Parenting a Struggling Child with ADHD: Where to Start When Your Kid is in Crisis: Top 3 Episodes Encore #271

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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. Because among the chaos, you're already a fantastic mom who’s trying her best, and you're not alone in this bumpy journey.

***Note: This episode originally aired in March of 2024. As I write my book on Motherhood in ADHD while my boys are at home all summer (send prayers and patience), I'm sharing past episodes that topped the charts last year. I know these episodes will support you with some integral skills for ADHD and lots of virtual hugs.

Super stressed and need a break?

Come along on our 4th annual ADHD Moms Weekend Retreat, October 10-12, 2025 in the Texas countryside, located at the Happy Goat Retreat!

“Honestly, this was one the best weekends I've had since becoming a mom. I've never felt so seen and understood. I would hop on a plane and go again. No hesitation! I'll follow y’all anywhere, moms.” –ADHD Mama J.Q.

I’ll take care of all the details - you simply show up and enjoy. I take care of you while you learn how to take even better care of yourself, in a way that’s sustainable for real momlife.

Because you can take care of your family well when you’re in a healthy place. It’s time to get your ticket: www.patriciasung.com/retreat

Patricia Sung [00:00:00]:

Hey there, successful mama. It's your friend, Patricia Sung. Today, you're listening to one of the top three episodes from 2024. So let's dive in. Oh, but before we do, reminder that the tickets for the ADHD mom retreat are on sale right now, and we only have a few spots left. So go get your ticket now at patriciasung.com/retreat. 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't figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home, or your family. I getcha, mama.

Patricia Sung [00:00:38]:

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 wanna 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.

Patricia Sung [00:01:23]:

Welcome to Motherhood in ADHD. 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 my 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 gonna take that long of a break.

Patricia Sung [00:02:00]:

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, like, the back end 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 then you you hate every decision you have ever made, and you're like, I'm a 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 March, Like, literally, like, four months later. Three months? Four months? Yeah. Four months later. And I can confidently say that we have got most of the pieces back in the closet.

Patricia Sung [00:02:55]:

We're still picking up some random bits and bobs and what's that? Ain't that what they say in England? Bits and bobs. And trying to find homes for the last few things, but I can say that the project was worth it. I did not feel that way 90% of the time, but you can do hard things too. 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 mom 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 they're in place. It's like I there are many times where I'm like, this is not why I started a business.

Patricia Sung [00:03:47]:

It's not so that I could figure out all the tech automations behind the scenes. Like, what I wanna 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 too. Like, there's a lot of parts that 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.

Patricia Sung [00:04:16]:

But, like, this whole, like, unloading the dishwasher for the fourteenth time and 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. Like, sometimes you just gotta go. Sometimes it's just this is in the trash pile. Move along. But when we are doing things that we know need to be done and they're not motivating, being able to dig in and figure out, like, what's my actual motivation here? Why do I actually wanna do this? Can make it a whole lot easier.

Patricia Sung [00:04:53]:

Because when we have ADHD and we don't understand the motivation behind something, you're like, why are we doing this? We're not doing it. We're 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 wanna 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. I want them to know, like, hey. Look. Here's a welcome video of how successful mama meetups work.

Patricia Sung [00:05:18]:

Here's a tour. You can click over here and you find this. You go here and you find that. Like, I want want you to feel welcome when you come in, and you're not like, I like, I really have to pee on where the bathroom is, and I don't wanna 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 is 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.

Patricia Sung [00:05:50]:

Why am I actually doing this? It's not, like, so that I can have a beautiful magazine worthy 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 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. Alright.

Patricia Sung [00:06:38]:

Wrangling that tangent on. 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. Oh, 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 wanna help him, and I don't know where to start. And while I can give a fair amount of information in text message, I realized that this is one of those things that I wanna talk to you about in detail, in-depth of, like, when you have a kid who's really struggling, where do you start? So I came up with five c's to help you get started on how to help your kid when they're really struggling. See number one is crisis.

Patricia Sung [00:07:22]:

What is on fire at the moment? You wanna start here When your kid is really struggling, there's usually something that's a major issue, maybe multiple somethings. We wanna 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 do we get here? How did this catch on fire? Like and look at all the different pieces of the puzzle, but we wanna start there. Now we wanna ask for 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, oh, I really wish I'd started over here. You won't know that until you're a year from now, and you can look back with the hindsight. So if you can ask for help from someone who's been through something similar before, please do.

Patricia Sung [00:08:10]:

But if you're not sure where to start, one option maybe if school is a thing on fire is to start with the guidance counselor. Find out who handles the special ed department. Figure out how can you get the school on your side as much as possible and work together as a team. 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 wanna look at, like, how can we get them help through accommodations? Do they need a five zero four 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 gonna help.

Patricia Sung [00:08:52]:

When we're writing accommodation list, a lot of times, there's, like, you know, there's 30 things that frequently show up, but some of those may not be the most impactful. What's the thing that's really gonna help your kid be successful? And then and we wanna 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 in order 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 gonna take you seriously, don't talk to them. Pick somebody else. Get a second opinion.

Patricia Sung [00:09:40]:

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 wanna 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 gonna be important to you to have that option, you'll wanna make sure that you have that person who is a medical doctor who can do that. You can obviously work, you know, with two people in tandem, but then that's more people to coordinate and more people to schedule appointments with and all that stuff.

Patricia Sung [00:10:22]:

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. Here's some ADHD. Oh, let's pull it back somewhere.

Patricia Sung [00:10:43]:

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, but we can only tackle what we know about, so we wanna start there. So other experts that we can lean on for help are therapists, occupational therapists for different kind of skills, like if you have a lot of, like, eating struggles, like food sensitivities. You You can work with a behavioral therapist, mental health therapists, counselors. You can find an ADHD coach, an 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.

Patricia Sung [00:11:21]:

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 c number one, the crisis. Deal with the crisis first. It's time to be who you are unapologetically. No more contorting or shrinking yourself to fit inside the box. Instead, you're gonna feel the freedom of just being yourself because you are more accepting of who you truly are.

Patricia Sung [00:11:48]:

You're invited, mama, to this year's fourth annual successful as a mother weekend retreat. It is time to relax, unwind, rest, and take care of a very important person in the family, which is you. This year's retreat is on October 2025, and you are invited. This is an all inclusive retreat. It covers your meals, your hotel, all of your activities. You literally only have to show up, and I will take it from there. We are staying at the peaceful Happy Goat Retreat just outside of Houston, Texas. I have rented the entire property, so we have it all to ourselves where we will enjoy nature and breathe deep in the fresh air and the calm of the lake and the sway of the trees.

Patricia Sung [00:12:31]:

But this is not camping, this is glamping. You will stay in your very own adorable modern tiny home with your own comfy queen-size bed, your own private bathroom, and living space that's just for you. Go check out the pictures I posted on my website because it is so cute. We will spend the weekend learning about our ADHD and tune into who you are and what you need so that you can trust your gut and love yourself a little bit more. All while eating delicious food you didn't cook, you didn't clean up, and hanging out with awesome other ADHD mamas who are just like you in this journey of understanding ADHD and also trying to do all the things, but not this weekend. This weekend, you are doing none of the things. You are relaxing. I will take care of everything and you get to focus on you.

Patricia Sung [00:13:17]:

Head over to my website patriciasung.com/retreat and get your ticket. This is a small group of 14 group of 14 mamas, and we already have a bunch of mamas going, so I don't have a ton of spots left. This means do not wait. Do not procrastinate. When you hear this, this is your sign. Go sign up. Get your ticket, and by signing up now, you number one, have access to the shrinking payment plan before it's gone. There's no extra charges for that.

Patricia Sung [00:13:44]:

And number two, you get to pick the type of tiny home that you want to stay in before they are all gone. So go sign up. Get your ticket and take a weekend to relax and take care of yourself while I do all the work. Head over to patriciasung.com/retreat, and get your ticket for the fourth annual ADHD Moms amazing getaway weekend and relax. Patriciasung.com/retreat. Scene number two is going to be care for mom. 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 gonna wanna take care of our kid, but it's not just taking care of your kid.

Patricia Sung [00:14:25]:

It's also taking care of you. So this message is for the mom who keeps putting herself last. Like, you can't do all the things that are gonna 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 out all these things that she had done. And she's like, but 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? And, like, that's a good question. You can help your kid when you're feeling really, like, roller coaster y.

Patricia Sung [00:15:06]:

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 friend's moms at Costco, and I just ran in for a quick return. And, of course, I end up chatting with her for, like, fifteen 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. And 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 a objective third parties and, like, it's really easy to point out what he's not doing, and we also get why it's important.

Patricia Sung [00:16:00]:

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, my life's really hard. I don't wanna do this.

Patricia Sung [00:16:27]:

Like, I don't wanna do my physical therapy exercises and be there, like, boohooing 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 almost 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 [00:17:08]:

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 is not getting affected by all that stuff. Like, we think that we're able to, like, pull it together and that all of 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. Like, 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.

Patricia Sung [00:17:46]:

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. And, 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 where you're, 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 in a, like, a friend situation in your friend's life, we know this. So I want you to know, like, you can picture what your kid's gonna say in thirty 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 that I had to go to therapy for so long.

Patricia Sung [00:18:36]:

Like, no. At no point is your kid gonna 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 c because I gotta keep moving, but I'm gonna talk about it in an episode coming up because this is a really important piece of taking care of our ADHD is taking care of ourselves as 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 at, like, the bottom of the list, but if I didn't say anything, you wouldn't even put it on the list.

Patricia Sung [00:19:15]:

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 the last couple months, and this is the first episode that 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. So we have first the crisis, then two, we have care for mom, and three is care for your child. I'm actually not gonna 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 five zero fours. I know you're already doing all that stuff.

Patricia Sung [00:19:55]:

Yes. There's more we can learn about it. I'm gonna link some episodes in the show notes, but, like, I know you're already doing a lot in that category. So So I'm gonna go to see 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? Blah blah blah. 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.

Patricia Sung [00:20:25]:

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. 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, like, 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 in activity 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.

Patricia Sung [00:21:29]:

Like, how can you spend that time with them where they know you genuinely care, you love them a lot, 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, like, 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. 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 or important to them, they need to have a place where they feel confident.

Patricia Sung [00:22:26]:

So if they're not doing well at school, what do they do well at? 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, an activity, music, art, the way that they care for other people? 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 awful and everything's terrible, which, I mean, I feel like sometimes too. 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 wanna 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, and other people are glad that they are here.

Patricia Sung [00:23:31]:

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 wanna 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. It's 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. I love you.

Patricia Sung [00:23:59]:

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.

Podcast EpisodePatricia SungHomeschool, Parenting, School, Self care