Stop Helping Your Adult ADHD Child: Unpopular Opinions #290
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Ever give your kid a piece of advice they ignore, only to hear them call it brilliant when it comes from somebody else? I do this to my husband. He’ll tell me something, I’ll wave it off, and then someone else says the exact same thing and suddenly I’m all ears. Sorry, dear.
In this episode of my unpopular opinions series, I’m answering a question from a parent who wants to help their adult ADHD child find a job. My first question back is a little uncomfortable. Do they actually want your help?
We’ll talk about how to stay available without bringing it up every time you talk, how to tell whether you’re worried about their job or disappointed they are different from what you pictured, and how to set clear expectations around rent, guests, and responsibilities if you share a home. I’ll also share why a trusted aunt, coach, or mentor might be the person they’re ready to hear from.
I also share how to get my book’s preorder bonuses, including the chapter sampler, by buying a copy or requesting one through your local library. Find book details and bonus form here. Please pre-order your copy this month so we can trigger a second printing to arrive in time for February.
If you’re trying to give your grown kid some room and still show up for them, come listen, mama. We can talk through this tough situation together.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Nick Finnegan Counseling Center’s free and low-cost resources.
Dr. Kimberly Harrison’s program for adults with ADHD and autism.
Patricia Sung [00:00:00]:
My husband gets mad all the time that like he'll tell me something and I'm like, I am not interested in your opinion. And then someone else tells me the exact same thing and I'm like, that is a brilliant idea. He's like, ah, I evenтАФ I do it too. It's like sometimes we just need to hear another voice tell us the exact same thing. 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 You can't figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home, or your family. I getcha, 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.
Patricia Sung [00:00:43]:
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 You can have my ADHD brain in your handsтАФ metaphorically, not physicallyтАФ but I have taken everything that I've learned and put it in this book, and I want you to have it. It's time to preorder your copy of Motherhood in ADHD: Practical Strategies to Calm the Storm in Your Home, Heart, and Brain.
Patricia Sung [00:01:42]:
And I'm so excited to share this book with you. And mind. Yes, there's a printed copy. Yes, there's an ebook. Yes, there's an audiobook. You can listen or read in whatever way makes you feel best, and it's time to order now. The book walks through understanding ADHD, then goes into emotional regulation and energy management. From there, we talk about letting go of guilt and shame, and then how to build your self-trust.
Patricia Sung [00:02:08]:
This is a culmination of years of working with people with ADHD, listening to you, and putting it together into one concise format that is a resource for every mom with ADHD. When you order your pre-order copy, then you're gonna head over to my website and fill out the form that you have pre-ordered your copy, and then I will send you some bonuses because who wants to wait till February? I will send you a digital chapter sampler so you can do some reading now, and I'm going to record some of the bonus content, which is stuff that got cut out of the editing process, and send those to you In November so that you will have something to scratch that itch until the book actually comes out in February. As you are signing up, when I hit different milestones of people buying the book, I'm going to be raffling off cool stuff. I have care packages that I'm literally going to mail you something wonderful, or you might win one of my courses or a coaching session. And as we move forward, I'm going to raffle those off. So if you are one of the first people in there, you are in all the raffles. Hint, hint, wink, wink. The more pre-orders that are in, the more stuff I'm giving away.
Patricia Sung [00:03:20]:
If we get enough pre-orders, I will also do a Q&A session after the publish date so that we have a chance to like, you know, look through some or all of it before we chat. Up to 1,000 pre-orders and I will come to somebody's virtual book club that you host and I'm gonna show up and I will answer any questions that you and your friends have. Now this is my first book, so I'm still learning a lot, but what I do know is that pre-orders matter because it tells the publisher how many books to print before Publish Day. And I'm gonna be honest, I'm a little bit insulted, but my publisher only printed 500 copies to show up in the US. The rest are over in the UK, and I'm pretty sure that there's more than 500 moms in the US that want this information. So I need your help to tell them that this matters and that we need more copies. Because my publisher is in Europe, it takes 3 months to get them to print the book and ship them over to the US, which means they need to know by mid-November That, hey, we're going to need more than $500 in order for them to get here by February. So I really need your help on this.
Patricia Sung [00:04:25]:
Please preorder the book. Please fill out the preorder bonuses because then I have proof of like, hey, y'all, there are people that need this book. You got to hit print so that they can get that second print going in time for you to have it in your hands in February. Now, if you're like, Patricia, I can't afford the book. Cool. Go to your library, request the book from your library, and then submit that request in your pre-order bonus thing, and I will still send you the pre-order bonuses, and I will still send you the digital sampler because I want this in as many moms' hands as possible. And if your library gets, you know, 10 moms from your area saying, hey, we want to read this, like, I'm hoping your library is going to be like, oh look, everybody wants to read Patricia's book. and they orderтАФ I was gonna be like one copy or 5, I don't know.
Patricia Sung [00:05:14]:
But I truly want this book to be in every mom's hands, whether it is free, whether you bought it, I don't care. I just want moms to have this information readily accessible. So help a girl out, go order your copy at patriciasung.com/book. That's where you'll fill in the form for pre-order bonuses. You can literally just Google me on Amazon. Barnes& Noble, bookshop.org, wherever it is you like to get books, or Kindle for the ebook. Like, go order it. Please tell your friends, buy your friends a copy.
Patricia Sung [00:05:47]:
Everyone gets one for Christmas, for Valentine's Day. Shout it from the rooftops that we ADHD moms want this information and it is important. patriciasung.com/book and get your copy. Hey there, Successful Mama. It's your friend Patricia Sung. I am trying something new for the next couple episodes here, and I'm hoping that it'll become a regular appearance, but I am sharing my bold and unfiltered unpopular opinions on certain topics, which as a recovering people pleaser and a perfectionist and all, you know, just training myself to keep my opinions to myself for most of my life is quite the step outside my normal. But this is something that I'm really working on for myself this year is speaking truth and speaking boldly. And I feel like I did that really well with the book because there was nobody there to argue with me.
Patricia Sung [00:06:39]:
And so I'm putting myself out there and speaking boldly and practicing that here with you. And so this should be interesting. And keep in mind, you don't have to agree with everything I say. As I always tell my kids, if everybody in the world was the same, it'd be really boring. So it's okay if you don't agree with me, and I'm still going to practice speaking boldly my opinions. So let's jump in and see how it goes. Okay, here is a question that was asked of me, and here is my opinion on it. What are the ways we can help our adult children find their First off, does your adult child want your help? Do they actually want your help? Because a lot of times as parents, we want to help our kids and they do not want our help.
Patricia Sung [00:07:21]:
And granted, like, take this with a grain of salt because I don't have adult children yet, but I have worked with high schoolers which think they're adults, and I have worked with so many adults who have opinions on how their parents handled things. And this is a touchy subject, but I think it really starts with, do they want your help? You can't force help on people. Yeah, I agree. You can't make them do stuff, especially when they're an adult. Like, you can make kids do some stuff, but like, they still have to choose to do it. And when you're working with your adult child, you're working with like decades of patterns and baggage and trauma responses and all that. Like, all that's coming in. And there's also decades of love in there, and it makes it complicated.
Patricia Sung [00:08:07]:
But really we have to first ask, like, does this person want my help? And this question applies to like anyone in our family. It's not just our adult children, but like, does your spouse want help? Does your aunt want help? Does your parent want help? Do these other adults in your life want help? Ask that first because we can't make people do stuff. We can't force help upon somebody. They have to choose to want to do something different. So in this case, if they don't want your help, don't help them. Like, let them be a grownup and figure it out themselves. It's harsh, leave 'em alone. Now, the second part of this is though, do let them know that you're available for help, that you are happy to help, that you want the best for them, and whenever they're ready, you're here.
Patricia Sung [00:08:47]:
But again, like, don't badger the doodoo out of them. Just let them know, I'm here to help, if you actually wanna help. If you don't wanna help, don't help. But like, let them know that you're here. But a lot of times when we push people continually on something, like, they don't wanna talk to you anymore about it. They're not interested in your opinion because you've already given it to them and they already said no thank you. Like, so let them be. Be loving, be supportive.
Patricia Sung [00:09:11]:
Let them know you're here when they're ready, but you can't make them take your help. Now, the caveat here is if this person lives in your house, that's different. If your adult child is in your home, there are different expectations here. There are different family rules. There are boundaries. Like, this is different because they're in your house. So you can set rules. Now obviously, like, it would be great if you do this before they move in or before they're like transition from, you know, being a kid in high school to being a grown-up not in high school.
Patricia Sung [00:09:44]:
But a lot of times we don't do that and things just keep on trucking along. So this is the point where you say like, okay, what is doable for our family and what does that look like? And every family is going to be different, so I can't sit here and be like, you should do this because your family is different. It's different if you still have younger kids at home. It's different if You know, they're moving back in as in, you know, after you've been an empty nester. Like, you have to figure out what you can tolerate and figure out with them, like, how does that look for contributing. But since it's your house, you can say, like, I need these things from you in order to live here because that is the way that we work together as a family and, like, also as roommates. Like, you can set the rules because you own the home, and if you are paying the bills, like, you're in charge. So you can set Expectations, you can set boundaries, and you can set rules.
Patricia Sung [00:10:31]:
So the rules are things like, if you have little kids at home, you might be like, hey, you can't be coming in at 2:00 AM with friends or something because little kids gotta get up for school the next day. It is okay to have rules about what is allowed and not allowed. You can't have people over at the house after 11:00 PM. There can be expectations of like, hey, I expect for you to let me know where you are, but like, they don't have to. But like, you can say like, hey, I worry a lot when I don't know where you are. So I don't want to check up on you as in I don't want to, you know, track you, but IтАФ it's a respectful thing when you live with someone. If I'm expecting you home at a certain time, I then worry that you didn't come home. So I don't necessarily need to know where you are and what you're doing, but I do want you to let me know if you think you're going to be home more than an hour after work or after what time you're normally home.
Patricia Sung [00:11:23]:
Can you just give me a heads up that like, I'll be late today? Then I don't have to worry. And that's like a community respect thing you would do with like a roommate also. You can have rules about like what they need to contribute, you know, are they living here rent-free? Like, I always laugh because at the time it was like, oh, this is harsh. But now keep in mind, this was like 25 years ago, so, you know, dollar amounts have changed. My best friends from high school are identical twins, and they were like my 2 sisters. Their mom is my second mom, and their parents offered that like you can come back after college and live here. But they set the expectation in the beginning of likeтАФ and I don't remember the specifics, again, it's 25 years agoтАФ but it was like, you can live here rent-free for 6 months, and then on month 7 you got to pay $100, and on month 8 you got to pay $200. And it like gradually increased so that they had about a year-long runway.
Patricia Sung [00:12:13]:
But then theyтАФ whatever the rent was, was like, now it would be as expensive to stay at home as it would be like for them to get their own apartment. And then Like, I think they said like, okay, and then at that point, like, we'll negotiate. Like, if you want to stay here, that's fine, but you have to contribute more to the family. And if you don't, like, you know, be on your way, go with the Lord, good luck. So like, one of my best friends took them up on it, and the other best friend was like, nope, I'm out, and went and lived on her own. So you can create these situations to like be fair to all. Like, is it kind to all concerned? Here. And it is okay for you to say like, you need to pay rent, or you know, you need to be in charge of these responsibilities, or you need to pay the water bill or the electric bill.
Patricia Sung [00:12:57]:
Like, you can figure that out. And yes, there's a difference there though. Like, a boundary, an expectation, and a ruleтАФ those are 3 different things. And being very clear on what they are, because you can't control the other person. So like, for example, this parent is asking like, you know, how do we help them get a job? Another one of the panelists made a really great point of like, is the issue that your expectations are not matching the reality of who your kid is? Like, is it that you just don't like their job? Like you don't think that that job is good enough? You know, if you think like, well, they went to 4 years of college and now they're just doing X, they're just, uh, whatever. Like that's not your place to decide. They get to do the job that they want to do. Like if they want to go be whatever, I'm like, I don't want to insult anybody here, but it's like if they want to be a mailman or like a line cook, like let them do that.
Patricia Sung [00:13:49]:
As long as they're like covering their responsibilities, that's their business. And we can't make them do stuff. Like, we can't change anybody but ourselves. And that, yes, I know it feels harsh, but like we can't. Um, but what you can do is know that there's a lot of resources out there. And another panelist, um, I will put her information in the link. Her name is Dr. Kimberly Harrison.
Patricia Sung [00:14:12]:
She is A little older than I, and she has adult kids, so she gets it. And she has a really great program at her center for like adulting with ADHD. So go look at the program that she has, um, for adults with ADHD and autism. And if you're not in Houston, like at least you know what to look for where you are. There are so many great resources around who can help your kid with what they need, and sometimes we just need to hear it from somebody else. Like, my husband gets mad all the time that like he'll tell me something and I'm like, I am not interested in your opinion. And then someone else tells me the exact same thing and I'm like, that is a brilliant idea. He's like, ah, I evenтАФ I do it too.
Patricia Sung [00:14:51]:
It's like sometimes we just need to hear another voice tell us the exact same thing. But then you're not the bad guy and you have more people on the team supporting your kid. And the panel that I spoke on was with the Nick Finnegan Counseling Center here in Houston. They have a lot of free and low-cost resources for people around Houston. And like, I am sure that they something like that near you or something virtual. Like, don't let an automatic, I don't have the ability to do that, keep you from investigating. Like, look for the thing you want and then figure out how to get it. But it exists out there.
Patricia Sung [00:15:25]:
Find the people who can help your kid that they are more likely to listen to. Ask the other adults in their circle, do you haveтАФ like, is there like an aunt or an uncle that they really trust? Is there a coworker? Is there someone else in their life, like a coach, a Like the theater teacher that they adored, like any other grown-up that they would listen to better than you. Get those people in on your team and say, hey, I'm trying to help so-and-so, and I know they will listen to you more than they will me. Can you talk to them about this? And like, you can tell them like, I found this really cool resource, I would like them to use it. I know if they tellтАФ I tell them, they're not gonna take it, but like, can you tell them about it? And, you know, figure out the way that's best going to work for you and your kid. You know them well, what's gonna actually make the impact. But again, it's not on you. You have raised this child to be an adult and we can't make people change.
Patricia Sung [00:16:18]:
We can support them, we can offer help, we can have lots of people on their team, but we can't make them do certain things just because we want them to. So find the people who will help you, find the resources available, continue to be the loving, supportive parent that you are. Let them know you're here when they're ready. But don't push your help on someone who has not asked for it. It's just leading for heartache for you and for them because they didn't want your help. And when somebody doesn't want your help, it's not helpful. So harsh but true. That's my unpopular opinion.
Patricia Sung [00:16:49]:
I'll talk to you soon, Successful Mama. For more resources, classes, and community, head over to my website, motherhoodinadhd.com.