be like I really wish I had started over here. You won't know that until your year from now and you can look back with the hindsight. So if you can't ask for help from someone who's been through something similar before, please do but if you're not sure where to start, one option may be if school is the thing on fire is to start with the guidance counselor. If I know who handles the special ed department and figure out how can you get the school on your side as much as possible and work together as a team.
Patricia Sung 10:07
Now, I know that this is not always possible. But this is the goal, if we can is figure out how can we get everybody working on the same team as much as possible? Sometimes schools can diagnose, it depends on where you're located. But when your child is struggling in school, we want to look at, like, how can we get them help through accommodations? Do they need a 504 versus an IEP, and I'll link the episode on that. So you can understand the difference here in the show notes. But focusing on where they're struggling, and what's going to help. When we're writing accommodation lists, a lot of times, there's like, you know, there's 30, things that are frequently show up. But some of those may not be the most impactful, what's the thing that's really going to help your kid be successful.
Patricia Sung 10:49
We want to focus on trying to get those accommodations in place. If you're struggling with something that is medical related, you can start with your pediatrician or GP, you may need a diagnosis on her to get some accommodations at school, is your pediatrician knowledgeable enough that they can help you unfortunately, there are some people in the medical field who don't believe in ADHD, which is ridiculous. But also here we are. Like if that person is not going to take you seriously, don't talk to them and pick somebody else, get a second opinion.
Patricia Sung 11:22
You can call your insurance or look on your website for your insurance and see what they cover, you may need to go see a specialist if you're looking to get a diagnosis for ADHD, you want to look at a neurologist, a pediatric neurologist, a psychiatrist, a pediatric psychiatrist, you can also see a psychologist and some therapists can diagnose some social workers may work. But those latter ones can't prescribe medicine. So if you're seeing a psychologist, like therapist, social worker, those people can't prescribe medicine. So if that's something that's going to be important to you to have that option, you'll want to make sure that you have that person who is a medical doctor and can do that.
Patricia Sung 11:58
You can obviously work with two people in tandem, but then that's more people to coordinate and more people to schedule appointments with and all that stuff. So, you know, that may be part of your factor in finding the right expert for your kiddo. And then speaking of therapies, once you're figuring out more of like what you're dealing with, which unfortunately is not usually like one and done usually we start to peel back the onion, we're like okay, we got anxiety on the surface. What's underneath that oh, look at your summit Ichi. Oh, let's pull it back. So we're Oh, we got some depression. Oh, look at this. Now we got some dyslexia like, it takes a while to find all the layers, which is again, annoying and frustrating.
Patricia Sung 12:32
But we can only tackle what we know about. So we want to start there. So other experts that we can lean on for help our therapists, occupational therapists for different kinds of skills. Like if you have a lot of like eating struggles, like food sensitivities, you can work with a behavioral therapist, mental health therapists counselors, you can find an ADHD coach and executive function coach, parent coach, but step one is to figure out what the issue is. And we can't figure out what the issue is until we put out the fire. So let's start there, what's the main concern? And what's the expert that can help us with that main concern and move forward from there? Alright, so that is scene number one, the crisis deal with the crisis first, scene number two is going to be care for mom.
Patricia Sung 13:17
Now, once you've dealt with the fire, you have space to start filling in the other areas. And I know that our immediate jump in is that we're going to want to take care of our kid. But it's not just taking care of your kid, it's also taking care of you. So this message is from the mom who keeps putting herself last, like you can't do all the things that are going to be on this list if you don't have capacity to do so. So it is most important for you to be on the list as well. You know, the mom who reached out originally, one of the things she said was, she's like, I've done my best and she listed all these things that she had done. She's like, What I always feel like I'm doing him wrong, because I can't control my own emotions. And like, how am I supposed to help him control and work through his emotions? If I can't control and work through my own emotions? Like that's a good question.
Patricia Sung 14:07
You can help your kid when you're feeling really like roller coaster free, like we like to think we can. But a lot of times we are in denial of how much those dominoes of not caring for ourselves are affecting everybody else. And I recently ran into one of my friends mom's at Costco, and I just ran in for a quick return. And of course, I ended up chatting with her for like 15 minutes in the Costco parking lot that I was supposed to be doing something else. And I was asking her how she's doing and her husband has Parkinson's, in she is really struggling because he's just kind of accepted that like life is over now. And he's not doing all the things he's supposed to do. He's not taking care of himself. He's not doing his physical therapy exercises and like all the things that he could be doing to make things less terrible, he's not doing and like while we can sit back as an objective third parties and like, it's really easy to point out what he's doing.
Patricia Sung 15:03
And we also get why it's important. Like, it's easy for us outside the situation to be like, well, of course, that's important. Like, if you know, if he's doing his physical therapy exercises, then he can get around by himself, he doesn't have to rely on her to do all of the stuff around the house, he would be more comfortable moving around like life would just be easier when you can move around and do the things for yourself. But when you're in that struggling place, a lot of times we don't realize how much those things matter. It's easy to sit there and be like, Oh, my life's really hard.
Patricia Sung 15:31
I don't want to do this, like I don't want to do my physical therapy exercises and be there like, Boo hooing and self pity, because that's easier to do than make the hard changes, I get it. Like I've been there a few times. And it's also hard to see when you're in there, how it's affecting everybody else, I'm sure it's a lot easier to ignore, than to deal with the fact that now his wife is taking care of all the house stuff, she's his nurse, she's homeless has to like babysit him because he can't be left alone. For long, if something happens, like she has to do all the cooking, she has to do all the errands. And him not taking care of himself and doing what he could to make his situation better is putting a really big weight on her.
Patricia Sung 16:13
When you don't care for yourself, like you're not taking care of yourself, it ripples out into the people around you. And it's easy to see that when we're on the outside. But yet, when we as a mom are like, oh, like my family's not getting affected by all that stuff, like we think that we're able to like, pull it together. And that all these things like we're able to, like, keep that stuff in so that it's not affecting our kids. And like, that's not true. That is a lie. We tell ourselves, but it's not true.
Patricia Sung 16:40
If you have ADHD, there's a good chance that one of your parents had it as well, right? So you know what it's like to have a parent who is unstable, or you have a friend who's like that, or someone in your family that you know, somebody who has an unstable parent, and you know how much that affected them as kids, you know how much it affects them as adults? Like, how much would you have given as a kid to have helped your parent been in a healthier place so that they could have done the things that you wish they would do? Or maybe that's your situation right now? Or are you like looking at your parent being like, I wish you would do the things so that you would take care of yourself so that like, you're not screwing everybody else up them taking ownership of that would have made a huge difference in your life. Or if it's like a friend situation in your friend's life.
Patricia Sung 17:25
We know this. So I want you to know, like, you can picture what your kid's gonna say in 30 years, like, hey, my mom really struggled. But she worked hard to get out of that bad place. Or like, wow, I really wish my mom hadn't caused me so much. Like so many problems, I had to go to therapy for so long. But no, at no point is your kid going to be like, Wow, I really wish my mom hadn't gone to therapy highly unlikely. So I don't want you to feel guilty about taking care of yourself, because it ripples out to everybody else. And I'm gonna stop talking about this one, see, because I gotta keep moving. But I'm going to talk about it in an episode coming up.
Patricia Sung 17:57
Because this is a really important piece of taking care of our ADHD is taking care of ourselves that a whole, like bottom line, I want you to throw all that guilt out the window, and know that when you're taking care of yourself, that is part of you having the capacity to be able to take care of your kid, especially when they're in a really tough spot. So I'm putting this as number two, because I know you're gonna ignore me, and you're probably gonna put it down and like the bottom of the list. But if I didn't say anything, you won't even put it on the list. So hopefully, it'll end up somewhere in the middle there. But this is really important for us as moms to hear. And I'm gonna keep talking about it, because it's been something that has really been on my heart for last couple months. And this is the first episode like I talked about it. So I'm getting real bossy with you. Because this is really important that you take care of yourself. And when you're taking care of yourself, that's when you can actually teach your kid how to do the things that they need to do. That's C number two.
Patricia Sung 18:43
Have you got a child that is too much, too sensitive, too anxious, too boisterous, too loud, too anxious, too smart for their own good to match. I am hosting a parenting workshop for parents of kids that are too much. And it's donate what you can because it's a fundraiser for my kids school. They lost funding for the GT program for next year. And so a bunch of parents have banded together and we are raising money to be able to keep that program for our kids. So donate what you can for the your gifted child series. It's a parenting workshop where we are going to cover three different topics there you can show up live or you can watch the replay.
Patricia Sung 19:26
The first workshop is behind the brilliant understanding and nurturing gifted minds. The second workshop is gifted and grounded parenting strategies for raising exceptional children. And the third workshop is Calm in the Chaos, emotional resilience for gifted families. So if you have a child that is too much, please come join me and donate to a very good cause. You can find all the information at patriciasung.com/gt. Those are both lowercase letters and donate for a great cause and you get those three workshops if you purchase before the elections happen, you can attend live, or afterwards, you can watch the replay. So thank you so much for supporting my kids school. And let's get you some parenting strategies to help you raise your out of box kid. Again, that's patriciasung.com/gt both lowercase letters.
Patricia Sung 20:14
So we have first the crisis than two, we have care for mom, and three is care for your child. I'm actually not going to say a whole lot about this category. Because I already know that you're probably doing 473,000 things for your kid and taking care of them going to the therapies, conferences with teachers figuring out the IEPs and the 504s. I know you're already doing all that stuff. Yes, there's more we can learn about it. I'm going to link some episodes in the show notes. But like, I know, you're already doing a lot in that category.
Patricia Sung 20:44
So I'm gonna go to C number four connection, when your kid is really struggling, they need connection more than ever, they won't listen to you, if they don't think you care, if they think all you care about is like why aren't they doing well in school? Why are you getting in all these fights? You know, why are you getting zeros, but like, they begin to tune out a lot of what we're saying. And what they need to hear in that moment is I love you, I care about you. Like you can be disappointed in their choice and love them a lot. And they need to hear that they're like, I don't have to agree with everything that you're doing in order to love you. I can be really proud of you and want you to make better choices.
Patricia Sung 21:22
Like they need to hear how much you love them how much you care about them, because otherwise they don't listen to anything else. And if they're in that, like point right now, where they're not listening to anything that you're saying, Who else can connect with them? Do you have an important person that you respect and care about that they can connect with? If it's like an aunt or uncle, a neighbor, like somebody who's a friend of the family, like a one of the coaches that inactivity they're involved in someone from church like Boy Scout, leader, Girl Scout leader, like some other adult that you trust that can connect with them, so that they have someone to talk to? And if it can be you? How can you spend that quality time with them? How can you be there listening to them without correcting them? Yes, we got a lot to say, because we're moms, like how can you spend that time with them where they know, you genuinely care, you love them a lot.
Patricia Sung 22:18
You want to be there for them. That's incredibly important when they're struggling in a crisis is knowing how much you and the other people around them, love them care about them are glad that they're here. And they need to hear that a lot. This one is especially hard for me because I'm not a words of affirmation person. So I have to work on this and make a really concerted effort to say these things out loud. It's really hard for me. So if that's hard for you to see you, like how can you connect with them in a way that they know how much you love them, in spite of whatever else is going on? That really matters. So number four is C for connection.
Patricia Sung 22:57
And the last C number five is confidence when kids are really struggling, especially if they're struggling in school, or with friends, the things that carry a lot of weight are important to them, they need to have a place where they feel confident. So if they're not doing well at school, what do they do well out? Where can they feel confident? Where can they do well, they need a place to do well, sometimes that's something that we don't really want them to do like video games, but if they can feel confident there, how can you nurture that in a safe and healthy way? Where can they feel successful? Where can you boost their confidence in a sport and activity, music art the way that they care for other people?
Patricia Sung 23:38
Like where can you help them see how they are good at something, and their life is just not you know, if you think about like in kid view or teenager view, it's like my life is Aveline everything's terrible, which I mean, I feel like sometimes do like, where can they feel successful and build their confidence so that it's not 100% I am terrible at everything. So to sum it up, when your kid is struggling, we want to look at the five C's, what's in crisis start there. Next is care for you. Mom, three is care for your kid four is connection that they know that they are loved and they are cared for.
Patricia Sung 24:12
And other people are glad that they're here. And number five is confidence. How do we make sure they have a place where they feel successful amongst all the struggle. So Mama, this is a really crappy time when our kids are really struggling. And so I want to give you a big hug and let you know that this is a season things will be different soon. But right now in this season, I see you is really hard. When your kid is struggling and you can't fix it immediately. I want you to know that. I'm here for you. I see you and love you. I'm so glad that you're back here with me today. And I'm giving you big giant hugs for the week coming up knowing that you are an awesome mom trying your best and that's what matters. I will talk to you soon successful mama. For more resources, classes and community, head over to my website motherhoodinadhd.com.